panic, Angela − I know my grandpa,’ she said. Her confidence was somewhat reassuring. ‘He never says yes on the spot. He likes to think about things, weigh up his options, but we’ve given him every reason to say yes. Besides, I know he wants me on the magazine side of the business. It’s not like Cici is proving herself heir apparent to the business when he retires.’
Despite a lifelong ambition to work in publishing, Delia had avoided Spencer Media until we started working on Gloss due to her batshit mental sister already working at The Look magazine. But while Cici’s ambitions only reached as far as stealing from the fashion cupboard and ruining the lives of British freelancers (cough − me − cough), Delia actually wanted to succeed. On the surface she was a blonde, Upper-East-Side WASP princess, but underneath she was a fiercely ambitious uber-genius. She was basically Serena van der Woodsen with the brain of Rupert Murdoch, and she had enough self-confidence to make Lady Gaga look like she was a bit down on herself. God help anyone who got in her way.
‘I just can’t cope with the idea of this not working out.’ I laid my head on the cool desk and peered at my iPhone. Ooh, some peas needed harvesting in my Smurf Village. ‘If he doesn’t go for it, then the last six months have been for nothing.’
‘Not going to happen,’ Delia said, enunciating each word with a clarity and confidence I couldn’t even try to feel. ‘Look, why don’t you take the afternoon off? There’s really nothing we can do now until he gets back to us.’
‘I was going to try to talk to Mary about some new features ideas,’ I said, twisting the emerald ring around my finger. Mary Stein, once we were officially off the ground, was going to be our editor. I was sort of surprised she’d agreed to it if I was being entirely honest. Mary and I had worked together on my blog when I’d moved to New York and I’d been nothing but trouble but I had a feeling she was itching to get off the blog and back onto a real magazine. That said, until we had full funding, she was still working on TheLook.com, but she made plenty of time to bitch out my ideas as often as possible. I loved her dearly. ‘And I could do with looking at the website plans again.’
Delia smiled at me across the office. ‘Do you realize you always do that when you’re nervous about something? Twist your engagement ring?’
‘I do?’ I looked down at my diamond and emerald sparkler and felt my frown turn upside down. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’
‘It’s cute,’ she grinned. ‘When you’re stressed, that calms you down. Bodes well for the future, doesn’t it?’
‘I suppose.’ It was a nice thought. ‘I’m probably just terrified of losing it, though.’
‘Speaking of engagement rings, I have something for you.’ She pulled a thick glossy magazine out from her beautiful Hermès Birkin and tossed it across to my desk. It landed with a pleasing thud and spilled open on a page full of amazing wedding dresses.
‘What is this?’ I said, turning to the front cover. ‘How do I not have this? I have all the magazines.’ I did. There were so many stacks of glossies in my apartment, I’d started using them as coffee tables. It was all part of my wedding-planning procrastination. If I had the magazines, at least I was sort of trying.
‘It’s actually British,’ Delia explained. ‘I wore some of the designer’s pieces when she did regular couture, but now she’s doing bridal. They’re amazing. I put a Post-it on the page you should look at.’
Regular couture. As if there were such a thing. I opened the magazine randomly to a painfully beautiful spread of painfully beautiful models wearing painfully beautiful wedding dresses. I ran my fingers over the glossy paper and tried to pretend I wasn’t barefoot and wearing a borrowed jumper because I’d effed-up one shirt already today. How was I ever going to manage in a wedding dress?
‘I marked the page with her dresses. Let me know if you want to talk to her − I’m sure she’d love to help.’ Delia’s eyes were bright and shining. It warmed my heart a little bit to remember that people could be lovely sometimes, especially after the morning I’d had. ‘And if you need any help with a venue, just say. I have so many contacts. Although I’m sure you’re fine. But really, just say the word.’
‘I will,’ I said, wiping some melting mascara away from under my eyes and added ‘wedding venue’ to the never-ending list of things I needed to worry about at some point in the future. Then delved right back into the bridal porn. Oh, the gloves … The vintage lace elbow-length gloves … ‘We haven’t got anywhere with planning yet. So far, all I know is what we don’t want.’
‘Which is?’
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the pretty pictures. ‘Agadoo. Any sort of live animal. Our parents.’
‘I don’t know what an “Agadoo” is. I’m with you on the live animals, but I really don’t know how you’re going to get away with leaving your folks out of the proceedings.’
‘Well, if I never tell them, they’ll never know,’ I pouted. ‘Sometimes I think we should have got married in Vegas.’
‘You know you don’t mean that,’ Delia said with a shudder. ‘Vegas weddings are very 2008. How is Alex?’
‘Recording.’ I gave her a small smile. ‘Always recording.’
Everyone I met thought it was super-cool to be engaged to a boy in a band. They saw nothing but gallons of champagne, midnight rock-and-roll adventures and sweaty on-stage serenades. The reality was far less romantic. We were more cider than champers, and the most adventurous I got pre-dawn was deciding whether or not I could be bothered to get up for a wee in the night. And as for the sweaty serenades, well, I couldn’t lie. There was something wonderful about hearing a song written just for you; but the actual process of pulling that song out of Alex’s head and recording it so thousands of other girls could pretend it was written just for them was an incredibly painful process.
At the beginning of January, a glazed look had come into Alex’s eyes and overnight he’d turned into a nocturnal creature. From the first deep freeze of the winter until the frost broke and the sun started shining in April, he’d been working on songs all night long and sleeping through the daylight hours. All of them. Now it was May and he was still at it. Every evening he’d emerge from the bedroom, confused and dishevelled, as the sun went down, only managing to focus when he picked up a guitar, a cup of coffee or the keys to the studio. It had been cute at first, but after the third time I’d had to take the rubbish out by myself, I’d been forced to slap him round the back of the head.
‘Seriously, go home,’ Delia commanded. ‘I’m ordering you to take the afternoon off. Go home, see your fiancé, read your wedding magazines. And don’t come back until you’ve got a colour scheme.’
‘A colour scheme?’
‘Go!’ she ordered. ‘You did really great this morning. You showed my grandpa your bra, you gave a very convincing PowerPoint presentation barefoot, and you handled an international Jenny Lopez crisis all before lunch. You get the afternoon off.’
When she put it like that, it did seem fairly reasonable.
The apartment was silent when I got home. Even though I’d been given the afternoon off by my kind of partner, kind of boss, I still felt like I had won something. Was there any better feeling than being at home when you were supposed to be in the office?
‘Hello?’
