I Heart London Read online

  ‘I still think we should suggest it,’ he insisted gently. ‘Maybe we could invite Louisa − and it’s Tim, right?’

  ‘All right, slow down,’ I said. My head was spinning and this time it wasn’t from the jet lag. ‘I think I need to eat before I start thinking about playing happy families.’

  He gave me his sad but slightly impatient puppy face.

  ‘Fine!’ I said. As if I wouldn’t have given in anyway. ‘It might be nice.’

  ‘That’s my girl,’ he said, swooping in and pulling my ponytail.

  ‘But we are on holiday,’ I repeated. ‘And yes, while I know we need to see Mum and Dad, we also get to do fun stuff too. Just me and you?’

  ‘Sure.’ He nodded slowly. ‘Although you have your presentation, right? And I said I’d go in and meet with the label while I’m here.’

  ‘And everything’s OK?’ I asked. Any mention of the label worried me. Because in all honesty, I had no idea what the label really meant. ‘They like the new record?’

  ‘They do,’ he confirmed. A pair of teenage girls across the street − Louisa and me ten years ago − turned on their high heels when they heard him speak. I ducked my head and grinned. He didn’t notice, as ever. ‘They want to discuss a tour sometime. But I’ll have a ton of time to hang out. And you have Jenny to deal with also, so I don’t think you’ll miss me.’

  ‘We have Jenny to deal with,’ I corrected him. ‘We.’

  ‘Nuh-uh,’ he laughed. ‘I’d rather take your mom shoe shopping than handle that girl any more. Remember I just spent twelve hours with her. And please know that she spent at least six of those hours crying.’

  ‘She did?’ This was not good news. ‘About Jeff?’

  ‘About Jeff, about Sigge, about not having packed the right clothes.’ Alex turned his green eyes on me as we paused and waited to cross the street. ‘I tried to help, but honestly, I kinda tuned out after a while.’

  ‘And no court in the land could find you guilty for that,’ I replied. ‘I just want her to be OK, but I have no idea how to help.’

  ‘You can’t,’ he said, almost carrying me across the clear street. The lure of fried food always turned Alex into Popeye. ‘People deal with break-ups in different ways. We both know that, don’t we?’

  After his last bad break-up, Alex had boned half of Manhattan and about a third of Brooklyn. After mine, I’d done a transatlantic runner. It was fair to say neither of us had dealt with our romantic let-downs well.

  ‘We do know that,’ I said with a sigh. ‘And I know there’s no magic switch, but I wish there was at least an off switch for the tears. She would kick my arse all the way to New Jersey if I cried as much as she has. She would tell me how bad it is for my skin, how I was giving myself wrinkles. How I was making myself look old.’

  ‘So tell her that,’ he suggested. I looked at him like he was stupid. Because that was a very stupid thing to say. ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘Are you insane?’ I punched him in the arm for good measure. ‘I like my life.’

  ‘Point taken,’ he said as we walked into the chip shop.

  Armed with five cods, four bags of chips, two pots of mushy peas and, at Alex’s insistence, a pickled egg and a can of Irn-Bru, I walked back into my mother’s kitchen expecting to see a laid table, a bottle of vinegar and enough salt to give a horse a heart attack. Instead, I saw an empty table, a stack of plates and my mum standing in the middle of the kitchen in a hot-pink Diane von Furstenberg dress and six-inch black YSL Tributes. I didn’t think it was unreasonable that I dropped the pickled egg.

  ‘If the wind changes your face will stay that way,’ Mum said. If I hadn’t been so startled, I’d have been impressed that she was able to pronounce a coherent sentence while Jenny was doing her eyeliner. ‘Do you like my new frock?’

  ‘Your new frock?’ I picked up the pickled egg along with my jaw.

  ‘Yeah. I was in the showroom on Friday,’ Jenny said, jumping in on Mum’s behalf, ‘and I saw this, and all I could think was, man, if I was turning sixty and throwing an awesome party to show everyone how much ass I still kick, I’d want to do it in this dress. Maybe not these heels, but definitely this dress. So I brought it with.’

  ‘Maybe not those heels,’ I agreed. I felt like a disapproving parent. So this was what my mum was on about when I bought those black Chinoiserie wedges in the lower sixth. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Angela brought me a stain-removing pen,’ Mum told Jenny as they moved onto blusher.

  ‘And she didn’t bring me anything,’ Dad chipped in, pouring himself a very big glass of whiskey from a very new bottle of Jack Daniel’s. ‘Jenny brought me whiskey.’ He raised his glass to me.

  ‘I brought you me!’ I protested and held out my paper packages. ‘And chips! And fish! And Irn-Bru!’

  ‘Ooh, that’ll go down a treat with the whiskey, actually.’ My dad took the bags from me and cracked open the can. ‘Now, get sat down before this gets cold.’

  I sat opposite my mum and didn’t even try not to stare.

  ‘Are you all right over there?’ she asked, accepting her plate of fried goodness from Alex.

  ‘You look really nice,’ I said quietly. And she did. Jenny had brushed her hair out to give it a little more shine than usual, and the make-up was delicate enough to bring out her features but not look obviously made up. She looked polished and, well, pretty. It wasn’t something I was used to thinking about my mother. ‘That dress suits you.’

  ‘It’s not something I’d usually wear,’ she acknowledged, pulling the low neckline up a little. ‘But it is going to be a party, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is,’ Alex replied, joining us at the table with his own glass of Irn-Bru and whiskey. ‘You look great, Mrs Clark.’

  ‘Annette, really,’ she replied, more than a little flustered. ‘Thank you, Alex. Does anyone else want a drink? Jenny?’

  ‘I’d actually kill for a Martini,’ she said, yawning loudly. ‘Or a beer? Just something to perk me up.’

  ‘I think I might have a beer as well.’ Mum teetered over to the fridge and came back with two bottles of Heineken. Mum? Drinking beer? In DVF and YSL? ‘Angela?’

  ‘Not for me.’ I was too tired and too on edge for a drink.

  Mum looked at Dad and smirked. Dad shook his head and looked away. I assumed they had a bet on how long it would take me to get ratted. Looked like Dad had lost.

  ‘So, Alex.’ Dad sat down next to my fiancé while Jenny elbowed me in the ribs and merrily chowed down on a chip, beer in hand. ‘Tell me all about this band you’re in. I’ve had a listen on the YouTube, and I must say, you’re very good.’

  To his credit, Alex brushed his hair away from his face, cleared his throat and gave my dad a very earnest nod. ‘Um, thanks, Mr Clark—’

  ‘David.’ Dad took a swig of his boozy Bru. A very big swig. ‘It’s David.’

  ‘OK, David,’ he went on. ‘We’ve been playing together for what, about ten years now? I met the other guys in school, so yeah, it’s got to be at least that. And we just finished our fourth album, and yeah, it’s really great.’

  ‘You met in school ten years ago?’ Mum choked on her chip butty. ‘How young are you exactly?’

  ‘School means university,’ I translated. ‘He’s thirty. Thirty-one in July.’

  ‘Oh. And I thought they spoke English,’ she said into a napkin. ‘Did you study music? Did you do well?’

  So it was going to be the Spanish Interrogation of Alex over fish and chips. I squeezed his knee under the table, but he just patted my hand and shook his head. He was so good at this. How come he was so good at this?

  ‘I studied architecture, actually, and yeah, I graduated top of my class.’

  I knew that. Starter for ten.

  ‘Class means year,’ I interjected quietly.

  ‘I went to RISD − that’s in Rhode Island. It’s a couple of hours out of New York. It’s a pretty good school.’

  That one I didn’t know. Lose five po
ints. Although I did know Seth Cohen applied to go there on The OC, so that was something.

  Mum was nodding her approval, Dad was nodding into his booze, and Jenny just seemed to be nodding off. So far she’d managed to eat about three chips and her fish was untouched. I was giving her three minutes before I took it. Sharing chips with my mum, my arse. I was Hank Marvin. Jet lag, obviously. Not just general greediness.

  ‘How do your parents feel about the music thing?’ Mum wasn’t giving up. ‘I can’t imagine I’d have been very pleased if I’d sent Angela to university to study law and she’d come home to tell me she was running off to join the circus.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s exactly the same thing,’ I remonstrated, jumping in to defend Alex before he could come up with a response. ‘Not that I wouldn’t have been an excellent circus performer.’

  ‘You did spend most of Year Ten wearing clown make-up,’ Dad chuckled to himself. I tilted my head to give him a glare. Oh, he was happy with that one. ‘And Year Eleven. Remember when you wore pigtails for six months straight?’

  ‘They were very popular,’ I said clearly and loudly. ‘It wasn’t just me.’

  ‘My folks weren’t crazy about it,’ Alex said, ignoring the sideshow. Probably best. ‘But they understood. And I guess we thought the band would just be a fun side project until we got real jobs, but then we all moved to Brooklyn together and things sort of took off.’

  ‘You lived with those guys?’ Jenny scrunched up her face. Which was now laid on her forearm, on the table. ‘With Craig? Ew.’

  ‘Just for a little while,’ Alex said, trying not to laugh. ‘Living with Graham had some benefits − he’s a pretty good cook. And it was that or go home to my folks.’

  ‘And what do your parents do?’ My mum was on a roll.

  ‘My dad is in real estate and my mom does a bunch of mostly charity stuff,’ he explained. ‘She used to teach but now she’s retired.’

  I had a weird feeling that these were things I was supposed to know about my fiancé already. Alex never talked about his family. I knew he had a brother, and obviously I knew he had parents, but they weren’t a regular topic of conversation. And by that, I meant he never, ever talked about them.

  ‘And do you think you’ll be doing music for a lot longer?’ I could see my mum was trying really hard to keep an even expression, even though I knew the idea of telling her friends she had an architect for a son-in-law was much more appealing than saying ‘musician’. ‘Or … not?’

  ‘I think it’s something I’ll always do,’ he replied, hastily swallowing his food. ‘But there’s other stuff I’d like to try. I am incredibly blessed to be able to make a living out of playing music, but it’s a huge commitment. Weird hours, lots of travel. I think it would be super-hard to be playing full time and raise a family.’

  My mum, my dad and I all coughed in stereo, but when we came up for air there were three very different expressions around the table. My mum had the glazed-over look of love in her eyes, my dad gave the impression he was going to be sick, and I didn’t know what to think. Or say. Or emote.

  ‘Of course.’ Mum reached across the table and rested her hand on Alex’s wrist. He did not pull away. Or cry. ‘That makes sense.’

  Alex nodded, smiled and stuck a fork into his fish. ‘This is really good, by the way,’ he said, lifting it to his mouth. ‘Almost as good as Angela’s cooking.’

  ‘She learned everything she knows from me,’ Mum sang happily. I glared at my dinner. That was just offensive. ‘Well, it’s very nice to have you here, Alex. It is quite a relief to know Angela has found someone with his head screwed on.’

  ‘Because my head isn’t?’ I asked. ‘I’m sensible.’

  ‘I don’t think you can argue that someone who has a degree in architecture −’ Mum gestured towards her new favourite person − ‘is a less sensible person than you.’

  Between being too tired to argue and wanting my mum to like Alex more than she liked Eamonn Holmes, I let it go. I wanted to run upstairs and show her my Gloss presentation. I wanted to show her last year’s tax return that I’d completed all by myself. I wanted to explain that I knew how to get from Sunset Park to Central Park on the subway inside half an hour without changing trains more than twice. I was sensible. I was smart. But this wasn’t the time to point this out. Beside, there was deep-fried fish to be eaten and every vinegary mouthful tasted like heaven. I was two years clean on battered cod and that wasn’t something I was OK with.

  ‘Actually, I have something for you guys,’ Alex said. He reached into his pocket, pulled out three shiny keys and placed them on the table. ‘I figured you should have keys to our place. Just in case.’

  Now he’d gone too far. Keys? To my house? They had better be fakes. They could open the White House for all I cared as long as they didn’t fit the lock to our apartment.

  ‘That’s very thoughtful,’ my mum said as my dad snatched them up and stuck them deep in his pocket before I could nick them back. ‘Really, Alex, that’s lovely.’

  ‘Well, you’re always welcome, obviously,’ he said, loosening his tie a little. All the better to throttle him with. ‘Angela’s home is your home.’

  I almost bit my tongue. My home was their home? News to me. Their home was my home, of course, but not the other way around. Bloody hell. Someone was getting a slap at bedtime.

  ‘Uh, Angela.’ Alex snapped me out of my rage trance and pointed across the table. At some point, Jenny had crossed the line from a bit tired to full-on passed-out and her head had rolled off her arm into her dinner. Nice. Nothing like a bit of fish in your hair to really set off a look. But just looking at her reminded me how tired I was, and in the blink of an eye, I could barely stand to blink my eyes.

  ‘I’ll take her up to bed,’ I volunteered. ‘I’m shattered as well, to be honest.’

  ‘Right.’ Mum jumped up from the table and took up her hostess action stations. It was her happy place. ‘Angela, you and Jenny are in your room and Alex is in the spare room. I’ve put out extra towels in your bathroom. The pink ones are for you, the white ones are for Jenny and the blue ones are for Alex. There should be everything you need − I got extra toothbrushes and things—’

  ‘Wait.’ I paused in my attempt to hoist Jenny’s face out of the plate of grease. And accidentally dropped it back in. ‘What do you mean Alex is in the spare room?’

  ‘Angela, it’s cool,’ Alex said calmly, appearing at the other side of Jenny. ‘Thanks Mrs … Annette. Super-thoughtful.’

  ‘No, really. You want us to sleep in separate rooms?’ I wasn’t sure what I was more upset about. The idea of another night away from Alex or sharing a room with Jet-lag Jenny.

  ‘Angela, don’t be difficult,’ Mum sighed as she started to clear away the half-eaten food. ‘You’re in your room, Alex is in the spare room.’

  ‘You do know that we live together? And that we’re engaged?’ I leaned forward, both palms flat on the table. In my head, I looked all confrontational and Jeremy Kyle-ish, but in reality, I probably looked like I was just trying to hold myself up. Because I was. ‘Do you think we’ve got separate bedrooms at home?’

  ‘Angela,’ my dad chimed in with his official ‘warning’ voice.

  ‘Because we haven’t.’ I ignored it. ‘And not just because we can’t afford a two-bedroom apartment.’

  ‘Angela.’ The similarities between my dad’s warning voice and Alex’s warning voice were spooky. And slightly unnerving. The two of them were at opposite ends of the kitchen, one raising an eyebrow and carrying an unconscious New Yorker in his arms while the other sat at the table nursing his glass. Mum was busy stacking plates in the sink and practising elective deafness. Things really were just like old times, except I didn’t feel like I’d gone back in time by two years; it was like I’d gone back in time by twenty.

  ‘Oh, sod it. I’ll see you in the morning.’ I folded my arms and added under my breath, ‘You bastards.’

  ‘I heard that,
’ my mother shouted as I pushed past Alex and stormed up the stairs. I was almost as mad with him as I was with them, but if they wanted to treat me like a teenager, I would behave like a teenager. I was this close to locking my bedroom door and turning the loudest album I had owned at fourteen, Spiceworld, up to full blast. Instead, I headed straight for the bathroom and punched a bale of pink towels. How come Jenny got the white ones anyway?

  I turned on the cold tap and held my wrists underneath. I needed to calm down. Clearly I was overreacting. Clearly being back in my childhood home was making me behave like, well, a child, but looking back at me in the mirror wasn’t a fourteen-year-old running on Pepsi and cheesy Wotsits who couldn’t control herself but a twenty-eight-year-old running on fried food and fumes who should know better. I turned off the tap, pressed a cool hand to my forehead and picked up a white towel to dry off.

  OK, I was still feeling a little bit contrary, but I was ready to apologize. In the morning. It was so time for bed.

  Dragging on the cord that switched the bathroom light off as I came out of the door, I bounced straight into the brick wall that was Alex’s chest. Pressing a finger against my lips, he walked me backwards into the bathroom and locked the door behind us. Surprised but still not entirely awake, I perched on the side of the bath and stared at him in the dark.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What?’ he repeated in a whisper. ‘What? Really?’

  ‘Yes.’ I was pouting. I hoped it was too dark for him to see. ‘What.’

  ‘Don’t pull that face at me, Clark.’ He crouched down in front of me. ‘What’s gotten into you?’

  ‘Me?’ I was trying to whisper but my voice seemed to be set on fishwife hiss. ‘You’re the one who’s so far up my mother’s arse I can see you when she opens her mouth. What’s with the keys?’

  ‘It’s a gesture,’ he replied, placing a hand on my knee. ‘I want them to like me and you’re not helping. Or maybe you are. I feel like they like me a whole lot more than they like you right now. And they’re not going to appear on the doorstep next week − calm down.’