life for ever. Even as someone who loved London with a fiery passion when I moved there, I can’t get over what an unbelievable place New York City really is.
When I found out about my ex and his extracurricular tennis lessons, all I could think about was what a horrible, awful thing he had done to me. And I’m not making excuses for him, he still is a great big giant scumbag, but, and this didn’t even occur to me until today, if he hadn’t done what he did, if I hadn’t caught them at it in my car, if I hadn’t completely destroyed my best friend’s wedding (that actually feels worse every time I mention it) I wouldn’t be here today. I wouldn’t be writing to you at all. I wouldn’t be in Brooklyn, blogging in the living room of a wonderful man who is asleep on his settee with a smile on his face. A man I would never even have met if it weren’t for that turd and his two-timing.
So, and I really mean this, thank you, Mr Ex, you hateful little scumbag, I hope you’re having fun back in England.
I’m learning how to have fun again and it feels nice.
I emailed the entry to Mary. It felt good to get that out, but it hurt to admit it. At least some stuff was finally starting to make sense, I had to let go of the past before I could move on to the future.
For someone who had flat out refused to go to Brooklyn for one evening only one week ago, I returned to the apartment on Friday morning to find a note from Jenny saying she was staying at Jeff’s for the weekend. As far as I could tell, she hadn’t been in our apartment since we’d had dinner at Scottie’s on Monday, but it was weird how the place already felt like home to me, whether she was there or not. Jenny had been quick to add some photos of us from Gina’s leaving party to her clip-frame montages, and since we had terrifyingly similar taste in films and TV (read hot actors), heaps of my favourite DVDs were lying around the place. I’d even picked up some copies of books by my favourite authors at The Strand second-hand bookshop. I couldn’t think of a single thing I needed from the flat in London. Not one single thing.
Necking what was left of my iced coffee, I logged on to check my email. I had precisely two hours before my meeting with Mary and in that time I needed to shower, choose an outfit that said ‘please don’t fire me’, and come up with my very first ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech for dinner with Tyler that night. Flicking through the acres of spam in my Gmail account, I played the scenario over and over in my head. I was sure he would be fine, we could just be friends, it would be great. Absolutely fine. And I definitely wasn’t going to be terribly terribly English if he wasn’t OK with it, and accidentally sleep with him. Nope. Wasn’t going to happen. I was just reassuring myself that one single polite goodbye kiss would probably be OK, when I spotted an email from The Look. But it wasn’t from Mary or Cissy, it was from someone called Sara Stevens.
Dear Angela, I hope you don’t mind me emailing, this was the only contact information on The Look server.
Firstly, I just want to say I absolutely love your blog–so much fun! I really feel like Im in New York with you.
So here comes the exciting bit. We’re currently setting up the UK version of The Look, launching in January and I would absolutely love to talk to you about you working with us as senior staff writer. Everyone here thinks your style is perfect for our magazine, and we’ve been tracking the popularity of the blog here in the UK as well as in the US, you’re a hit!
Obviously I’m not sure how long you’re planning to be in New York, but we’d need you back in the UK by the end of August to prepare for the launch issue.
Give me a call, my numbers are at the bottom of the email and we can talk over any questions you might have, salary, benefits, etc.
It was almost one-thirty here, so six-thirty in London. Only one way to find out if she was a late worker.
‘Sara Stevens.’
Yes, yes, she was.
‘Hi, Sara? It’s Angela Clark here.’ This was officially the last time I was going to dial a phone number without having a blind clue what I was going to say if someone answered. ‘I just got your email.’
‘Angela, I’m so excited that you called me! We absolutely love you here in the UK office. Are you excited? It’s exciting isn’t it?’
So far, so different from Mary.
‘Erm, yes? It is?’ I plopped down on the back of the sofa.
‘Oh my God, it SO is!’
I wasn’t sure I was OK with Sara showing such an early propensity for screeching.
‘So, when are you back, hun? I love that you nicked off to New York for a jolly instead of sitting around being a lil miss victim. Very fun. But we need you back here! When’s your flight booked?’ she yelled.
‘I haven’t actually booked a flight back.’ Sara might only need to stop for breath every seven minutes, I was struggling. ‘I don’t know if I’m actually coming back.’
‘What? You haven’t married that Wall Street banker have you? Not that I would blame you! No, really, it’s better. We will absolutely pay for your flight back, Virgin Upper Class all the way, baby! So the senior writer position is really exciting. You’d be writing about just about anything you think would be interesting to The Look readers, so there’s lots of scope for getting around. I was reading your blog and it just hit, pow! This girl can write fashion, dating, travel, food, sex—’
‘What did Mary say?’ I interrupted. Yes I know it’s rude, but she wasn’t going to shut up if I didn’t.
‘Mary?’
‘Mary Stein? My editor here.’
‘Oh,’ Sara actually paused, ‘I haven’t exactly spoken to her. It’s not really poaching is it? You’re British, you’re coming back to London, we need a writer. Really, we’re just keeping it in the family. I’m sure she’ll be pleased as. And I don’t want to be vulgar, but Angela, the money on this position is going to shit all over whatever pennies the web team are paying you.’
‘But you will speak to her?’
‘Oh yeah, right now, I’ll call her right now. I just need you to say you’re coming to work for me, you ridiculously talented woman!’
‘OK, well, this is really interesting,’ I just wanted to get off the phone as soon as humanly possible, ‘but I actually have to dash off to a meeting, and—’
‘I need to know by the end of the day, your time, on Monday,’ Sara said bluntly. All the giggles and enthusiasm gone out of her voice. ‘Unfortunately I don’t have time for you to think too long and hard about this–I didn’t think you’d need to actually–I have a writer to recruit in a very short space of time. I’ll email the job spec and salary and you can reply. Right?’
I suddenly realized she couldn’t see me nodding down the phone. ‘Yes.’
‘Right. I’ll speak to you Monday. Bye hun, have a great weekend in the Big Apple!’
‘Bye.
