‘I see. And what exactly does that mean?’ I asked, as though I was asking her how one might go about baking a Victoria sponge without the requisite ingredients.
‘It means you might have some fertility challenges,’ she replied. ‘And the longer you leave it, the harder it might be to conceive naturally.’
She let the news sink in for a moment but I wasn’t sure whether or not she was waiting for a response. If she was, I didn’t have one, so she was buggered.
‘I’d love for you to come in so we can talk about some options,’ she went on. ‘There’s really no need to panic, this doesn’t mean you’re infertile. There’s absolutely no reason why you wouldn’t be able to conceive naturally and have a perfectly healthy pregnancy, we’ll just need to stay on top of the situation.’
‘But sooner would be better than later,’ I said, way more calmly than I was feeling. ‘If I wanted to have a baby naturally.’
The word ‘naturally’ stuck in my throat. How else did you have a baby?
‘Sooner would be better than later,’ she said with emphasis on the ‘would’. ‘But there are a lot of options, Angela. I really would like you to come in and talk. Seriously, I had a woman come in last week who froze her eggs when she was three years younger than you and she’s just had twins. And we’re a long way from even contemplating egg freezing.’
‘Egg freezing.’
‘It’s an option,’ Laura said. ‘A long-term option. For women looking to put off pregnancy indefinitely.’
‘Egg freezing.’
‘Angela?’
‘Egg freezing.’
‘Angela, are you OK?’ Laura’s professionalism was slipping over into concern. ‘Is anyone there with you?’
‘I’m fine,’ I whispered to stop my voice from cracking. I was not going to cry on the phone to a doctor, my mother would kill me. ‘I’m OK. Thanks for letting me know.’
‘You need to come in and see me so we can talk about this some more,’ Laura insisted. ‘I can make some time tomorrow. Whenever works for you. Just let me know.’
‘Did you call Jenny yet?’ I cradled the phone between my ear and my shoulder, freeing my hand to wipe away a tear that hadn’t quite made it out. And I wasn’t going to bloody let it.
‘I haven’t,’ she said. ‘I wanted to talk to you first.’
‘She’s fine?’ It was a statement more than a question.
‘She’s fine,’ Laura confirmed, softly.
‘Can you not mention anything about this when you call her?’ I asked, embarrassed.
‘Of course not. I absolutely wouldn’t discuss your test results with anyone else. So you’ll email me with a time for tomorrow?’
‘I will,’ I said, sniffing with resolve. ‘I will.’
‘And maybe if he’s around, bring Alex?’ she suggested.
‘If he’s around.’ Alex. The resolve seeped away, along with any measure of strength that was stopping the tears that welled up behind my eyes. ‘Thanks for calling, Laura.’
Without waiting for her to reply, I hung up. It was rude and my mother would be endlessly disappointed at my treatment of a health professional but I figured it was better to be thought of as abrupt than the woman that sobbed uncontrollably down the phone to a doctor she barely knew. I turned my chair to face the window, the bright lights of Times Square blurring into colourful smudges. I didn’t even know why I was crying. It was like Laura said, there wasn’t anything majorly wrong, my hormones were just a little bit low, that was all. And there was no reason why I couldn’t have a baby naturally. People went through worse than this every single day and right now there wasn’t even anything to go through. Apart from telling Alex that we might have a hard time having kids. How did I even start that conversation? Merry Christmas, honey. I know you really want to have kids but surprise! No such luck. All at once, I wanted him there with me and I never wanted to see him again. I wanted him there to hold me and tell me everything was OK but I just couldn’t imagine how I was going to look him in the eye. Even though I wasn’t quite sure how, somehow I felt as though I’d let him down.
Picking up my phone, I looked at the photo of Alex, Louisa and Grace huddled around a small, distressed-looking reindeer and smiled. They looked like the perfect family – handsome dark-haired husband, beautiful blonde wife and the perfect mini-me daughter. Only the blonde’s husband was three thousand miles away and possibly porking some bird called Vanessa while the dark-haired husband’s wife was going to struggle with a mini-me of her own. Dropping the phone on the desk, I pulled my notepad out from underneath the keyboard. Problems one to five suddenly seemed a little bit silly.
Bollocks.
CHAPTER EIGHT
By the time I arrived back at the apartment, I had come to what I considered to be an ingenious solution to my problems. I would just ignore them. I’d been looking forward to Erin’s tree-trimming party for weeks and I wasn’t going to let a little issue like potentially never being able to have children even though my husband had nothing but babies on the brain ruin my evening. After a twenty-minute cry in the shower and half a bottle of eye drops, even I couldn’t tell anything was wrong with me.
‘Who’s ready to trim a tree?’ I asked, stepping out of the bathroom and into the living room to a round of applause from the ladies of the house. Grace’s eyes lit up as she slapped her chubby hands together. Alex nodded his approval from the kitchen, where he was shoving a Jaffa Cake in his mouth, hoping I wouldn’t notice.
‘You do scrub up very well.’ Louisa gave my gold sequinned BCBG shift dress an admiring nod. I did a spin, making sure I could get around in the obscenely high Brian Attwood heels I’d nicked from the fashion desk on my way out. I hadn’t worn the shoes in an age and they were a risk but they made me look skinny so I couldn’t really see what choice I had. ‘You still need a haircut, though.’
‘Well, I’m not quite at the point where Vidal Sassoon can come in and give me a trim while I’m at my desk,’ I said, checking my handbag for lip balm and chewing gum. ‘Nice jumper.’
‘Thanks, it’s yours,’ she replied, stroking the silver sparkles on her shoulder. ‘And I’m pretty sure Vidal Sassoon is dead.’
‘All the more reason why I’d struggle to book him for a trim them.’ I clacked my hastily applied stick-on nails on the kitchen top. ‘Shall we get off?’
‘Hey, chill.’ Alex wandered out of the bedroom, fussing with a skinny black tie against a white shirt. ‘I called a car. It’ll be here in a second.’
Talk about scrubbing up well. Whenever Alex ventured into the wild world of formalwear, I wanted to drag him around the streets of New York, shoving him in random women’s faces and screaming ‘this is mine!’ Totally rational.
‘Don’t Auntie Angela and Uncle Alex look glamorous?’ Lou said, hoisting Grace onto her lap and stretching her little arm out towards us. ‘Don’t they look like neither of them spent twenty minutes trying to get chocolate out of your hair this afternoon?’
‘Yeah, sorry about that,’ Alex muttered, turning to me so I could fix his tie. Adjusting a tie was something a sexy, grown-up woman did in movies. It made me feel like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, except without the casually overlooked prostitution part. I just hoped he never actually needed me to tie it for him because I had no idea how. ‘I left her alone with a cookie.’
‘You never leave me alone with a cookie,’ I sulked, stepping back to admire my handiwork. Outside, a car horn sounded as Alex helped me shrug on my coat while Louisa did the same with Grace. The irony was not lost on me. ‘Come on, gang, let’s get our Christmas on.’
One of the biggest problems with moving to New York was accepting that coffee house waitresses and wannabe actors did not live in big, beautiful lofts in the West Village. In truth, the only people who lived in the West Village were extraordinarily rich people. People like my friend Erin. But, as we stepped inside the beautiful townhouse on Perry Street, I remembered that it had cost her not only over a million dollars but
forty years of slogging away for eighty hours a week and three failed marriages. When you really thought about it, that was probably a lot to pay for a house, even a really nice one.
‘Angela!’
I was awkwardly handing my coat to a middle-aged woman wearing a black maid’s dress and a face like a slapped arse when Erin appeared in her own hallway. ‘Alex, it’s been an age. And Louisa, so excited that you’re here! There’s a crèche in the next room, feel free to offload this little cherub.’
She tweaked Grace’s cheek and planted kisses on the rest of us before literally snatching Grace out of Louisa’s arms and handing her over to a waiting nanny. Grace took the whole thing with a surprisingly good attitude, waving happily at us as she was whisked away through a dark wooden door. Before Louisa could react, Erin placed a glass of champagne in her hand.
‘Merry Christmas,’ she said, giving Lou a ‘drink up’ gesture. ‘Enjoy the night off while you can.’
Stunned, Louisa did as she was told and Erin turned her attention to me, wrapping me in a bear hug that belied her tiny frame.
‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ she whispered in my ear, mid-hug. ‘I feel like a zombie. It’s so long since I’ve done anything like this. You look amazing. I feel like shit.’
In reality, Erin’s son, Thomas Junior, was only two weeks old and we’d been to brunch literally twenty-four hours before she gave birth. And while she might have felt like shit, she looked amazing. I might not have been able to get the hairdresser into the office but Erin had certainly had him round to her house. Along with a personal shopper and a make-up artist from the look of it. Her floor-length black dress made her blonde hair shine and the simple T-shirt cut of the gown stopped the heavy satin material from looking too much. It was a simple elegance I could never get away with, although I did think I’d look all right in the enormous diamond chandelier earrings that peeped out from her half-up, half-down do. Truly, Erin was the best example I knew of how the other half lived. West Village townhouse, Wall Street banker husband, her own PR company, private jet, summer house in the Hamptons and ski lodge in Vermont. It was insane. Sure, Delia was from family money but she hadn’t been spoiled and since the woman never left the office, it was easy to forget about the black Amex in her wallet. But Erin had worked hard for what she had and she was committed to making the most of it, and for that I couldn’t knock her. I could be insanely jealous, but I couldn’t knock her.
‘Come through,’ she said, grabbing my hand and leading the way with a half-full glass of champagne. ‘There are so many people you need to say hello to before we get shitcanned with Lopez.’
Music and laughter from another room suggested we weren’t the first to arrive. Stricken with sudden social anxiety, I was relieved to feel Alex’s hand on my waist. He was a total champ to come to the party. Wall Street bankers and Manhattan socialites were not his cup of tea and the poor boy had already put in a full day entertaining my emotionally compromised best friend and her toddler, all while planning our move in three days’ time. He deserved a medal. But instead, he was getting a hearty handshake and a slap on the back from Erin’s husband, Thomas, and being presented to all of his banker buddies.
‘This is Alex,’ I heard Thomas announce. ‘Hell of a guy. He’s actually in a band. He lives in Brooklyn.’
The Brookes Brothers gang stared at him as though they’d just been told Alex lived on the moon and sold crack for a living. I made a mental note to make it up to him in sexual favours as soon as we got home. It wouldn’t exactly be a hardship.
I tottered along behind Erin, letting her drag me through clumps of well-dressed but decidedly unsparkly party guests, while she nattered on to Louisa about the difficulties of childrearing under the influence.
It wasn’t hard to tune out. Erin’s house had been transformed from a chic West Village townhouse into a winter wonderland. Every available surface in my office and apartment was covered in reindeer, snowmen, bells, tinsel, twinkling lights, candy canes and cotton wool snow. And if there was already something on the surface, that something was now wearing a miniature Santa hat. I liked to think of my Christmas decorating style as enthusiastic and fun. Erin’s Christmas decorating style was, like the rest of her house, bloody beautiful. Classic Christmas crooners were piped through an invisible sound system and there were beautiful glowing candles on high shelves, safely out the way of clumsy guests, i.e. me. And in the corner of the main reception room was a towering Christmas tree of glory. Truly, it was a thing of beauty but much to my utter dismay, it was already completely decorated. Wasn’t this supposed to be a tree-trimming party? From top to bottom, the eight-foot giant glowed with hidden fairy lights and tasteful gold- and silver-toned decorations. Classy. I always envied these kinds of trees but at heart I was a mishmash of decorations girl. I had baubles on my tree that I had made in Brownies when me and Lou were tiny, I had decorations from all of my travels, pieces friends had bought, things that reminded me of special times. Erin’s tree only really reminded me that I still hadn’t worked out how to stop my lights from blinking on and off like a mad man.
‘What’s wrong?’ Erin asked, handing me a glass of champagne. ‘You look like someone just told you the holidays were cancelled. Here’s a clue – they aren’t.’
‘Your tree is already done,’ I said. Heart. Broken. ‘I thought we were going to put all the stuff on it?’
‘Oh no.’ She gave a tiny tinkling laugh and placed her hand on my arm. ‘I had someone come over and do it. Dressing the tree is such a chore. Now we get to concentrate on the fun part!’
I smiled happily, nodding while I died on the inside. So much for my mega-fun Christmas evening that was going to take my mind off all the messy, stressy bollocks that was threatening to send me mad. While Erin and Louisa carried on chatting, I tiptoed closer to the tree. A proper lungful of piney goodness would make all this better. Except, I couldn’t smell anything. Because the tree didn’t smell of anything. Because the tree was fake. Peering in between the densely packed branches, where I was expecting to see a thick, woody trunk, was just a chunky green plastic pole. Christmas fraud! I turned to look back at Erin, trying to think of an appropriate way to express my dismay. With no better option, I decided it was best expressed in consuming as much alcohol as humanly possible. I’d been robbed of decorating the tree – hell, I’d even been robbed of an actual tree – but I’d be damned if I was giving up all Christmas traditions. There was nothing else to do but get really drunk.
‘Angie!’
The inimitable call of Jenny Lopez sounded across the room, shaking me out of my sulk. She strode in, her flatmate Sadie hot on her heels. I abandoned the tree of lies and made my way over to my friends, determined to turn things around, determined to have a good time.
‘Hey, Lou Lou.’ Jenny threw herself on Louisa, leaving bright red lipstick smudges on her cheeks. She was wearing a purple silk jumpsuit with towering gold strappy sandals and a matching belt around her tiny waist. Her hair was everywhere. Sadie was almost wearing a silver Hervé Léger bandage dress.
‘Hi,’ she breathed, leaning ever so slightly forward to suggest air kisses on both of my cheeks. ‘I just flew in from London. I’m really fucking tired.’
‘It’s good to see you too,’ I replied. Sadie was a model. This meant she occasionally forgot how actual humans were supposed to act in social situations. ‘Merry Christmas.’
She blinked twice, moved her mouth into a smile that didn’t meet her eyes and then whispered something to Jenny before vanishing.
‘She OK?’ Louisa asked.
‘Sure.’ Jenny waved away our concerns and waved over a waiter. ‘She’s just gonna go do some coke and then she’ll be fine.’
‘Oh.’ Louisa looked startled for a moment before resetting her face. ‘Is that … is that normal?’
‘Not for normal people,’ I replied on Jenny’s behalf before she said something that might upset Louisa’s delicate, suburban temperament. ‘If I’m a bit tire
d, I have a Diet Coke and a sit down. But Sadie isn’t normal people.’
‘Fair enough,’ Lou muttered, looking around the party with new eyes, trying to work out who was just a regular Manhattanite and who was a raging gak head. Following her gaze, it actually wasn’t that hard to tell.
‘So what’s going on, Lou Lou?’ Jenny asked, taking a glass of champs from the waiter. I wondered how many bottles Erin had ordered and whether or not France was worried about running out. ‘Have you spoken to that dirtbag husband of yours?’
Lou coloured up slightly, far too English to consider such a conversation at the party of someone she barely knew. But unfortunately for her, Jenny wasn’t concerned about such things. Or, actually, any things.
‘Not yet,’ she admitted. ‘Honestly, I’d rather not talk about it tonight. Can we just have a lovely night out and talk about it tomorrow?’
‘Sure,’ Jenny replied in an unprecedented display of tact and understanding. ‘Do you guys have plans tomorrow night? Shall we get dinner? Make it a real girls’ night?’
‘Oh, I’d like that,’ Louisa nodded. ‘Are you free, Angela?’
I nodded. ‘I have to be at work again but I can be out at a decent time,’ I replied. ‘And you know Jesse in my office? His band is playing. He said he’d put us on the list if we wanted to go and see them play?’
‘Jesse?’ Jenny’s eyes sparkled. ‘I don’t remember a Jesse. Is he hot?’
‘I suppose so,’ I said, trying not to blush. ‘But I have to work with him so can you try not to accidentally fall on his penis right away?’
‘Honey, it’s never an accident,’ she said, finishing her drink with a loud smacking sound. Classy gal. ‘And I make no promises.’
‘I need a wee,’ Louisa whispered as Jenny waved the waiter back before he’d even got halfway around the room. ‘That girl’s not going to make me do drugs in there, is she?’
‘No,’ I promised. ‘As I understand it, she’s not that generous with her coke anyway. You can pee. Just remember, just say no.’