‘As I remember, Mark didn’t want following because he was shagging your tennis partner,’ I replied quickly, stabbing a piece of steak and biting down too quickly, getting the fork. Karma was bloody fast around these parts.
‘Fair enough.’ Louisa didn’t look as if she was about to give in that easily. ‘Shame you can’t come, you look so amazing and I know everyone is dying to hear about your adventures. I’m forever telling them all about you and Alex and everything. They’re so jealous.’
‘Louisa,’ I started slowly, ‘when you say everyone, are you talking about someone in particular?’
‘Tim’s hot brother?’
‘Anyone else?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Louisa?’
‘All right, Mark’s going to be there,’ she admitted, putting down her fork for a moment. ‘Tim invited him because he’s been so bloody pathetic lately. I wasn’t going to tell you, but apparently things aren’t going very well with that Katie girl and he’s just drunk at the tennis club all the time. Turning up for work late, same clothes as the night before, all that. And don’t tell me that seeing him now you’re looking all fancy and glamorous hasn’t crossed your mind. Let alone with the rock star live-in lover.’
‘Firstly, this is not me looking my most glamorous,’ I pointed to my black eye and bruised cheek, ‘and secondly, I’m not so sure I can be bragging about the live-in rock star right now.’
‘I thought you were going to be moving in with him soon?’ Lou asked, a milder version of the ‘has your boyfriend been punching you?’ concern in her eyes. ‘Is everything OK, babe?’
‘It’s been better to be honest,’ I admitted, trying to work out how best to paraphrase our last conversation. ‘Um, it was his birthday yesterday and we went out for dinner and he told me he didn’t want to marry me or move in together.’
Given Louisa’s news, I didn’t think I needed to include the ‘and he doesn’t want kids’ part of the conversation just yet.
‘What? He just came out with that?’ she asked, her voice getting slightly higher with each word. ‘What did you say?’
‘Well, no, not exactly,’ I munched thoughtfully on a frite. ‘OK, basically, he had this ex who messed him around a few years ago, and because of that, he said that he doesn’t think he needs marriage and kids to be happy.’
‘He doesn’t want to have kids?’ she shrieked.
Bugger, I’d forgotten that I wasn’t going to mention that.
‘No, he just said that he doesn’t need them to be happy,’ I repeated. I couldn’t help defending him, even if I didn’t understand what he meant any more than Louisa did.
‘And what about the whole moving in thing?’ she asked, her lips pressed together into a tiny cat’s bottom. Not one of her more attractive expressions. ‘How come he’s gone off that idea?’
‘I think that’s my fault. I kept saying we’d talk about it later because well, I was a bit scared given what happened the last time I lived with someone, and now he’s decided it’s a bad idea and that it’s too soon. Even though I’ve decided I want to. I suppose it’s ironic.’
‘So, you’re not allowed to be worried about moving in with him because of what happened in your last relationship, but he’s allowed to keep you dangling by a thread for the rest of your life because of what happened to him in his last relationship?’ Louisa demanded.
I stuck out my bottom lip. Well, when you put it like that…
‘Oh, Ange, it’s just like Sex and the City—’
‘Don’t start,’ I cut her off quickly. Her eyes were dangerously glittery and excited. ‘Just because I live in New York doesn’t mean everything that happens in my life is just like Sex in the bloody City. I’ve got enough of my own real problems without piling on Sarah Jessica Parker’s.’
‘I still think he’s out of order.’ Louisa shrugged, annoyed at being cut off mid-Miranda flow. ‘He’s allowed to be messed up by his past, but you’re not? And what’s brought this on all of a sudden anyway? Hasn’t he been all super keeno?’
‘Yeah, the thing is,’ I took a deep breath, ‘his ex is sort of here.’
‘Here in Paris?’
‘She’s from Paris.’
‘And he knew she would be here?’
‘No.’
‘Whatever.’
‘He didn’t,’ I protested. ‘Yes, she’s from Paris and she’s in a band, but he didn’t know she’d be here. Or performing at the festival.’
‘Oh come off it,’ Louisa scoffed. ‘Listen to yourself Angela. Your previously adoring boyfriend has suddenly gone off the idea of living with you and has gone out of his way to tell you he doesn’t want to get married, even though it wasn’t even on the cards, at the exact same time the girl who broke his delicate little heart reappears on the scene?’
‘Lou, you’re making it sound so much worse than it is,’ I sulked. But the problem was, she wasn’t making it sound worse. She was making it sound like the truth.
‘Angela, I’m not trying to upset you,’ she insisted. ‘I’m trying to look after you. I stood by and let you get hurt last time, I won’t do it again. Now, I know that I haven’t met Alex, but I also know I’ve never seen you this upset about anything. It’s written all over your face. And I want to believe those tears were just for me earlier, but they weren’t, were they? It was about him, wasn’t it?’
I nodded a little bit, not especially ready to speak. Because if I spoke, I’d have to admit that she was right.
‘Please come home, Angela,’ Louisa sighed. ‘Even if it’s just for a little bit. I know you’ve got work and friends and stuff out there, but it might help you see things a bit more clearly. Just come for a week. For the day.’
Looking up to the sky, I closed my eyes. How could she be feeling so sorry for me when I hadn’t even told her about the crappiness that was work? My boss was pissed off with me, her assistant was trying to sabotage my big break, and said big break wasn’t exactly going according to plan. And that was without even getting into the Jenny situation. Maybe a quick trip home would help clear my head. If only to remind me why I left in the first place.
‘I can’t just up and leave,’ I decided, pulling my hair back into a ponytail and then letting it drop. It was getting so long. ‘I’m sorry, Lou.’
‘You did it once,’ she countered.
I pushed my plate away and sniffed. For the first time in possibly ever, I wasn’t hungry.
‘I miss you, Angela,’ Louisa said quietly. ‘I just wish you’d come home.’
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘I’m just not sure where home is right now.’
We sat in silence for a few minutes, letting the waiter clear away our half full plates and bring over coffees. Clearly they’d decided either we looked as if we needed them or at least I did, and hadn’t waited for us to order.
‘Well, we’re a right pair, aren’t we?’ Louisa said, sitting up and rearranging her hair. At least two hairs had escaped her ponytail and she wouldn’t be having any of that.
‘We are,’ I agreed. ‘Honestly, I’m so excited about your news. You’re going to be an incredible mum, you know.’
‘Yeah, well, I’ve had twenty-seven years of practice on you, haven’t I?’ she said, sipping her coffee.
‘Piss off!’ I smiled, relieved that our fight was over. If breaking her husband’s hand and spoiling her wedding didn’t ruin our friendship, I was pretty certain that not coming to her party wasn’t going to see her off.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
After lunch, Louisa and I wandered around for a couple of hours, crossing the river and taking dozens of pictures of each other from the Trocadéro, me holding up the Eiffel Tower, Louisa with it coming out of the top of her head. I’d need to be on point to stop these from making an appearance online. I was fairly sure this wasn’t the image Belle writers were supposed to present. It was tricky though, Paris was made for impromptu photo shoots. We had no choice, but to take a very serious series of ‘mean and moody
girl in beret’ underneath the Arc de Triomphe. I did mean and moody a lot better than Louisa, she was far too blonde and bubbly for serious Parisian photography.
‘I wish you’d change your mind and come back with me,’ Louisa said, mid-hug as I packed her off into a taxi. ‘Oh, I completely forgot, I brought you this.’
She handed me an envelope, with a big cheesy grin. I smiled back and started to open it up, but the taxi driver tooted his horn. Apparently it wasn’t OK to sit in the middle of the road with the engine running in Paris. Actually, it probably wasn’t OK anywhere.
‘Open it later.’ Louisa threw her handbag across the backseat. ‘I miss you babe. I can’t believe I’m going to have to do all this baby stuff without you. You’re sure you won’t come back? You’re breaking my heart, you know.’
‘I know, I promise I’ll come back soon,’ I swore, stuffing the envelope into my abused handbag. ‘But I can’t now. I need to sort this Alex thing out if nothing else.’
‘You really love him, don’t you?’ she asked, pushing her hair back behind her ears and staring at me hard. ‘He’d bloody better be worth all this, Angela Clark.’
‘He is,’ I sniffed, half of me in the taxi with her for one more hug, half wishing I could jump in with her and leave all my troubles behind. Again. ‘And when you meet him, you’ll know.’
‘Can’t wait.’ Lou stuck her head out of the taxi window. ‘But you realize you have to bring him before I’m the size of a house or wait until after the baby is born. I’m not having you and your gorgeous boyfriend trotting around London while I look like Shamu trussed up in maternity gear.’
‘Got it,’ I saluted, waving madly as the taxi pulled away.
I stood at the side of the road, staring at the flow of traffic for far too long, waiting for my mood to balance out. I was so happy to have seen Louisa, but so incredibly sad to see her go. I really hadn’t registered how much I missed her. And she was having a baby. It seemed incredibly rude that her life should go on without me in it, but I was undeniably relieved that we had picked up exactly where we had left off. Well, about an hour before where we left off really, when she was still my best friend in the whole world, to whom I could tell anything. Not the sobbing, heaving mess of a woman who’d just had her wedding ruined by a mentalist, aka me. A huge part of me wanted to jump in a cab and go after her, reinvent myself as Auntie Angela, the favourite auntie who let you play with her make-up and always has sweets, but really, that wouldn’t help me. It might help me eat fewer sweets, but apart from that, it wouldn’t solve my present predicaments.
Luckily there wasn’t too much time for me to dwell on my cock ups, past, present or future. It was already after seven and I was meeting Virginie at some random bar she’d picked between seven and eight and since I didn’t have a working phone, I wanted to be there as early as possible. There was no way on God’s green earth that I was dealing with the Métro again, so I hopped in a taxi and gave him the address Virginie had helpfully written down for me, before I pulled out my black eyeliner and got to work. It turned out applying it in the back of a taxi was apparently how all the girls in Paris got that messy, smudgy look down to a tee. Combined with several lashings of mascara and a liberal powdering of the nose and chin, I was pretty passable, given the amount of sobbing I’d done earlier in the day. And it wasn’t quite dark yet, but the light was happily forgiving on the narrow, dim streets of Hipsterville-en-France, which made covering up my injuries so much easier.
I hopped out of the cab, throwing what I hoped was enough money at the driver, and looked around for Virginie. She was nowhere to be found, but I soon spotted the sign for L’Alimentation Générale, the place where we were supposed to meet. Annoyed that it mocked me and my GCSE French (it wasn’t a general store at all, it was a bloody trendy bar–why would the French lie to me?), I ventured inside to look for my new friend. It was early for a Saturday, but the bar was already busy and the music loud. Taking a seat at the bar, I ordered a mojito like everyone else and spun around on my stool to watch out for Virginie.
The bar looked fun and was lined with more of the same beautiful people I’d seen in Café Charbon on our first night. It was pretty cool and kitschy, with china cabinets lining the walls and weird lampshades. The crowd lapped it up regardless, already dancing and laughing. The Saturday night feeling was infectious as I sat back with a smile and indulged in some guilt-free people watching. It really was madness how clichéd the world was. New Yorkers all wore black and thought it was acceptable to wear trainers to walk to the office. Parisians all smoked and looked like characters from Amélie. And my most important observation, people in both cities drank like fishes. Of course, it was possible that I was spending far too much time amongst the hipsters in both of these countries. Not a healthy pastime.
‘Angela?’ a voice called from the door. Standing on my tiptoes, I could just about make out the top of Virginie’s head, or at least the giant neon pink floppy bow that was on top of it. She raised a hand from the doorway where she was talking on her tiny phone. I waved manically, bashing at least three people in the eye with my frantic elbow. Virginie slipped her phone into her bag, looked around the packed bar and gestured for me to come out to her.
‘It is too busy,’ she declared after a brief hug and two perfunctory air kisses. ‘I am sorry, I was coming early and got held up.’
‘It’s fine, let’s just go somewhere a bit quieter,’ I said, trying not to worry about the grandma-like implications of my statement. ‘It’s going to be loud enough at the gig later.’ I was going to be a godmother after all, I needed things like my hearing now. So I could fully enjoy all the wailing and screaming of my forthcoming godchild.
We wandered down the street a while until we found a smaller, slightly less crammed bar. Somewhere right in the back, dangerously close to the toilets and the cigarette machine, we found a tiny table and slid on to the stools on either side of it.
‘I will get wine,’ Virginie announced, throwing her bright purple sweater at me and venturing back out to the bar.
I couldn’t help but take a quick look at the label. Sonia Rykiel, nice. Between this and the Louboutins, Miss Virginie wasn’t quite as clueless as she claimed to be when it came to fashion, but then, working on a magazine like Belle, I guessed that it would be impossible not to pick up anything, whether you were into it or not. A year ago, I’d have struggled to tell the difference between Prada and Primark if I couldn’t see the price tag. And she really did seem wedded to her jeans and ballet flats, which might have been why I loved her.
She reappeared almost as quickly as she had vanished, grasping a bottle of red wine and two not-so-clean-looking glasses, but given the venue, I supposed I should have been pleased we weren’t supposed to swig it out of the bottle. I was all for dive bars and low-key venues, but good God this place was rough. While Virginie poured the wine and began to rattle on about how she’d spent her day rereading some of my blog posts for inspiration (I still hadn’t quite kicked her off the hero worship wagon), I stared at the flaky red walls, plastered with posters for past shows and random pieces of framed pop art.
I also noticed that the crowd was slightly different to L’Alimentation Générale. The out-and-out party atmosphere was somewhat stifled by a very obvious desire to see and be seen although, God forbid anyone should look like they were trying. Also, I was absolutely certain they would never play Britney here, in an ironic sense or otherwise. A couple of carefully put-together girls leaned against the window, tossing their hair from side to side, occasionally rolling their eyes at each other and desperately trying to pretend they weren’t checking out the tall dark-haired boy in the corner with his back to the room. Apparently, he was the only one who really didn’t care who was or wasn’t in the bar. Clearly, he won ‘coolest person’ prize for the evening.
‘So you met with your friend?’ Virginie asked loudly.
I turned back to face her and was met with great big, wide questioning eyes. Good God, s
he was always so interested in everything. It was quite unnerving.
‘Yeah.’ I glugged back a mouthful of the wine. When in Rome, right? Or, well, France. ‘We had lunch, it was really nice to see her. She’s just found out she’s pregnant so it was a bit weird. Good weird, but weird.’
‘You miss her?’
‘So much,’ I nodded hard and my hair bounced up and down. ‘I didn’t actually realize how much until I saw her. It’s her wedding anniversary tomorrow, which means it’ll be a year since I last saw her. And a year since I moved to New York.’
‘You don’t think about going home at all?’ She glanced over my shoulder as she spoke, I presumed towards Mr I-Don’t-Give-a-Shit in the corner behind me. Ha, she was just as at risk to a hot boy as the rest of us. ‘A year is a very long time to be away from your friends, from your family.’
‘I know. And honestly, I have hardly been homesick at all, but after today I don’t know, I feel a bit weird. Different.’ I contemplated. ‘Louisa is having a first anniversary party tomorrow. It’s so strange to think that more or less everyone I know will be in one place, all together, two hours away on a train and I’m not going to be there.’
‘You don’t want to go?’
‘I actually sort of do,’ I admitted quietly. ‘I know it’s not a good idea though, it’s only because I’m having a bit of a downer on stuff back in New York.’
‘But your life, it is so amazing,’ she protested for what seemed like the millionth time. ‘I would kill—’
‘It doesn’t matter how many times you say that,’ I warned, ‘it doesn’t actually make it any more true right now.’
Virginie shook her head. ‘I am sure that London is a great place, but New York! It is the best place in the world. So tell me, what is so bad that would make you want to go back to England?’
‘Just, well, loads of stuff.’ I took another sip of the wine before I tried to explain. ‘Me and Alex are sort of in limbo, Jenny isn’t speaking to me and there’s just something he said the other night that’s been playing on my mind.’