you want me to come home?’ I asked, hoping she wasn’t feeling abandoned. I was still new at this roommate thing.
‘No, no,’ her voice lowered slightly. ‘Jeff is here, I just thought, he might mention to Alex that you weren’t home or something. I didn’t know if he knew that you and Tyler were …’
‘Shit!’ I absolutely hadn’t thought about that at all. ‘I don’t think he does, not really. And I don’t want him to. Please don’t say anything.’
‘Of course I won’t,’ she said more easily. ‘I’ll just tell him you’re at Erin’s or something, that you wanted us to have alone time. Oh, but he did invite us over for dinner tomorrow, to apologize for Friday night.’
‘To apologize for you throwing up all over Alex’s apartment?’ I asked, reflecting on the fact that Jeff knowing Alex could really make things difficult.
‘Yes, Mom,’ Jenny replied. ‘I’ve got to go, the pizza’s here. Alex already told Jeff he could make it, so it’s tomorrow at seven, OK? Try and get your pants on for then. Love you.’
I turned off my phone and resumed my position in the living room.
‘Everything OK?’ Tyler asked, pulling me in close to him.
‘Yep,’ I said, wriggling into place back under his arm. ‘Just tired.’
‘You want to go to bed?’ He stroked my hair absently.
‘I’m OK,’ I replied, resting my eyes just long enough to fall fast asleep on the sofa, the sounds of the baseball match echoing in my ears.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Adventures of Angela: CPDA – Central Park Display of Affection
As a newcomer to New York, I have no idea what level of indecency is considered, well, decent in your fair city’s fairest park. I’m just back from another great date with Wall Street, a very romantic picnic with wine, Godiva truffles and Cheetos (no one said he was perfect) and I’m wondering whether or not to expect a policeman (mmm, hot cop!) to turn up at my door. Obviously there was nothing removed during the outdoor sesh, but what’s worse – the hot and heavy petting or the unbearable levels of smugness we forced those around us to endure. Vom-worthy, really. Pre-New York dating extravaganza, I would have happily put Wall Street’s corkscrew through his temple if I’d seen a couple so terribly pleased with themselves as we were (Cheetos aside) but I really don’t want to kill him just yet. And I don’t want to stop getting touched up in the park either.
Hmm. This is going to be a tricky one.
After arguing with myself over the content of my post for twenty minutes, I just couldn’t do it. And in a radical bid to distract myself, I did something drastic.
‘Hello?’
‘Mum? It’s Angela.’
‘Darling, how are you?’ she asked, sounding fairly relieved, as though she thought it might have been the Avon lady from number fifty-four. ‘Are you coming home?’
‘No, not yet,’ I said, pacing the apartment. ‘I’m fine though, I’m staying with my friend still and I’m working for this magazine. Things are really good.’
‘But you’re coming home soon, dear?’ she asked again. I could just see her frowning in the mirror above the phone, probably fiddling with her hair, looking out of the window into her impeccably kept garden, watching next door’s cat shit all over her flowerbed.
‘I don’t know, Mum,’ I said, eventually coming to a standstill by the window. ‘I’m having a really good time. The writing thing is really exciting, I’m doing an online diary for the magazine’s website.’
‘That’s lovely, I’m very proud.’ The same dismissive tone that she had used for my GCSE, A level and degree results. Grrr. ‘But darling, you know, I would really like you to let me know when you’re coming back. You must have a date for your flight? And the hotel must be costing you a fortune.’
‘Mum, I’ve just told you, I’m staying with a friend. I don’t know when I’m – do you know what? It doesn’t matter. Why was Mark at your house when I called last week?’
‘I just don’t know why you can’t tell me when your flight is,’ she chuntered on. I was starting to regret the phone call all together.
‘I don’t have a flight booked so I don’t know when it will be,’ I repeated, thinking about how different the views were out of our windows. I could see yellow taxi cabs, the Chrysler Building and thousands of New Yorkers hustling and bustling around the city. From my mum’s window, she would be lucky to be able to see her Clio in the drive, the post office, and Mr Tucker from next door, possibly thrilling the neighbourhood by gardening shirtless. He was fifty-two. ‘Why was Mark answering your phone?’
‘He was dropping off some of your things, Angela.’ I could tell she was starting to get just as pissed off with me as I was with her. ‘I know he’s done a terrible thing to you, but I have known him for a lot of years. I can’t just pretend he doesn’t exist.’
‘Yes you can.’ Was she serious? ‘You can very easily pretend he doesn’t exist. He doesn’t as far as our family is concerned.’
‘Just because you have chosen to run away instead of confronting your problems, doesn’t mean I can,’ Mum tutted down the line. ‘I see Mark’s mother every week at Tescos.’
‘I haven’t run away,’ I said. This was not the supportive mother-daughter talk I’d been envisioning. ‘I’m doing something with my life.’
‘And maybe if you had stayed and talked to Mark, you would have realized how terrible he feels about things,’ she carried on, completely ignoring everything I was saying. ‘Maybe you would have been able to sort things out. Not that I’m saying you should, he did cheat on you, I know.’
‘He wants to sort things out?’ I asked. The idea hadn’t even crossed my mind.
‘Well, maybe he would have if you hadn’t run away, I don’t know,’ she said, sounding distracted. ‘But now he’s moved in that Katie girl, I don’t suppose the two of you will ever get back on track. I suppose if you called him …’
‘He’s moved in with – he’s moved her with in?’ I stopped her in the middle of her sentence. ‘Into our house?’
‘Well, you disappeared, dear,’ she seemed to be listening again. ‘What was he supposed to do? Not that I’m making excuses for him. He should never have done what he did, but, he did explain—’
‘Mum, I’ve got to get off, I’m going out,’ I needed to be off the phone right away. ‘I’ll call you when I know more about coming home.’
‘All right, darling, speak to you soon,’ and she hung up before I could.
Knowing for a fact that Mark had moved that girl into my house was all too much for my brain to process, but it did put the blog problem into perspective. I sat down in front of the laptop, blocked out the images of the filthy mare wearing my Cath Kidston apron and cooking with my beloved lime green Le Creuset casserole dish and emailed the blog to Mary. Mark who?
Once Jenny had returned from her Sunday spa appointment at Rapture and checked that everything had been exfoliated, waxed and moisturized to her own high and Jeff-ready standards, we headed out to Brooklyn. I was justifiably nervous, not having spoken to Alex about our ‘double date’ and not having spent more than fifteen minutes forcing my hair into some sort of shape, slapping on some of my miraculous MAC mascara and lipgloss. But my (still amazing) Marc Jacobs bag made everything better. I wondered if I could feasibly go out in my pyjamas and still feel like a grown-up if I were carrying this. Jenny practically skipped all the way to the L train, barely a sentence tripping over her tongue that wasn’t