the rest of the crew it was OK, I wasn’t going to drink them dry.
I had planned on sleeping through the flight, but I already knew I was too restless. Every time I closed my eyes, something started niggling. I’d spent the first couple of hours going over and over and over my presentation for Gloss. I’d spent the next hour eating peanuts. And then I’d gone over the presentation again. And I couldn’t quite get my head round how much had changed since I’d flown the other way, out of Heathrow. I was proud of myself, I was. Two years ago, I’d been scared and alone and entirely directionless. Now I was so close to realizing so many dreams. Which didn’t stop me being scared. The more you have, the more you have to lose.
And then there was the wedding. The non-existent wedding. Thanks to Delia, Erin and Sadie, I was really starting to worry about my lack of preparation. Maybe watching Breaking Dawn was a bad idea. Edward and Bella were making me feel bad. I switched off the screen and pulled out my notepad, along with the wedding magazine Delia had given me. Maybe if I made a list. Maybe if I had an idea of what needed doing, I’d be able to get my head round how to make it work for me. Dress. Guest list. Venue. Catering. Dog and pony. Bleurgh.
Where was that stewardess? Why had I said no to more champagne?
Number one, I needed a dress. Flipping to the pages Delia had marked for me to look at, my eyes popped. I had imprinted. Suddenly, life had new meaning for me. On the page in front of me was a light, frothy concoction of sheer beauty. Layers and layers of ivory skirts floated around the model, making it look like she was walking through a cloud, and a high slit up the front revealed a hint of leg, giving the dress an edgy look without seeming slutty. Up top, a delicate bodice gave her boobs that she quite clearly did not have. Models did not have boobs. I did not have boobs. It was simple. It didn’t look like I would have to starve myself for six months to get into it. The slit led me to believe I might not trip.
This was the dress. I closed my eyes and imagined myself wearing it, getting married in it, and it was easy. I could feel sunshine on my skin, I could see Alex smiling at me, and in that moment, all I wanted to do was jump off the plane, grab Alex and march him down the aisle. Now I really wasn’t going to be able to sleep.
Full of wedding beans, I picked up my pen, turned the glittery vampire wedding back on and started on the guest list. How come there wasn’t a magical page in a magazine that would make this easy for me? Obviously Jenny, Erin and, I supposed, Sadie. Probably my friend Vanessa. Definitely Delia. Mary, if she would come. And Louisa and Tim would have to come over. And I assumed my dad would insist on bringing my mum. Alex’s side was even easier to whittle down than mine. I drew a line down the middle of my notepad and added all my people to one side, then added Alex’s band members Graham and Craig, his parents, his brother, his manager, and his slightly creepy old roommate who came over once every couple of months, brought himself two cans of beer and peed sitting down. I knew this because he left the door open when he did so.
So that was the dress and the guest list sorted. Who knew I would turn out to be a wedding planner extraordinaire?
I tapped the pen against the tray table, incredibly pleased with my progress. My seat neighbour, however, was not so pleased with the tapping. He raised his eye mask and gave me the frowning of a lifetime until I pursed my lips and carefully laid the pen down on the table. How dare he not care that I had just solved two-thirds of the world’s most pressing problem? Global economic crisis be damned, I had a wedding to plan. So if I could pick a dress and sort out my guest list without slashing my wrists, where was all the drama coming from with other people’s weddings? Perhaps I was just supernaturally talented. I considered the likelihood of this while quietly judging Bella’s wedding dress. My main thought was that it was very tight. Maybe incredible event-organizing skills would be my vampire talent. It must take a lot of organization to be a vampire these days. After a few minutes, I felt my eyelids getting heavy and began to doze pleasantly, losing myself in a dream where Alex’s skin sparkled and my ex, Mark, crashed our wedding, howling at the moon. Although he was considerably less Taylor Lautner and considerably more Home Counties Werewolf in New York.
Hmm. I felt my earbuds slip out of my ears as I nodded off. No doubt about it, I was Team Alex all the way.
CHAPTER SIX
When I woke up, I’d missed the breakfast service and my several tiny glasses of champagne had added up to one big headache. Between my dehydrated skin and crumpled clothes, I was far from my most fabulous self and there was very little I could do about it between getting off an aeroplane and getting into a car. Louisa’s car, I reminded myself, a little thrill of excitement splitting through my headache for a moment.
I pushed up the shade and looked out of the window. There it was, that green and pleasant land. OK, so it looked a bit grey and murky from the air, but that was probably just the drizzle I’d been warned about. Drizzle. A word I hadn’t used in two years. It had never occurred to me before, but we didn’t really have drizzle in New York; we had light rain, heavy rain or fuck-me-is-the-world-ending rain. But never drizzle. It was perfect really. Now I would have frizzy hair to match my grey, bloated face and scruffy clothes, and my mum could be entirely certain that I had spent two years peddling crack under a bridge and definitely not eating vegetables.
And then it appeared. The opening titles of EastEnders rolled out underneath me, the ribbon of river curling up and stretching out across the landscape, punctuated by large patches of green. My stomach slipped when I spotted the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye. I’d grown up a little less than an hour outside London, less if I managed to catch the fast train (I never did), but it always felt like a million miles away. Louisa and I used to sneak off on Saturdays and get the train to Waterloo, just to wander up and down the South Bank before buying chocolate and riding straight back home. (Nights out in the big smoke were verboten.) I’d always got a kick when the train rolled into Waterloo, even as an adult. The city always made me feel like a little girl. It was so much older and more serious than I could ever be. New York was a little more encouraging. Fewer men in suits stroking their beards and more women running around in high heels. Clearly it was the media’s fault. London was defined by books and poems and centuries of words written by men. NYC had been culturally claimed by skinny-jean bands, cocktails and four ladies into Manolo Blahniks, brunch and Mr Big.
Passport control was painless and, thanks to a bargain I made with the devil for the soul of my firstborn child, my suitcases all came off the carousel intact and unexploded. Forty minutes after we touched down, I was wheeling my bags through the exit and out into the wild. The first thing I saw was a Marks & Spencer Simply Food. The second thing I saw was my mother. Without exerting any control over my own feet, I stopped stock-still and wondered whether or not I had time to duck into M&S and grab a bag of Percy Pigs before she spotted me. It was only after I’d considered this gummy treat that I realized my mother was in the airport and Louisa was not.
‘Angela!’
Whatever time I’d had to recover myself was gone. I had been seen. And now my mother was waving like a loon, shouting my name and hitting my father on the arm. ‘Angela Clark! We’re over here! Angela!’
Wow. There they were. Not a hair on my mum’s head had moved since Louisa’s wedding or, to be more specific, since 1997. As much as I had prayed to find out I was adopted as a teenager, there was no denying she was my mum. We had the same blue eyes, the same dark-blonde hair – or at least we did when I didn’t highlight the shit out of it – and the same tendency to go a bit pear-shaped when we got lazy. Which we both did. All the time. At her side, my dad was wearing the same old Next cardigan that he kept in the car in case it got a bit chilly. On one hand, it was sort of reassuring. On the other, bizarre.
‘Are you deaf?’ My mum marched towards me, handbag on her shoulder,
