Jenny’s ring.
Bold, bright, and almost obscenely sparkly, it was La Lopez herself in jewellery form.
‘Good evening.’
A shortish, baldish, pleasant-looking man appeared behind the counter.
‘Is there anything I can show you this evening?’ he asked with an encouraging expression.
‘We’d like to see the half-carat Embrace,’ I said, pointing at the glass but not quite touching. It wouldn’t do to leave fingerprints in Tiffany. ‘Right, Mason?’
‘Yep,’ he squeaked. ‘We would.’
‘A beautiful ring,’ the assistant said as he opened the cabinet and reached inside to gently pull out the display tray. ‘This really is one of my favourites. Such a glamorous option, a truly romantic offering for an elegant woman.’
He stopped to take a breath and consider my plum-coloured corduroy pinafore dress and stripy T-shirt ensemble.
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ I said, looking down at my own toddler-inspired outfit. ‘It’s not for me.’
‘Quite,’ he replied before placing an almost identical, only slightly larger ring beside the first. ‘Just for size comparison, this is the one-carat version of the same ring. It’s still quite tasteful, perfectly suitable for daily wear. Slightly larger central stone.’
There was nothing slight about it. The new ring looked like something Barbie might have worn around her dream home. Even Elizabeth Taylor would have said it was a bit much.
‘I think we’re fine with the first one,’ Mason gulped.
The assistant nodded. ‘Is there anything else I can show you?’
‘No,’ Mason replied.
‘Yes, please,’ I countered. ‘Have you got anything that’s really massive?’
Mason elbowed me in the ribs as he stared at white diamonds on black velvet.
‘Not for you,’ I replied, eyes glazing over at the pretty things in front of me. ‘While I’m here, I might as well.’
The shortish, baldish assistant amiably opened up neighbouring cabinets and laid several giant rocks out on a separate tray. Mason continued to eyeball Jenny’s ring but made no attempt to touch it. Even though I’d seen it a million times, Jenny had never allowed herself to take the ring out of the cabinet. We only ever looked at it from behind the safety of the glass. Up close, it was even more stunning than I remembered. The central diamond sparkled under the store’s lights while the halo of smaller stones shimmered with a subtlety that belied the fifteen-thousand-dollar price tag.
‘It’s gorgeous,’ I whispered, as I slid a two-carat canary yellow solitaire onto the little finger of my right hand. ‘She’s going to be so happy, Mason.’
I held my breath as, very slowly, a huge smile broke out underneath his beard. He looked at me, and I realized there were tears in his big manly eyes. ‘This is it, this is the ring. It’s Jenny’s ring.’
As soon as he said it, I began to well up.
‘Oh,’ I sniffed, scratching my cheek with an enormous sapphire as I wiped away my own tears. ‘Mason, she’s going to be so happy.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, draping his arm around my shoulders. Given his ridiculous lumberjack build, he had to reach down quite far to give me a half hug but I wrapped my arm around his waist as the assistant gave us one happy nod and silently disappeared to fetch a ring box. ‘Part of me can’t believe I’m actually going to do it, but as soon as I saw the ring, I knew it was right. I want to ask her right now, I don’t even want to wait.’
‘Don’t wait!’ I agreed, tears streaming down my cheeks at the thought of the proposal. ‘Do it right now!’
‘I’m going to call her.’ Mason wiped his eyes with the back of his ringless hand and pulled his phone out of his pocket. ‘Maybe she can meet me for dinner, she’s probably still at work.’
‘No, I know where she is!’ I reached up to snatch the phone out of his hand. ‘She’s right next door, we were having a drink at the King Cole bar before I met you.’
Mason looked at me, confused. ‘I thought you said you were at work?’
‘I did but I lied,’ I said happily. ‘I forgot I was meeting you and I went to meet her but then I told her I had to go to work and – and none of this matters! Let’s go and do it now, her hair looks nice and she’s just had a manicure. She’ll be ecstatic.’
‘OK.’ Mason ran both of his hands through his sandy hair then threw his arms out wide. ‘I’m doing this! I’m going to propose to my girlfriend!’
Before I could object, he grabbed me around the waist and hoisted me off my feet, twirling me around in a circle.
‘Oh, steady on,’ I said, grabbing his shoulder with one hand and clapping the other over my mouth. ‘I’ve been feeling a bit gippy all day.’
Slowly, everyone on the shop floor began to clap.
‘Whoo!’ yelped one overly enthusiastic man in a backwards baseball cap across the way. ‘Congratulations!’
‘Oh no,’ I said, mortified. Whether it was sheer embarrassment or the fact a man was wearing a backwards baseball cap in Tiffany, I couldn’t be sure. ‘Oh, Mason, put me down.’
‘Yeah, Mason, put her down.’
Still holding me hoisted three and a half feet up off the floor, Mason turned to reveal a decidedly unecstatic-looking Jenny Lopez.
‘What the fuck is going on?’
‘Jenny, I—’ Mason, startled, seemed to have completely forgotten what he was doing in the most famous engagement ring shop in the entire history of the world. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Duuuuude, busted.’
Backwards Baseball Cap Man gasped on the other side of the store and I realized everyone in Tiffany & Co. was watching us.
‘What am I doing here? What are you doing here?’ Jenny demanded. Her face was almost the same shade of red as her nails and her hair was wild. She was furious. ‘Angie left her phone on the bar so I was going to take it to the office but when I followed her out, she didn’t go to her office. She came here. To meet you.’
‘You followed me from the bar?’ I scrunched my eyebrows together, perplexed. ‘How did it take you this long to find us?’
‘Because I had to pee on my way up here, OK?’ she yelled, hurling my phone at me. ‘Someone left an entire martini on the bar and I paid seventy-five dollars for three drinks. I knew you were lying to me – tell me what the hell is going on!’
‘Jenny …’ Mason dropped me like a bag of hot dog shit and I stumbled forward into the glass counter. Before she could say anything else, he dropped to one knee and everyone in the shop held their collective breath. ‘I have something I want to ask you.’
Behind him I gestured wildly for her to come closer but she didn’t move. The fury in her eyes began to shift into wide-eyed shock and her red cheeks faded to white.
‘I’ve been thinking about this for the longest time,’ Mason went on, inching closer to his girlfriend, still on one knee. Even kneeling he was almost as tall as I was. He really would be a handy person to have around if you needed something getting down off the top of the wardrobe. She had done well. ‘Since I met you, my life has changed completely. You make the bad days better and you make the good days fantastic – and I need you to know how much I love you.’
‘Oh.’
Jenny looked up at me as she realized what was happening. From my spot at the counter behind Mason, I gave a nod so big I thought my head might drop off.
‘This isn’t exactly how I’d envisioned it,’ Mason said, ‘but you are the most exceptional, intelligent, ridiculous, beautiful and incredible woman I have ever met and I want to spend the rest of my life beside you.’
He really was very good, I thought, tearing up again as I trained my phone’s camera on Jenny’s face. Impressive proposals were one of the upsides to dating a professional writer.
‘Jenny?’ he reached out and fumbled on the counter for the ring. ‘Will you …’
‘Yes?’ she said, manically combing out her hair with one eye on my phone.
Mason opened
his mouth to seal the deal but instead of saying ‘Will you marry me?’ he barked like a wounded sea lion and keeled over, huge, rolling sobs shaking his giant shoulders. Jenny looked at me with fear in her dry eyes. There was a chance this wasn’t exactly how she’d imagined this going down.
‘Mason?’ I said, poking him with my toe. ‘You all right there?’
‘I’m just so happy,’ he choked out each word in between a fresh wail. ‘Jenny, I want to ask you, will you … will you?’
Just as I thought he was going to get through the sentence, he rolled over again, tears streaming down his face and getting lost in his beard before they pooled into a stain on the front of his plaid shirt. For the want of a comprehensible sentence, he held out the ring and squealed.
‘I will,’ I mouthed at Jenny over the top of his prone, checked form.
‘I will!’ she said, rushing towards him and skidding to the floor on her knees to plant a kiss on his lips and, most importantly, get the ring on her finger.
‘Congratulations!’ I shouted, circling around them with my phone, still recording the perfectish moment while all the staff and customers breathed a group sigh of relief and began a round of thunderous applause. It was like something out of a very expensive, slightly odd, fairy tale.
‘Dude!’ yelled Backwards Baseball Cap Man. ‘Sweeeeet.’
‘Yes, congratulations,’ the assistant added, while Jenny and Mason continued their celebratory make-out session on the floor of Tiffany & Co. ‘Will sir be paying with cash or credit?’
‘Oh, it’s credit,’ I said, handing him the credit card Mason had left on the counter before slowly removing all my borrowed baubles. Who walked around New York with thousands of dollars in cash on them? And were they currently in the store and looking for a new British friend? ‘Thank you so much for your help.’
‘Not at all,’ he replied, smiling at the newly engaged couple. ‘It looks perfect on her. I’m so glad he decided to go with the one-carat ring, so much more impactful than the half carat.’
I bit down on my lip as my eyes opened up, saucer-wide at the sight of the half-carat ring still on the counter. Down on the floor, Jenny was laughing deliriously, staring at her own left hand. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell he was getting it off her finger now.
‘What’s the price on the one-carat ring?’ I asked as the assistant quickly and carefully put everything away. ‘Just out of interest.’
‘That one is actually 1.18 carats, and will be twenty- one thousand five hundred,’ he replied without looking up from the task at hand. ‘Plus tax.’
There was that nauseous feeling again.
‘Worth every penny,’ I said, snapping another photo. It would be nice to have as many as possible before Mason saw the price tag and had an aneurysm. ‘It’s a fairy tale come true.’
‘Angie!’ Jenny crawled over to me and hauled herself upright. ‘I’m engaged!’
‘I know!’ I replied, watching Mason sign for the ring without reading the slip. Wow, that was going to be a rough day when his credit card bill came in.
‘My wedding is going to be perfect,’ Jenny whispered, glittering eyes locked on her dream ring. ‘Just you wait and see.’
And for some reason, I couldn’t help but think it sounded more like a threat than a promise.
CHAPTER FIVE
When a washing machine crashed through my ceiling a week earlier, it had been somewhat disconcerting. But now I had become oddly used to squeezing past the hunk of Hotpoint determined to get between me and my breakfast cuppa.
Right after they completely destroyed my kitchen, Lorraine and Vi had promised they would have it all sorted out before the weekend, but after a failed attempt at trying to pick it up and drag it out to the street on our own, I’d been living with what could have passed as modern art to some people, and a huge hole in my ceiling, for more than a week. On Sunday morning they’d lowered down a basket of pastries and, after that, it was fair to say I wasn’t nearly as upset about the situation as I could have been.
‘Good morning!’ Vi called through the Hello Hole as we’d christened it. I waved back and grabbed a Tetley teabag out of the pot and tossed it into my travel mug. You could take the girl out of England, etc. ‘Sweet outfit. Big day at the office?’
‘Trying to make a good impression.’ I flipped the ends of the black ribbon I’d tied in a bow around my neck and prayed the white silk shirt wasn’t a mistake. ‘Do I look presentable?’
She squatted down to take a closer look and I gave her a quick twirl.
‘Very nice, the shirt is smart, the skirt is sexy, everything’s working for me,’ she gave me a thumbs-up and I poofed up my little black mini. ‘Great getaway sticks, lady.’
‘And now it’s black tights season again and I don’t have to shave every day, you’ll be seeing a lot more of them,’ I replied, returning her thumbs-up as the kettle boiled.
‘And if all else fails, you can just spill water on your blouse and call it a day,’ Vi suggested. ‘Your boss is a dude, after all.’
‘Note to self, buy water,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
‘I’m sorry it’s taking so long to get everything figured out.’ She pulled at the hem of her Harvard T-shirt as she folded over to sit on the floor. ‘Lorraine’s brother’s best friend is a builder and he specializes in restoring townhouses and period places. I’m really hoping he can come and take a look tonight.’
I poured boiling water from the kettle into my travel cup and swished the teabag around until the water was more or less brown before removing the bag and tipping in half a pint of milk. My mother would have died if she could see what passed for tea in this house these days.
‘Any chance he’ll be able to clear this out?’ I asked, tapping the washing machine with my black Saint Laurent pointed pump. ‘If I’m honest, a great big washing machine in the middle of a small kitchen is more of a problem than the Hello Hole.’
Naming the gaping chasm in the ceiling had probably been a bad idea. It now felt more like something from a Nineties sitcom than a potential structural disaster.
‘You’re telling me,’ Vi sighed. ‘I’ve got Lululemon leggings in there – no way I’m going to be able to save them now. I guess it’s better not to try and force it open, though, right? In case it explodes or something?’
I chose not to tell her how I’d spent fifteen minutes trying to jimmy the door open with a butter knife three nights earlier. It was late, I couldn’t sleep and curiosity had got the better of me. Bloody thing would not budge.
‘Well, it is a washing machine, not a nuclear bomb, but I think we should probably leave it alone,’ I said, sipping tea as weak and feeble as I was.
‘I’ll text as soon as I know when the builders can start.’ She rolled upright and waved through the hole. ‘Have a great day and show that boss man who’s really boss.’
‘It is actually him,’ I replied with a wave of my own. ‘He’s been quite clear about that.’
‘Eurgh, patriarchy,’ she muttered as she vanished from sight. ‘Catch you later.’
‘I wish I was a lesbian,’ I mumbled, staring up into Lorraine and Vi’s beautiful kitchen. There was an actual herb garden in the window box. The only thing in our window box was pigeon shit. ‘I wonder if there’s a course you can take.’
‘There is,’ Vi shouted, apparently still in her kitchen. ‘But they’d make you leave your hot husband and I know for a fact he does all the cooking in your house.’
‘Noted,’ I called back, my cheeks flaming red as I barrelled out of the kitchen and towards my front door. ‘Thanks, Vi.’
Park Slope was one of my favourite parts of New York and not just because I lived there. It was post-Halloween and pre-Thanksgiving, meaning the giant cobweb decorations and animatronic skeletons were gone but the pumpkins remained. Every single stoop was covered in gourds, plastic, ceramic and even some real ones. If you’d left real pumpkins on the doorstep in my village when I was growing up, someone would
have lobbed them through the neighbour’s greenhouse by the next morning – we just wouldn’t have known what else to do with them. The streets all round mine were wide and tree-lined and all the houses looked like they’d come straight out of a Woody Allen movie, usually complete with a neurotic man chasing a much-too-good-looking-for-him younger woman to boot. There was the odd modern concrete block dotted here and there, but, for the most part, our neighbourhood was all elegant brownstones and townhouses. It looked like the New York I knew from the movies. That was the strange thing about my city, even if you’d never stepped foot in the place, you already knew it by heart. The skyline, the streets, the parks and the subways, New York belonged to everyone.
Sipping my tea as I walked down to the 9th Street subway station, I let myself dream of buying a townhouse all to ourselves one day. Our apartment was one of two in the building; we had the ground floor and the basement while Lorraine and Vi had the top two floors. Maybe if I didn’t get fired, I’d become the editor of Belle someday and that dream would become a heavily mortgaged reality. Or perhaps Alex and the guys would get back in the studio and write a blockbuster album that made oodles of money. It had to be a possibility, didn’t it? Coldplay didn’t seem to be hurting for cash and Adele could definitely afford to spare a bob or two. I turned the corner past my favourite Mexican restaurant and the fancy underwear boutique next door, then nodded to the man inside the neighbouring juice bar, promising my liver I’d go in and get one tomorrow. There just wasn’t time today, it had nothing to do with the fact I couldn’t deal with even the thought of a green juice when my stomach was full of tea.
Just as I was about to put my foot on the steps down to the subway, my phone started ringing. Mother. I considered not answering but the passive-aggressive voicemail I’d have to listen to when I got to work didn’t bear thinking about.
‘Ahoy hoy,’ I answered, holding the phone between my shoulder and cheek as I patted myself down for my MetroCard. ‘How’s life at sea?’
‘Your father’s had enough,’ my mother announced from wherever they might be. There was no time for pleasantries when you were sailing around the world, it seemed. ‘Once in a lifetime holiday, this. Round the world cruise and the silly old bugger has decided he doesn’t like boats. Will you talk to him?’