As my temper faded away, all I felt was sad and tired. I wanted to shower and then I wanted to sleep but going to the new apartment didn’t feel right and I definitely couldn’t pop back upstairs and ask Jenny if I could hop in the bathroom for half an hour. Which only really left me with one option. Well, two if you counted the gym at the office but really, who did?
New York got dark much earlier than London and the sun was already beginning to set when I reluctantly stepped out of the bathroom and into the empty living room at four in the afternoon. Wrapped in the pathetic excuse for a towel I had bought from Duane Reade on my way over (along with shampoo, conditioner, shower gel and all of the peanut butter M&Ms I could carry), I turned on the kitchen spotlights, hoping no one on Kent Avenue was especially interested in staring up through our curtain-less windows. The place looked huge without our furniture, and other than the tragedy of our air mattress, that now took pride of place in the middle of the living room, the place was completely bare. The wooden floors were much dustier than I remembered and I could see four round impressions where the feet of the sofa had been. Evidence of so many happy hours in front of the TV and under Alex. I rifled around in the Duane Reade bag looking for the very sexy pair of white cotton Hanes knickers I had purchased. I knew no one could see into the apartment, not really, but I still didn’t feel great walking around with my arse hanging out. I wasn’t Donald Duck.
Hopping up onto the kitchen top, I pulled out a bottle of full-fat Pepsi (desperate times, etc.) and opened the first bag of M&Ms, mindlessly popping them into my mouth one after another and staring out into space. It was Saturday evening in New York City and there were a thousand stories being told outside that window. Downstairs, in the fancy organic wine shop, someone would be stocking up for a dinner party. Across the water, girls all over Manhattan would be choosing outfits and trying to decide whether or not they could walk in their high heels for more than a block while boys would be sat watching sports with their hands down their shorts, vaguely wondering whether or not they were going to get lucky later that evening. Oh, the romance. And somewhere, a couple of blocks down from the Chrysler building and a few longer blocks east of the Empire State, Jenny and James and Louisa were going about their evening without me. Probably together. Probably happy. I sipped the Pepsi, letting the bubbles burn before shoving in an entire handful of M&Ms. Who was I trying to kid with this one at a time nonsense?
I didn’t expect to hear from Jenny or Louisa, not yet, but I was starting to get upset that I hadn’t heard from Alex. Only I could start a day moving into a gorgeous new home and end it wearing a pair of supermarket knickers in an empty old flat that looked like a crack den. I hopped down off the counter, taking my snacks with me, and collapsed onto the airbed.
‘Merry bloody Christmas,’ I said to the ceiling.
The ceiling. Christmas. Alex’s Christmas present.
In all the rush of the move, I’d completely forgotten about the book I’d stashed in the air vent. Pouting, I stared up at the slightly skewed vent cover and contemplated my options. We’d taken the stepladder to the new apartment already so unless I wanted to go knocking on neighbours’ doors, that was out of the equation. The airbed wasn’t going to be much cop in getting up to the ceiling, which really only left one option. Rolling off the airbed, I stood under the vent cover and stretched my arm out to the kitchen worktop. It wasn’t far at all, I could reach it easily.
‘Piece of piss,’ I convinced myself, clambering up onto the marble counter with all the grace of a drunk cat.
My bare feet seemed to cling to the cold surface, which was slightly reassuring, and before I could think better of it I tiptoed over to the edge, pushed the cover off the vent and reached my arm up into the air duct.
‘Please don’t let anything have crawled in here and died,’ I prayed to the empty apartment. ‘Or have crawled in here and lived.’
I couldn’t feel anything furry, squelchy or bitey but I couldn’t feel anything padded envelopey either, at least not within my reach. Left without an option, other than waiting for my sanity to return, I gritted my teeth, reached both arms into the air vent and dragged my sorry self up. There was no wonder you only ever saw people in prison movies doing pull-ups – you’d have to have an awful lot of time and very little to do to make that seem like fun. I pulled my T-shirt down over my bare belly and shuffled along the metal vent, blinking until my eyes adjusted to the silvery darkness. There was a vague chance that this was not my brightest idea ever. Eventually I spotted the envelope, just a couple of feet beyond my grasp, and propelled myself forwards until I could grab it. If I weren’t on my own, half-naked with no genuinely safe way of getting back out of the vent, it might have been fun. But I was so it wasn’t. With the envelope secured, I began to back up, trying to work out how to get back to the very edge without the T-shirt riding right up to my nose or falling twelve feet to the floor. I let my feet find their way back out the hole and kept pushing backwards, waiting to feel the counter underneath my toes. And waiting. And waiting.
Hmm.
‘Right,’ I mumbled, my concern echoing into the vent, my non-existent stomach muscles tensing. ‘I can’t feel the kitchen top but I can’t go any further without having to drop down.’
I really hadn’t thought this out well at all. If I dropped in the right spot, I’d only fall a couple of feet onto the counter. If I missed, it was about ten feet down to the floor. Was that bad? Would I break something if I fell ten feet? And of course there was always the glorious proposition of falling half onto the counter, half onto the floor and breaking my neck in the process. I didn’t love the thought of that. And so I did nothing. I pushed myself back into the vent, just far enough that my stomach was flat against the cool metal, and waited for something to happen. Other than me panicking. That was already happening.
‘Maybe I should try to get into someone else’s apartment,’ I wondered aloud, swinging my legs back and forth. ‘I’m sure the man next door hasn’t got a gun.’
But he had already left for the holidays, the annoying voice in my head reminded me. Gone off to Vermont to see his family. Someone in the building was baking and the delicious smell of cake only served to remind me that I’d eaten nothing but two handfuls of peanut butter M&Ms all day. I had, however, drunk quite a lot of Pepsi and pretty soon, whether I liked it or not, I was going to need a wee. I couldn’t even read Alex’s book – it was too dark to make out the words on the page. Well, wasn’t this a fantastic way to spend a Saturday night? Half-naked, starving and desperate for a wee in an air vent. I had two choices – I could cry or I could do something.
The tears came before I’d even thought what that something could be.
I had no idea how long I’d been dangling out of the ceiling when I heard the key in the lock but it was long enough for me to have considered crawling far enough in to have a wee and then crawling back. I’d decided against it on the grounds of not knowing whether or not the vents sloped up or down. I immediately tried to shuffle my entire self into the ceiling but the passage was narrow, what with it not actually being made for a person, and panic made me even clumsier than usual.
‘Hello?’
The air vent made the voice below tinny and unfamiliar but I was fairly certain it was a man. Without a better plan, I steeled myself to put up a fight. Whoever this man was, this man with keys to my apartment and no concern about finding someone inside. Sheesh, it was as though he owned the place …
‘Angela, are you in there?’
‘ALEX!’ I shouted, banging on the air vent. ‘Alex, I’m in here!’
The echo really did not make me sound ladylike.
‘Holy shit.’ Obviously I couldn’t see him but I could hear his voice was closer and, unless I was very mistaken, he was trying not to laugh. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Can you please just get me down?’ I sniffed, overwhelmed with the emotional charge of the fact that he had come to find me, that I wasn’t going to starve to dea
th and be eaten by rats and that I was going to be able to have a wee on a toilet within the next five minutes. ‘I left something up here.’
‘Gimme a sec,’ he replied, definitely laughing this time. ‘I think there’s a ladder in the hall.’
I wiped away a tear and rocked myself from side to side until I was as close to the edge of the vent as I could get without falling out.
‘OK, there’s no ladder,’ he shouted. ‘Can you wait while I go find one?’
‘No,’ I called back, panic levels rising again. ‘Please can you just get me down? Please?’
‘Can you fall and I’ll catch you?’ he suggested.
I shook my head, the tears coming again. Maybe if I kept this up, I wouldn’t need to pee after all. There couldn’t possibly be that much fluid left in my body after all the sweating and puking that morning.
‘Are you shaking your head instead of talking to me?’ Alex asked.
‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘I can’t fall. I’ll squash you and then you’ll die and then everyone will hate me.’
‘You won’t squash me and I won’t die.’ I felt a warm hand on my foot. ‘And no one hates you.’
‘Everyone hates me,’ I corrected him. ‘How did you find me?’
‘I looked everywhere for you in the store,’ he said, squeezing my toes. ‘But you weren’t there so I called your phone and you didn’t answer. Eventually I went back to the apartment and you weren’t there so I figured you’d be at Jenny’s.’
‘I didn’t get any calls.’ I tried to squeeze his fingers back with my toes. It was a little gross. ‘I had my phone on all day.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m dumb. I was calling your old phone.’
‘Oh.’ I couldn’t really call him on that, I’d done stupider things. Like climb into the ceiling of an empty apartment on my own on a Saturday night. ‘So you called Jenny?’
‘Yeah.’ The hand around my foot tightened. ‘I don’t know what went down there but she is steaming.’
‘I know,’ I said. Having had some time to reflect, I felt pretty horrible. ‘I messed up. Really messed up. She didn’t say anything?’
‘She said a bunch of things,’ he said gently. ‘None of which need repeating right now.’
‘Alex, I’m so sorry.’ I pressed my face into my hands and groaned. ‘I’ve been such a twat lately. Such a complete twat. I’m sorry I haven’t been around. I’m sorry I haven’t been listening. I’m sorry I haven’t been good enough.’
‘Hey, don’t,’ he replied, tapping my calf. ‘I guess I got ahead of myself in the baby conversation. In that there wasn’t even really a conversation.’
‘I need to talk to you about that too.’ I watched a couple of fat tears plop onto the metal vent and roll towards me. Thank God I hadn’t had that wee. ‘I went to see a doctor with Jenny the other week and had some tests.’
I felt him stiffen beneath me and really wished I could see his face.
‘So, I don’t really know anything but she said there might be some problems.’ I breathed in, waited a second, and breathed out again. ‘With me. Having a baby.’
‘What exactly did she say?’ he asked, his comforting hand turning into more of a clamp. ‘Exactly?’
‘Just that things weren’t exactly where she’d like them to be?’ I tried to remember her exact phrasing but I’d told myself this story over and over so many times I couldn’t quite remember the original words. ‘She wants me to go in for some tests. She didn’t say it won’t happen, just that it might not be as easy as it is for some people.’
A couple more tears plopped onto the air vent as my breath fogged up the metal in front of my face. Alex didn’t say anything, didn’t do anything – at least not anything I was aware of – so I decided to carry on talking. Because that always went so well for me.
‘I didn’t want to worry you about it yet,’ I said. It was more or less true, I just hadn’t actually scheduled a time when I did want to worry him about it. ‘And I didn’t think it was something we were thinking about right away so I just sort of, you know …’
‘I know,’ he said, his grip on my leg loosening a little. ‘But you also know I want to be worried about things. Not just this, all the things.’
‘Um … then Jesse from work tried to kiss me last night, I think Cici is going to try and get me sacked, Jenny and Louisa aren’t talking to me because I said some really horrible things to them and I’m worried that I’m going to pee on you if I don’t get out of here in the next five minutes.’
‘Jesus,’ Alex breathed. ‘Shall we just deal with this baby stuff first?’
‘You’ve got five minutes.’
‘OK, here’s how I see it,’ he started. ‘I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I guess, yeah, I didn’t mention it because I figured you would get there on your own and I wasn’t in any kind of rush. But then Erin got pregnant again and then she had the baby and then Grace came to stay and you just didn’t seem interested at all.’
‘I was interested,’ I protested weakly. ‘Sort of.’
‘You weren’t,’ Alex corrected me. ‘And that’s totally fine. You had so much going on with the magazine and, you know, I get that. I have my music, I know how it feels to want to create something, to want to see it succeed. That’s kind of like a baby too, you know?’
‘Mm-hmm,’ I agreed. He was right, that was exactly how it felt.
‘And you can’t rush shit like that. But it didn’t stop me being a little jealous that the magazine was taking you away from me.’
‘Nothing could take me away from you,’ I interrupted, slapping the side of the air vent for effect.
‘OK, stop hitting things before the whole damn thing falls out of the ceiling.’ He slapped my leg just as hard. ‘And let me finish before you pee your pants. Like I said, I know it’s irrational but I felt a little abandoned. And so I started looking for a new place, thinking maybe it would get you thinking.’
‘Crazy idea but it would have been a lot easier to just ask me.’
‘Since when was just asking you anything ever the easy option?’
He took my silence as tacit agreement. Which it was.
‘And actually, I tried to start the conversation a bunch of times but you always shot me down,’ he reminded me. ‘So I stopped asking and I thought I’d stop thinking about it.’
‘But you didn’t?’
‘But I didn’t,’ he agreed. ‘And I guess earlier, I was just so tired and so frustrated that I lost my shit. And that’s not OK. I’m so sorry. As soon as I walked away, I wanted to come back and make it right but I couldn’t find you.’
‘We were both tired and stressed. I was a dickhead as well,’ I said, gently patting his shoulder with my right foot. At least I hoped it was his shoulder. ‘Please don’t apologise. I feel horrible about it.’
‘Then it never happened,’ he replied. ‘And we never, ever have to go back to Ikea again. Unless it’s just for the hot dogs.’
‘Deal,’ I replied, feeling the first smile of the day spreading across my face. I wasn’t sure whether it was for the hot dogs or my husband but I was happyish and that was enough.
‘But about this baby stuff …’ Oh, Alex wasn’t done. Damn him for wanting to have the full deep and meaningful while I couldn’t get away. ‘We’ll make an appointment for the doctor first thing in the morning, right?’
I nodded.
‘Are you nodding?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’ One more squeeze of the foot for luck. ‘And it’s not because I’m trying to get you barefoot and pregnant, it’s because we need to know. Whatever we decide, whatever you want to do, it’s not healthy to have uncertainty hanging over you, babe.’
‘I know,’ I told the air vent.
‘And it doesn’t matter what the doctor tells us,’ he said. ‘You’re still you, we’re still us. We’ll work this out however. And if you decide you never want a baby, regardless of what happens, I don’t know, I’ll get a puppy or somethin
g. There’s no rush.’
‘It’s not that I don’t want a baby ever,’ I tried to explain the best way I could. ‘I think a tiny little version of you would be amazing. I just want to be ready.’
‘Then we wait until we’re both ready,’ Alex promised. ‘All I want is you. A baby would be, like, the icing. Really expensive, poop-covered, cries-all-the-time-and-never-lets-us-sleep icing.’
‘Way to sell it, Reid,’ I choked on a happy sob. ‘I really was going to tell you, it’s just been one thing after another this week.’
‘Yeah, getting back to that,’ he said, raising his voice a little. ‘What do you mean Jesse from work tried to kiss you?’
‘Can you not punch him out?’ I asked. ‘I don’t want you in prison over Christmas. Also, I really don’t want to have to hire a new managing editor.’
‘DUDES!’ I heard the door being flung open and riotous laughter filling the apartment below me. ‘What is going on? This is some kinky shit.’
‘Shut up and put up the ladder,’ Alex sighed, letting go of my feet. ‘Come on, she’s stuck.’
‘Craig?’ I called. ‘Is that you?’
‘Yeah, I’m doing double duty as a moving guy and superhero today,’ he replied, still laughing. ‘Nice underwear, Angie.’
‘Thank you.’ I pressed my burning cheeks against the chilled metal of the vent and tried to be happy that any minute now I would be out of the ceiling and back on solid ground. The fact that I’d never live this down with Craig was something I’d have to deal with later.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I should have slept like a log on Saturday night but instead I spent hours staring up at my new ceiling while Alex snored quietly beside me. Every time I felt sleep washing over me, I’d get a sudden jolt, a tension in my shoulders. My arms and legs felt tight, like I wanted to shake them, like I wanted to run, so I knew something was wrong. I never wanted to run. I still had nightmares about a personal trainer I’d hired for a week when I started at Gloss. On a normal day, moving house might have been enough to put me under for a month and the stress of getting stuck in an apartment ceiling would, I imagined, be pretty exhausting. But when I piled everything up on top of each other, threw in the row with Alex, the apocalyptic battle with Jenny and Louisa, my mum’s transatlantic rage and the assorted work dramaramas, it really was all too much.