I Heart Christmas Page 9

  It was another hour before Alex arrived home, all chapped cheeks and watery eyes. I silently accepted a quick kiss while he took off his three outermost layers and started excitedly relaying all of our moving news. Leaning over the back of the sofa, I watched as he went straight into the kitchen, debating the value of full-service movers versus hiring someone to do the heavy stuff and us doing the rest with the band’s van, carefully stepping over Grace’s toys and moving around Louisa’s suitcase. I didn’t even laugh until he opened the fridge, ignored the dozens of juice cartons and premixed formula, and reached right in for a Coke.

  ‘Craig and Graham will totally help,’ he said, collapsing on the sofa and staring at the Christmas tree. ‘And it’s not like we have that much …’

  I placed my hands on his shoulders, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek.

  ‘Angela?’

  ‘Alex.’

  ‘Why is there a box of diapers under the tree?’

  ‘We have a visitor,’ I said, kissing the other cheek and clambering over the back of the sofa to join him. ‘Louisa and Grace are here.’

  Alex closed his eyes, shook his head and opened them again.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know,’ I said, snuggling up to him as close as I could. ‘Unexpected. They’re in our bed.’

  ‘Is she OK? I mean, that’s not super like her, is it?’ He raked a hand through his hair, a look of concern on his face.

  He was the best. Whatever past life Angela had had to get me this man in this life, I couldn’t thank her enough. At this point, I was starting to believe there was a good chance that I had been Jesus. Or at least one of those people who hand out free cheese in the supermarket.

  ‘I think,’ I replied. ‘She’s being a bit vague and she doesn’t want to talk about Tim, like, at all, but I’ll find out tomorrow when she’s not so knackered.’

  ‘Cool.’ He kissed the end of my nose and sighed. ‘I gotta tell you, I kind of thought, just for a second there, those diapers were your wacky way of telling me you were pregnant.’

  I laughed. And laughed. And then laughed some more.

  ‘What?’ Alex looked at me. ‘It’s such a crazy idea?’

  ‘On top of moving and starting the new job and everything else?’ I asked. ‘Yes. It’s such a crazy idea.’

  ‘I don’t think it would be so bad,’ he said, draining his drink and turning his attention to me. ‘I think it would be kind of awesome actually.’

  ‘Grace has been here for two hours,’ I said, pointing at the chocolate-covered rug and the chocolate-covered me, ‘and she has decimated the apartment.’

  ‘I just figured you’d been in the Nutella again,’ he said, his fingers dancing around the buttons on my shirt.

  ‘That was one time,’ I replied, slapping his hands away. ‘And there’s a baby in the next room. Control yourself, man.’

  ‘Fine,’ he pouted, fastening me right up to the throat and kissing my nose. ‘I’ll go get the air mattress out the basement.’

  Aah, the basement. Of course.

  ‘You can stay there and think up baby names.’ Alex stood up and stretched with a great big grin on his face. His stupid, handsome face.

  ‘But I’ve already got you a present,’ I shouted after him as he vanished through the front door. ‘And it doesn’t need changing five times a day.’

  One of my biggest concerns about motherhood had always been how early I would have to get up in the morning. At six fourteen the following morning, that concern was proved to be valid.

  ‘Anala!’ Grace leapt onto the airbed, displaying no interest in how ironic she was making her name. ‘Aah.’

  Without another peep, she crawled under the covers and draped herself across me, thumb in mouth, eyes wide open.

  ‘Hey, Grace,’ Alex said, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and yawning loudly. ‘Do you remember me?’

  ‘No,’ she replied without even looking at him. Graceless and tactless. Admittedly only nineteen months old but still, when did a girl gather her manners?

  ‘Morning,’ Louisa sang out as she sailed out of the bedroom, looking as though the last twenty-four hours hadn’t even happened. ‘Shall I put the coffee on? Hello, Alex, sorry to wake you up so early. Madam doesn’t understand the concept of jet lag.’

  ‘No problem,’ Alex replied, rolling off the airbed and subtly adjusting his boxers while he thought no one was looking. ‘Let me make the coffee, you take a seat. It’s not really that early.’

  He was such a filthy liar. Alex Reid never saw the wrong side of ten a.m. if he could help it. I’d had to develop a full-on stealthy getting ready system so that I could sneak out of the apartment in the morning without waking him up that mostly involved getting dressed in the bathroom and trying not to fall over. It had a fifty–fifty success rate.

  ‘So what are the grand plans for today?’ Louisa breezed, appearing above me with a sippy cup and outstretched arms. ‘Christmas in New York. Dazzle me.’

  I handed over the baby, now fully aware of why Louisa had such awesome, toned arms. ‘I don’t know.’ I looked longingly at Alex. So much for our day together. ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lou said. ‘We did all the touristy things when we came out for your wedding. You’re the Christmas addict. Surely there’s something fabulous me, you and Gracie could do together?’

  ‘We could go ice skating?’ I suggested. ‘Would she like that?’

  ‘Bit too young, I think,’ she replied. ‘What would you be doing if I wasn’t here?’

  I eyed my husband’s backside as he bent over the coffee maker, trying to work out why it wasn’t making coffee, and coughed. ‘I don’t think you’d want to do what I’d be doing if you weren’t here,’ I said, wondering when would be a good time to tell him he needed to plug it in first. ‘Christmas shopping?’

  ‘Ooh.’ Louisa’s face lit up. ‘I could always do with grabbing a few bits. Might not be the best thing to do with madam here, though. She hasn’t quite grasped the concept of “not everything is mine” yet.’

  Alex, having finally woken up enough to locate the ‘on’ switch, sat down beside Lou on the sofa and ruffled Grace’s hair.

  ‘I can look after Grace if you guys want to go off into the city?’ he suggested. ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘That’s really sweet,’ Lou said as Grace turned to eye her wannabe babysitter with suspicion. ‘But she can be a real pain in the arse if you’re not used to kids. I’m saying that and I love her. I couldn’t put you through it for an entire day.’

  ‘What if it was just half a day?’ he said. ‘I’ll take the morning shift so you guys can shop and talk shit about me and Tim and then I’ll find something fun for us to do all together this afternoon?’

  ‘You, sir, are a genius,’ Lou said with a smile. ‘How does that sound to you, Angela?’

  It sounded to me like she was right – Alex was a genius. He knew I needed some alone time with Louisa to find out what was going on and he knew that if I entered Bloomingdales with Grace, I was likely to exit without her. To think he was willing to throw himself onto that adorable blonde grenade for me …

  ‘It’ll be good practice for me anyway, right, Ange?’ Alex hoisted Grace onto his lap, earning himself a punch to the nose, followed by a hug. ‘Log some babysitting hours before we get one of our own.’

  Louisa turned her head towards me very slowly, an incredibly smug look on her face and eyebrows quirked so high they were practically in space.

  ‘Good practice,’ I replied weakly. ‘I’m going to go and have a shower then.’

  Mew.

  New York had decided to give us a break with the weather, and as we trotted up the subway steps at 59th and Lex, the sun shone happily and the air was fresh. The snow that had fallen the night before had all but vanished, and, if it weren’t for the Christmas carols blaring out of the speakers outside Bloomingdales, you might have mistaken it for a fresh spring day. Something I would have been hard
-pressed to mistake for anything else was the sexy silhouette of one Jenny Lopez as she strode up the street to meet us. While hiding in the shower, I realised I was going to need help with Lou – in the shopping and interrogation stakes – and Jenny was an expert at both. A quick email exchange later and she had called in to the office with a personal day and was on her way to Bloomies. She and Louisa had experienced what was fair to say a bumpy start to their friendship but they had been so far up each other’s arses at mine and Alex’s wedding the summer before, I was almost surprised that Lou had shown up on my doorstep and not Jenny’s.

  ‘Lou Lou!’ Jenny bounded across the street with little to no concern for the ‘Don’t Walk’ sign and barrelled straight into Louisa, spinning her around and almost knocking us both to the ground. ‘Ohmigod, you look amazing! How do you look amazing? You just got in yesterday? You should look like shit. You should look like Angie. Angie, how come you look like shit?’

  Louisa looked like a woman reborn, all shiny hair, rosy cheeks and clothes that didn’t need ironing. I looked as though I’d been woken up at six a.m. and had spent the night sleeping on an air mattress next to a man who had forgotten all duvet-sharing etiquette, for no apparent reason.

  ‘Hi, Jenny. Thanks. You look nice.’

  ‘Well, duh.’ She threw her long, curly ponytail over her shoulder and gave me a cursory peck on the cheek. ‘So what’s the plan?’

  ‘Christmas shopping?’ I said, pointing up at the best department store in the entire world. ‘Shameless indulgence? And then maybe a cheeky midday beverage?’

  ‘First stop for you is the make-up counter because you need all of the make-up.’ Jenny waved her hand in my face. My sad, unmade-up face. ‘Jesus, Angie, it’s always like I’m starting over with you.’

  ‘This is what you get for trying to do nice things for people,’ I sulked, letting the two of them bully me through the doors as they cackled to each other.

  I’d given Jenny a very brief overview of the situation in my email and warned her that my unexpected visitor wasn’t really feeling terribly chatty about whatever was going on so we’d probably need to use a softly-softly approach. But, of course, softly-softly to me wasn’t the same as softly-softly to La Lopez. We had only been wandering around the second floor for five minutes when she started.

  ‘So, Lou Lou,’ Jenny said, picking up a Kooples blazer, scrutinising it for a second and then putting it back with a tiny shake of the head. ‘What the fuck is going on?’

  ‘Hmm?’ Louisa let out a confused noise while fingering the price tag of an extortionately expensive plain white T-shirt. ‘What’s that?’

  I bit my lip, hovering at Lou’s side and wondering whether or not to intervene. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea.

  ‘You, here, what gives?’ Jenny thrust a cropped black cashmere jumper at me and carried on her questioning. ‘Kind of a weird thing to do, don’t you think?’

  Folding her arms over her boobs, Louisa looked at the floor and shook her head. Nope, this definitely wasn’t a good idea.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she replied, her voice becoming very crisp and proper. ‘I’m just here to see Angela. Just a last-minute trip, that’s all.’

  She waited for Jenny to respond but when our personal shopper-slash-interrogator shrugged and moved on, we both let out a sigh of relief.

  ‘You know the last time someone turned up on New York’s doorstep with zero notice, it was this chick.’ Jenny pointed at me before adding a silver studded T-shirt to the growing pile in my arms. I had a feeling she was trying to keep my hands busy so I wouldn’t be able to get involved in any potential violence. ‘And we all know what that was about.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Louisa appeared terribly interested in a charcoal crop top, decorated with a diamanté studded skull. Not something I would have chosen for her myself, but …

  ‘So tell me,’ Jenny continued, suddenly stepping right into Louisa’s face. ‘What’s going on?’

  For one impossibly tense moment, I had no idea what was going to happen. Louisa’s pale skin turned flame red and she started to vibrate. Either she was about to turn into the Incredible Hulk or …

  ‘Tim is cheating on me,’ she wailed at the top of her lungs. And with that, she began to weep hysterically, falling to her knees, clutching Jenny’s ankles. ‘He’s having an affair.’

  A startled-looking shop assistant froze beside me, eyes wide open, while the rest of Bloomingdales whispered amongst themselves.

  ‘Excuse me.’ I held out the clothes in my arms. ‘I was wondering if you could start a room for us.’

  Two minutes later, we were safely installed in a private dressing room with a very strong pitcher of mimosa, far from the main shopping floor. Apparently, having a nervous breakdown in the middle of Bloomingdales had its perks. Jenny, having switched from bitch mode to fierce protector, had all but carried Louisa into the changing rooms, giving anyone who looked at her the evil eye, while I apologised profusely to everyone we passed. Not that I thought we really had anything to apologise for but because I was English.

  ‘Lou, are you OK?’ I knelt down in front of the crumpled blonde mess that used to be my best friend, and poked her arm gently. I didn’t know where to start. ‘Do you want to go home?’

  She didn’t move or speak or even sniff. I knew first-hand how exhausting a good two solid minutes of hysterics could be, so I sat back on my heels and looked to Jenny for advice.

  ‘Here, drink this.’ Jenny handed Lou a very full glass of booze before turning to the nervous-looking assistant who hovered at the door. ‘We would like to try on all of your clothes,’ Jenny instructed. ‘Like, everything. Theory, Marc, Vince, Maje, Sandro, Equipment, Current/Elliott … you get the idea? I want sequins, I want sparkle, I want leather pants, denim, dresses and everything in the store made of cashmere.’

  ‘What sizes?’ The girl was visibly shaking.

  ‘Like, a six? A six.’ Jenny looked at me for confirmation. ‘Sixes, eights if they run small. We’re gonna buy a shit-ton of stuff so if you could make sure we get the good stuff and not the shit over at the front end of the floor, that would be awesome.’

  ‘I’ll be right back,’ the shop assistant replied, backing away uncomfortably. Poor cow.

  Jenny joined me on the floor with her own glass of fizz and gave me a ‘here goes’ glance. ‘You’re gonna feel better when you tell us what’s been going on,’ she promised. ‘And you’re gonna feel even better than that when you drink that mimosa.’

  Louisa nodded softly and pushed her hair behind her ears before sinking the drink on command. She took a deep breath, wiped a finger underneath each eye to smear away some of the runny mascara and held her glass out for a top-up.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ she said with a hiccup. ‘I should have seen it coming. It was just like you and Mark. Everything was fine and then one day, I woke up and he wasn’t there.’

  ‘He left?’ I pushed myself up to my feet, ready to run all the way to England to punch Tim Smith in the face. ‘He walked out on you and Grace?’

  ‘No, that’s not what I meant.’ Lou wrinkled her nose, looking all crumpled and small. ‘He just wasn’t there anymore, you know? Physically he was but mentally, he was somewhere else. So I thought about it and it all made sense. Late nights at the office, Saturday at the football, Sunday at tennis. Tennis, Angela. We both know what tennis means.’

  ‘Well, for me, tennis meant my ex was boffing his mistress,’ I agreed. ‘But it doesn’t mean Tim is cheating on you. Tim loves you. Tim is a good person and not a snivelling, coward of a shit of a man. And Grace, he would never do this to Grace.’

  ‘She’s right,’ Jenny cooed, rubbing a soothing hand up and down Louisa’s back. ‘Maybe he’s not cheating? Maybe he’s just an inconsiderate shit who needs his ass kicking?’

  ‘I read his texts,’ Lou whispered. ‘Yesterday morning, before he went to work. And there were all these messages from a woman called Vanessa. I don�
��t know anyone called Vanessa.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean he’s having an affair,’ I said, clutching at every straw I could find. This couldn’t be happening. I refused to believe that perfect Louisa and lovely Tim could possibly be in this situation. ‘That just means he’s getting texts from someone called Vanessa. I bet it’s someone at work.’

  ‘And I bet she’s fat,’ Jenny added. I rolled my eyes and ignored her best attempt at comfort.

  ‘Whoever she is, she’s texting my husband in the middle of the night, putting kisses at the end of her messages and talking to him about stupid bloody man stuff that I don’t know anything about.’ She took a tiny sip of her second mimosa. ‘What kind of woman texts a man about golf and her car’s engine and sends him pictures of a round of shots?’

  ‘To be fair, it doesn’t exactly sound like she’s trying to seduce him,’ I said with careful diplomacy. ‘I mean, a text about golf isn’t the same as a picture of her tits, is it?’

  ‘No, it’s worse,’ Jenny said. ‘That’s some sneaky girl shit, Angie.’

  ‘Yes!’ Louisa exclaimed, pointing at Jenny. ‘She’s all “ooh, I’m just like one of the boys except I’ve got boobs and exciting parts where you can put your thing, and did I mention I’m so much more fun than your wife?”’

  ‘Oh yeah.’ I often forgot about those girls. Or at least I tried to. Toxic.

  ‘I bet she plays computer games and always eats bacon sandwiches and loves football and even though she has beautiful, long hair and Bambi eyes, she never, ever wears make-up.’ If nothing else, Lou had already perked up a bit. ‘Because make-up is for girls and she’s just one of the lads.’

  ‘Even if he’s texting this woman,’ Jenny said, spitting out the word as though this Vanessa’s gender were questionable, ‘he might not be doing anything. Maybe he’s just going through a shitty patch and didn’t know how to talk to you. Have you tried to talk to him?’

  ‘Talk?’ Louisa smiled weakly at herself in the massive mirror behind us. ‘We don’t talk. What time will you be home? What do you want for dinner? Say goodbye to Grace for me. That’s it. He’s never home and I’m always home. Last Friday, he didn’t come home at all.’