going to hand over to Peter, our vice president of HR and he’ll detail the breakout groups.’ She looked over at her grandfather, who gave her a nod and, against all laws of gods and men, flashed her the finger guns. Bob Spencer, doing the finger guns? Was it possible I’d fallen over and banged my head on the way into work? ‘Thank you, everyone, I’m very excited about the future of our company and that future begins right now.’
Considerably less enthused applause clattered around the room, spurred on by the iPad-clutching assistants who quickly opened the exits for Delia and Bob and immediately locked us back in the second they were gone. As soon as the doors closed, the sound of applause was drowned out by panicked whispers and the clacking of acrylic fingernails against smartphone screens.
‘Holy shit,’ Mason exhaled. ‘Restructuring and streamlining? This is not good.’
‘But Ghost is doing fine,’ I said, chomping down on the end of my pen until there was nothing left but a chewed mess. ‘And Gloss too. We’ll be OK.’
‘Yeah, but what about Belle?’ He nodded across the room to where the editor of Spencer Media’s flagship monthly fashion magazine was sat staring at the wall, ashen-faced. ‘Their circulation has been dropping for months. What if streamlining actually means folding?’
‘Delia loves Belle,’ I said, certain it was safe. ‘There’s no way she’d fold it. She started at Belle.’
‘Not to make myself unpopular, but this is Delia Spencer, the new company president, not Delia Spencer, your friend,’ he replied with an uncomfortable smile under his gingery beard. He had an excellent beard. ‘So many magazines have gone in the last few years. And Ghost isn’t doing that well.’
‘So, you were saying something about proposing?’ There was nothing like forcing a change in subject when you didn’t want to deal with reality. ‘Mason, this is so exciting.’
All the tension washed off his face and his eyes glazed over as he dug his phone out of his pocket.
‘I’ve been thinking about it for a while but this is Jenny we’re talking about, I want to get it exactly right,’ he explained as I clapped along in delight. ‘It’s almost the anniversary of when we met so I was going to ask Erin if we could go back up to her house upstate, the place we met? I want to do it there. You know Jen better than anyone else. What do you think about this ring?’
Flicking around at the screen for a second, he pulled up a picture of a beautiful ring. Yellow-gold band with a cushion-cut diamond nestled between two baguette-cut sapphires. Very sophisticated, very elegant. Completely wrong.
‘It’s stunning,’ I said, twisting my own emerald engagement ring around on my finger. ‘But no.’
‘No?’ Mason looked down at the phone as the smile fell off his face. ‘What do you mean no?’
Switching on my own phone, I opened my emails and tapped in Jenny’s name.
‘It’s in here somewhere,’ I muttered, poking my tongue out the corner of my mouth as I searched. ‘Wait, yep, this is it.’
Clicking on a link, I held up the phone triumphantly.
‘She sends me this about every three months,’ I said as Mason blinked at the Tiffany Embrace engagement ring and took the phone out of my hands. ‘And she’s been sending it every three months for the last five years. This is the ring. This is Jenny’s ring.’
Underneath his beard, I could see he’d gone awfully green. It was a diamond-studded platinum band with a huge brilliant cut diamond, surrounded by a halo of yet more diamonds. There were so many diamonds involved, it looked fake but according to the price tag, it most definitely was not. I figured I’d wait a while to email him the cost. From the look on Mason’s face, he wasn’t ready to learn how much Jenny’s eternal love went for. Or the matching wedding ring she wanted to go with it.
‘For real?’ he asked.
‘For really real,’ I promised.
‘If that’s the one she wants, that’s the one she’ll get,’ he said, recovering himself slightly. ‘You don’t happen to know her ring size?’
‘Five and a half.’ I slowly removed my phone from his vicelike grip. ‘That is also included on her email. I’ll forward you the details.’
He paused and took a deep breath. ‘She is going to say yes, right?’
I bit my lip to stop my smile. He looked so nervous, I could hardly stand it.
‘Of course she’s going to say yes!’ I leaned across my chair to wrap him up in a hug. ‘But just to make sure, let’s definitely get that ring.’
‘So then, they got a ten for their samba but I really didn’t think it was as good as the American smooth.’ I screwed up my nose as I tossed two Sour Patch kids into my gob. ‘Sometimes I don’t even know how they work out the scoring, I really don’t.’
‘Yeah, that’s a drag.’
‘It’s just not fair, you know? When everyone else is working so hard, he’s so obviously the judges’ favourite. I get annoyed.’
‘I know you do, I know you do.’ On a grainy Skype feed, Alex looked over his shoulder at the bustling marketplace behind him. ‘So now I’m all caught up on Dancing with the Stars, you want to tell me what’s really going on over there?’
‘How’s Myanmar?’ I asked, cheerfully popping another handful of sweets. ‘That’s where you are, isn’t it? Looks beautiful. When was the last time you had a shave?’
‘It’s amazing, and probably two weeks ago, and now seriously, tell me what’s going on,’ he ordered.
‘Just some changes at work.’ I tried to sound as casual as possible but I’d never been good at putting on a brave face. ‘They’re shifting some stuff around and I’m getting a new boss. Instead of a print division and a digital division, they’re putting us all into brand streams. Which I’m sure I’ll understand by the time I meet with Jo tomorrow.’
‘Jo?’ Alex scratched at his new scruff.
‘Jo Herman. She’s the new director of women’s brands,’ I recited through a mouthful of chewy sugary goodness. ‘Gloss is in good shape, I’m not worried.’
‘I see,’ he said calmly. ‘Is that your first bag of Sour Patch Kids today?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘No, it is not.’
‘I can come home.’ Alex held his hand up to the screen of his phone until I could trace the concentric circles of his fingerprint on my laptop. ‘There’s only a couple of weeks left and I think it’s very clear I could use a shower and a shave.’
A good wife would have immediately told him not to be so silly. A good wife would have thought about how excited he was the morning he left, how happy he was every time I spoke to him and the undeniable joy in each and every one of his postcards. But I did want him home. I hated that he’d been away for so long, I hated waking up in a big empty bed every day then tripping over his slippers every single morning because he wasn’t there to wear them. I hated cooking alone,
