‘Special delivery for Angela Clark?’
Yawning, I rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. A gigantic teddy bear filled the door of my office, supported by a pair of human legs clad in the same navy blue work trousers our mailroom workers always wore.
‘I don’t want it,’ I said reflexively. The bear gurned at me and I shuddered. ‘Make it go away.’
‘Funny,’ the deliveryman said, dumping the six-foot bear on the tiny sofa in my office while not laughing. ‘It came with this.’
He wiped the sweat from his forehead and tossed a regular-sized white envelope on my desk.
‘Thanks,’ I said, keeping one eye on the bear.
As he left, he patted the bear on the head and, very slowly, it sloped forwards before collapsing face down in the middle of my office. I opened the envelope at my desk and a multicolour glitter explosion blew out all over my grey cashmere sweater dress. Inside the envelope was a card that said, ‘I’m Beary Sorry’ and inside the card was a Polaroid picture of James, pulling his most apologetic face, both of his hands pressed against his cheeks.
‘Perfect,’ I whispered, trying to swipe the glitter off me but only succeeding in spreading it all over my dress, my palms and my face.
The rest of the weekend had been a disaster. No cabs were interested in picking up Jenny the Garbage Monster and Angela, Mother of Damp Dragons, and so we had suffered the indignity of the L train back to Manhattan. After I had physically put her in the bath, dressed her, carried her to the toilet, held back her hair while she threw up whatever shots she’d consumed with Craig and then put her right back in the bath again, Jenny had passed out in my bed, alternately sobbing and spooning me all night long. I’d planned to spend all day Sunday working on my presentation, but instead I was passed out on the settee while Jenny ate all the ice cream in our freezer and hate-watched 27 Dresses. There were several aborted attempts at calling, texting, emailing and even Snapchatting Mason, but he was either ignoring us both or he’d done something that was completely beyond my comprehension – turned off his phone.
By Monday morning I was more tired than I had ever been and all the glitter in the world couldn’t have distracted from the dark circles that had taken up permanent residence on my face. Cici had covered my desk in healthy snacks and herbal teas before disappearing for lunch, but none of it was making me feel any better. It was almost time to crack open the emergency Percy Pigs I kept in my bottom desk drawer.
‘Is this a bad time?’ Joe asked, replacing the bear in the doorway of my office.
‘Yes,’ I replied without thinking. ‘Sorry.’
‘I wanted to tell you what a fantastic night I had on Saturday,’ he said, letting himself in regardless and staring at the bear. ‘You did a great job with the event.’
‘It was a team effort,’ I said, putting my hair up in a ponytail. The smell of dry shampoo around my face was making me nauseous. Much like everything else. ‘I’m glad you had fun.’
‘It was a shame you had to rush off.’
He wasn’t sitting, I realized. Maybe he wasn’t staying?
‘Cici said it was a family emergency, we were all very worried.’
‘Everyone’s fine,’ I assured him, testing a smile on my face. Nope, didn’t feel right. ‘But you know how families can be.’
‘Oh, family first, absolutely,’ he said, still not moving. ‘Glad to hear everything worked out.’
‘I don’t want to be rude, but it’s actually press day today,’ I told him, flapping a hand over the marked up pages on my desk. ‘I really should be getting on with this.’
‘I just need five minutes of your time,’ Joe replied, sticking his head back out of the door and waving someone over. ‘I wanted to introduce you to Eva Hanstock AKA Eva-Lution.’
Just what I needed. An overenthusiastic child running around my office with a video camera.
‘Look, Joe—’
Before I could protest, a very petite young girl with huge brown eyes and cheekbones that could have sliced bread appeared under his left armpit. Her hair was puffed out in a gorgeous golden blonde afro and she was rocking a red glitter lip better than anyone had any right to on a damp Monday morning in December.
‘Hi!’ She practically ran across the room, her cropped, high-waisted pinstripe trousers swishing as she went. ‘I am so excited to meet you. I can’t believe I’m in the Gloss offices, this is so dope.’
‘Yup,’ I repeated. I had never felt so old in my life. ‘Dope.’
‘Angela is a huge fan of your videos,’ Joe said as I rose to reach out my hand but was instead swallowed up into a massive hug. She was much stronger than she looked. ‘Right, Angela?’
‘Massive fan,’ I agreed, quietly inhaling. She smelled amazing. I smelled like Alex’s cheap coffee, Alex’s deodorant, and the subway. The deodorant was on purpose, the coffee I’d spilled by accident – and the stink of the subway was just something that was going to get you eventually.
‘I’m the biggest fan of Gloss ever,’ Eva said, releasing me and hopping right into the clean seat in front of my desk. Joe took the coffee-stained one beside her. ‘I’ve been reading it since it came out. I used to get the subway into the city every week, just to pick it up.’
‘You weren’t working in Manhattan?’ I was smiling, in spite of myself. She was like human sunshine.
‘I wasn’t working anywhere,’ she replied, pushing up the sleeves of her soft, white shirt. ‘I was only seventeen.’
And there went my smile.
‘So, you’re how old now?’ I asked.
‘Ancient,’ she replied, laughing at the look on my face. ‘In vlogger terms, anyway. I’m going to be twenty-two at the end of the year.’
Ancient? She was practically younger than the foetus in my belly.
‘I used to get the train from Queens after school just to sneak into this fancy boutique in Nolita and grab a couple of copies,’ she explained. When she talked, her hands flew around her face, drawing pictures in the air. ‘When I got home, I would read one copy and then cut out pictures from the other and write features around them. I used to make my own magazine because I never thought I would be able to write for a real one.’
‘Me neither,’ I said, ignoring the self-satisfied grin on Joe’s face. ‘I more or less had to start my own.’
‘Like me with my channel,’ she agreed readily. Eva grabbed a recent issue from the coffee table behind her and leafed lovingly through the pages. ‘I always loved your features, you were so funny and honest. You don’t really write any more though, do you?’
‘I wish I did but I don’t really have time,’ I admitted, running my fingertips over the masthead of the page in front of me. Angela Clark, Editor. ‘When you’re the editor, you’ve got to manage the whole magazine, it’s more like running a business to be honest.’
‘See, I love having complete creative control over my videos,’ she replied, frowning slightly. ‘I can talk about whatever I want.’
‘And you’d really want to give that up?’ I asked as I marvelled silently at her perfect cat’s eye liner, making a mental note to search her channel for a tutorial. ‘If you come and work for a big corporate publisher, there’s going to be much less freedom.’
Joe sat up sharply, like an electrocuted meerkat.
‘You’ll still have freedom,’ he corrected. ‘But with more structure and support to build.’
‘Structured freedom,’ I repeated. ‘Sweet.’
‘There’s only so much I can do on my own,’ she said to me, glancing back at her new boss. ‘I didn’t go to college, I don’t have rich parents. Running a YouTube channel out of your apartment has limits and I’m not interested in limits. Yeah, I’ve got ten million subscribers on my channel, but what’s next?’
Ten million? Sweet Jesus.
‘A quiet sit down and a well-deserved drink?’ I suggested.
‘I want to be the best at what I do,’ Eva went on, a fire in her eyes that I recognized from somewhere. ‘I’m going to be Oprah, Ellen and Beyoncé, all rolled into one. I’m going to take over the world.’
Oh. Dear. God. I was looking into the eyes of a baby Jenny Lopez, only even more ambitious. I tried to imagine what Jenny would be like if she’d been a teenager during the YouTube revolution. It didn’t bear thinking about.
‘You remind me of my best friend,’ I told her, glancing across at a framed photo of me and Jenny, doubled over laughing at Erin’s wedding to Thomas. A much happier image than the one of her doubled over the toilet on Saturday night. And Sunday morning. And Sunday night. ‘Which is almost entirely a compliment. I’m just not sure why you’d want to give up your own thing to come and work for someone else?’
‘To learn,’ Eva said earnestly, beating her hand against the issue of Gloss in her lap. ‘I’m can’t get any further in my career until I learn from other people. Did you know Delia Spencer is the youngest female president of a media company ever? I’m sure there’s something she could teach me that I’m not getting from staring at a camera in my bedroom.’
I smiled as she smoothed out the wrinkles in the magazine with an awkward smile. I was impressed. Even though it was easy to be impressed when your own hashtag goals only stretched as far as making it through the day without throwing up on yourself.
‘I love Gloss, I really do,’ Eva said. ‘When Joe reached out to me and asked for a meeting, I died. For real, I am obsessed with your magazine. I want to have Gloss babies and send them all around the world to tell everyone how great we are, like a reverse Angelina Jolie. I’m excited to join Spencer Media because of Gloss.’
‘That’s so cool,’ I replied, touched and flattered and quietly scribbling down what she had said. It was a better global outreach strategy than I’d come up with. ‘I really hope we get to work together.’
‘You’ve got to keep growing, haven’t you? Got to keep swimming, like a shark,’ she said as Joe stood, signalling that it was time to leave. ‘If you’re not moving forward, what are you doing? Treading water? That’s five minutes away from drowning.’
‘Maybe you’re floating?’ I suggested, following them towards the door. ‘Floating is fun.’
Especially if you were floating on an inflatable donut in Taylor Swift’s Rhode Island pool, just like Eva had been, on Instagram, over the Fourth of July weekend.
‘For a while,’ she conceded. ‘But before you know it, you’ve been swept out on the tide and there’s no way back to the shore.’
The girl was deep. That would look great as an inspirational quote on Pinterest.
‘It was really nice to meet you,’ I said, taking a deep breath and bracing myself for another mega hug. She genuinely seemed like an intelligent, determined woman who was nice to boot and it took all my strength not to whisper, ‘Run while still you can’ into her ear.
‘Can we get a selfie?’ she asked, whipping an enormous mobile phone out of a tiny Chanel bag and tilting her chin downwards before I’d even had time to blink. ‘Sorry, I’m so Gen Z I can’t even stand it sometimes.’
‘It’s fine,’ I assured her, choosing not to look at the photo on the screen. ‘Just promise you’ll filter the shit out of it before you post it?’
‘Oh, I don’t filter,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I’m all about authenticity. But I can Facetune you, if you’d like?’
‘I would like,’ I said quickly. ‘Thanks.’
‘See you in the morning,’ Joe said over the top of her amazing hair. ‘Can’t wait to see your presentation.’
‘Me neither,’ I replied. ‘See you then.’
Heaving my giant teddy bear back onto the mini sofa, I sat down beside him and rested my head against his chest. Joe was right, Eva was great. She was bright, she was funny, she knew exactly what she wanted and she wasn’t afraid to ask for help. So what if she was young? She had all the experience she needed and confidence by the bucket-load. Like Joe had said at lunch, Eva was the future.
Which only left one question. What did that make me?
‘I’m going to have nightmares about that thing,’ Cici said, side-eyeing the bear hours later. Most of the lights were out and everyone else had long since gone home. ‘Are you planning on staying here all night?’
‘I’m still working on my presentation,’ I explained, turning the screen of my computer to face her. ‘We were so late closing today I only just got to it.’
‘I figured you’d have it done by now,’ she replied, scanning the first slide and pulling a face. ‘It’s like a Gloss brand thing, right? You could do that in your sleep, what’s so complicated?’
I looked across the desk at my assistant and saw someone who wasn’t just a colleague, a rich bitch, and a face that stalked my nightmares. For the first time, I saw someone who was reliable, supportive, and hardworking – and also someone who could very nearly pass for a friend. Even if I knew she’d rather wear head-to-toe manmade fibres before she would admit it.
‘Cici?’ I said.
‘Yeah?’ she replied.
‘Please can you take off those fake glasses?’
She tensed her jaw and pursed her lips.
‘They’re not fake,’ she replied. ‘I need them for driving at night.’
I looked around the empty office, saw her standing on her own two feet, twelve floors off street level, and burst out laughing.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ she asked when I didn’t stop. ‘Are you having a psychotic break? Should I call an ambulance?”
‘I don’t know,’ I said, wiping a welcome tear away from my dried-out eyes. ‘Possibly, and no, I think I’m OK.’
‘OK, yeah, because you’re laughing like a psychopath,’ Cici pointed out. ‘Why do you want me to take off my glasses and why is it funny?’
‘Because you don’t need them,’ I said, rubbing my eyes; I’d been staring at a screen for altogether too long today. ‘You don’t need to wear glasses to convince people you’re clever – I know you’re clever. I know you’re good at your job. The Generation Gloss party was amazing and persuasive props are not necessary.’
Slowly, she reached up to her face and pulled off the glasses, turning the frames over in her hands for a moment before folding them up and placing them on my desk.
‘Why, Miss Spencer, you’re beautiful,’ I said with a grin.
‘You want me to call you a cab?’ she asked, smiling back. She looked even more like her sister when she smiled, not that I could remember the last time I’d seen a truly joyous expression on either of their faces. ‘It’s too late for you to take the train.’
‘I can’t leave until I finish this,’ I said, tapping the computer screen with a pencil. ‘And I can’t finish this because my brain is mush.’
‘It’s a presentation about Gloss,’ Cici said again, flipping through the slides. ‘You know everything about Gloss, you are Gloss. What are you having trouble with?’
‘Finding a reason for Joe to choose us over The Look when he closes one of us in January,’ I replied softly.
Cici whistled quietly. ‘Whoa.’
‘I didn’t want to say anything to worry you,’ I replied, scrolling back and forth over the same slides I’d been looking at for the last three hours. ‘But the way it’s going right now, he’s not even going to wait until January.’
‘You know, you could ask for help,’ she said, pulling my keyboard towards her. ‘You’re editing a magazine, you’re pregnant, and you’re living with that lunatic of a friend of yours. This is a lot to take on, I would have helped you.’
‘Thank you,’ I replied as my screen lit up her carefully appointed features. Several generations of carefully selected breeding and another several thousand dollars of rhinoplasty, Botox and cosmetic dentistry stared at my presentation. ‘What do you think?’
‘Joe doesn’t need to know why Gloss is already great,’ she said, clicking on a group of slides and pressing delete. I closed my eyes and tried not to throw up in my mouth. I had not backed up. ‘He wants to know where Gloss is going in the future. He wants to know why he should invest time, money and resource in us. What does Gloss have that The Look doesn’t?’
‘A lifesize cutout of Chris Pratt in Jurassic World?’ I suggested.
‘The fewer slides the better,’ Cici said, ignoring my unhelpful suggestion. ‘You want to go in, tell him how it’s going to be and get out. Don’t let the thought of closing Gloss even cross his mind.’
‘I shouldn’t be defending the magazine’s existence,’ I said, catching on to her point. ‘I need to remind him how bloody lucky he is to have it in the first place.’
‘Exactly,’ she replied, opening a new slide, her long nails clacking across my keyboard. ‘“Why Spencer Media needs Gloss”.’
‘Cici Spencer, I don’t know how I would manage without you,’ I declared, stunned by my own words.
‘Took you long enough,’ she muttered in response. ‘Now, can we get this done so I can get the hell out of here, please? Unlike you, I have a life.’
I nodded in agreement. Not because she was right, but because it just wouldn’t do for us to be nice to each other for more than five minutes at a time.
It was so late by the time Cici and I spilled out of the office and into our cabs, Times Square was almost deserted. The neon madness had already slowed down, animated billboards stood static and the brightly lit marquees of the theatres had all gone dark. I texted Jenny to let her know I wasn’t coming home. Working with Cici had given me new life and new life required a new outfit. The exact outfit that was hanging in my wardrobe back in Park Slope. My black leather pencil skirt, my black silk shirt and the little black Saint Laurent ankle boots that were covered in silver glitter stars. Jenny had ‘acquired’ them from a photoshoot the winter before, but they were too big for her. I was certain they would fit my swollen feet and wearing a grand’s worth of designer goods on my feet would certainly help boost my confidence while I explained to Joe just how stupid he would have to be to close Gloss.
As my cab rattled down FDR Drive, hitting every pothole possible, I gazed out on the Brooklyn skyline that awaited me across the East River. Manhattan still towered above me, threatening to swallow me whole as we looped around on ourselves and rolled over the Brooklyn Bridge. I was tired but I was happy. The presentation was good and I knew it. Tomorrow was still going to be interesting, but at least I was going in with a better than fighting chance.
We rolled up outside the house a little after one and the street was silent. There were hardly any lights in any windows on our block. Someone had lied: New York was definitely sleeping. Inside, the apartment was the same, comforting mess I had left it – piles of clothes and notebooks everywhere I looked and an empty packet of Hobnobs on the coffee table. I took a quick look in the kitchen and saw the Hello Hole had been completely covered and my floor was spotless. The murderous builder’s work was done.
Peeling off my ankle boots, I automatically turned on the TV just as an episode of Law & Order: SVU began. I closed my eyes happily and hummed along to the music, thanking the TV gods for rewarding my long and stressful day.
And then I heard the toilet flush.
‘Oh. My. God,’ I whispered, my hands creeping up to my own throat and covering my mouth.
There was someone in the house.
I heard the footsteps coming closer to the living room but I couldn’t move a muscle. This was not a drill, this was not paranoia, there was someone in my house, and to add insult to injury, they’d just used my toilet. It had to be the homicidal builder.
‘And they flushed,’ I told Detective Benson on the television. ‘Forensics won’t be able to get DNA evidence from the lav if they flushed.’
The familiar creak of the floorboard in the hallway told me they were right outside the door. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do but hide or fight. I looked all around, assessing possible weapons. Biscuit wrappers, Cheez-Its, dirty tights, my old Jimmy Choos. I closed my eyes and swallowed, adrenaline surging through my veins. If I could distract the murdery builder, because it was obviously him, maybe I could run out the front door, lock him inside and scream bloody murder until someone called the police.
A shadowy figure appeared in the doorway before I could make a run for it. I saw the outline of a beard and a startled look in his eyes as he noticed the TV and then me.
‘Get out of my way!’ I screamed, hurling shoes, tights and packets of Cheez-Its in his direction as I charged towards the door with a blood-curdling war cry. I was not going down quietly. The neighbours had given my keys to the psycho in the first place, the least they deserved was a poor night’s sleep.
The intruder dodged the cheesy snacks but my Jimmy Choo hit him squarely between the eyes. His legs crumpled underneath him and I saw my chance as he dropped down to one knee and kicked him squarely between the nuts and ran for the door. Before I could get anywhere, he reached out and grabbed my ankle.
‘Angela,’ he gasped.
‘Please don’t hurt me!’ I screamed, closing my eyes and wrapping my hands around my belly, hopping on one foot to stop myself from falling over, not stopping to wonder how he might know my name. ‘I’m pregnant!’
‘What?’
I opened one eye to see a hairy, confused version of a man who looked just like my husband staring up at me.
‘Alex?’ I whispered.
He nodded, shock all over his face.
‘What did you just say?’ he asked, still carefully guarding his balls with one hand and hanging on to my ankle with the other.
‘So, I’ve got some news,’ I said, my heartbeat thudding in my ears. ‘We’re having a baby.’
Alex let go of my leg and wiped a hand over his face, blinking at me in silence.
‘Are you serious?’
‘Almost twelve weeks serious,’ I said, reaching out to touch his beard. Gross. It was really him.
‘A baby?’ He tentatively released his nads and looked at my stomach. ‘You’re pregnant?’
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘And please don’t say it doesn’t look any different, because it definitely does, and it wasn’t funny when Jenny said it either.’
‘Angela …’ Alex rolled forward onto his knees, covering my mini bump with both hands. ‘We’re having a baby?’
‘I know, I’ve had more time to get used to it than you,’ I said, laughing at the look of shock on his beardy face and kneeling down on the floor beside him. ‘One hundred per cent real human baby, cooking up in this oven. Oh, and it’s definitely yours, by the way. In case you were wondering.’
And there were the tears again. Alex pressed his mouth against mine, kissing me so hard. It felt new, strange in a good way, he’d been gone so long and I couldn’t stop myself from joining in with a little sob. Even while he kissed me, even as his hands became caught up in my long hair, his beard scratching my hot face, I wanted to be closer to him, on him, with him. I needed him inside me. I clambered up into his lap, desperate to feel his entire body against mine.
‘I missed you so much,’ I said as I yanked his T-shirt over his head and ran my hands down the strong muscles in his lean back.
‘I missed you too,’ he replied, pushing my sweater dress up around my hips and tearing at my tights. ‘Every goddamn day.’
We fell backwards, arms and legs moving without thinking until we were nestled between the settee and the coffee table, his jeans somewhere else, my dress acting as a very expensive pillow. Alex paused, framing my face in his hands as he hovered above me.
‘We’re having a baby,’ he said, smiling.
And for the first time in a long time, it felt as though everything was going to be all right.