‘Oh. My. God.’
‘What?’ I stuck an earbud in my ear, proofreading the final fashion pages as I answered Jenny’s call. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing’s wrong. Everything is right. I think I’m dreaming,’ I could practically hear her bouncing off the walls. ‘You won’t believe this, but I called Amy, that British girl who runs AJB, to see if they had anything I could wear for the wedding and it turns out Bertie Bennett is launching a bridal collection next season and he’s gonna let me wear one of the sample dresses. Bertie Bennett is making me a wedding dress and I have to go meet with him tonight.’
‘Does he definitely know it’s you and not the other Jennifer Lopez?’ I asked, a little dazed. This was huge.
‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ she sang. ‘You have to come.’
‘Jenny, I can’t.’ I stared at the clock to try and turn it backwards. AJB dresses were so beautiful and Bertie Bennett was a fashion legend, if it had been any other day, I would have happily murdered almost anyone for the opportunity to hang out with him. Jenny had been handling their PR for the last couple of years, but this was an incredible coup, even for La Lopez. ‘It’s press day and I’ve still got more than half the magazine to approve. There’s no way I’ll be done here before ten.’
‘You can’t sneak out early, maid of honour?’ she tried her best, most wheedling tone of voice. ‘For your best friend? Your old pal, Jenny?’
‘You know there is nothing I would love more,’ I said, circling a typo in the second paragraph. ‘But I really can’t. Is there any way you could move it to tomorrow?’
‘When Bertie Bennett offers to give you a wedding dress, you don’t ask questions, you just go,’ she replied. ‘I just cancelled a new business meeting I’ve had in the diary for months. Wait, no, I haven’t. Don’t tell Erin.’
‘Send me photos,’ I said, holding the marked-up pages out to Sophie who was waving from the doorway. ‘And if some sort of miracle happens, I’ll let you know.’
‘What if I call in a bomb threat?’ she suggested. ‘I know that’s not funny, but Angie, this is Bertie-fricking-Bennett.’
‘There’s a nuclear bunker underneath the building with WiFi, Censhare, and an FTP server,’ I answered. ‘If you do that, I’ll never get away.’
‘Wild,’ she whistled in response. ‘Fine, I’ll take photos. Maybe Sadie can come with.’
‘Is she still wearing the protective face mask?’ I asked. ‘I saw it on Instagram last night, Mum was well tickled.’
‘Yeah, maybe I’ll go on my own,’ Jenny replied in a sulk. ‘Go finish your magazine. Love you.’
‘Love you,’ I said, popping out the earbud and opening up the news pages.
‘Is there really a nuclear bunker underneath the building?’
I looked up to see a confused look on Eva’s face. Of course, the neon pink desk had been for her. Of course, Joe had decided the best way for her to integrate into the company was to share an office with me. Of course, I was ready to chuck myself out of the window after dealing with it for three-quarters of a day.
‘I don’t know,’ I replied, offering her my best attempt at a smile. ‘It was a joke.’
‘Was that your friend?’ she asked. ‘The one who’s getting married?’
‘Yep,’ I said, studying my computer screen very closely.
‘That’s exciting. I’ve never been a bridesmaid,’ Eva said, picking up a tablet and tapping out a note. ‘You should vlog it. For the website.’
‘Probably won’t,’ I said, catching sight of her deflated face in the corner of my eye. ‘Good idea, though.’
Why would anyone think it was a good idea to move someone into my office on press day? Because that person is a wanker, the voice in my head whispered. The voice in my head spoke so much sense.
It was already dark outside. Even though it was only three in the afternoon, we’d had an entire day of terrible weather, rain, rain and more rain and the sun hadn’t even made an attempt at putting in an appearance. The weather forecast was better for the weekend but I was still keeping everything crossed for sunshine at the wedding.
In the bottom of my computer screen, I noticed a new message notification. It was my mum.
CAN YOU SEE HAMILTON 2NITE?
Hamilton? They had Hamilton tickets?
You got tix? I replied, fingers like lightning.
UR DAD MET NICE MAN IN THE PARK. HE’S IN IT. IS IT GOOD?
I had been trying to get tickets to Hamilton for two years. They were like unicorn poop rolled in diamond dust, completely unobtainable unless you were insanely lucky or obscenely rich. Alex had pulled every string in his musical book to snag two for my birthday the year before, but I decided it was a good idea to eat three-day-old Mexican leftovers for lunch, and when I should have been enjoying the vocal stylings of Lin-Manuel Miranda, I had a front seat to the inside of my toilet bowl. Jenny and Mason went instead and she called me during the intermission, in tears because it was so good. I still hadn’t forgiven them for not lying.
It’s v good, I told Mum. Get tix and go!!!
U AND ALEX 2?
She doesn’t mean to shout, she just likes the bigger letters, I told myself, letting out a cleansing breath.
I have to work, I replied. Take Dad, he’ll like it. It’s historical.
MAN SAID ITS FUNNY. WILL SEE MIGHT GO XXX
I turned my attention back to my computer screen, groaning as all the letters swirled together.
‘Hey, chief,’ Jason knocked on my door and grinned. ‘Hi, Eva.’
‘Hi, Jason!’ she replied, practically leaping out of her chair with emoji hearts in her eyes when he walked in. I wasn’t sure who was going to tell her just how very gay he was but it certainly wasn’t going to be me.
‘You look so great today, chief,’ he said, holding out a Snickers bar. ‘Is that a new highlighter?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, angry at myself for being pleased. ‘What do you want?’
‘Would it be OK if I run out for an hour?’ he asked, holding his hands together in prayer. ‘My roommate’s boyfriend is dancing with Justin Timberlake at this thing they’re recording for Extra. It’s only at Radio City, I will be gone for mere moments. You’ll barely even believe I left my desk.’
‘It’s press day,’ I said, holding up a handful of white pages in case he, the managing editor, wasn’t sure what that meant. ‘I need you here.’
‘Yeah, I know, but I’ll make it up,’ he bargained, carefully placing the Snickers on my desk. ‘I’ll stay as late as you need me, I swear it.’
‘What if I don’t want to stay late?’ I asked, tearing into the Snickers before he could take it back.
Jason began to laugh, slapping his thigh to illustrate just how amused he was.
‘Good one,’ he said, clicking his fingers as he left. ‘You almost had me there. I’ll be back ASAP, call me if you need me. I won’t be more than an hour, two at most. We’ll get this baby to bed by ten!’
What an arsehole. I couldn’t make my best friend’s first wedding dress fitting, my parents had scored free tickets to Hamilton, and my staff were taking the piss.
‘Cici was right,’ I realized. ‘I am a bad boss. Anna Wintour probably has snipers at the ready to take out staff who bunk off on press day.’
I looked out the window and waited for the flying pigs. Cici Spencer was right.
Grabbing my phone, I started a text to Alex. I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted him to say but I was certain he could come up with something helpful.
The baby wanted a Snickers, I typed, adding a photo of the half-eaten chocolate bar. What are you doing?
Working, he replied. No kisses, no emojis. Super harsh.
On new music? I asked.
Yep, he texted back. Talk later.
‘Fine,’ I muttered, shoving the rest of the Snickers into my mouth and undoing the top button of my jeans. ‘We will talk later, arse.’
‘You want to talk later?’ Eva asked.
‘Don’t mind me,’ I said, fake laughing. ‘Sometimes I talk to myself.’
‘That might be kind of distracting,’ she frowned, scratching her head behind the neon pink desk Joe had shoved directly in front of mine. ‘I guess I’ll have to get used to it.’
‘I guess,’ I replied with a manic grin.
Outside my window, the sky blackened, thunder rumbled across the city – and I really hoped Jason had forgotten to take an umbrella.
The rain still hadn’t let up when I eventually approved the last pages, dead on the dot of seven. Leaving Jason to send everything to print, I practically ran across the lobby, desperate to leave the building. I hadn’t set foot outside all day and I needed fresh air, I needed to get home, and I needed to talk to Alex.
‘I thought you were never going to leave.’
Cici stepped out of the shadows of the neighbouring building as I fought with my umbrella.
‘Are you trying to give me a heart attack?’ I asked, chucking my umbrella up in the air. Rain hammered the top of my head, soaking my hair through as I bent over to retrieve it. ‘What on earth are you doing?’
‘Waiting for you?’ she replied, as though it was obvious. She held out her own massive golf umbrella, her blonde blowout untouched by something as vulgar as weather. ‘I need to talk to you about a thing.’
‘And you couldn’t do that, say, in the warm, dry confines of the massive office building behind me?’ I asked.
‘Uh, no,’ she replied. ‘Grandpa had all the offices bugged years ago – you didn’t know that?’
‘I bloody well absolutely did know it,’ I said, punching the air and almost two passersby at the same time. ‘Regardless, this is bad timing, I’m knackered. Can we catch up another time?’
‘Look, Angela, we both know you’re going to give in eventually,’ she said impatiently. ‘So, let’s just get it over with. I made a reservation at the Four Seasons.’
Just in case I’d forgotten how obscenely rich she was.
‘Cici, the Four Seasons is ten blocks away, it’s hammering it down, and I haven’t been to the toilet in seventeen minutes,’ I said. ‘There’s no way we’re walking all that way. If you’ve got something to say, you can say it here or you can get on the subway and come back to my house.’
‘Brooklyn?’ she recoiled. ‘Eww.’
‘As much as I’d love to stand here getting piss wet through, I’ve got to go,’ I said, popping my own umbrella and showering myself in the face in the process. ‘So nice to see you, we must do this again some time.’
‘No!’ She stamped her shiny black Hunter rain boot and her umbrella shook itself off like a wet dog. ‘This is really important. I stood out here in the rain to wait for you, and you know I hate admitting this, but I really need your help. Will you please come to the Four Seasons with me?’
‘If you want someone to check out your Tinder date before you go into the bar again, I am not your girl,’ I warned. ‘Don’t think I didn’t hear about that.’
‘I only did that maybe five or six times,’ she replied sulkily.
So many interns had suffered under her reign of terror.
‘This is important,’ Cici said with a straight face and something that looked like earnestness in her eyes. ‘I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t.’
I pressed my mouth into a hard line, raindrops dripping down the back of my neck and a baby pressing on my bladder. The internet said it was still only the size of a lime but never in my life had a lime made me need to pee this much. At least, not unless it came on the side of a shot of tequila.
‘Angela,’ she said, reaching out to take my hand in hers. ‘Please.’
Whoa. This was an unprecedented moment. I wasn’t entirely sure what to do and I wasn’t entirely sure she hadn’t been taken over by body snatchers.
‘OK,’ I said slowly, gesturing for her to lead the way. ‘Four Seasons it is.’
‘Thank you,’ she muttered, waving to a black town car that pulled a sharp U-turn across 42nd Street and came to a stop right in front of us. ‘Please don’t pee in the car.’
Of course, she had a town car waiting for her, I thought, whipping out my phone to send Jenny a notification in Find My Friends, just in case.
‘You’re doing what?’ I asked, pinching myself under the table while Cici calmly sipped a Scotch on the rocks.
‘I’ve set up my own media company,’ she replied. ‘Why do you look so shocked? It makes perfect sense when you think about it.’
‘But your grandfather already owns one of the biggest media companies in the world,’ I reminded her. ‘And your sister, your identical twin sister, is the president of that company.’
‘Yeah, I had not forgotten about that, but thanks for the heads-up,’ she said. Along the bar, two handsome men in suits threw her smiles, only to be shut down with nothing more than a roll of her crystal-clear blue eyes. ‘After we had lunch, I was thinking about what I’m good at, what I know, and that’s when it hit me. I’m good at managing people and I know media. I don’t know how to write, but I know what good writing looks like, and I have the most important skill already, I know how to make people do what I want.’
‘I don’t know if that’s the most important,’ I said, still struggling to grasp what she was telling me. ‘But yay?’
‘I know how to manage people who know what they’re doing,’ she said, spinning her bar stool around so that her long, slender legs were pointed directly at me. ‘Which is why you’re here.’
‘You want me to come and work for you?’ I asked, unable to hold in a little gasp of surprise.
‘Oh, my god no.’ A little flutter of laughter escaped her mouth and echoed over the quiet piano music. ‘I know you would never leave Spencer, you’re too much of a martyr. But some people will, right?’
‘So, let me check I’ve got this straight. You’re not trying to headhunt me but you expect me to point you in the direction of the people you should headhunt from the company I work for, including my own employees?’ I drew out a mental map of her ridiculous request on the bar with the tip of my finger, just so I could be sure.
‘Yes,’ she replied, placing her drink back down on its plush napkin. ‘What?’
‘You can’t see why that’s weird?’ I questioned. She shook her head. ‘You don’t think there’s a conflict of interests here?’
‘No, not really,’ Cici said, offering the bartender a polite smile as he refilled our water glasses and placed a bowl of bar mix in between us. Without a word, she pushed it towards me. ‘Besson Media is going to be web-based. I know Spencer has websites, but only websites based on magazines. We’re going to be quick and modern and instant, everything you aren’t. Spencer is like the fat old housecat, we’re the panther that smashes down the front door and tears that housecat apart with our teeth.’
‘Beautiful visual,’ I said, choking on a dry roast peanut. ‘I’m still not going to give you a list of who you should nick. They’d sack me and they’d be right to. Also, not to be funny, but you didn’t get on with people that well. What makes you think people are going to come and work for you in the first place?’
‘Because I have tons of cash,’ she said, tilting her head to one side. ‘My business manager has already had so many people approach us. I thought it would be harder than this, to be honest.’
‘You have a business manager?’ I asked.
‘Yep,’ she nodded. ‘I have a COO, a CBO, a CMO and of course, I’m CEO.’
‘Wouldn’t have expected anything else,’ I said, feeling oddly proud. ‘This sounds so great, Cici.’
‘I know,’ she shrugged. ‘It’s going to be the perfect company. Flexible working hours, great healthcare, the offices are in Brooklyn, but, you know, sometimes you have to make sacrifices.’
‘Commuting to Brooklyn isn’t a sacrifice,’ I told her. She pulled a sour face and shivered dramatically. ‘You really did all this in two weeks?’
‘What can I say?’ Cici took another tiny sip of her drink. ‘I’m motivated.’
‘That I can see,’ I said, tapping my bitten-down nails against my water glass. ‘And it’s slightly terrifying.’
And I’d thought an unexpected pregnancy was a lot to process. Cici was starting her own rival media company? It was a Ryan Murphy miniseries in the making.
‘Well, it’s been lovely to see you,’ I said, hopping down off my stool, scooping up a handful of bar mix and shoving it in my pocket. I needed train snacks. ‘And this all sounds fantastic, but I need to go home.’
‘For sure,’ she said, without blinking. ‘So, you’ll call me.’
A statement, not a question.
‘Probably not, if I’m honest,’ I said, walking backwards out of the bar and into the ridiculous marble lobby, longing to be back out in the rain. I needed to clear my head. ‘Bye, Cici.’
‘Bye, Angela.’ She raised her hand in a wave. ‘And I know you said I shouldn’t try to headhunt you, but just so you know—’
‘Don’t say it,’ I warned, wrapping my glittery scarf around my neck.
‘Whatever,’ she said with a glittering smile on her face. No longer an underfed hyena but a housecat-eating panther. ‘Just think about it.’
I had a horrible feeling I wouldn’t be able to do much else.
‘I know you weren’t raised Catholic, but can you remember exactly how it went when the devil tempted Jesus in the desert that time?’ I asked Alex, hurling my parka in the general direction of the coatrack and missing completely. ‘Because I’m pretty sure I am having my faith in something tested.’
‘Don’t know,’ he said, not looking up from his laptop. ‘Bad day?’
‘Bizarre day,’ I replied. I kicked off my ankle boots and collapsed on the sofa, pointing my feet in his general direction. It was definitely foot-rub time. ‘Where are Mum and Dad?’
‘Your dad said he met a man called Miranda in the park and tonight they were going to see him sing.’ Alex continued to stare at the computer, his pale skin glowing with the light from the incandescent screen. ‘So no, I have no idea.’
‘Oh yeah,’ I remembered. They were at Hamilton. The bastards. ‘So, long story short, Cici is setting up her own media company and wants me to be the editor of the first website.’
Alex didn’t move.
‘Or at least I think she does,’ I said, trying to recall exactly what she’d said. ‘It was very confusing, but then, it was Cici.’
‘Yeah, that’s funny,’ he said, looking up at me with tired, dry eyes. ‘Did you eat?’
‘I’m not sure funny’s the right word.’ I shuffled down the sofa until I was properly laid down and my feet were closer to foot-rub distance. He was not taking the hint this evening. ‘I know it sounds ridiculous, but if you took the Cici part out of the equation, the whole thing sounds kind of like a dream. Seriously, if it was anyone but her—’
‘You’d still be ignoring it because you’re almost four months pregnant and need health insurance and a steady job and you don’t throw away a career to go dick around at an internet startup,’ Alex replied, closing up his laptop with a loud clap. ‘What is this, 1999? Are you trying to get in on the dotcom boom?’
‘Why are you so angry?’ I asked, tearing up the second I opened my mouth. ‘I’m only telling you what happened. Of course I’m not going to take a job working with Cici, I know I have to stay at Spencer.’
‘Thanks, I feel so much better knowing you’re passing up an amazing opportunity because you have to,’ he said. He anchored one hand on the back of his neck and swung the other around in the air, chucking an invisible tennis ball into the kitchen. ‘Did she offer you a pony as well?’
‘You know full well if she’d offered me a pony I’d have taken it,’ I said, sitting upright. ‘Alex, what’s wrong?’
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ he said, picking up the tiny Baby-gro he’d bought in Bloomingdale’s. ‘I sat down and looked at our budget today. It’s going to be tighter than I realized if we want to do this properly.’
‘People have babies on far less than what we have, every day,’ I said, refusing to let myself cry. This was the problem with hormones, I told myself, the first sign of a disagreement and the waterworks started. It wasn’t my fault. ‘What’s got you so freaked out?’
‘People who don’t live in New York City,’ he said, standing before beginning to stride up and down the room. ‘People who don’t have huge New York City mortgages to pay and New York City childcare to worry about.’
‘Non-New York City mortgages and non-New York City childcare aren’t cheap either,’ I reminded him. ‘Louisa and Tim had to tighten their belts when they had Grace.’
‘So tight they can’t breathe?’ he muttered. ‘Because that’s what’s going to happen to us.’
‘Yeah, so we’ll have to make a few sacrifices,’ I told him, trying to sound as soothing as possible, but it was hard when he wouldn’t bloody well stand still. ‘It won’t be that bad.’
He turned and looked right at me.
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, looking at my shocking nails. ‘I’ll stop getting manicures and I won’t buy coffee on the way into work any more.’
He took a deep breath and pushed all his hair back from his face with both hands.
‘And I suppose I’ll take myself off the waiting list for a Chanel Jumbo Flap Bag,’ I muttered into my chest.
‘We are not ready for this.’ Alex swiped at a cushion and knocked it across the room. ‘We are not ready at all.’
You will not cry, I told myself, you will not cry. Did Hillary Clinton cry when she didn’t win the election? No, she didn’t, and so I wasn’t going to cry just because my husband was being a massive dick.
‘Chanel bags are bit obvious, anyway,’ I said quietly, puffing out my cheeks to stop my eyes from prickling. ‘Not really me.’
‘I’m going downstairs,’ he said, grabbing his laptop as he crossed the room.
‘Do you want anything to eat?’ I called as he went, holding my breath as he slammed the door.
‘No,’ he answered abruptly from the other side. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Well,’ I said, breathing out and patting the bump gently, just in case it had heard. ‘At least that makes one of us.’