Lindsey Kelk 5-Book 'I Heart...' Collection (112 page)

‘Angela.’ Ronnie the Bagel Boy raised a hand from behind the counter. ‘Usual?’

‘Usual,’ I waved back, hopping straight onto one of the bar stools in the window and pulling out my stash. This was one of my favourite places to sit in the winter. Come summer, I’d be outside the ice-cream store up the street. Spring and autumn saw me sitting beside the East River, watching the ferry sweep back and forth between Brooklyn and Manhattan. But inside Bagelsmith, peering out of its steamy window, was my favourite place when the weather turned against me.

I watched every kind of person walk by while I panted over wedding dresses, chair coverings and place cards. We had models, musicians, delivery men, students, yummy mummies, ancient locals bemoaning the influx of yuppies and hipsters alike. There was always something new, but never anything surprising. Until today. An unmistakeable mop of curly brown hair, clad in a scarlet trench coat, standing across the street, staring directly at me. Jenny. I waved madly in the window while pulling my phone out of my bag to dial in case she was blind. But my excitement at seeing her shifted from a simmer to a boil and I started to panic. Why was she here? Why hadn’t she called first? What was wrong? Her apartment had definitely burned down. After a moment, she waved back and started across the street. I looked down at my magazine. Shit. She could not see this. Panicked, I rammed it into my MJ satchel as fast as the fraying seams would let me.

‘Hey!’ She rushed in, rosy-cheeked and wide-eyed. ‘Hi.’

‘Hi.’ I gave her a quick hug and moved onto the second stool, bearing the brunt of a filthy look from the Mexican guy now squished into the corner. ‘What are you doing out here? Is everything OK?’

‘Everything’s fine,’ she said, grabbing a bottle of water from the open fridge and whipping off the top. ‘Why wouldn’t it be fine?’

‘Because you’re in Williamsburg in the middle of the afternoon on a Monday,’ I said. No reaction. ‘And you work on Mondays. And you hate coming to Williamsburg.’

‘I like coming to see you,’ she replied with a bright Jenny smile. ‘And I like bagels. What’s good?’

‘You came to see me?’ Now I was confused. ‘Why didn’t you call?’

‘Jesus – chill, Miss Ego.’ She necked half her bottle of water in one gulp. ‘As much as I love you, I am prepared to cross water for other reasons than to see your sweet ass.’

My ass was not sweet. And by January it would be even less sweet following my annual Christmas pig-out. ‘Such as?’

‘That nail place.’ She waved an unpolished hand in the general direction of ‘over there’. ‘It’s supposed to be awesome. I took a long lunch, figured I’d drop in on you on the way and talk Vegas.’

‘Which nail place?’ There were a million nail places in Williamsburg and I couldn’t have named one of them. ‘I don’t have a nail place.’

‘And again, I do know people other than yourself.’ She grabbed half my bagel as soon as Ronnie put it down in front of me. ‘One of the girls in the office swears by it. She won’t go anywhere else and, you know, I want to look extra awesome for fabulous Las Vegas.’

Brilliant. Something else to add to the list, which already had on it buy a swimsuit in the dead of winter, steal all the quarters from the laundry jar and endure the horror of a bikini wax. The last time Jenny and I had entered bikini territory, she had put me through a DIY waxing horror and made me wear one of her Brazilian beauties. This time I was hoping for a professional wax and a bikini that covered more than fifteen per cent of my arse. It was a big ask, but I was confident it could be achieved.

‘Ew, tuna fish.’ Jenny made a face at the first bite of my bagel but, curiously, kept on eating. ‘I told myself no carbs before Thursday. What are you doing to me, Clark?’

‘Expanding your horizons,’ I said, snatching the second half before it disappeared. ‘So, viva las Vegas. Did you talk to the hotel?’

Jenny, a former hotel concierge, had fingers in all kinds of hospitality industry pies and had promised to arrange the whole thing during the after-party party at Scottie’s Diner on Saturday night. Obviously she was aware that I was on a clock with regards to travel plans inside the US of A despite my very confident (if baseless) declarations that everything was going to be fine.

‘I did talk to the hotel, and I talked to the airline, and I talked to Erin, and I have news,’ she nodded, picking apart her half of the bagel. ‘We’re going on Thursday.’

‘This Thursday?’

‘Uh-huh. We’re staying at the De Lujo, we’re flying in the morning and we’ll be back by Sunday night. Monday you recover, and Tuesday we get our asses into gear. I made you another appointment with the lawyer and this time I told him you don’t leave the office until he has sorted his shit out. So, viva la visa. I hope you’re feeling lucky, Angie.’

I pushed the rest of my bagel towards my friend. I’d love to know what I’d done in a former life to deserve a friend like Jenny. Lucky wasn’t the word for it.

‘You’re going to Vegas?’

‘Yes, Louisa,’

‘Without me?’

‘Yes, Louisa.’

‘I’m so jealous. It’s not fair. You’re going to Las Vegas and I’m stuck here.’

I made a face into my webcam.

‘You’re stuck in your beautiful home, with your wonderful husband, pregnant with your first, no doubt glorious, child,’ I replied. ‘I reckon it’s a fair trade that I get three nights in what is essentially a debauched Alton Towers.’

She made a face right back. This was the problem with Skype. Having people able to see your expressions made it really hard to pretend not to be pissed off with the person you were talking to. Not that Louisa was trying. She never had before; why start with the civilities now, just because technology demanded it? My oldest friend and I tried to get a good Skype chat/bitch in once a fortnight, at least. Ever since she had got knocked up, we were up to a weekly date. I had a morbid fascination with the bump. Louisa had always been the skinny one, and I was damned if I was going to miss this. And so, on Monday night, I lay on my belly in front of the Christmas tree, looking at the truly hideous sleety shitty weather through the window and happily scarfed a carton of Goldfish crackers for my lunch while we chatted. At home, Christmas meant bag upon bag of Mini Cheddars, and this was the closest I could get. Plus they were shaped like fish and no one loved a novelty snack like I did.

‘I really thought you were going to come home this year,’ she sulked. ‘Being pregnant is shit. I’m fat, I’m miserable and I can’t bloody drink. Imagine Christmas without being able to have a drink. My mum and dad. Tim’s mum and dad! Jesus, I’m probably going to have to see your mum and dad. And without so much as a Baileys.’

‘While that does sound like the best argument I ever heard for sterilization,’ I replied, ‘I’m still going to Vegas. And you’re still going to be knocked up whether I come home or not, aren’t you?’

‘Maybe I’ll just have a drink anyway,’ she said, poking her bump. ‘See how she likes a couple of sweet sherries. My breast milk is going to be ninety per cent Sauvignon anyway.’

‘My mum will probably sort you out with a nice bit of crack,’ I suggested. ‘Or a lovely drop of meth. Since it’s Christmas.’

‘Don’t!’ She physically pulled away from the screen. ‘I cannot believe your mum and dad smoke weed. The baby cannot believe your mum and dad smoke weed, and she doesn’t even have a consciousness yet.’

Wait, she? I leapt up – it was a she now? How had I missed that memo?

‘She?’ I wanted to rap on the screen to get her attention. Sometimes I forgot that using Skype wasn’t the same as when I saw the neighbour’s cat licking its arse on the other side of a window; this was actually a human woman, thousands of miles away. ‘It’s a she? You know it’s a she?’

‘She’s never been an it. Only you call her “it”,’ she said tartly. ‘And no, we don’t know. We’re not finding out. I just, you know, have a feeling.’

Well, that was disappointing.

And until it was on Facebook, it was an ‘it’, wasn’t it?

‘Do you get lots of feelings?’ I asked. ‘Baby feelings?’

Pregnancy genuinely terrified me, and I was fascinated with Louisa’s experience. I considered it to be a condition somewhere between a nine-month-long debilitating hangover – the vomming, the cravings, the need for a nice sleep and a lovely sit-down – and being attacked by the face-hugger in Aliens. It was a living thing! Inside you! That you didn’t ask for! Well, I accept that bit is debatable, but you get the idea. No one wakes up and thinks, ‘I’d love to have a nine-pound screaming beast yanked out of my vagina today and then latched onto my boob for two years, cheers,’ do they? They think ‘Ooh, lovely babies’. They think they want to glow. They think they want the last seat on the tube. They don’t consider the middle part. At least not as much as I did. As far as I was concerned, my period was a monthly blessing, not a curse.

‘I do.’ Louisa scrunched up her nose. ‘Mostly horrible ones like sore boobs and haemorrhoids. But I’m excited, you know? In four months, I’ll have an actual baby.’

‘Christ.’

‘I know.’

We sat and stared at each other in silence for a moment. I didn’t know what Louisa was thinking about, but I was prepared to bet quite a lot of money that it wasn’t the time she wrapped the school guinea pig up in a blanket, pretended it was her baby and pushed it around in a pram for an entire afternoon before dropping it in the pond while nursing it to sleep.

‘So when are you coming back, anyway?’ She broke the silence first as always. It was clinically impossible for Louisa to be speechless for more than one minute. Unless you were making a ‘bit of a scene’ at her wedding and breaking the groom’s hand. And in my defence, I only did that the once. ‘I really miss you, babe.’

‘If I don’t get the visa sorted, I’ll be back very soon for a very long time,’ I said, wrapping my hair into a ponytail, a sure sign it needed cutting, and then letting it droop around my shoulders. We’d already covered my least favourite topic and I just couldn’t bear to go over it again. ‘I know there’s nothing anyone can do, and I know no one wants me to leave, but I just … I don’t know – I feel like maybe they’re not taking it as seriously as they could be.’

Louisa did her best to look sympathetic to my cause instead of excited at the prospect of a cheap babysitter. Not that anyone would ever leave me alone with an infant. Or a toddler. Or anything really precious, like their Sky Plus box or iPhone.

‘When you say they, do you mean Alex?’ she asked. I pouted. She nodded. ‘And have you actually talked to him?’

My bottom lip was out so far she could have sat on it.

‘Angela.’ Louisa gave me a very stern stare. ‘You have to talk to him. As in actually tell him what thoughts are going through your tiny mind and not just make passing comments and hope he’ll pick up on them. What have you told him?’

‘That I need to get a new visa.’ This was true.

‘And what haven’t you told him?’

‘That I’m not technically eligible for any of them and if I don’t get one, they’re going to kick me out.’

‘So you haven’t talked at all?’ Annoyingly, this was also sort of true.

‘Yes, we have,’ I lied merrily. ‘We talk all the time.’

Of course we hadn’t bloody talked. I’d thought about talking. I’d tried talking. But ever since Jenny’s party he’d been out or asleep, and I could hardly pop my head around the bedroom door, give him a cheery grin and a quick ‘Ooh, I’m off to Vegas, love, but when I get back we need to have a wee chat about how I’m going to be deported in four weeks’ could I? Or at least that’s what I’d convinced myself.

‘Alex doesn’t deal well with pressure.’ I tried to talk the look off Louisa’s face. ‘He just wants to know it’s going to be OK. Which it is. All he’ll say is “we’ll work it out after Christmas”. So there’s no point in worrying him. He doesn’t need to know.’

‘I think you mean you don’t deal well with pressure,’ she replied. ‘And just what happens if you don’t get a new visa?’

‘Then I’m screwed.’

‘Oh, Angela.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Screwed? You’ve gone all American. You’ll be buggered. Maybe you should come back.’

‘I’m bilingual, you cow.’ Sticking my tongue out was a perfectly mature response, yes? ‘But yes. I’ll be buggered. I know Alex is always getting visas to play gigs in other countries, so maybe he doesn’t think it’s a big deal. And to be fair, I wasn’t that worried before he went to Japan. I was sure a job would come up before there was a problem, but now …’

I felt my stomach drop hard and fast. Probably a bit like Kylie, the year five guinea pig.

‘It might not feel like it helps, but I do believe you’ll be all right, honey,’ she said, flashing me a smile that had been getting me through tough situations for twenty-eight years. ‘This is you we’re talking about. Angela who up and moved to New York all on her own. Angela who met all these amazing friends that I’m insanely jealous of. Angela whose handbag I would swap my husband for. You can do anything you want if you put your mind to it.’

‘You wouldn’t trade me Tim for that handbag if you could see it now,’ I said, looking mournfully at the battered bag sitting sadly on the sofa. ‘And besides, a Marc Jacobs handbag isn’t going to help you with the three a.m. feed, is it?’

‘And Tim is?’ she asked.

‘Good point,’ I acknowledged. ‘Good point, well made.’

On my computer screen, gorgeous, glowing Louisa bit an already ragged nail.

‘Ange?’ She pressed her hand against her mouth.

‘Lou?’

‘I’m really scared about having the baby.’

‘Oh shut up.’ I wanted to reach out and slap her. ‘You’re going to be the best mum ever. What’s brought this on?’

‘It’s just …’ She looked behind her to check the coast was clear and leaned into the camera. ‘Do you remember when I dropped that guinea pig in the pond at school?’

‘Talking to Louisa?’ Alex wandered into the living room, elegantly attired in his boxers and an old Led Zeppelin T-shirt, hair rumpled from another afternoon nap. The jet lag was making his sleep patterns even more erratic than usual, and he paused for a moment, trying to work out his path through the epic pile of magazines, Post-it notes and highlighters I had spread out on the floor. The more mess I made, the more confident I was about securing my new visa and, man alive, there was a lot of mess. Torn-out mastheads, scribbled headline ideas and, well, quite a few circled shoes that weren’t going to get me a job per se, but were going to motivate me to do well.