‘What do you mean, you’re going to Thanksgiving?’ Mum asked. I pulled a blue Sandro shift dress over my head, considered my reflection in the bedroom mirror then yanked it off and chucked it back on the bed. ‘How do you go to Thanksgiving? You can’t go to Christmas.’
‘Thanksgiving dinner,’ I clarified to my phone as I slid on a little black Nanette Lepore dress. It was sleeveless, so I wouldn’t get too hot, but the white lace collar seemed too dressy. ‘We’re all going to Erin’s house for Thanksgiving dinner.’
‘I don’t get it,’ she replied. ‘Why did they have to go and make up their own Christmas? And without the presents! It’s bonkers, if you ask me.’
‘No one asked you,’ I said quietly, considering my limited wardrobe choices. I’d only been able to bring so much over to Jenny’s and, inevitably, everything I now wanted was still back in Park Slope.
‘And I don’t know why you’re going,’ Mum sniffed. ‘I know you’re married to one, but you’re not American.’
‘It’s not a religious thing, Mum,’ I replied, plumping for a pretty printed smock dress from Maje. Cute, smart, but with plenty of room for a Thanksgiving food baby. And, now I thought about it, a real baby as well. I’d been maternity shopping without knowing it for the last six months. ‘You just eat a big turkey dinner with your friends and family and give thanks for all the good things in your life.’
‘Sounds a bit happy-clappy to me,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you joining a cult like Tom Cruise.’
Only my mother would confuse Thanksgiving with Scientology.
‘Is Dad having fun yet?’ I asked, searching for an appropriate pair of shoes. ‘He’s been very quiet online.’
‘He’s been very quiet in general,’ she said with a sigh. ‘He’s taken to sitting at the side of the pool in his jogging bottoms and a jumper, reading books about serial killers. People are starting to talk, Angela. I’m certain that’s the reason we haven’t been asked back to the captain’s table.’
‘I’ve got to go,’ I said as Jenny poked her head around the bedroom door. ‘But I’m sure he’ll cheer up soon.’
‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘They had Steak Diane on at dinner last night and he barely touched his. I’m starting to worry.’
‘Is that you, Mrs C?’ Jenny asked, giving my Acne ankle boots a thumbs-up. ‘Happy Thanksgiving!’
‘Happy Thanksgiving to you,’ Mum shouted sweetly. ‘I’m thankful that Angela has a friend like you, Jenny.’
My mother was such a suck-up sometimes, it was unbelievable.
‘Aww, Mrs C, that’s too cute.’ Jenny smiled across the room while I faux gagged. ‘We have to go now, but do you think you’ll be coming to visit soon? We miss you here in NYC.’
I shook my head, slicing my arms through the air in front of me. Why would Jenny even joke about something like that?
‘Oh, I don’t know, Jenny,’ Mum replied. ‘We’ve still got a long while left on the cruise. Maybe next year.’
‘Maybe next year,’ Jenny said, back to her, dodging the pair of balled-up socks I lobbed at her head. ‘Say hi to Mr C for me.’
‘Will do,’ Mum sang down the line. ‘Bye, girls, have fun at Thanksgiving.’
‘We will, Mum,’ I said as I pressed the red button to end the call. ‘You test me sometimes, Lopez.’
‘That’s my job,’ she replied, running her hands over her skintight purple sheath dress. ‘Does this look good?’
‘It looks snug,’ I said, ever the diplomat. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather wear something a bit roomier for dinner?’
She held her arms up above her head and shimmied her hips.
‘Nope,’ she replied. ‘I’m on my wedding diet, this will stop me pigging out.’
‘So, it’s a tactical frock.’ I flipped out the hem of my smock. ‘Mine too, just the other way around. You do realize you don’t need to lose weight, though? You’re practically miniature. If you get any littler in the waist, we’re not going to be friends any more.’
‘It’s not my waist I’m worried about,’ she frowned, patting her backside. ‘It’s the junk in the trunk that’s the issue. Most wedding dresses don’t leave a lot of extra ass room.’
‘They do if you go for a ballgown,’ I replied. ‘Nothing but extra ass room.’
Jenny shot me the filthiest look I’d ever seen.
‘OK, no ballgown,’ I replied quickly. ‘Well, don’t think of it as junk in your trunk, think of it as fantastically practical things that you need in case of an emergency. Like a torch and a first-aid kit.’
She pouted and gazed at her gorgeous figure long enough for me to be certain we weren’t seeing the same thing reflected back in the mirror.
‘It’s not a wedding dress body,’ she said. ‘Sadie has a wedding dress body, all tall and willowy. This is a Hervé Léger, drop it like it’s hot bod. It has no business wearing Vera Wang.’
‘Oh good, you’ve lost your mind.’ I grabbed my parka from the bed and shooed her out of the room. ‘You’re going to be a beautiful bride, Sadie is going to be a different kind of beautiful bride, and more importantly, right this second, we are going to be late.’
‘Next time your mom calls, I’m going to tell her you’re pregnant,’ she threatened, flouncing out of the front door. ‘Think about that, Clark.’
‘Sometimes you are stone-cold,’ I said, locking the door behind us as she laughed.
Jenny Lopez, the dirtiest player in the game.
If Sadie’s champagne shampoo had caused any permanent damage to Erin’s carpet, I certainly couldn’t tell. The sitting room of her West Village townhouse was impeccable, as it probably should be for someone who employed a full-time housekeeper. Even though it was dull and grey outside, the house was beautifully lit with low lamps and strategically placed candles, highlighting all of Erin and Thomas’s beautiful collection of things. This was the kind of place I wanted to own one day. Maybe if Alex wrote two really successful albums and I became the editor of Belle? And we won the lottery?
‘Ladies …’ Thomas strolled into the sitting room as we handed out coats to our hostess. ‘So glad you could join us, Happy Thanksgiving.’
‘Happy Thanksgiving,’ I replied, grazing his cheek with mine in a downtown air kiss.
Thomas was a nice man, as far as I could tell, but other than his wife we had nothing in common. He didn’t watch TV, he only listened to jazz, and he used the word ‘summer’ as a verb. I knew he did something on Wall Street and had somehow survived the financial crisis unscathed, but even if someone held a gun to my head, I couldn’t tell you exactly what he did for a living. I’d always regarded money men with great suspicion, especially someone with as much money as Thomas, but if Erin said he was OK and he was prepared to feed me on a national holiday, who was I to judge?
‘Dinner smells amazing,’ I said, staring at a painting on the wall where the TV should be. Maybe it flipped over to reveal a dead fancy flatscreen? ‘You must be happy to have the day off.’
‘I worked this morning,’ he replied as Erin disappeared to open the door again. ‘Thanksgiving is a tricky one – the rest of the world doesn’t stop so we can eat too much turkey.’
Mmm, too much turkey.
‘I suppose not,’ I agreed. ‘Where are the kids?’
‘Upstairs.’ He nodded backwards and took a deep breath. ‘Arianna is having one of her days. Four going on fourteen.’
‘Imagine what she’ll be like when she really is a teenager,’ I replied, laughing.
Thomas looked at me, silent and stony-faced.
‘Or, you know, don’t,’ I said, looking off over my shoulder. ‘Mason!’
Jenny’s fiancé appeared in the doorway with Erin behind him. I noticed she was wearing a beautiful white apron over her fancy silver dress even though there was no way on god’s green earth that she’d even stepped foot in the kitchen. Jenny had already told me they’d had the entire meal delivered from Jean-Georges. It was half the reason I was there.
‘Hey!’ We exchanged cheek kisses with actual human contact before Jenny pounced on him, sliding her arm through his and resting her head on his arm. They really were a gorgeous couple, she was mad if she thought they would look anything other than stunning in their wedding photos.
‘Dinner is served,’ Erin announced, giving a gracious sweep of her arms to usher us through the sitting room and into the formal dining room.
Her house was like the TARDIS. Most New York homes were the opposite, they looked pretty big from the outside but when you went through the front door, it was just a rabbit warren of tiny studio apartments. Most of my friends didn’t even have proper kitchens, and one of the girls at work had a shower squeezed in next to her stove. Erin and Thomas had managed to achieve the opposite. From the outside, it looked like any other bazillion-dollar West Village home, narrow, tall, and in close proximity to Sarah Jessica Parker. But once you were inside, the whole place blossomed, the sitting room led to the drawing room, the drawing room led to the family room, and the family room led to the kitchen. Upstairs was Erin and Thomas’s bedroom, a home office, and a guest bedroom; and on the third floor, if you could be arsed to make it up that far, the two kids’ rooms, a shared playroom, and the nanny’s room. Because of course there was a nanny. I wasn’t including all the bathrooms because if I did, it made me sad. I’d never quite got to grips with America’s obsession with a toilet per person, possibly because the thought of cleaning that many lavs made me want a nap. Erin must go through so much Toilet Duck, I mused as we passed one of the downstairs powder rooms.
‘You didn’t tell me your new boss was Joe Herman,’ Erin said, taking a seat at the head of the table, peeking at me over an enormous flower arrangement in the shape of a turkey. ‘Wow.’
‘You know him?’ I asked, moving left and right, trying to make eye contact.
Erin growled, grabbed the floral turkey and dumped it on a side table behind her. Thomas raised an eyebrow.
‘What?’ she challenged.
‘My mother sent that,’ he replied.
‘I would think it’s quite clear to everyone here that I didn’t choose it,’ she said smoothly, retaking her seat and ignoring Thomas’s tightly clenched jaw. ‘And yes, I do know him. Of him, at least.’
Mason cleared his throat and began talking to Thomas, ignoring the tension at the table.
‘Don’t worry about him,’ Erin instructed, picking up her fork with her right hand. The pumpkin-stuffed agnolotti I’d read about on Eater.com was already on the table. ‘He’s tired. TJ was up all night and I made him deal with it. Now he’s sulking like the baby that he is.’
‘Good to know,’ I replied, sucking in my stomach.
‘Joe Herman used to be head of digital at Hearst,’ she said as she dug into her dinner happily. ‘He revolutionized their online platforms. I was kind of surprised to hear he’d gone into print publishing at all, but it made more sense when I heard it was at Spencer.’
‘Massive fan of Belle?’ I theorized.
‘Massive fan of your assistant,’ she corrected. ‘They used to date.’
Oh, fan-bloody-tastic.
‘As I understand it, Delia, Cici and Joe all went to the same college and he dated Cici on and off for a while although from what I hear, she saw it as more off than on. He’s been pining after her ever since she broke his heart and cheated on him.’
‘I want to be surprised but I’m not,’ Jenny said, pushing her pasta around her plate without actually eating a bite. ‘But it’s a worry, no one with a decent head on their shoulders could be in love with Cici Spencer.’
‘Anyone with a penis in their underpants could be in love with Cici Spencer,’ I replied. Mason and Thomas both looked up at the same time. I held up a hand in apology. ‘It doesn’t matter, he told me he has an English girlfriend so even if he was crushing on the evil Spencer twin, he must have got over it by now.’
‘Sure,’ Jenny nodded, raising a glass of white wine to her lips. ‘That’s why he gave up a huge job at Hearst to run the women’s magazines at Spencer.’
‘It’s kind of a side step,’ Erin said as I picked up my own wine, wet my lips and then put it right back down on the table without drinking a drop. Self-restraint was so hard sometimes. ‘I’m sure he’s there on a promise of moving up fairly quickly.’
‘You’re sure he’s not there on another kind of promise?’ I asked. ‘But thanks for the heads-up. If he starts sending me notes asking me to ask her out for him, I’ll let you know.’
‘I know you’re joking, but the media industry in New York is even more like high school than actual high school,’ Jenny said. ‘Only we have HR instead of guidance counsellors and the lunches are slightly better.’
‘You’re not wrong,’ I said, accidentally on purpose letting the tiniest sip of wine pass my lips. Oh, so good. ‘I have a meeting with him on Tuesday. He’s really dragging this new strategy stuff out. Honestly, I think he’s just trying to make me sweat and it’s totally working.’
‘It’s all so macho,’ she replied with a judgemental tut. ‘Leave you hanging, make you wonder what’s going to happen. He’s just trying to keep all the power.’
‘But he already has all the power, he could fire me tomorrow if he wanted to,’ I reminded her, wilting at the very thought. Maybe I could have one more tiny sip of wine. ‘Keep your fingers crossed that’s not in his “strategy”. How are things going on Ghost, Mason?’
He sucked the air in through his teeth and Jenny squeezed his huge bicep. It was a sweet gesture, but his arms were so massive I wondered whether or not he could even feel it.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, leaning back in his chair. ‘Lincoln, our new guy? He seems like he’s going to be cool but there’s something about him I don’t trust. He’s all “hey, we should all go see the Jets next game” to your face then goes to his office and sends you a brutally direct email insisting we pull any article that actually requires budget. I feel like staffing cuts are coming.’
‘We’ve had the budget cuts talk as well,’ I commiserated. ‘I honestly don’t see where we could cut anything and keep the magazine going.’
‘Just keep a slot open for me,’ Mason said, adding an awkward chuckle to the end of the sentence. ‘You never know, I might need you to find me a job.’
‘You’re not really worried, are you?’ I asked.
‘No, he isn’t,’ Jenny answered on his behalf. ‘How could they fire Mason? He won a Penny? He interviewed Kanye West and managed to make him seem almost entirely sane?’
‘That kind of thing doesn’t matter to the corporate folks,’ he replied with a shrug. ‘I’ve asked Gregory, my editor, but he’s keeping this one close to his chest and that’s not a good sign. He tells me everything – seriously, he told me about his affair and he won’t tell me about this.’
‘Gregory’s having an affair?’ I asked, stunned. Mason pulled an awkward face and I wondered if that was why Gregory hadn’t told him who was getting fired. ‘Sorry, not the point.’
‘He told me not to stress, maybe we’re not losing anyone. There’s always growing pains with a new structure.’
Everyone around the table made agreeing noises.
‘And I have better things to think about right now, right, Lopez?’
‘Yeah, you do,’ she replied, kissing the tip of his nose.
‘How’s the wedding planning going?’ Erin asked. She and Thomas looked away from the PDA at the exact same moment.
Never missing an opportunity, Jenny flashed her ring around the table for everyone to enjoy. It really was bloody beautiful.
‘It’s only been a few days.’ Jenny rested her hand on Mason’s forearm and gazed at the ring, turning it this way and that so it could catch the light from different angles. ‘We haven’t really decided on anything yet.’
‘We decided Maui, didn’t we?’ Mason asked, smiling down at her. ‘But we’re not totally sure where or when. We want to keep it real low-key.’
‘I wish we’d done a destination wedding,’ Thomas said approvingly. ‘Or eloped. Or just gone to City Hall. The whole thing is an insane waste of money.’
Erin gazed calmly down the table at her husband, resting her chin on her woven-together fingers, never saying a word.
‘I don’t know,’ Jenny said. She bobbed her head from side to side, making her hair bounce as she spoke. ‘I’m kind of going off the idea. Maui is so far away from New York, it’s going to make it really hard for a lot of people to come.’
‘Yeah,’ Mason replied with a mouthful of pumpkin pasta. ‘I know, that’s the point. Hopefully, my parents included.’
‘But what about your brother and his kids?’ she said, counting off excluded guests on her fingers. ‘And I want to invite Angie’s parents. They’d already be coming all the way from England, I can’t ask them to fly to Hawaii.’
‘Really, don’t,’ I insisted. ‘We’ll do just fine without them.’
‘And I wanted Arianna to be a flower girl,’ Jenny said, turning to Erin. ‘You don’t want to have to lug her and TJ all the way out to Maui, do you?’
Thomas leaned across the table to give Mason the full benefit of his manic eyes.
‘Elope,’ he hissed. ‘Do it now.’
‘So you don’t want to go to Maui?’ Mason asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Jenny pinched her shoulders together, innocently spearing a lettuce leaf I had assumed was just on my plate for show. ‘There are a lot of things I hadn’t considered. Doing a beach wedding means doing a beach dress. Maybe I don’t want to.’
‘You could get married in a Hefty bag and I’d still love you,’ Mason replied. ‘Whatever you want, babe, we’ll figure it out.’
I watched the muscles in her face tighten as he went back to his starter. I knew her well enough to know something was up.
‘Has Sadie mentioned anything about her wedding?’ Jenny asked, pushing her plate away.
And there it was.
‘She emailed me yesterday to see if I knew anyone at Bravo,’ Erin replied. I tried to kick her under the table but instead bashed my toe on a very hard table leg. ‘Some producer approached them about doing a reality show or something.’
‘How awful would that be?’ I said loudly. ‘Imagine someone following you around constantly, telling you what you can and can’t do for your own wedding. You wouldn’t want that; your wedding is going to be so classy and anything reality TV gets involved with ends up being tack central.’
‘I guess you’re right,’ Jenny sniffed, her cheeks burning red. ‘So tacky.’
‘That’s my idea of a nightmare,’ Mason added. ‘Some company pitched the idea of making a reality show at Ghost once, like a guy’s version of The Devil Wears Prada? They killed it after two days. A bunch of dudes sat at laptops typing and scratching their asses didn’t make for good TV.’
‘And that’s why all reality shows are scripted,’ Erin replied. ‘Reality isn’t really very interesting.’
‘Maybe we should have our wedding after theirs?’ Mason said, nudging a still-silent Jenny in the ribs. ‘Just so we know exactly what we don’t want.’
‘She sent me a photo of some custom Louboutins,’ Jenny replied with forced lightness in her voice. ‘I don’t know if they’re for the actual wedding or the rehearsal dinner, but they were kind of cute.’
‘For two thousand dollars, shoes need to be more than kind of cute,’ Erin said. ‘Besides, Loubies are hell to stand around in all day. Don’t sweat it, babe, you know we’ve got you. Your wedding is going to blow hers out of the water.’
Jenny’s shoulders slipped back down and a small smile reappeared on her face.
‘It’ll bankrupt you, if you’re not careful,’ Thomas muttered as Erin rose to clear our plates. ‘And if the wedding doesn’t, kids will.’
Now it was my turn to colour up.
‘And if the wedding and the kids don’t do it, the divorce definitely will,’ Erin said, kissing him on top of the head. ‘Right, babe?’
That shut him right up.
Two hours and several courses later, Mason and Thomas were comatose in front of a football game in the TV room while Jenny and Erin were poring over bridal magazines. It was like I’d fallen asleep and woken up in the 1950s.
‘Just going to pop to the loo,’ I said, picking up my glass of wine and venturing off alone when neither of them looked up from the latest issue of The Knot.
Fully aware that Mason and Thomas had both availed themselves of the ground-floor facilities in the last hour, I slipped off my ankle boots and tiptoed upstairs. The second floor was deadly quiet but I could hear music coming from the very top floor. And not just any music, Disney music.
‘Hello,’ I said, pushing open the door to the playroom. Arianna and TJ looked up from their child-sized sofa. Neither seemed especially impressed.
‘Don’t mind them, they’re in turkey comas,’ a voice called from the adjoining room. It was, of course, the nanny. ‘Does Erin need something?’
‘No, I just came to say hi.’ I waved meekly, never quite sure how to talk to her. We’d met so many times but always in passing when she was either whisking the kids away or delivering them to say goodnight. ‘What are we watching?’
‘Pocahontas,’ Mandy the nanny said with a healthy scoff. ‘It is Thanksgiving, after all.’
‘That is dark,’ I replied, crouching down beside Arianna. ‘And entirely admirable.’
The playroom was almost the same size as my entire apartment, I realized, and full of more toys than your average Toys R Us. I knew Erin tried not to spoil the kids, but it seemed Thomas had no such qualms. TJ, not quite three and Arianna, already four and a bit, were transfixed by the TV. Mouthing the words along with the characters and quietly holding hands, full of turkey and mashed potatoes and the joy of being a small, wealthy child.
‘They have no idea how good they have it, do they?’ I asked.
Mandy grinned from the little kitchen that peeked out onto Horatio Street.
‘Not a clue,’ she replied. ‘And I hope they never do. There are kids in Arianna’s class at pre-school who already have their own iPhones.’
‘No way,’ I breathed. ‘That’s insane. Who are they calling?’
‘They’re mostly playing games and watching Peppa Pig,’ she replied with a dishcloth over her shoulder. ‘But there was one boy who ordered a series pass for Game of Thrones and believe me when I say that was an exciting day in show and tell.’
It seemed impossible that these teeny-tiny pink-cheeked angels could ever be any kind of trouble. They looked just like every other kid in the history of kidkind. They didn’t know they were rich, they didn’t know they lived in New York. They didn’t even know it was weird that it was Thanksgiving and they were upstairs with a Swedish woman everyone called Mandy, even though that wasn’t her actual name, instead of downstairs with the rest of their family. But that was for them – and their therapist – to work out in years to come.
‘I know I’m going to sound like a knob however I ask this,’ I asked, resting my wine on the little mid-century modern sidetable I was fairly sure TJ hadn’t chosen from the Pottery Barn Kids website by himself, ‘but is it weird? Looking after someone else’s kids all day when they’re right downstairs?’
Mandy laughed and poured herself a glass of water. Mandy laughed a lot, I noticed.
‘No, because it’s my job,’ she replied, joining me on the floor. I watched as TJ’s eyelids began to flicker, his little blond eyelashes fluttering against his cheek. ‘People think of the nanny as someone to take the kids off the parents’ hands, but it’s not like that any more, at least not for me. My job is to give them peace of mind and hours back in their day. They’re busy people, they have big jobs. If they didn’t have a nanny, they would have to compromise part of their lives. It’s kind of like having a cleaner, just on a bigger scale.’
I thought about the state of the apartment and Alex’s any-day-now return from his trip. A cleaner would come in handy.
‘I don’t hide the kids away in the attic,’ Mandy said, glancing around at our surroundings. ‘Well, except for today. We’re laying low today, huh, babies? TJ doesn’t feel too good and Arianna is keeping him company.’
Ari nodded and stroked her brother’s sleeping head before kissing him on the forehead and I shoved my entire fist in my mouth to stop myself from crying.
‘They’re good kids,’ Mandy whispered. ‘Erin is a great mom. Thomas is a New York dad.’
I gave her an understanding nod, fighting the urge to bawl my eyes out at the sight of Erin’s angel babies, cuddling each other in front of my eighth favourite Disney movie.
‘I know they both work ridiculous hours,’ I said, imagining two other children, a brother and sister with Alex’s black hair and my blue eyes. ‘I know they need help.’
‘It’s hard being a parent here,’ she agreed. ‘Kids start school so early. How do you have them in class on the Upper East Side by seven forty-five and get yourself to work on time? How do you collect them at 2 p.m. without missing a meeting? Get them to soccer practice, or ballet class, or make sure they do their homework before it’s time for bed?’
‘School starts at seven forty-five?’ I asked. She nodded. Surely she was mistaken. Maybe they read the time differently in Sweden. ‘At least Erin doesn’t have to worry about the homework bit just yet.’
‘They have homework,’ Mandy corrected. ‘They’re not doing quantum physics just yet, but they have a project or reading to do every day. Parents paying tens of thousands of dollars a year want their children to be challenged at school.’
‘That much?’ I whispered, very glad I was already sitting down. ‘Arianna is four years old!’
‘But if you don’t get them in the right pre-school, they don’t get in the right middle school, and some prep schools will only take from certain middle schools. And I don’t need to tell you how important it is about which college you go to here in America.’
‘No,’ I said, shuffling forwards until I was resting on my knees. ‘Please don’t.’
I tried to remember exactly how much money we had in the bank at that exact moment. The fact I didn’t know worried me almost as much as the fact that my baby would not be going to nursery with TJ and Arianna. Or middle school, or high school, or, apparently, university. My baby wasn’t even born yet and it was already a failure.
‘So, to me, it is not weird,’ Mandy said, stretching to touch her toes. I was really starting to not like Mandy. ‘Sometimes it is more strange when a parent comes to collect their child from school, you know? That’s just how it is in New York.’
Puffing out my cheeks like a distressed blowfish, I looked out the windows at the cotton-wool clouds as they puffed past. We were in the roof of the house and each window had a little recessed seat with a padded cushion and a mini reading light, perfect for story time, or working on your trigonometry, or generally plotting to take over the world. Erin’s kids might be the luckiest kids on earth, but it was all so much. Every second of their day was supervised and planned. How could someone already be strategizing for their child’s university place when they were still walking around with a dummy in and watching Disney movies with their nanny?
‘Oh, Arianna, no!’
I looked back to see Mandy wrestling my wine glass out of Arianna’s tiny hands. She was already halfway through her second gulp, cheeks flushed and eyes bright, before she managed to snatch it away. On cue, Arianna opened her mouth wide and began to wail at the top of her tiny lungs.
‘Like mother like daughter,’ I said, hastily standing up as TJ followed his sister’s lead and began to bawl. ‘I’m sorry, is there anything I can do?’
‘No,’ she replied with a forced smile. Not laughing now, are you, Mands? ‘We’re all good. I wish I could tell you that was her first taste of wine.’
‘I wish you could too.’ I backed out of the room with my hand on my stomach. Maybe it would be for the best if our baby didn’t spend too much time with their West Village buddies. ‘I’ll leave you alone, sorry again.’
‘It’s fine,’ she promised. ‘So nice to see you, Happy Thanksgiving!’
‘Happy Thanksgiving,’ I repeated, bolting down the stairs with my ankle boots in hand, wishing I’d never ventured up in the first place.
Even though we’d eaten an obscene amount of food at dinner, I was hungry again almost as soon as we walked out of Erin’s house.
‘The baby must be sugar deficient,’ I explained, happily swinging my Duane Reade bag full of Ben & Jerry’s through the air as Jenny and I walked home. When it was on offer at two for the price of one, it was rude not to get four. ‘I would never eat this much if I wasn’t pregnant.’
‘Were you pregnant that first winter you lived here?’ Jenny asked. ‘When we got snowed in by that blizzard and you made a delivery guy come out and bring you Häagen-Dazs?’
I still felt bad about that and she knew it. By the time he got up to the apartment, the guy’s fingers were blue. ‘Remind me again why you aren’t on your way upstate with your fiancé?’ I asked.
‘Because even though I would love to spend the remainder of the holiday in the bosom of my soon-to-be family, even though Mason’s mom keeps suggesting I wear her 1980s Princess Diana-inspired wedding dress, I am so busy with my very important job, I have to work tomorrow,’ she replied. ‘Or it could be because I want to hit up the Black Friday sales at 6 a.m. tomorrow and he really doesn’t. They’re both super-feasible explanations.’
‘You’re such a martyr to your job,’ I said, mustering up as much sympathy as I could. ‘What a trouper.’
‘This up-and-down weather is freaking me out.’ Jenny rubbed her own pale hands together as we rounded the corner to her apartment. ‘Make your mind up, New York. Is it autumn or is it winter? My hair can’t cope with this.’
‘Jennyyyy!’
A tall, shaggy-haired man was standing in front of our building, screaming my friend’s name at the top of his voice. Before she could react, I grabbed hold of her jacket and yanked her into the stairwell of our neighbouring building.
‘Shit, should we call the police?’ I whispered, fumbling for my phone as he reached down to pick up a crumpled can from the floor and launch it at our window. Instead of smashing the glass, the light, aluminium projectile flew two feet up into the air and then came right back down and hit him in the face.
‘Oh Lord,’ Jenny sighed wearily and pushed her hair back behind her ears. ‘It’s Craig. So yeah, you should probably call them.’
‘That’s Craig?’
It had to have been months since I’d seen Alex’s bandmate and those months had not been kind. Stills had been on hiatus for a while, even before Alex and Graham took off on their South East Asia adventure, so I hadn’t spent any time with Craig in an absolute age, but whenever I did see him, he always asked after Jenny. I got the feeling he hadn’t quite got over her ending things between them – she was the closest thing he’d had to a proper girlfriend in all the time I’d know him, which was in itself a sad statement. He’d hardly been in the running for boyfriend of the year when they were dating, or to be more accurate, when they were drunkenly hooking up, screaming at each other in the street, not talking for three weeks at a time, and then drunkenly hooking up again.
‘He does this sometimes,’ she said, starting back up the steps. ‘I’m not usually here, but my neighbours have complained. He’s totally going to get his ass thrown in jail if he doesn’t cut it out.’
‘He looks as though that’s where he came from,’ I said as I followed her into the street. ‘This is not a man living his best life.’
‘Craig!’ Jenny barked as he bent back down to pick up his can and promptly fell over. He was wasted. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘You got engaged,’ he said, pointing an accusing finger in her general direction from his comfy-looking spot on the filthy pavement. I looked down and saw a rat peeking out from behind a pile of abandoned cardboard boxes. Fantastic, we had an audience. ‘You’re engaged, and you didn’t even tell me.’
‘I was waiting to send you a wedding invitation,’ she replied, equal parts annoyed and tired. I was equal parts concerned for Craig and concerned for my ice cream. ‘We haven’t been together in more than three years, Craig, what are you doing?’
‘We’re meant to end up together,’ he said, slurring his words. He was so drunk for how early it was, I was almost impressed. ‘We were the endgame, babe. We’re Ross and Rachel, we’re Carrie and Big.’
‘Is he Carrie or are you?’ I whispered over her shoulder. ‘Because I know he’s definitely not a Ross.’
‘Oh, hey, Angela,’ Craig muttered as he crawled around on the ground and tried to find his footing. The main problem with falling over drunk when you were over six feet tall was how incredibly hard it became to stand back up again. ‘How’s it going?’
‘I really think you should go home,’ Jenny said, hoisting him up to his feet and holding him in place until he looked somewhat steady. ‘Do you want me to get you a taxi?’
‘No,’ he protested, pushing her away and pulling her closer at the same time. Craig had never been on the best of terms with a razor but his usual stubble had been replaced by a slightly rubbish ginger beard and his hair needed a good wash. As did his clothes and, I realized as I got closer, his entire body.
‘I love you, Jen,’ he insisted, slurring his way through his declaration of love. ‘I know I’m drunk but that’s because I’m mad, dude. You got engaged to some other guy and you weren’t going to tell me? And I know why, I know why you didn’t want me to know.’
‘Enlighten us, please,’ Jenny said, her forehead puckering slightly.
‘Because you love me,’ Craig said with a sloppy smile. ‘You still love me and you knew if I knew that you knew that I knew you were engaged, you wouldn’t be able to do it. You wouldn’t be able to get married to this chump, this asshole, this – this—’
‘Mason,’ she finished his sentence for him. ‘His name is Mason. And that’s a super-fun theory, you asshat, but now it’s time for you to go home. If you keep screaming in front of my apartment, the neighbours are going to have you arrested.’
‘Your neighbours love me!’ He shook her off and turned in a sharp pirouette, wobbling in place for just a second before he collapsed into a giggling heap on the ground, right next to the rat. ‘Mrs Kleinmann used to give me cookies when you went to work. I think she wanted to bone me.’
‘Goodnight, Craig,’ Jenny called as I opened the front door, let her in, and quickly closed it behind us, leaving Jenny’s former lover lying in the street. ‘Get home safe.’
‘Do you think he’s all right?’ I asked, following her up the stairs.
‘I think he’s fine,’ she replied, searching for her own keys to open the apartment door. When she turned to look at me, her eyes were bright and her cheeks were pink. ‘What a dick. What a douche. As if I’m in love with him! Like, I totally understand why he’s still in love with me but wow, as if I’m in love with him.’
‘As if,’ I echoed as we walked inside and flipped on the lights. Pregnancy and parenting books were piled high on the coffee table, competing for space with bridal magazines and tear sheets from wedding dress catalogues.
‘I was the best thing that ever happened to that man and he blew it,’ Jenny went on, sailing past her little library. ‘He doesn’t get to show up now and announce we’re meant to be. Who does he think he is?’
‘He thinks he’s Craig,’ I replied. ‘Remember? He’s a massive wanker who loves himself and never thinks about anyone else. That’s why you broke up with him.’
‘Yeah, you’re right.’ She trotted right over to the window, pulled up the corner of the blinds, and looked out onto the street. I couldn’t see Craig, but I could hear him. He was still there. ‘Wanna watch a movie?’
‘Why not?’ I replied while I stashed my ice cream in the freezer. I looked back to see her still staring through the window. ‘What were you thinking?’
‘You choose,’ she said in a faraway voice, biting her thumbnail while she watched her ex flail around in a pile of garbage. ‘I’m easy.’
‘Hopefully not that easy,’ I said as I took myself off to the toilet.
Craig was a semi-unemployed drummer in his mid-thirties, who shared an apartment with four other dudes and had seemingly forgotten how to use a washing machine. Mason was a handsome, award-winning journalist who owned his own Manhattan apartment, believed cleanliness was next to sexiness and had put a chunk of ice on her finger, so big I had to keep checking it for polar bears. Even with her track record for self-sabotage, there was no way Jenny would do anything as stupid as even entertain Craig’s nonsense.
Or at least, I didn’t think she would. I came back into the living room bearing a bowl of ice cream to see her beaming at him through the window, a Puerto Rican Juliet to Craig’s grubby, hipster Romeo.
‘Oh, bugger,’ I muttered to myself. ‘We’re going to need a bigger bowl.’