An hour or a whole day could have passed before I eventually pushed myself up off the floor, it really didn’t matter. As I wiped away a few sneaky tears that had slipped out unnoticed and pulled my messy hair back into a ponytail, I spotted someone else having a good stare. There, leaning against the escalator, was Alex. He smiled sadly and raised a hand. I froze for a second, and then waved back, not knowing what else to do. He gave me a cool single nod and came over.
‘Hey,’ he said softly.
‘Hey,’ I replied. My voice sounded strange after being silent for so long. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Jenny called Jeff, Jeff called me, I called you, you didn’t answer,’ he said. ‘It’s a big long chain of people calling people until I figured out you might be here.’
‘Oh,’ I nodded. ‘Wait, Jenny called Jeff?’
‘She didn’t have my number, and I guess she thought you might have come over to mine,’ he explained. I couldn’t even begin to think how awful I must look. ‘She was worried about you.’
‘They broke up,’ I said quietly, thinking about how furious Jenny had been. I wished I could go back and try that conversation again. ‘Jenny and Jeff. She’s so upset.’
‘Him too,’ Alex looked at me. ‘I hope they work it out, but it’s hard when you can’t trust the other person.’
‘It’s all anyone seems to be doing, working stuff out. Gets tiring after a while.’
‘It does, but what else are you supposed to do?’ Alex put one hand gently on my shoulder. ‘You want to talk?’
‘Not in here though,’ I said, letting him guide me towards the escalators and outside.
‘So, what’s going on?’ he asked after watching me scratch at a small mark on my jeans for three solid minutes.
‘I’ve been offered a job back in London,’ I said, looking up at him. Seemed like as good a place to start as any. ‘I had a huge row with Jenny and then I called home and had a huge row with my friend there and now, just when I thought I had some idea of what I wanted, I’m sort of back to square one.’
‘Wow, I only saw you yesterday, right?’ he asked. ‘So what do you want to do?’
‘What would you do if you were me?’ I asked, head tipped to one side, trying to read him. He was playing everything pretty close to his chest. ‘If you could go back to your friends and family, have no visa worries and a great job, or you could stay here, where you’re not quite sure of anything.’
‘I can’t make that decision for you,’ Alex said, taking my hands and holding them lightly. ‘It wouldn’t be fair.’
‘It would if I asked you to.’ I gave him a half-smile, but he didn’t return it.
‘It wouldn’t be fair because I don’t know what you should do,’ he said, squeezing my hand. ‘You know how I feel, but I won’t ask you to stay for me. Besides, it’s not just me, is it? What about this other guy?’
Tell me this isn’t happening, I thought, watching Alex turn away.
‘There is no other guy,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s just you.’
‘I read your blog, Ange, and I just kinda know. Please don’t lie,’ Alex shook his head and slackened his grip on my hands. ‘And Jenny said you’d had this huge row with him? I don’t know Angela, I really like you, but I only just got my head back together, I can’t be in another relationship where I can’t trust the other person. Where I don’t know what’s going to happen.’
‘How can you ever know what’s going to happen?’ I asked, pulling his hands back. ‘But I can honestly tell you there is no other guy. Whatever Jenny might have said, she was so mad at me. Honestly, there was only ever another guy in the tiniest way. And it wasn’t a huge row, I was telling him I didn’t want to see him again. I want to see you. Just you. What did she tell you?’
‘Doesn’t matter. Would you have told me that you had been seeing someone else if I hadn’t fronted you on it?’ he asked. He was smiling now, but it was so, so sad I couldn’t bear it. ‘If I hadn’t had to read about it on your blog?’
‘Oh, God, I wish I’d never even started that thing,’ I groaned. ‘Please, Alex, honestly, it’s just you. I met him before I met you and I just, I was only seeing him because, well, I don’t even know why. The bloody blog, Jenny, Erin…none of it matters. It’s just you. Really and honestly and completely.’
‘OK then,’ he said. His voice was so thick I couldn’t even look at him. ‘What would you do if there was no me, no Jenny, no “other guy”, and you still had the same choice to make entirely on your own? Because that’s what it’s going to have to come down to.’
‘I’m not sure, but I don’t want to be on my own, Alex.’
‘You’re not,’ he said, cupping my cheek with one hand, as the tears starting to track down my face. ‘You’re so not. Do you think Jenny would have put herself through calling Jeff if she didn’t care about you?’
‘No,’ I whispered. ‘But I don’t mean Jenny, do I?’
‘That’s just going to have to have some time,’ he said, after a moment’s pause. ‘I need a little bit more time, and I think you do too. Whatever we might have, I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t be sitting crying about it after only three weeks.’
‘Don’t,’ I stumbled over my words, noticing Jenny loitering. She was still wearing Jeff’s T-shirt, but she had managed to find some jeans before coming out. Thank God. ‘Don’t make it out to be bad.’
‘It’s not bad,’ Alex smiled. ‘It’s good. Really good, you know? Maybe it’s just not right. Not the right time.’
‘Do you think I should go home?’ I asked, willing him not to answer.
‘Maybe,’ he nodded, wiping my tears away with his thumb and leaning in to kiss me. His tears left new slippery tracks down my cheeks. ‘I think you should do what you want to do, what you really want to do. Look, I’m going to go, but I’ll call you. Or you call me when you’ve talked to Jenny?’
I nodded, not wanting to let go of his hand. He wasn’t going to call me. I watched him walk across the courtyard, following him down the street until he was gone.
‘Angela?’ Jenny was the quietest I’d ever known her. She had smudged mascara all around her eyes and her hair was a complete bird’s nest. She looked exactly how I felt. Probably exactly how I looked, actually. ‘Angie?’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I whispered as she sat down on the step next to me. ‘I shouldn’t have even mentioned Tyler or anything. I know how much you love Jeff.’
‘Shut up!’ Jenny smiled through a new set of tears. ‘If you don’t stop being so goddamned polite we’re never going to work out as roommates. I absolutely needed to hear what you had to say. Jeff can’t forgive me because I can’t forgive myself, that’s hardly your fault. I should never ever have said any of the things I said to you. And I never meant to say anything to Alex about Tyler, it just all came out at once. I told him he was the one. I would totally understand if you couldn’t forgive me.’
‘Don’t, please just don’t even,’ I said, resting my head on her shoulder. ‘But I think you’re the one that’s been too polite. If you’d just given me a verbal thrashing the first time we’d met, I might never have been in this mess.’
‘So you’re coming home?’ Jenny asked, taking my hand and standing up. Her hands were smaller and softer than Alex’s, but they were just as strong.
‘I’ve been offered a job back in London, Jenny,’ I said soberly. ‘I should just take it, Jenny.’
‘Seriously?’ She sat back down. ‘You would just leave?’
‘It’s the sensible thing to do,’ I nodded. ‘It seems like the logical thing. It’s a great job.’
‘You know whatever you want to do, you’re stuck with me now, right?’ Jenny said. ‘You don’t survive two Hurricane Jenny attacks and then get rid of me.’
‘I wouldn’t know what to do without you now,’ I smiled. It was true, I couldn’t imagine her not being in my life. In just three weeks, she was as much a part of me as Louisa.
‘What did Alex say about you leav
ing?’ she asked.
I tried to smile, to talk, but all I could do was shake my head and let some more tears loose.
Jenny pulled me in close for a tight, long hug. It helped. ‘I don’t think I ate every last crumb of that cheesecake you left in the living room,’ she whispered after a while. ‘Want to go see what’s left?’
I nodded numbly and let her pull me to my feet. Although I managed to stand up, my stomach was still stuck on the step and my heart was so heavy, I thought it might drop out of my chest at any second. Funny how I hadn’t felt this way about Mark, I thought. So this is what it felt like to lose someone.
‘Whatever you decide to do,’ Jenny said, brushing my hair back behind my ears and speaking clearly, as though I might have trouble understanding, ‘it’ll be the right decision, you know that? I didn’t phrase myself too well this morning, but if this confused messy ball of shit is you, then doll, I still think you’re freaking amazing.’
I took her hand and we exited out onto the street. No one stared at us, no one even gave us a second glance. Two weepy girls in last night’s clothes, holding on to each other as if our lives depended on it. If only it was the strangest thing they’d seen on the street that day.
The city was so hot, I started to think New York had frozen the clock until I decided what I was going to do. It was almost nine, and still so light and so unbearably humid, it could have been the middle of the afternoon. But it wasn’t. In the middle of the afternoon I had been sobbing on the steps of MoMA watching Alex walk away from me, and now I was sitting in my windowsill watching Jenny wave up at me on her way to work. It had taken all of my persuasive powers (not something I was renowned for) to convince her I wasn’t going to up and vamoose before she got back, or just throw myself out of the window. At least not without calling her first and giving her a fifteen-minute warning. She’d already skipped out on one shift to come and find me, I didn’t want her to get in any more trouble, but a Ghostbusters/Ghostbusters 2 marathon supplemented with about three pints of Ben & Jerry’s really wouldn’t have gone amiss.
The people below me were literally walking down the street pouring bottles of water over their heads and watching the drops sizzle on the pavement. Even the spire of the Chrysler Building was fuzzed out of focus way up in the heat haze. I was not made for this heat. Or for getting dumped. Or for making many major life-changing decisions in a very short space of time. Next month I was definitely going to try to keep it down to one. Maybe two tops. I really didn’t know what to do. The last few weeks had been amazing, but what was the point in being in New York if it was even harder than being in London?
And how fantastic would it be to go back, to be all super Sex and the City’d up with my fab new wardrobe, my gorgeous handbag and my amazing dream job? I knew in my heart I’d moved on from Mark, I wasn’t afraid of seeing him. Mum and Dad would be, well, they’d like to know where they could find me in case they needed a cat sitter when they went on holiday. And Louisa and I would work everything out. Things would have to be different now. I was different.
‘I’d be completely mad,’ I whispered to myself. ‘If I don’t do this, I’m completely mad.’
I peeled my thighs off the windowsill, leaving several layers of sunburned skin behind, and began the search for my passport. It wasn’t in my (fabulous) handbag and it wasn’t at the back of my bedside drawer. There was only one other place I could think of. Kneeling down, I pulled my travel bag out from under the bed. All that was in there was my passport, my old handbag and a screwed-up hunk of coffee-coloured taffeta.
My bridesmaid’s dress.
I dragged it out into the light and held it up in front of me. Having done nothing but eat for the last three weeks, it looked tiny. For the first time in months, I had no idea what I weighed. Jenny didn’t believe in scales, they had a ‘negative impact on her self-esteem’, and all my new clothes were so fabulously smocky. Couldn’t hurt to try it? Even if going back to London feeling like a porker would take the shine off my triumphant return.
The fabric was cold against my sticky skin and the bodice felt uncomfortable, as if it had been rinsed out with wallpaper paste, but it wasn’t as tight as I had expected. In fact, it wasn’t tight at all. Apparently you can do all the eating as long as you’re doing all the walking around New York and all the shagging of the hot boys. After stumbling over the hem twice and actually going the full length of the room once, I slipped on my Louboutins and teetered over to the mirror, pulled my hair back from my face and held it up into a tight chignon. My eyes were still red and swollen, the dress all scrunched up. It wasn’t a good look, but it was a familiar one. All that was missing was my engagement ring, and I really wouldn’t want to put that on again, given where I had left it.
Jenny had stuck photographs from the last couple of weeks all around my mirror to ‘help me live in the now’. My after photos from Rapture, when Gina had transformed my hair. Me, Jenny and Erin at karaoke. The photo Jenny had snapped of me and Alex at his gig. But the girl in those pictures wasn’t the same girl looking back at me right now. The girl looking back at me was Angela Clark from a month ago. It was the Angela Clark who had slept in this dress and woken up sobbing every twenty minutes. It was the Angela Clark who ran as far away as possible when things got hard. But that was all that I remembered about her. Did I really, honestly want to go back?
The Angela in the photos looked happy. Yes, she was a little bit drunk, but she was happy and healthy and she had pretty good eye make-up. And in the post-haircut photo, she looked positively ecstatic. I pulled down the photo of me and Alex and tossed it onto the floor. No point making myself more miserable by leaving it up there. Nope, even without the hot boy pictures, this girl was much happier.
I wriggled out of the bridesmaid dress and shuffled it across the room and into the bin with my gorgeously shod feet. It felt good to be out of that dress. It felt weird to be in my underwear and Louboutins. Pulling on a T-shirt so as not to scare passing pedestrians, I tottered back to the window. The glass was cool against my fingertips even if the weather was scorching. Everything should still be so exciting and new, the steamy sidewalks, the psychic who hovered outside Scottie’s Diner, the twenty-four-hour deli below us, but all I could think was that we were out of milk. Completely random thought, but completely comforting. Before I knew it, I realized my face wasn’t wet from the lack of air con in the apartment, but because I’d started crying. Crying at the thought of never going to get milk from the twenty-four-hour deli again. Well Angela, I thought to myself, wiping the tears away, well done, you’ve reached a new and pathetic low. You’re crying over milk, and it’s not even spilt. It’s not even bought yet.
I bent down to slip off my shoes, and spotted the picture of me and Alex peeking out from under the bed. Looking at it now, even I was surprised by the expression in my eyes. Looked a lot like love. Alex was beautiful, even in a guerilla shot taken precisely two minutes after he had come off stage. Couldn’t help but notice he looked pretty happy too.
I was already finding it hard to picture Mark clearly. I might have been living with him just three weeks ago, but I hadn’t looked at him for months. I could close my eyes right now and see every strand of Alex’s hair. Taste that insanely strong coffee on his breath. Hear him singing to himself in another room. Feel the callouses on his fingers against my skin. But he was gone. And maybe so was the Angela in the other photos.
So I wouldn’t be Mark’s Angela if I went back to London, and I couldn’t be Alex’s Angela if I stayed in New York. But I could be someone new. Someone I didn’t know yet. And I could go and get the milk. It was a start.
‘I am completely mad,’ I whispered out of the window. ‘Completely, bloody mad.’
EPILOGUE
It had been snowing solidly for three days, and New York was tucked in under a beautiful sheet of thick white snow. Each day, the city turned out and turned the snow into slush. And each evening, a new blanket was laid out. Criss-crossing the streets and
avenues, drifting up the park, icing the skyscrapers. To a new New Yorker, it was breathtaking. But as pretty as the snow might be, it was a shock. After a mild Christmas full of strappy dresses and parties, January was terrifying. And they said it was cold up north.
I sat at my desk tapping away, in jeans, a hoodie, fingerless gloves and Ugg boots.
Inside.
With the heating on full.
It hardly made it easy to write an article about feeling frisky in spring time. Luckily, the DHL man was in cahoots with my procrastination and rang the doorbell as I apple-A, apple-Z’d the whole thing.
‘Wouldn’t fit in the box,’ he said, handing over a wide flat package in a yellow plastic bag, ‘but it says urgent on it.’
‘Thank you,’ I smiled, snatching up the package and ripping it open. There it was, the first ever UK edition of The Look. I gazed at the front cover for a moment. With shaky (and not just from the cold) hands, I turned to the staff page.
There I was.
My name, my picture and my title.
Angela Clark, editor-at-large, New York
‘Is it here?’ Jenny wailed from the bathroom. She came running out, toothbrush in her hand, wearing only a towel. ‘Is that the magazine?’
‘It is,’ I held it back at a safe distance, ‘and you’re not touching it until you’re dry.’
‘What, you’ve got like twenty copies,’ she gestured to the other three magazines in the plastic bag. ‘Shit, look at you! You’re so my hero, doll.’