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CHAPTER TWO

I was half awake and completely naked when I heard my phone buzzing in my bag from the living room a couple of hours later. Alex had slipped back into unconsciousness − I chose to believe that my supreme sexual prowess had knocked him out − and so, nosy old mare that I am, I rolled out of bed and into my pants, grabbed my phone and crawled into the kitchen to avoid flashing the neighbours.

Naturally the phone stopped ringing as soon as it was in my sweaty paws, but straightaway I saw a terrifying number of messages and missed calls from Louisa, my oldest, dearest friend in the UK. I swiped my phone screen to open them, refusing to entertain all the horrible thoughts that were running through my head. Of course someone had died while I was at home blowing out work for an afternoon quickie; what else could possibly have happened? Louisa’s texts didn’t really give me a lot of information, just repeated the demand that I call her as soon as I could, and that only worried me more. Louisa and I Skyped once a week as well as texted as often as her baby schedule would allow, and I knew I hadn’t missed a phone date. Since she had given birth to Grace a couple of months ago, we hadn’t been quite as chatty as normal, so seven ‘call me now’ texts at what had to be ten-ish in the evening UK-time couldn’t be good news. I fannied about with my iPhone contacts, trying to get it to call her back, but was cut off by an incoming call.

From my mother.

Someone was definitely dead.

Or someone was about to be.

With a very unpleasant feeling in my stomach, I reluctantly answered the phone.

‘Mum?’ I grabbed a tea towel from the kitchen counter and wrapped it around my chest. It just didn’t seem right to be topless while on the phone to my mother. Thank goodness I’d put on pants. ‘Is everything OK?’

The last time she’d put in an impromptu call was when my dad was in hospital after enjoying a recreational batch of space cakes at my auntie’s house. Ever since, I’d been waiting for the call to say he was leaving her for the milkman or that he had defaulted on the mortgage to fund his crack habit. It was impossible to say which was more likely.

‘Angela Clark, do you have something to tell me?’

The quiet fury in my mother’s voice suggested that my dad wasn’t in trouble but that I certainly was. And I was almost certain I knew why. Louisa’s texts suddenly made a terrifying kind of sense as I put two and two together to come up with a big fat shiny emerald-coloured four.

‘Um, I don’t think so?’ I answered sweetly. Because playing dumb had worked so well when I’d ‘borrowed’ her car in the middle of the night when I was eighteen, only to return it with three exciting new dents. I thought they added character. She thought they added to the insurance premium.

‘Are you or are you not −’ she paused and took a very deep, very dramatic breath − ‘engaged to that musician?’

Sodding bollocky bollocks.

It wasn’t like I’d planned on keeping my engagement a secret from my parents, but circumstances had conspired against me. And by circumstances, of course I meant stone cold terror. I’d called on Christmas Day to deliver the happy news, but my mum had been so mad that I hadn’t come home for dry turkey and seething resentment, and so mad that I was choosing to stay in ‘that country’ with ‘that musician’, that I couldn’t seem to find the right way to tell her I had just accepted a proposal from ‘that musician’ to stay in ‘that country’ for the foreseeable. Then, as the weeks passed by, the more I replayed the conversation over in my mind, the less I felt like casually mentioning my betrothal.

‘Am I engaged?’

‘Yes.’

‘To Alex?’

‘Yes Angela. To Alex. Or at least one hopes so.’

She used the special voice to pronounce my fiance’s name that she usually saved to refer to Sandra next door and Eamonn Holmes. And she hated Sandra next door and Eamonn Holmes.

‘Well, at least I’m not going to end up a barren spinster.’ Yes, dangling a grandchild-shaped carrot in front of her was a low blow, but needs must when the devil shits in your teapot. ‘Surely?’

‘Oh dear God, Angela, are you pregnant?’ she shrieked directly into the receiver before bellowing at the top of her voice in the other direction, ‘David! She’s pregnant!’

‘I’m not pregnant,’ I said, resting my head on my knees. I might be sitting half-naked on a dirty kitchen floor with a slightly grubby tea towel over my boobs, but I wasn’t pregnant. As far as I knew. ‘Seriously.’

‘Oh Lord, I should have known,’ she wittered on regardless. ‘Moving in with that musician, never calling, never visiting. How far gone are you?’

‘I’m not pregnant,’ I repeated with as much conviction as I could muster while simultaneously trying to remember if I had taken my pill that morning. ‘Mum, I’m not.’

‘How far gone is she?’ I heard my dad puffing his way down to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Is it that musician’s? Is that why she’s engaged?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ Even though they couldn’t see me, I couldn’t resist an eye roll and emphatic wave of the hand. ‘I’m genuinely not pregnant. Alex did not propose because I’m up the stick. To the best of my knowledge, it’s because he actually wants to marry me.’

‘Right,’ she replied with a very subtle scoffing tone.

‘Thanks, Mum.’

‘Shall I book a flight? Do I need to go and get her?’ Dad was practically out the door already. ‘I’ll have to go to the post office and get some dollars.’

‘The post office,’ Mum seethed. Another of her arch enemies. ‘Go back upstairs. She says she’s not pregnant.’

‘She’d better bloody not be,’ he said, just loud enough for me to hear. ‘She’s not too old to go over my knee. That musician of hers as well.’

I fought the urge to remind him I’d only gone ‘over his knee’ once, when I was five and had purposely gone into his room, walked into the garden and thrown his best leather driving gloves into the pond so we wouldn’t have to go to my aunt Sheila’s. I was a petulant little madam. But he had apologized when I was twenty-five and told me I was right to have done it because my aunt Sheila was a − quote-unquote − right pain in the arse.

‘I can’t imagine why else you would think the best way for a mother to find out her daughter is engaged − to a musician, no less − that she has never met and who lives ten thousand miles away is to hear it from the village gossip on the Waitrose cheese aisle.’

I had to admit she had a point there.

The thing was, ever since my seasonal no-show, the subtle digs at Alex and his choice of profession had become out-and-out abuse. By the end of January she had written him off as Hitler and Mick Jagger’s love child. To most people, a musician was someone who played an instrument. To my mother, they had to be a lying, cheating drug addict whose only ambition in life was to knock up her poor, stupid daughter and then leave her destitute in a motel on the side of a highway with an arm full of track marks. It was a bit of a stretch. Alex didn’t even like to take Advil for a headache.

‘You told Louisa before your own family?’

Oh, Louisa, I thought to myself. Baby or no baby, you are dead.

‘Look, I wasn’t not telling you,’ I said, deciding to take a different tack. And to get off the kitchen floor because my bum was completely numb. ‘I just didn’t want to tell you over the phone. It didn’t seem right.’

Check me out − the dutiful daughter. For a spur-of-the-moment excuse, I thought it was pretty good. I tiptoed over to the sofa and replaced the tea towel with a blanket. Very chic.

‘Well, that’s probably because it isn’t right,’ she said, still sounding grumpy, but I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be disinherited. This time. ‘We haven’t even met this Alex character. It’s not right.’

‘He’s not a character, he’s a person.’ I took a deep breath, imagining the cold day in hell when Alex would sit down for afternoon tea with my mum and dad. ‘And you will meet him and you’ll love him.’

‘When?’

Oh cock.

‘Soon?’ I managed to make the word so high-pitched I swear the dogs next door started whining.

‘Bring him home for my birthday.’

And it wasn’t a question.

‘We’re having a bit of a do − nothing fancy, just something in the garden for the family,’ she went on. ‘And I want you there. And if he thinks he’s going to be part of this family, he’d better be there too.’

I put my mum on speakerphone and opened my calendar. Her birthday was in three weeks. Three very short, very unavoidable weeks. It wasn’t that I had forgotten, it’s just that until Facebook reminds me someone has been born, it just doesn’t register.

‘It’s a bit soon, Mum,’ I said slowly. ‘And the flights will be expensive …’

‘Your dad and I will pay.’

There was blood in the water, and Annette Clark never gave up until she got her kill.

‘For both of you. As an engagement present.’

‘Right.’ I felt very, very sick. Home. London. England. Mark. Everything I’d left behind.

‘And you’ll stay here.’ She was really enjoying herself now. ‘With your dad and me. Oh, Angela, you’ve made my birthday. David, get on Expedia, she’s coming home!’

And at that moment, I knew two things only. The first was that I was going to kill Louisa. The second was that I was going to have to go to London.

‘I didn’t tell her,’ Louisa whined into the phone as I hopped into a cab the next morning. The subway was down and I was already late for the office, having spent most of the previous evening drinking homemade margaritas while Alex stroked my hair and tried to talk me off the ledge. ‘It was Tim. It was a mistake.’

‘How did Tim manage to tell my mother I’m engaged?’ I fumbled in my satchel for a pair of sunglasses. The sun was too bright and my hangover was too sharp. ‘Is this because I broke his hand?’

Which I did. Almost accidentally. On their wedding day. I wasn’t sure if he’d forgiven me in the two years since I’d fled.

‘No.’ Louisa sounded tired. I had heard that was one of the side effects of having a baby, and according to my mother I’d know all about that. ‘He was in the supermarket and Mark’s mum was in there and going on about how Mark was going to New York for some conference—’

‘Mark?’ I suddenly felt very sweaty. And sick. And violent. ‘Mark Mark?’

‘Yes, Angela, Mark. You do recall? You were engaged to him for a million years?’

‘So Mark then?’ I said. ‘I just wanted to clarify that we were talking about the same scumbag.’

‘Yes, Mark.’ The word had lost all meaning. ‘So he was supposed to be going to New York for this conference because he’s just so important, and obviously Tim mentioned you were in New York, and obviously she couldn’t help having a dig, and so he casually dropped in that you were engaged. He didn’t mean to, honestly, and he had no idea she’d tell your mum. I mean, he didn’t know your mum was in there as well, did he?’

‘My mum is always in the supermarket,’ I replied, watching Williamsburg rush by, giving way to the Polish shop signs of Greenpoint and assorted acid-washed denim ensembles. ‘She lives and dies for Waitrose. I’m amazed they haven’t given her a job yet.’

‘Well, I just wanted you to know it wasn’t on purpose. Really, he was trying to do you a favour,’ Louisa bellowed over the Top Gear theme tune. ‘He’s totally Team Angela.’

‘But getting back to the important things, Mark is coming to New York?’ I didn’t need to see my reflection to know I had no colour left in my face. ‘When? Why?’

‘I don’t know,’ Louisa sighed. ‘He didn’t get the details. He is only a man, babe. And you know they don’t talk at all any more. It’s not like you’re going to bump into him, though, is it?’

‘No.’ I breathed out hard. My ex in my city. How dare he? Wasn’t there a law against cheating ex-boyfriends coming within five thousand miles of you? ‘It’s just sod’s law, isn’t it? I’ll be walking into work with my skirt tucked into my knickers and he’ll just appear.’

‘No he won’t, don’t be silly.’ Louisa had a fantastic telling-off voice already. She was going to be a great mother. ‘And even if he did, you’d just walk straight past him with your head held high.’

‘Or scream like a banshee and kick him in the bollocks?’ I suggested.

‘Sounds perfectly reasonable to me,’ she replied. ‘God knows, I’ve thought about it.’

‘It’s a good job he cheated on me before I discovered my violent side,’ I said, not even slightly meaning it. ‘Louisa, why on earth are you watching Top Gear on a Tuesday afternoon?’

Louisa’s voice strained as she hoisted up something heavy. I assumed it was the baby. ‘I’m sorry, it’s the only thing that stops her crying. I sometimes wonder what I’m raising.’

‘A tiny female Jeremy Clarkson?’ I shuddered. The idea of Louisa having a baby terrified me, let alone the idea of a baby that could only be placated by watching grown men with bad hair drive a Ford Mondeo into a caravan. ‘You should see someone about that.’

‘Top Gear and The Only Way Is Essex,’ she sighed. ‘Three months old and she’s already a fake-tanned boy racer with a vajazzle.’

‘I don’t understand at least half of what you just said,’ I remonstrated. The shop fronts slid into warehouses and the warehouses into the expressway before I finally saw the bridge and my beloved Manhattan in front of me. My blood pressure dropped just enough to make me sure I wasn’t going to die in the car. Good news − they charged fifty dollars if you puked; I had no idea how much a stroke would set me back. ‘And I don’t think I want to.’

Louisa laughed. Which made the baby cry. Which made Louisa sob.

‘Well, I know it’s selfish, but I can’t wait to see you,’ she said. ‘It’s time you met this little girl of mine. It’s been too long, Clark.’

‘I know, I want to see her face.’ I traced the Empire State Building against the window as we hurtled over the bridge. ‘I just feel so weird about coming back.’

‘That’s natural,’ she shouted. ‘It’s been a while, but, you know, you’ve got your visa now, you’ve got Alex − it’s not like they’re going to hold you at customs and never let you go.’

‘Yes, I have Alex now, but he hasn’t met my mum yet,’ I replied grimly. ‘And there’s every chance my dad is going to tie me up with a hosepipe and lock me in the shed.’

‘Yeah, he might do that,’ she admitted. ‘Or I might. I miss you so much.’

‘I miss you too,’ I said, feeling incredibly guilty for not meaning it nearly enough.

I did miss Louisa, I really did, but I missed the old Louisa. I missed our Friday-night wine dates and calling her during Downton Abbey to get a running commentary on the episodes that hadn’t aired in America yet. No one took apart a period drama like Louisa. But things had changed. She had an actual live baby, and the way life raced around me now, it was hard to find five minutes to really indulge in a good sulk about days gone by. Between work, not planning the wedding, trying to stop Jenny from drinking New York dry and attempting to dress like a grown-up every day, I struggled to find time to miss anything other than sleep.

And I definitely wasn’t in a baby place. I couldn’t even see the baby place from where I was. Now that Louisa had Grace, things felt a bit strained. Sometimes she was all we talked about. Of course I knew it was the most important thing that had ever happened to her, but I felt stupid complaining about being a bit hungover and the cost of handbags when Louisa now had to keep a tiny human being alive. I couldn’t even look after a handbag, I thought, stroking my beloved and nigh on destroyed Marc Jacobs satchel with every ounce of tenderness I would show my firstborn child. Which, as far as I was concerned, it was.

‘It’ll be fine, you know,’ Louisa promised. ‘Obviously your mum’s going to be an arse for the first couple of days, but your dad will be so happy to see you. And I want you to meet Grace. And I want to meet Alex. Honestly, Ange, it’ll be great.’

‘I suppose,’ I said, trying to adopt her positive attitude. ‘It’s just been so long, you know? I feel like it’ll be weird. Things are so different.’

‘No they aren’t,’ she argued. ‘Bruce is still doing Strictly, everyone’s still obsessed with Percy Pigs and the world still stops for X Factor. Things are, in fact, exactly the same.’

I smiled. She was trying. And it didn’t really make a lot of difference. I was going whether I liked it or not.

‘It’s not just that, though − there’s work as well,’ I said. Hopefully there was work. We still hadn’t heard back from Bob. ‘I’m working twelve hours a day. I don’t know how I’m just supposed to take a week off.’

‘People manage,’ Lou replied. ‘And you bloody should take some time off. It’s not healthy to work as hard as you have been.’

I didn’t like to say it might not be healthy but it was entirely necessary. When she had told me she was thinking about packing in work to be a full-time mum, I couldn’t speak to her for a week. Not because I didn’t agree with it as an option; it was just so far removed from the Louisa I knew. My career was important to me, but she was keen to tell me I couldn’t possibly understand anything ‘until I had a baby’. Grr.

‘Do you promise to make me lots and lots of tea?’ I asked solemnly.

‘I do,’ she replied with equal gravity.

‘And to be nice to Alex?’

‘You’ll be lucky if I don’t try to run off with him.’

‘And that you’ll be my alibi in case I accidentally murder my mother?’

‘I’ll do it for you,’ she swore. ‘Just get your arse home, Clark. There’s a chav-obsessed shit machine here that’s desperate for your influence.’

‘I’m pretty sure you should stick with Grace,’ I suggested. ‘It’s much more flattering.’

‘Just get on a plane and call me as soon as you land,’ Louisa replied. ‘I’ll pick you up from the airport.’

‘Yes, you bloody will,’ I said. ‘Yes, you bloody well will.’