I Heart London (28 page)

I didn’t know what to deal with first. The way Jenny spat out the words ‘best friend’, the concept of my wedding being a provincial shit-show, or the clown. There would be no clowns. Luckily, Jenny gave me a more pressing concern to manage.

‘You know what.’ She stood up and knocked over the new teapot. Had she learned nothing from Louisa’s exit? ‘I’m through with this. Deal with it yourself. Book your own PA system. Find your own serving crew. If you can hire someone to organize outdoor fucking fairy lights with three days’ notice, then good luck to you. Screw all of this.’ With a final flourish, she stared straight at me, stuck out her chin and slapped one of the sterling-silver cake stands across the table before turning on her heel and tracing Louisa’s steps right out of the front door.

‘Oh, I say,’ Mum muttered, reflexively catching a flying egg and cress sandwich. ‘Maybe we should have gone to the spa.’

‘So they could drown each other?’ I suggested.

‘Oh yes. Maybe not.’ She raised her eyebrows and sipped her tea. ‘You’d better go after her. God knows what trouble she’ll get herself into wearing those jeans.’

It reassured me somewhat that when Jenny had just trashed a two-hundred-pound afternoon tea, smashed a teapot, broken a cake stand and made more of a show of herself than my mother had ever considered possible in her worst nightmares, her main concern was that she was loose in London wearing low-riding jeans with her midriff showing. She gave me a tired smile, rubbed her forehead and waved her hand for me to go.

‘Before you lose her.’ She pulled her handbag onto her lap. ‘I’m getting used to this now.’

I dashed out into the street, looking in every direction for Jenny. Unlike Louisa’s Batman-esque exit, Jenny had gone for a less subtle approach. I followed a trail of destruction and scared-looking shoppers that Godzilla would have been proud of until I found her bellowing at a man handing out copies of the
Evening Standard
.

‘Jenny!’ I shouted, picking up my pace in case she decided to bolt. But my run wasn’t enough. As soon as she laid eyes on me, Jenny stepped into the street, right in front of a black cab. Of course he was too busy staring at her tight, toned belly to be upset, and when she hopped into the back seat and slammed the door shut, he just did as he was told.

‘Oh, bloody hell.’ I flagged down the next passing cab and threw myself in. ‘Can you please go after the cab in front?’ I asked as politely as I could.

‘Eh?’ He turned in his seat to give me the once-over. Whatever the first driver had seen in Jenny, I seemed to be sadly lacking.

‘Follow that taxi!’ I shrieked, hoping volume would make up for hotness. Apparently it did.

‘Yes, madam,’ he replied, gunning the engine into life and charging off down the street. ‘Although I feel like I should tell you these things never end well.’

‘They never really start that well either, do they?’ I reasoned, madly dialling Jenny’s mobile. ‘So it shouldn’t be such a shock to people.’

‘You’re right about that,’ he said, throwing me around the back seat as he took me towards the twisting, twirling streets of Soho. ‘Most people aren’t that clever though, are they?’

‘Too true,’ I agreed. ‘Too true.’

The taxi driver kept on talking at me while I kept on calling Jenny. We whizzed down Piccadilly, almost killed someone crossing against the light outside Boots on Piccadilly Circus and kept on going. It was still daylight, but the billboards were all lit up like a teeny tiny Times Square. They made me want a Coke. We kept going, matching Jenny’s driver light for light, and I was simultaneously grateful and terrified for my cabbie’s lax attitude to the laws of the road.

‘Looks like your friend’s headed towards the river,’ the driver said as we span through Covent Garden. ‘And I don’t go south of the river.’

‘Really?’ I held tightly onto my seat belt. ‘I always thought that was a cliché.’

‘Well it is,’ he admitted with a big attractive snort. ‘But I’m not going over Waterloo Bridge. So that’s that.’

There was no way I was getting out of the taxi until I had Jenny in my sights. This was my first and hopefully last dramatic car chase through the streets of London. Also, there was no way I’d pick up another cab at this time of day on the Strand. I tried to decide whether I should lead with desperate lady tears or angry lady shouting, but a couple of seconds later my decision was made for me.

‘Hang on, she’s getting out.’ The driver swerved to the side of the road without so much as the honk of a horn and pointed to the cab in front, where Jenny was indeed spilling out onto the pavement and shouting at her driver. ‘Problem solved. Twenty quid.’

I threw some notes at him and jumped out, trying to grab Jenny before she ran. But she didn’t run, she turned and faced me with an epic pout on her face.

‘Are you OK?’ I pushed my hair out of my eyes. It was windy on the bridge. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I haven’t got any cash and asshat here doesn’t take credit cards.’ She flicked her head quickly and I could see she was trying not to cry.

‘Oh.’ I pulled another twenty out of my shrinking stash of cash and paid the driver, ignoring his obscenities and flipping him the middle finger as he drove off. ‘They don’t take cards here in taxis.’

‘Yeah, I got that.’ She wiped at her face and turned her eyes to the water. ‘It’s like being in the freaking past.’

‘This isn’t really the spot to dispute that,’ I said, resting my elbows on the railings and looking out at the Houses of Parliament in the fading afternoon light. I considered explaining about the Addison Lee app to her, but that just seemed a bit much. ‘Are you OK?’

‘No, Angela.’ She joined me at the railings and kicked at them with my ballet pump. ‘I’m not OK.’

‘Just checking.’ I watched the water sparkle with sunshine, covering up all of its deep, dark, murky secrets.

Neither of us said anything for the longest time. Jenny occasionally huffed, puffed and turned to gaze in the opposite direction, taking in the Tate Modern and Somerset House before turning back round. I just flipped once, smiling softly at St Paul’s. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been mid-makeover, his walls covered in scaffolding and soot. It had been a little bit sad. I’d always loved St Paul’s, but to see him so brought down and not living up to his full potential was tragic. Now he was all freshly scrubbed and shining brightly − the last two years had been good to him. We had a lot in common. Sort of.

Jenny’s phone rang with an old school bell and she pulled it out of her Proenza Schouler and visibly shrank back. I leaned back to get a better view of the screen. In big, bold letters it said ‘Jeff’.

‘Oh, Jenny.’

I watched a shadow fall across her face, her eyes sparkling with reactionary excitement before her expression collapsed in on itself and her lip began to tremble.

‘He’s been calling again?’

She nodded, brown eyes locked on the phone’s screen until it faded back to black.

‘Have you been talking to him?’

She nodded and waited for the screen to flash back into life. It did.

‘Oh, Jenny.’

I wished I had something more insightful to say, something helpful and wise that would make her answer the call and tell that douchebag to go back to the bowels of hell whence he came and never darken her door or her phone again. When Jenny and I had first met and Mark had kept calling me, I’d thrown my phone into the Atlantic Ocean. So I shouldn’t really have been surprised when Jenny pulled her arm back and tossed her phone into the Thames. It was becoming something of a habit.

‘Oh.’ I watched it sail through the air and then vanish into the water in silence. It really was a very expensive way of playing transatlantic pooh sticks. I couldn’t help but imagine our phones in Ariel’s cave of land-dwelling wonders, but I did manage to keep that image and accompanying song to myself. ‘Jenny.’

‘I’m sorry I was a bitch to Louisa,’ Jenny said, never taking her eyes off the horizon. ‘I don’t know why I said − well, I guess I don’t know why I said any of it.’

‘She’ll be all right,’ I replied, having no idea whether or not it was true. ‘Everybody says things—’

‘No, she’s right. Stop defending me.’ She cut me off with a bittersweet laugh. ‘You’re doing it right now. You’re like my mom. Except my mom wouldn’t stand up for me the way you do.’

I didn’t have anything to say so I didn’t say anything. She was right. I’d been defending her when she was totally out of order.

‘I’m probably jealous of her,’ she said with forced breeziness. ‘Husband, baby, first dibs on you. Whatever.’

I clicked the band of my engagement ring on the railing of the bridge, desperately biting my tongue. ‘You don’t need to be jealous of Louisa,’ I blurted out after a whole three seconds of keeping it in. ‘You’re successful, smart, funny, gorgeous. I can’t think of anyone on earth who wouldn’t be jealous of you.’

‘Wow.’ Jenny pulled all her hair back into a loosely tethered topknot. ‘Holy shit.’

‘What?’

‘We have totally traded places,’ Jenny looked at me with an incredulous smile. ‘This. Us.’

Dozens of people walked around us − tourists taking in the views, commuters on their way back to Waterloo making the most of the warm weather. None of them were concerned with me and Jenny and our roundabout lives.

‘You know, when we met, you were this lost little girl.’ She was smiling again. ‘I figured you’d last maybe two weeks? A month? And I was all “Oh, I’m going to have to babysit this broad and hold her hand until she runs off home to Mommy”, but man, I was wrong.’

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and let the tears start falling.

‘You took hold of that city with everything you had and you didn’t let go. You said you wanted to be a writer and now you’re a writer. You wanted to make it work with Alex and you’re getting married. You needed a visa, you found a way to get a visa. You don’t let anything get in your way. You’re amazing.’

‘But I couldn’t have done any of those things without you,’ I said quietly. It was always strange to have someone lay your life out in front of you, especially when it was from a perspective you weren’t used to seeing it. ‘If you hadn’t been there at the beginning or at the end of the day or on the end of the phone. I couldn’t have done any of it on my own.’

‘But you did do it on your own,’ she argued. ‘Just own it. Just for one minute drop the “Oh, I’m just so ditsy and all these crazy things just happen to me” act. Just know that everything you have now you have because you made it happen.’

There didn’t seem a lot of point in arguing with her.

‘I was standing in my room at home with my suitcases open, packing for this trip, and I just lost it. I don’t even know what I put in there. Nothing seemed right − everything was just totally wrong. Everything. I just figured, if Angie can do it in New York, why can’t I do it in London? But I can’t. I can’t do anything right because I’m not you. You fuck up and everything falls perfectly into place. I fuck up and the love of my life marries another girl. I fuck up and I lose my job. I’m still living with a roommate at thirty-one, for Chrissake.’

She took a deep breath and cracked her knuckles noisily.

‘And what have I actually done while you’ve been off conquering New York? Quit one lame-ass job, went to LA, failed. Came back to be a stylist. Failed. Had to get a job from my best friend, which I’m fucking up royally. Reconciled with my ex, who dumped my ass. Met a great guy, cheated on him with my ex, who then dumped me for the third time, married his new girlfriend and is now trying to get me to meet up so we can what? Get into some nasty little affair where he messes with my head for another six months and then leaves me on my own, thirty-two and alone and hopeless and lonely and used up and—’

‘Right! Enough’s enough.’ I slapped her arm hard to cut her off. She grabbed at the spot and rubbed it, looking at me like a lame puppy. ‘If we really have switched roles, that makes me the Oprah in this scenario, and I’ll be buggered if I’m listening to your pity party for one more second.’

‘It’s not a pity party when it’s true,’ she rallied, prepping for a second slap. Which she got. ‘Stop hitting me.’

‘Stop sulking then. You’re talking shit, you do know that?’

‘What part of what I said isn’t true?’ she demanded. ‘What part of my life is kittens and unicorns and rainbows?’

‘I’m not disputing you’ve had a rough time of it,’ I replied. ‘But you’re letting the Jeff thing colour it all. You left your job at the Union to follow a dream. Brave. You went to LA and you were a success, Jenny − you got work. How many people actually get work? No one. Then you came back because New York is awesome and LA lives on salads. No shame there. And the job with Erin was hardly a hand-out. I’m not saying she didn’t help you out in the beginning, but if it was just a charity gig, why did she promote you? You killed your styling business to put full-time hours into that job. And she would have fired you by now if she didn’t believe in you. Erin is hardcore. We both know that.’

‘Still doesn’t explain why I’ve been such a tool over Jeff,’ she muttered. ‘I would never let you act this way.’

‘Maybe we haven’t completely swapped places, then.’ I nudged her with my hip. ‘Because I don’t think I could have stopped you. God knows I tried. But there’s not a lot you can do when you love someone.’

She opened her mouth to say something, but a heartbreaking sob came out first. I hated to see Jenny so helpless. She was my rock. When everything else went to shit, she stood firm and proud and full of bullshit psych 101 advice, but when she fell apart, I had no idea what to do. London walked around us, giving a slightly wider berth than before, and I wrapped Jenny up in the biggest hug I could manage and let her cry it out.

‘I do love him. Even though I know everything I know, I just love him so much,’ she whispered after the sobs had died down into tremors. ‘And I don’t want to any more. I want to hate him. But I just keeping having “what if” moments. If I hadn’t cheated on him, would we still be together? Would we be married now? I’m thirty-two in July. I thought I’d be married. I thought I’d have kids. I feel like such a failure.’