minutes. It was the Angela Clark who ran as far away as possible when things got hard. But that was all that I remembered about her. Did I really, honestly want to go back?
The Angela in the photos looked happy. Yes, she was a little bit drunk, but she was happy and healthy and she had pretty good eye make-up. And in the post-haircut photo, she looked positively ecstatic. I pulled down the photo of me and Alex and tossed it onto the floor. No point making myself more miserable by leaving it up there. Nope, even without the hot boy pictures, this girl was much happier.
I wriggled out of the bridesmaid dress and shuffled it across the room and into the bin with my gorgeously shod feet. It felt good to be out of that dress. It felt weird to be in my underwear and Louboutins. Pulling on a T-shirt so as not to scare passing pedestrians, I tottered back to the window. The glass was cool against my fingertips even if the weather was scorching. Everything should still be so exciting and new, the steamy sidewalks, the psychic who hovered outside Scottie’s Diner, the twenty-four-hour deli below us, but all I could think was that we were out of milk. Completely random thought, but completely comforting. Before I knew it, I realized my face wasn’t wet from the lack of air con in the apartment, but because I’d started crying. Crying at the thought of never going to get milk from the twenty-four-hour deli again. Well Angela, I thought to myself, wiping the tears away, well done, you’ve reached a new and pathetic low. You’re crying over milk, and it’s not even spilt. It’s not even bought yet.
I bent down to slip off my shoes, and spotted the picture of me and Alex peeking out from under the bed. Looking at it now, even I was surprised by the expression in my eyes. Looked a lot like love. Alex was beautiful, even in a guerilla shot taken precisely two minutes after he had come off stage. Couldn’t help but notice he looked pretty happy too.
I was already finding it hard to picture Mark clearly. I might have been living with him just three weeks ago, but I hadn’t looked at him for months. I could close my eyes right now and see every strand of Alex’s hair. Taste that insanely strong coffee on his breath. Hear him singing to himself in another room. Feel the callouses on his fingers against my skin. But he was gone. And maybe so was the Angela in the other photos.
So I wouldn’t be Mark’s Angela if I went back to London, and I couldn’t be Alex’s Angela if I stayed in New York. But I could be someone new. Someone I didn’t know yet. And I could go and get the milk. It was a start.
‘I am completely mad,’ I whispered out of the window. ‘Completely, bloody mad.’
EPILOGUE
It had been snowing solidly for three days, and New York was tucked in under a beautiful sheet of thick white snow. Each day, the city turned out and turned the snow into slush. And each evening, a new blanket was laid out. Criss-crossing the streets and avenues, drifting up the park, icing the skyscrapers. To a new New Yorker, it was breathtaking. But as pretty as the snow might be, it was a shock. After a mild Christmas full of strappy dresses and parties, January was terrifying. And they said it was cold up north.
I sat at my desk tapping away, in jeans, a hoodie, fingerless gloves and Ugg boots.
Inside.
With the heating on full.
It hardly made it easy to write an article about feeling frisky in spring time. Luckily, the DHL man was in cahoots with my procrastination and rang the doorbell as I apple-A, apple-Z’d the whole thing.
‘Wouldn’t fit in the box,’ he said, handing over a wide flat package in a yellow plastic bag, ‘but it says urgent on it.’
‘Thank you,’ I smiled, snatching up the package and ripping it open. There it was, the first ever UK edition of The Look. I gazed at the front cover for a moment. With shaky (and not just from the cold) hands, I turned to the staff page.
There I was.
My name, my picture and my title.
Angela Clark, editor-at-large, New York
‘Is it here?’ Jenny wailed from the bathroom. She came running out, toothbrush in her hand, wearing only a towel. ‘Is that the magazine?’
‘It is,’ I held it back at a safe distance, ‘and you’re not touching it until you’re dry.’
‘What, you’ve got like twenty copies,’ she gestured to the other three magazines in the plastic bag. ‘Shit, look at you! You’re so my hero, doll.’
‘Come on,’ I said, taking the spare copies and stashing them on a shelf next to the US edition of The Look in which my columns had already featured. ‘You’re going to be late for work.’
‘And you’re never going to get that spring fling piece to that psycho Brit bitch if you don’t do it today,’ she reminded me needlessly. ‘Did your mom see it yet?’
‘They’re still on the Christmas cruise.’ I closed up my laptop and slipped it into my (slightly battered but still amazing) Marc Jacobs bag. ‘They won’t be back for a couple of weeks.’
‘She’s gonna freak when she sees you in a magazine!’ Jenny danced around the living room in her towel. ‘Last time we talked, she was so excited for you.’
‘I can’t even begin to tell you how uncomfortable I am with the fact that you two have weekly chats,’ I smiled, taking off my hoodie, layering up several T-shirts and finishing up with my coat. ‘How is the life coaching going?’
‘She’s my best client since you. Seriously, if you would talk to your parents without my having to start the call every week, I wouldn’t have to know about Avon’s special offers and Anne-next-door’s curry night, would I?’
‘We talk.’ I sighed, throwing underwear at Jenny. Our weekly Sunday evening phone calls home had become a ritual for Jenny and I, whether I liked it or not. ‘I just don’t think I need to talk to my mother every time you speak to yours. It’s not a requirement of my visa. Now get your knickers on, Lopez. We’re leaving.’
We walked arm-in-arm, trying not to slip in the snow, all the way down to The Union, where I hugged Jenny goodbye and left her at the door. Union Square Park looked picture perfect in the snow, but it was too cold to go and sit right now. Every time I went outside at the moment I remembered Alex’s promise to take me back up the Empire State Building to see the city in the snow.
No, bad Angela, I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about him. I turned left and tiptoed down to the music shop on the corner, hoping some new CDs might inspire me to go home and get it on with my laptop. God knows I hadn’t got it on with anyone else in months. As I passed through the security gates, I beeped loudly, attracting the attention of the guard, but I smiled, holding up my mobile phone.
‘Just a text message,’ I said. He smiled back, but he also followed me into the store.
Just got my copy of The Look. I’m so proud of you! Louisa
x x x
I re-read the message a few times until I had burned it onto my retinas, then I stashed my phone back in my pocket overly dramatically for the security guard’s benefit.
I browsed contentedly for a few moments. I’d been sort of out of the music loop since the summer, all part of my Alex Reid cold turkey programme prescribed by Dr Jenny
