‘He said you couldn’t have a tree yet, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ I nodded.
‘And why not?’
‘Because I still haven’t cleared away all the Thanksgiving dishes,’ I admitted. It wasn’t like I hadn’t put them in the dishwasher, I just hadn’t taken them back out again. For over a week. ‘But I needed it. It’s been a weird day.’
‘You’re disgusting.’ She yelped as she pricked herself for the eighteenth time in two minutes. ‘And it’s been a weird day so you picked up a Christmas tree? You couldn’t just buy shoes like normal people? You’re what’s weird in this scenario.’
‘Something’s going on at work,’ I said, jabbing at the buttons and willing the doors to close faster. ‘I’m sure of it. Delia and Mary are being all whispery behind closed doors.’
‘Don’t you and Mary share an office?’ Jenny asked. ‘What are you doing, following them to the ladies’ room?’
‘Um, yeah, we have separate offices now.’
Mary, the editor of Gloss, and I had started off sharing a big, beautiful office but since I apparently couldn’t stop singing show tunes when I was trying to concentrate and occasionally enjoyed the odd YouTube video of kittens with narcolepsy, she’d had a wall put up in the middle of the room. I tried not to take it personally. If she couldn’t appreciate my celebrated (by me) rendition of ‘I Know Him So Well’, that was her loss.
‘Something’s definitely going on, though. They’ve both had time blocked out in their diaries and—’
The silver doors slid together for just a moment, before springing back apart to let another passenger inside.
‘Not the super, not the super, not the super,’ I whispered into the branches of my glorious tree.
‘Hi, I’m Jenny.’
Before I could deliver my admittedly paranoid work theories, Jenny interrupted me with her best ‘hello, you’re a hot man’ purr. Nestled behind the bulk of the tree, I might not have been able to see either of them but I could hear her sparkliest smile twinkling through her introduction. Lowering myself into a squat, I squinted through the branches to get a better look at her target but all I managed was an eyeful of sap and the suggestion of some very shiny brown hair.
‘Oh, uh, hi,’ a deep voice that most definitely did not belong to my gnarled Italian super replied. ‘I’m Doug.’
‘Doug?’ Jenny repeated his name like it was the most interesting thing she had ever heard. I wondered whether or not someone had actually pressed a button. I was desperate for a wee. ‘You must be new to the building, right?’
‘Pretty new,’ he confirmed. I leaned back against the wall of the lift and pushed up onto my Converse tiptoes, trying to get a look at this ‘Doug’. If that was his real name. ‘You live on the top floor?’
‘More or less,’ she replied, with a tinkly laugh that made me want to punch her in the boob. ‘I’m a Manhattan gal. This is my best friend’s place, which I guess means I almost live here, right?’
‘Nice to meet you,’ I shouted in his general direction through a mouthful of tree. Which did not taste as good as it smelled. ‘I’m Angela.’
‘Oh shit,’ Doug replied. ‘I didn’t know you were hiding in there. Hi.’
‘She’s behind the tree,’ Jenny explained. Doug made an ‘oh’ sound. Doug was clearly not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
‘This is my stop,’ he announced as the bell sounded and the doors opened on the third floor. ‘Have fun.’
‘Oh, we will,’ I heard Jenny promise. ‘We always do.’
‘You massive slag,’ I said as the doors closed quickly, slicing through the sexual tension. ‘Haven’t you got a boyfriend?’
‘No, I don’t have a boyfriend and I was just flirting.’ Somehow Jenny managed to find a way through the tree to punch my arm. ‘Relax, Mom.’
I paused, thought better of my question, then asked it anyway. ‘Was he hot?’
‘Super hot,’ she sighed. ‘He looked like Clark Kent. Real gentleman. Can I set off your smoke alarms? See if he comes to help us?’
‘That’ll be a fun one to explain to Alex,’ I muttered, pushing Jenny backwards out of the door as we arrived at my floor. ‘Oh, sorry, darling, we burnt the apartment down to see whether or not the new neighbour downstairs was as chivalrous as Jenny assumed he was after a fourteen-second conversation.’
‘Screw you,’ she replied, giving me the finger for extra emphasis.
‘A real lady, worthy of a real gentleman,’ I smiled over the top of the tree.
One hour, two arguments and three beers later, the Christmas tree was safely(ish) in its stand and towering proudly over my apartment. It only leaned ever so slightly to the left and somehow we’d managed to string the fairy lights without throttling each other, but sheer exhaustion and desperate thirst meant we’d been forced to pause in the decorating for a beer break.
‘So, you didn’t finish your story.’ Jenny picked a single stray pine needle from her sweater and tossed it on the floor with disgust. She was so thoughtful. ‘What’s going on in the office?’
‘I didn’t finish because you were too busy cracking on to “Doug” to let me finish,’ I stated. ‘Actually, I’d barely even started.’
‘Then stop whining and start now,’ she said, curling her legs up underneath her. ‘What’s the goss at Gloss?’
Gloss had launched ten months earlier and, against all odds, it was doing really, really well. While other magazines were disappearing from the stands, our weekly freebie was everywhere. We had even launched an enhanced iPad edition that people were actually paying for – it was crazy. And while I was the first to put my hand up and say the editorial was fantastic (possibly because I was deputy editor), it really was all down to Delia. She was an incredible businesswoman and no one on earth was able to say no to her. Every time I saw her, I wanted to do a little dance and sacrifice a goat. Or maybe just give her a Kit Kat. Admittedly, I saw her less and less as the magazine got bigger and bigger. I knew her grandfather, Bob, the president of Spencer Media and ultimately our big boss, was grooming her to move up in the company and while I was happy for her, I wasn’t ready for her to disappear from the mag. Bob was basically the Donald Trump of publishing, which might have sounded like an exaggeration if I hadn’t known for a fact that Delia and The Donald were on first-name terms. While the New York billionaires’ club was bigger than you might think, it was still pretty cliquey.
‘There’s nothing specific,’ I said. ‘It’s just a feeling. Mary and Delia have been in and out of each other’s offices all week and they’ve both been very quiet around me or so—’
‘They’ve been quiet or you’ve been extra loud?’ Jenny asked. ‘It is December. I figure you’ve been running around in some ugly Santa sweater singing holiday songs since the first, right?’
‘Don’t interrupt me.’ She didn’t need to know that was exactly what I’d been doing. ‘They’ve been weird, all right? Something is up.’
‘You didn’t think to just ask them?’
I stared at her revelatory concept. Oh Jenny, you and your common sense.
‘Um, no?’
‘Right,’ Jenny sighed, ‘because why would you do something as obvious as that?’
‘Oh, fuck off.’ I hopped up and grabbed two fresh beers from the fridge, popping the tops and handing one to Jenny. ‘I want everything to be OK, that’s all.’
‘You’d