A Girl's Best Friend

  ‘But my gut is scared.’ I dropped my forehead onto the table, my hair spilling all around me in a lovely, tangled tent of isolation. It lasted approximately four seconds.

  ‘Of course it is.’ Jenny grabbed a handful of my curls and pulled my head back up, sulky face and all. ‘If you’re in love, you have something to lose. That’s terrifying. Way easier to pretend it’s not happening, am I right?’

  I stared at her pretty face and perfect lipstick and wondered what she could possibly know about romantic problems. She was a goddess. I couldn’t imagine she’d had so much as a dent in her heart, let alone a straight down the middle, keep-you-up-all-night-and-then-slap-you-in-the-face-every-morning-when-you-wake-up break.

  ‘It’s too hard,’ I replied, grabbing my wine glass and drinking, my hair still wrapped up in Jenny’s fist. ‘I’m going to give up on men altogether. I’ll just get a load of cats, lie down on the floor and wait for one of them to fall asleep on my face and smother me. It’s a good way to go.’

  ‘Very dignified,’ Kekipi said, taking the wine glass out of my hand, sloshing sauvignon blanc across the table. ‘Shall we order some food? Perhaps a lot of stodgy carbs to soak up your entire bottle of wine?’

  ‘How many wines have I had?’ I asked, rocking my glass back and forth and eyeing the bottle.

  ‘Only two,’ Kekipi replied. ‘You’re a disgrace.’

  ‘Feels like more.’ I pushed it around the table, making Spirograph patterns in the condensation. ‘Can I have more?’

  ‘I think Mr Miller is a very interesting man,’ he said, taking away my wine and then taking my hand in his underneath the table. ‘And they bring things out in each other that they’re not used to. I think that makes them both uncomfortable but I don’t know if he’s as brave as Ms Brookes here. He may well have decided he doesn’t want to risk it.’

  Squinting in the semi-dark of the restaurant, I zeroed in on my friend.

  ‘Really?’ I asked. ‘That’s what you think?’

  He nodded.

  Everyone had been so busy discussing me and what choices I had to make, I’d forgotten that Nick had thoughts and feelings as well.

  ‘You think I make him uncomfortable?’

  ‘I love that the first thing you worry about is how you make him feel,’ Angela said, shaking her head. ‘You should be thinking about yourself first. Didn’t you hear him say that you’re brave?’

  ‘I’m brave?’ I repeated, the wine washing over my anxieties and stress, dropping my brain into an internal hot tub. What if they were right? ‘I’m brave. Oh my God, I’m brave.’

  ‘You seem pretty fearless to me,’ she said. ‘Stop overthinking everything and you’ll see it. If there’s the slightest chance that this man does regret the way he left things and is too scared or too proud or too stupid to tell you, wouldn’t you want to know?’

  Well, when she put it like that.

  ‘Hell yeah!’ Jenny cheered. ‘Guys are wimps, babe, they compartmentalize like mofos. It’s one thing to run away from your feelings in a note, it’s another when they’re stood on your doorstep and staring you in the face.’

  ‘I am not going to stand on Nick’s doorstep and stare him in the face,’ I replied. ‘I can’t think of anything worse. I cannot imagine anything I would rather not do in the entire world, thank you very much.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ Kekipi said, placing my wine glass back in front of me. ‘Since I know where he lives.’

  ‘No thank you,’ I said again, draining the glass. ‘Wild horses couldn’t drag me to Nick Miller’s apartment right now. Now, what’s for dinner? I’m starving.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘Don’t just stand there, ring the bell!’

  Two hours and two more bottles of wine later, I was somewhere on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, surrounded by string lights and Christmas trees and dozens of drunk people wearing high-waisted jeans, staring directly at Nick Miller’s front door.

  ‘I’m just going to tell him off,’ I shouted, wrapping my too small coat tightly around my too thin jumper. This wasn’t the right outfit. My hair was all wrong and I needed to check my make-up. ‘I’m going to ring the bell and tell him he’s an asscat and then we’ll do shots.’

  ‘It’s asshat,’ Jenny corrected. ‘But you know what, asscat is great too. You do you.’

  ‘Cockwombling asscat,’ I said, swaying on the stoop. ‘I’m not doing this with you all watching. Go away.’

  This had seemed like such a good idea ten minutes earlier. Well, first it felt like a terrible idea but the more I drank, the more I came around to it. Now, if I could just focus for long enough to read the numbers on the buttons, I’d be golden.

  ‘We’re not watching,’ Kekipi promised, clinging to the corner of the next building and peeking around with Jenny’s head buried in his armpit. ‘We’re leaving.’

  ‘We’re gone,’ she agreed, nodding madly. ‘We already left. Just ring the damn buzzer already.’

  There would never be a good time for this, I realized. My hair would always be wrong. Jenny was right, press the buzzer and take back my power. I was Tess Brookes; I was in control; I could do this.

  Number one, Elizabeth Ziemacki. Number two, Peters and Alimena. Number three, N. Miller. This was his apartment. This unassuming block of concrete on this unassuming and only slightly terrifying street. The twinkling lights of the city sparkled with encouragement at my back and a rowdy drunk man unleashed a torrent of filth at a parked car.

  ‘We’ll be right here,’ Angela called, hustling Jenny and Kekipi away from the curb and into the bar next to Nick’s place. ‘Text us from the toilet to let us know you’re not dead.’

  ‘Why would I be dead?’ I muttered, taking a step forward and immediately skidding on a patch of black ice, just grabbing hold of the door before I could fall.

  ‘OK,’ I called back, clinging to the door handle. ‘I will text you.’

  Glancing over my shoulder, I saw them stumble through a glowing doorway, a blast of warm air and laughter and music swallowing them up. Maybe I should go with them, I thought. Maybe I should have one more drink.

  ‘You’re overthinking it,’ I scolded myself. ‘Just ring the damn bell and stop being a baby. A drunk baby.’

  My fingertips were numb from the cold and my face was warm from the wine but at least I was funny, I told myself.

  ‘Ring the bell!’

  I turned around to see Jenny hanging out the door of the bar.

  ‘Sorry.’ Angela ran out and shoved her back inside. ‘She’s a bloody nightmare when she’s had a couple.’

  As the door to the bar slammed shut, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath that was rudely cut short by the bitterly cold air catching in my throat. Of all the ways I’d imagined this scene playing out, half-cut on a downtown Manhattan doorstep, wearing a sleeping bag with sleeves and eyeliner I’d applied in the back of a town car that was carrying a broken camera inside a family-sized bag of brown rice in its boot had not featured in my top ten.

  He was in there. Nick Miller was behind this door. And up some stairs. And behind at least one other door – but the point was, he was only moments away from me. I was buzzing with excitement and nerves and what might happen next. I wished Amy was there. Amy would know what to do.

  ‘Amy would press the doorbell and bloody well run away,’ I whispered to myself. ‘So just do it and it’s done.’

  Closing my eyes, holding my breath, I jabbed the doorbell hard.

  And nothing happened.

  My anticipatory high fizzled into disappointment.

  He wasn’t home? How dare he not be home?

  Staring at the buzzer, I jabbed it again. And again and again.

  ‘Hello?’

  A woman’s voice answered. If the black ice hadn’t been so treacherous, I probably would have made a run for it. Unless Nick had undergone some extreme hormone treatment in the last twenty-four hours, that definitely wasn’t him, but then nothing would really sur
prise me any more.

  ‘You pressed the wrong button,’ I said with a sigh. ‘Because you’re an idiot.’

  And so I tried again. Deep breath, open eyes, press the buzzer.

  ‘Who is this?’

  So there was one thing that could still surprise me. The same woman’s voice crackled over the intercom.

  ‘Hello?’ she asked again, all American and annoyed and inside my Nick’s apartment. ‘Elizabeth, I swear, if that’s you and you’ve forgotten your key again, I’m going to rip you a new one.’

  Who was Elizabeth? And why was she always forgetting her key?

  ‘I’m not buzzing you in. You can stay down there and freeze to death.’

  Whoever this was, she sounded like a real charmer.

  ‘I … it’s not Elizabeth,’ I said, fumbling for the right words. Which was pointless because there were none. ‘Sorry. I’m in the wrong place.’

  ‘Hey, there’s some weirdo downstairs,’ I heard the woman call out to someone. ‘Can you go check it out? He sounds wasted.’

  He? Cheeky cow. Somewhere above me, I heard a shuffling noise and a flurry of frozen snow fell from a disturbed windowsill and hit me in the face as I looked up. I watched as a window on the fifth floor slid upwards and a face peered down at me.

  ‘Hey you,’ it called. ‘Get the fuck off our stoop.’

  Black ice be damned! I turned on my heel and ran as fast as I could along the street dark street. The fear of seeing Nick in his apartment with another woman was far greater than my fear of breaking my neck.

  Once I staggered over to the street corner, I grabbed hold of a signpost and considered my options, heart racing. I could go back and talk to Nick like a grown-up, I could find Kekipi in the bar, laugh about what had just happened then drink until I destroyed an awful lot of brain cells or I could jump into the first taxi that drove past, hide under the covers and obsess over the fact that Nick had moved on, he didn’t love me, he never had loved me, and cry myself to sleep.

  Really, there was only one sensible decision as far as I could tell.

  The taxi stopped outside Al’s house but I didn’t want to go inside, not just yet. Actually, that wasn’t true. I only wanted to go inside because it was bloody freezing but Amy was still at work and the last thing I needed was one of Al’s pep talks. I didn’t want to be peppy; I wanted to wallow. Between the wine and the photoshoot and the wine and the doorbell incident and the wine, I was too worked up. My stomach was in knots and my dinner was in danger of making a second appearance in my day if I didn’t calm down. I needed five minutes to myself to decompress.

  Looking both ways, even though I knew by now the traffic only ran south, I crossed the road as quickly as I could and ran down to the gates of the park. Locked. I gazed between the iron bars, looking in on the lamplit pathways that sparkled silver in the night. I followed the footpath through the trees until it disappeared under a gently curving bridge. My fingers tingled as I reached for my camera until I remembered it wasn’t there. It was in the back of a car downtown, hopefully drying out. But the light was too beautiful for me to walk away, I had to try to capture it, there had to be a way. I still had my phone, didn’t I?

  ‘This is too perfect,’ I said, leaning against the wall, my feet slipping in the snow. ‘Who locks up a public park?’

  But since when did I let a padlock and no camera get in my way of taking photos of a gated park? Pushing up my sleeves, I hoisted myself up on top of the wall with steely determination. If Amy could climb over the security fence at Wembley arena to get five minutes face to face with Justin Timberlake, I could break into Central Park.

  ‘OK, I’m OK,’ I muttered, hoisting one leg across the wall and hurling myself over. I hadn’t anticipated that the drop on the other side would be quite so far, but once I’d stood up, dusted myself down and made sure there were no broken bones, I was really quite pleased with myself. This could make a great story, I thought, envisioning myself at the Spencer Gallery, swanning around in a dress I didn’t yet own and regaling the assembled crowds with my hilarious tale of breaking into Central Park to secure the snap.

  ‘You climbed over the wall in the snow?’ someone would ask, astonished and delighted. ‘That’s dedication.’

  ‘And so worth the risk of a broken ankle,’ someone else would add. ‘This is the most astonishing work in the whole show.’

  ‘Why, thank you.’ I bowed my head graciously at the tree in front of me. ‘I’ve always sought to find truth and beauty in my subjects but the truth of the matter is, the park was so beautiful, I couldn’t not take its picture. Do you know, I actually took this with my iPhone! Ah ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.’

  But once I was over the wall and inside the grounds, something had changed. I couldn’t find the same shot now that I was on the ground and the light had shifted.

  ‘I can’t make adorable puns about this in front of complete strangers,’ I said, looking through my viewfinder and seeing nothing but disappointment.

  But I had not climbed over a wall and risked life and limb for nothing; I was not leaving without my photo. In the quiet park, the city seemed miles away. If only it could stay that way, I thought, marching through the undisturbed snowbanks, lost in my own little corner of New York City for as long as I could stand it. I stopped in front of a tall, thick-trunked tree with solid-looking branches jutting out like spokes on a wheel. If I could climb the tree and get high enough, I could get my picture. I could get a picture no one had ever taken before. It was too tempting. There had to be a million photos of Central Park in the world but the thought of capturing an image no one had ever managed to snag, ever before?

  Rubbing my hands together and flexing my fingers, I grabbed hold of one of the middle branches, hoisting myself up and finding a foothold. Not too slippery, I thought, a white-hot rush of excitement pushing me on. All the tension I’d felt in the cab uptown shot through my arms and legs, helping me climb higher and higher, my lips pressed together with steely determination. I kept going until the branches began to feel slender and flexible in my hands. Wedging myself in safely, I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and searched for my shot.

  ‘There,’ I said, satisfied I hadn’t risked my life for nothing. The picture really was special, a million shades of black and white, touched by silver as the park glittered for no one but me. Fifteen feet off the ground, wrapped around a tree in what felt like the last garden in Manhattan, I couldn’t have felt further away from my old life. Charlie, the job offer, Amy’s flat, my family, even Nick – it was all background noise. Up here I was just Tess, taking a photo. I felt calm and I felt safe.

  At least I did until I heard footsteps in the park below me.

  ‘Fuck a duck,’ I whispered.

  What on earth was I thinking? Who broke into a park at night? It was locked for a reason! It was almost as though I hadn’t spent the last six weeks staying up too late just so I could watch New York crime procedurals on random digital channels. And this was a perfect holiday special, three days before Christmas: stupid tourist sneaks into the park to climb a bloody tree in the middle of the night. Well, at 10 p.m. but still, it was late and I was an idiot and now I was going to die.

  My mother was going to be so annoyed.

  Directly beneath me, I heard snow crunching and then silence.

  Because the murderer is waiting for you to come down, I told myself. Even he’s not stupid enough to actually climb a tree in Central Park in the snow.

  I looked down to see a human shape loitering underneath my tree, turning in circles and shining a torch into the darkness.

  ‘Miss?’ a voice called out. ‘This is Officer Hawkins of the NYPD. You do know it is an offence to be in the park after dark?’

  I thought about arguing with him: I hadn’t seen a sign and I was only a visitor, after all, but even the most stupid person would have to admit the locked gate was a bit of a giveaway. And so instead of calling politely to the officer and attempting to explain my predicament, I stayed up in
the top of my tree, completely silent.

  The policeman’s radio fuzzed in the semi-dark but I couldn’t make out the message.

  ‘Copy that,’ the officer said. ‘I can’t see anything. Maybe it was a big dog.’

  A big dog? How big a dog were they used to seeing in this bloody park?

  ‘Or a couple of raccoons.’

  The sheer indignity.

  ‘I’m heading back your way, over.’

  Relieved that the policeman was leaving, I loosened my grip slightly and looked back down at the deserted ground. How big were raccoons, anyway? And they weren’t violent, were they? Slowly, I stuck out a foot and attempted to find the next branch down. Enough of this stupid adventure, I told myself, it was time I was on my way home instead of on my way to hospital. I’d let my travel insurance policy expire and I’d heard no end of horror stories from my mother about what happened when Cheryl from Asda had to have her appendix out in Florida.

  But I couldn’t find the next branch. No matter where I stuck my foot, I couldn’t find anything. I was stuck up a tree in Central Park with the temperature dropping every second and two police officers and a pack of rabid raccoons out to get me. With one arm wrapped around the trunk of the tree, I squeezed my thumb against the touch ID to unlock my phone and pressed the first number I had on speed dial.

  ‘Amazing timing, I’m almost home,’ Amy answered immediately. ‘Are you still out? Should I come and meet you?’

  ‘Sort of,’ I said, my voice still low in case the police officer or the raccoons were within earshot. ‘And yes please!’

  ‘Where are you?’ she asked. ‘I’m getting really weird static on the line.’

  ‘I’m in Central Park and I’m stuck up a tree,’ I replied. ‘I’m drunk and I’m scared raccoons are going to eat me and I can’t get down.’

  Amy sighed.

  ‘I’ll be there in five minutes or so,’ she said. ‘Don’t fall out and break your neck.’