and a smaller photo of Poppy and me sitting in the car – her looking gorgeous, smiling broadly, and my startled face, one leg in the car, getting in, in an ungainly fashion, unaware I was being photographed. Both Amanda and Poppy looked like models with their perfectly coiffed hair and made-up faces, whereas I looked like a flustered frump. The headline accompanying it read: AMANDA SYKES SHOPPING SPREE CAUSES CHAOS AT SELFRIDGES. I wondered what the big bosses would make of this; whether they would spot who the person was inelegantly getting into Amanda’s car. Perhaps my sabbatical will be recalled now. Perhaps they won’t want me back.
‘Rob came and leaned over my shoulder. ‘Classic! You didn’t tell me about this, Am. Look at your face! Come on, you’ve got to admit, it’s a little bit hilarious?’
‘I look like a homeless person.’ I sulked.
‘Anyway, Amanda is thrilled,’ Poppy revealed. ‘She only went to the store at the busiest time of day to try to score a photo in a paper. You can’t buy PR like this.’
‘Won’t she wonder who the random person in her car is, though?’ I asked.
‘Don’t worry, she’s cool,’ Poppy assured me.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed my iPhone, muted but blinking on the coffee table. I picked it up and began scrolling through the messages and missed calls, there was even a thread on Facebook, thanks to Shauna posting the image of me. Vicky had seen it, and texted:
I hear you’re BFFs with Amanda Sykes. WTF happened babe?!? xxx
Mum had texted with her lawyer hat on:
So you’re famous? If you’re being hounded, say No Comment and walk off. First rule to remember, darling. Hope Nora’s been cheering you up. Mx
One of the texts was from Lucy:
Saw the Standard – so that’s why you were late. Hope Nora is asleep? Don’t forget you can give her milk if she wakes and if she can’t sleep, try reading the Frozen book, she might want to sleep with it next to her. She’ll probably wake up at 6ish, if you’re lucky. xx
I only replied to Luce:
All quiet, hope you’re enjoying your evening. Switch off! x
The others would have to wait. I noted that Joseph hadn’t said anything which either meant he hadn’t seen it, or was waiting to grill me tomorrow morning.
Pinky was snuffling around Poppy’s toes, angling to be picked up.
‘Hey, little fella,’ she purred, scooping him into her arms. ‘Did we forget about you? Tut tut. Come and give your adopted mummy a kissy.’
‘Adopted mummy, hey?’ Rob’s ears pricked up. At last, attention was being taken away from the newspaper I’d placed face down on the table.
‘I’ve been thinking… if you need to re-home him and it’s only going to be for three months, I’d love to be your new pig-sitter.’ Poppy smiled. ‘I talked to Nora about it earlier, and she agrees. I could use a new flatmate and Pinky won’t nick all my toiletries. Do you think I’m up to the job?’
Both she and Pinky looked at us, her big blue eyes and his little dark peepers shining.
‘I think Pinky’s already made the decision,’ Rob said, looking lovingly at them both. For a moment, he looked bereft, as though he was giving away his own child.
‘Well, that’s perfect,’ I seconded. ‘Let’s toast Pinky’s new home!’ and I refilled us from the second bottle.
‘I’m so excited!’ Poppy gushed. ‘I’ll clear out some space this week and get him next weekend – if that suits you, Rob? Oh, and Amber, don’t let me forget: I want to hook you up with Dana LeRoy. She runs a stylists’ agency in New York. And she’ll love you, I know it. I’ll hook you up over email – she’ll get you some jobs in no time.’
She’ll love me. The words played on my mind. They insinuated that I, Amber Green, from suburban London, could wow people, just by being me. I was going to need to do a lot of wowing in New York, if I didn’t want to be stuck in our apartment all day out there. But what if people don’t love me? What if I’m not cool enough?
As the wine flowed, so did the conversation, and I began warming to Poppy, big time. Despite the unfortunate photo opportunity, she genuinely seemed to want to be friends and help me out with some contacts in New York.
It was nearly two in the morning when Poppy finally left; Rob and I were now in the bathroom together, brushing our teeth and talking in whispers, fearful of waking Nora before we’d even got into bed.
‘So, it’s all falling into place then,’ he enthused. ‘What a sweet girl Poppy is, too.’
‘Yes, amazing how first impressions can be so off,’ I admitted. ‘Thanks to Mona, I had her all wrong.’
‘Well, there weren’t exactly many people Mona managed to keep on side, let’s face it,’ Rob remarked. ‘Maybe Poppy can help you build up some clients while we’re in New York – Dana sounds worth looking up, for starters.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, sighing, ‘if she thinks I’m worth getting back to.’
‘You what?’ said Rob, taking my electric toothbrush from me and placing it on the side, before pulling both of my hands into his. ‘I won’t hear any of this “if I’m worth it” stuff. You may not have any idea how talented and beautiful you are, but I certainly do. And the Danas of New York should be bloody glad to meet you, not the other way around. Okay?’
I smiled, trying to look seductive, though I wasn’t convinced I’d got all the red-wine stains from the rim of my lips. ‘Okay.’ I made a silent promise to take a leaf of self-confidence out of Poppy’s book and take Manhattan by storm.
‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘we need to get into bed before a hyper five-year-old or a hungry pig wakes us up in, precisely, urgh, four hours, you said…?’
Nora must have been exhausted by Pinky’s taunting because by some miracle, I woke up before her, at seven the next morning, my mouth dryer than the Sahara and head gently aching. Rob muttered something about ‘too many tannins in that red wine’ and rolled over. I noticed Pinky had made himself at home in a pile of laundry in the corner of my room and was snoring gently. The image of them both made me smile. Our little family. I was going to miss Pinky while we were away.
I forced myself to drink a pint of water and, by the time Nora woke up twenty minutes later, my lounge floor was strewn with items resembling the sad, unwanted items on a Portobello market stall at the end of a Saturday afternoon. Packing up the flat was going to be hard work and more emotionally draining than I imagined. There was a lifetime’s worth of belongings to sort through and, no matter how ruthless I tried to be, there were some items that it was hard to bring myself to part with. The furniture would be easy to shift via adverts in Gumtree, but it was the items currently gathered in the middle of the room that would feel like throwing away a bit of my soul if they were to go. Take the wooden footstool in the shape of an owl bought with Vicky from Camden market when we first moved in; or the poster-sized framed astrological chart which had remained propped up against a wall for the past four years as I never got round to having it hung; and then there were the two pretty, albeit battered, crochet cushions brought back from a holiday in the south of France when I was a student. The flat was full of things I had once loved, important purchases for one reason or another – but, I told myself, it was time to strike out the old to make space for the new.
Vicky proved tougher on the chucking-out front, instructing me over the phone to take any of her clothes that I wouldn’t wear myself to the charity shop. Unfortunately, my fashion taste was infinitely more conservative than hers, so I had two big sack loads to unleash on the nearest Oxfam.
‘To be frank, babe, I can’t even remember any of this crap,’ she had said, when I paraded a few items in front of her, Generation Game-style, over Skype one evening. ‘Anyway, it’s liberating