when I wasn’t working a nine-to-five in an office, I sure as hell wasn’t doing the washing. But fitting real life around work did mean some of the shine had gone off our relationship. There were no last-minute jaunts to watch him play international festivals or days spent lazing around in McCarren Park just because we could. The week was going to be all about us and I couldn’t bloody wait.
Seven straight days of festive fun, culminating in twenty-four hours of just me, Alex, loads of food and an entire day sat in front of the TV, playing with my presents. And just in case he didn’t quite come through on the gifting front, I’d picked up a couple of things for myself on one of my Christmas shopping binges and informed my mother she owed me the money. I was a very considerate daughter.
The lights on the tree twinkled on and off in an unfathomable pattern, echoed by the lights of the city outside the window. I closed the drapes on Manhattan and stared at the tree. I couldn’t remember how I’d set them not to blink last year but then I couldn’t remember how I’d made my wireless printer work two days earlier so that wasn’t such a shock. I just wanted them to be the same as they had been. I just wanted one thing to be predictable for one moment. And that moment needed to start with Jenny. Alex was probably right, she would have her heart set on something else soon enough. And if she didn’t, I’d just have to remind her how horribly Erin had suffered through both of her pregnancies – the morning sickness, the uncontrollable lactating, not being able to get into a single pair of her beautiful, beautiful designer shoes for over a year.
Emptying my beer, I picked up a stack of mail from the coffee table and leafed through the assorted flyers and bills. One was a reminder that I was due for a check-up at my own gynaecologist. It had been a year already? If there was one thing you could say about the US healthcare system it was that they were thorough. As long as you had insurance anyway. I pressed my hand against my belly and, just for a second, I stopped wishing it was flatter and pushed it out against my palm. I had spent so much time and energy over the years trying to get thinner, the idea of suddenly ballooning up, full of baby, was terrifying.
Halfway down the mail pile was a thick cream-coloured envelope with mine and Alex’s name written in elegant script. Ooh, the first Christmas card of the season! I smiled beatifically at my Christmas tree. It felt good not to be the only seasonal crazy in the city.
But it wasn’t a Christmas card. It was an invitation.
To the wedding of Mary Stein and Bob Spencer.
‘You’re getting married?’
‘Good morning, Angela,’ Mary replied without looking up from her computer when I raced into her office and slammed the door the following morning. The door-slamming was accidental but it did add to the dramatic effect.
‘You’re getting married to Bob?’
Mary took a deep breath, pushed her glasses up her nose and looked up at me with all the patience she could muster. Which with Mary was never that much.
‘Delia told you?’ she asked, carefully rolling up the sleeves of her crisp white shirt. Everything about Mary was crisp – her steel-grey bob, her Manhattan-born-and-bred accent, even her eyeliner. ‘I told her I wanted to tell you myself.’
‘Delia didn’t tell me,’ I said, taking an unoffered seat. I felt like such a shambles in front of Mary. She was almost the same age as my mother but always a thousand times more put together than me. I’d left the house in the same old Madewell pencil skirt I’d worn the day before and a neon pink and white striped T-shirt. Somewhere in the bottom of my trusty old Marc Jacobs handbag there was a bright blue Paul & Joe jumper that absolutely failed to bring the entire outfit together. My spring–summer hand-me-downs from Jenny were on the brighter side this season. ‘I got an invitation. To the wedding. Your wedding, to Bob. Bobbity Bob Bob Spencer Bob.’
‘I don’t think we’ll be using his full name in the vows.’ Mary pulled a face and immediately began clicking through screens on her Mac. ‘They went out already? That’s a week early. Honestly, you just can’t hire the right people these days.’
‘Oh no, what a nightmare.’ I rapped on the desk for her attention and repeated myself. ‘Mary, you’re getting married to Bob Spencer?’
‘Well, if I weren’t, the invitations would be kind of an elaborate joke, wouldn’t they?’ Mary took off her glasses and I could swear I almost saw her smile. ‘Yes, Angela, I’m getting married to Bob.’
She paused and waited for me to speak but I didn’t have anything. No words. Not even swear words. Which was odd for me. After a quiet sigh, she picked up her phone and punched in an extension number.
‘Delia, could you come down? Angela appears to have become mute.’ I watched, still silent, and this time there was definitely a smile on her face. ‘Yeah, I checked, she’s still breathing.’
‘I knew something was going on.’ My voice found itself before I managed to exercise any control over its volume. ‘I mean, not in the sense that I had any sort of actual idea but I knew you were up to something. So that’s why you’ve been having all these secret meetings with Delia.’
‘Kind of,’ Mary replied.
‘Kind of?’ Brilliant. I loved it when Mary was vague. That was my favourite. ‘What do you mean, kind of?’
‘My getting married isn’t the only change on the horizon, Angela,’ she replied. ‘Delia and I wanted to have everything ironed out before we presented you with the new plan. So there wouldn’t be any reason for you to panic.’
‘New plan?’ I panicked. ‘What’s going on? Is Gloss closing? Have I been fired?’
It had to be all the pens I’d ‘borrowed’. I couldn’t help it, I was a stationery klepto. I feverishly tried to work out how many had found their way into the bottom of my handbag so I could replace them but there was no use, I’d literally had hundreds away.
‘You haven’t been fired,’ Mary said with a sigh. ‘You always jump to the worst possible conclusion. Why on earth would you be getting fired?’
Don’t say the pens, don’t say the pens, don’t say the pens …
‘I’ve nicked loads of pens.’
‘I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.’ She pressed her lips into a thin line and shook her head, just as the office door opened and Delia appeared. ‘Thank Christ, you’re just in time.’
‘Have I missed anything?’ Delia asked before leaning down to kiss me quickly on the cheek. She smelled like angels would smell if they happened to have spent a spare half hour in Bergdorf with a Black Amex.
‘Angela just confessed that she is heading up an international stationery smuggling cartel,’ Mary replied. ‘But apart from that, no.’
‘So nothing then,’ Delia said, smoothing down her perfect pencil skirt and slipping into the big comfy chair. ‘Right. Where do we start?’
‘Mary’s getting married to Bob.’ I was shouting again. ‘Your granddad, Bob.’
‘Yeah.’ Delia
