I Heart Christmas (22 page)

While I attempted to process all of the crappiness, Grace inexplicably threw herself to the floor with a shriek. I jumped a mile, my heart pounding, but Louisa didn’t even flinch. A split second later, Grace leapt to her feet and began to spin in circles, laughing her mad little head off.

‘Don’t worry,’ Lou said, patting my hand and forcing herself to her feet. ‘She does that sometimes. My little girl is mental. Ice skating will tire her out. I hope.’

‘I see.’ I pulled my scarf back up over my frozen nose and followed her across the grass. ‘Tell me, would you say you drank a lot while you were breastfeeding or just a regular amount?’

In my mind, a work’s Christmas do meant three bottles of red, three bottles of white and a couple of boxes of own-brand mince pies. If you were lucky. But my work’s Christmas do wasn’t a hastily arranged shindig with people karaoke-ing to ‘Last Christmas’ around the photocopier. This was Spencer Media’s Annual Holiday Bash and I should have known better. With a skip in my step and reindeer antlers in my bag, I left Alex, Grace and Louisa packing, hiding in boxes and passing out on the settee respectively, thinking I’d pop into the party, get my air guitar on to ‘Merry Christmas, Everybody’
and be back home in time to pretend to understand all the jokes on
The Daily Show
. And then I arrived at the party.

Before I’d even got past the velvet rope, I managed to slyly lose my antlers in a bin in case the massive bouncers searched my bag and refused to let me in due to the fact I looked like I was planning to have fun. I was suddenly very aware that this was not going to be a Fun Party. This was going to be a Cool Party.

Mew.

Spencer Media held almost all of its big shindigs at a restaurant in the Meatpacking District I never, ever went to. I’d heard amazing things about their parties – that they were filled with celebs, that they had the coolest DJs and the most delicious drinks. Obviously I never heard much about food but it was a New York media party – people didn’t eat in front of each other. And while I’d heard lots of exciting things
about
the Spencer parties, I’d never actually
been
to one. I’d either been too busy working or watching
Top Model
on Jenny’s living room floor or chasing Alex around the apartment with a cold teabag. We had been married for more than a year, we had to make our own fun.

‘Angela!’

The party was a mass of barely moving, barely smiling skinny girls in tight dresses and shorter-than-average men in expensive suits. Happily, one of those tight-dress-wearing skinny girls was my tight-dress-wearing girl. Delia pushed past a long, narrow table covered in half-empty vodka sodas and pulled me into a very welcome hug. She smelled how she looked – elegant and rich. Her hair was pulled up in a messy bun, her make-up barely there but flawless and her short black dress fitted and sexy without being revealing. I was so happy I’d decided not to wear my Mrs Santa outfit and if I had the chance to go home and change, I’d probably go with a slinky black number instead of an Urban Outfitters sweatshirt covered in seasonal penguins and red sequin shorts. Perhaps if I had been in the office earlier, I would have got the ‘absolutely no sense of humour allowed’ memo.

‘I’m so glad you’re here.’ Delia made no reference to my quirky ensemble but then she was used to me by now. ‘This party’s killing me. It’s even more boring than Grandpa’s board meetings.’

‘Oh, I can imagine,’ I replied. It was a lie. I couldn’t. ‘Where are all the
Gloss
people?’

‘I haven’t really seen anyone,’ she said, grabbing two colourful-looking cocktails from a tray. I really hoped at least one of them was for me. ‘I thought I saw Jesse earlier but no one else. Regular staffers never really come to these things, you know.’

I took a decent slurp through the straw without a blind clue what I was drinking. Thankfully it was good, so I was currently one for three on things I’d heard about the Spencer Media parties because the music was terrible and I hadn’t recognised a single celebrity yet. I had seen a lot of size-zero girls who gave me the evil eye every time I came in shovelling a croissant down my gullet and tried not to make eye contact with me when I used the treadmill in the company gym once a month but no actual celebs.

‘It is a Friday night.’ Delia waved her hand around the room full of strangers. ‘And we did actively hire people who wouldn’t be impressed by a party like this.’

‘But they didn’t know it was going to be a party like this,’ I protested. ‘I told everyone it was going to be a super-fun proper Christmas party with plastic reindeer antlers and crackers and ugly men putting mistletoe through their belt buckles and they still haven’t come.’

‘I can’t think why?’ She creased her forehead. ‘What the hell is a cracker?’

Honestly, I had to wonder what was wrong with people sometimes.

‘What kind of office party doesn’t even have a photocopier for someone to scan their arse on?’ I asked. ‘I can’t even see a Christmas tree.’

‘Because it’s not a Christmas party,’ she reminded me. Again. ‘It’s a holiday party.’

‘I could go off you,’ I said. If she wasn’t careful, I wasn’t even going to give her the spare bit of tinsel I had in my handbag for her hair.

‘So, how’s your big week been?’ Delia asked, clearly dancing around the elephant in the room. The identical, psychotic elephant that should not be named. ‘Any new drama?’

I shrugged. ‘Louisa seems to have moved in indefinitely and may or may not be breaking several international kidnapping laws, Jenny is convinced she’s going to have a baby with or without an active father and I have to move house tomorrow even though I haven’t actually started packing at all.’

‘Oh.’

‘I’m closing the magazine all on my own for the first time on Monday because your grandfather is taking my Mary upstate early, my parents fly in on Tuesday, I still haven’t bought a turkey and I haven’t been able to find a bottle of Advocaat anywhere in this city.’

‘I see.’

‘Oh, and your mental sister is still mental. But on the upside, sitting at my desk in absolute terror does make the rest of it feel like a piece of piss.’

‘Angela …’ Delia smiled but sighed at the same time. On anyone else it would have looked patronising, but on Delia it looked, well, patronising but she got away with it. She was after all a patron of several charities. Including me. ‘If you’re that against it, then we’ll can it, I’ll find her something else. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable in your own office.’

‘Ignore me,’ I said, my martyr complex growing stronger with every sip of my cocktail. ‘I feel uncomfortable every time I eat saturated fat in front of the fashion editor. I told you I’d give her a chance so I’ll give her a chance.’

‘And I told you if she messes up, I’ll fix it,’ she promised.

‘Just make sure there’s a body for my mother to bury,’ I replied. ‘That’s all I ask.’

‘So you’re not going to freak out when I tell you she just walked in?’ Delia winced and nodded to the door behind me. I didn’t want to turn around. I wanted to close my eyes and wake up in a double glazing sales office in Croydon with a paper crown on my head, singing ‘Mary’s Boy Child’ with Tony from marketing.
Anywhere but here
, I whispered in my head,
anywhere but here
.

‘Deedee! Angela!’

Steeling myself, I pasted a smile on my face and for the first time since I’d walked into the party was glad I hadn’t worn anything nice or expensive or dry clean only.

‘Look at you!’ She glowed from head to toe. It made me sick.

‘Look at me,’ I said, my voice completely and utterly dead. Her diamonds made my sequin shorts look like a reject from the
Saturday Night Fever
costume department, although the red on her skin-tight satin mini-dress did bring out the red in my bloodshot eyes.

‘You look awesome,’ she said with complete sincerity. ‘One thing I always loved about you, Angela, is you’re an individual. You have your own look. I wish I was secure enough to make your brave style choices.’

‘Do you need a drink?’ Delia interrupted and pointed across the room before the ground could completely swallow me up. ‘Because the bar is over there.’

‘Oh, that would be fantastic, thank you,’ Cici nodded at her sister. ‘Anything really. Champagne would be great. Or a vodka soda. Anything but those awful mixed drinks they’re trying to force on people, they’re all sugar. It’s disgusting.’

I prayed for Delia to punch her sister right in the face while finishing up my sugary, mixed drink in silence. Delia stood between the two of us in silence for a moment, looking at me, then at Cici, before necking the rest of her own drink and stalking off to the bar.

‘So, boss,’ Cici said, nudging me in the ribs and winking. ‘Don’t you think this week went so well? I think we’re going to make quite the team.’

‘You do?’ I asked. My mind was playing a highlights reel of some of mine and Cici’s greatest hits. If you put the Benny Hill theme over it, the whole thing was quite funny. If you didn’t, it looked like a horror movie.

‘Of course, I mean, we’ve been through so much, I feel as though I really get you,’ she replied. ‘And I have so many great ideas for the magazine. Spending this week getting to know the team really gave me so much insight. I believe this is going to be a fantastic collaboration for both of us.’

‘A collaboration,’ I repeated. This was entirely my own fault. If I hadn’t been hungover when I was interviewing assistants, I could have just hired Rag, Tag, Cottontail, or whatever that lovely gay boy was called, and had nothing more to worry about than whether or not he was judging me for wanting three sugars in my coffee. ‘You have ideas?’

‘Oh, so many,’ she confirmed, her eyes flashing with what I hoped was enthusiasm. It was that or she was off her meds. ‘I’ve been a huge fan of
Gloss
since you started. I genuinely respect how you speak to every woman because, you know, I’m a woman.’

‘Glad to have that cleared up,’ I said, looking for Delia. I needed her. And more importantly, I needed a drink and I didn’t care what that said about me. ‘I did wonder.’

‘You’re so funny.’ Cici gave me another blast of her practised, real-life LOL again and pressed her perfectly painted paws to her chest. Her nails were spike sharp and blood red, her fingers covered in platinum and gemstones. She might be a woman but she wasn’t really everywoman. ‘I’m genuinely happy that I’m going to have a voice in the media. At last.’

‘Well, you know there isn’t that much editorial work in your role?’ I didn’t want to upset her if I could help it but if it had to be done, I’d rather do it in a room full of witnesses. ‘I think it’s going to be very admin-oriented. As in totally. Forever.’

‘Is that right?’ her voice cooled by about fifty degrees and the enthusiasm in her eyes paled down to a general sense of amusement.

‘Pretty much,’ I said. ‘So if that’s not something you’re really interested in, I would totally understand if you wanted to wait for a more active editorial role. At another magazine. Somewhere else. Far away.’

‘Oh no.’ Cici reached out one of her claws to brush my hair back from my shoulder and grasp me in her Vulcan death grip. It hurt. Dr Spock must have taught special classes at her Upper East Side prep school. ‘I’m staying at
Gloss
. It’s the right place for me.’

‘It is?’ I wondered if her nails were painted red so they wouldn’t show the blood.

‘It is,’ she confirmed. ‘And I don’t think it’s going to be so long before I have an active editorial role.’

I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say. Instead I smiled brightly and thanked my lucky stars that she wasn’t planning to douse me in pig’s blood at the party.

‘So I’ll see you Monday,’ she said, releasing my shoulder with an expensive smile and a wink. ‘I have plans. I’m excited.’

‘Fan-fucking-tastic.’ I smiled back as she melted into the party, people seemingly instinctively stepping aside for a Spencer. That or their internal psycho alarm was going off and they didn’t quite know why. Luckily for me, I was fully aware.

‘Where did she go?’ Delia reappeared, two tall glasses in her hands, one clear, the others brightly coloured and full of elaborate umbrellas and neon-coloured straws. ‘I had to stand at the bar and
wait
for her goddamn vodka soda.’

‘She’s just gone,’ I said, taking one of the cocktails and the vodka soda. I’d earned them. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘Well, I’m glad you two are playing nice.’ She gave me a weak smile and the nice-twin version of Cici’s nudge. ‘Who knows, you might end up being friends, God forbid.’

I downed the clear drink with a shudder, ignoring Delia’s wide eyes and setting the ice-filled glass on the tray of a passing waiter.

‘I think God would forbid it actually,’ I said, resting my elbows behind me and leaning on the table. ‘But it is Christmas and we are due a miracle.’

‘Don’t count it out,’ Delia said, leaning beside me. ‘Stranger things have happened.’

After a smash and grab at the only tray of canapés that had come our way and fifteen minutes of intense debate over which of the Spencer Media girls looked sad because they hadn’t eaten in the last month and which were just sad in general, I was forced to leave Delia to a gaggle of not-nearly-good-enough-for-her suits and hunt down the toilets. Obviously, because I was wearing the highest heels I owned, a pair of ankle-shattering Guiseppe Zanottis (purchased because they were on super sale and because Jenny said they made me look skinny – double standards, thy name is Angela), the toilets were up a set of extremely steep stairs. And because everyone was drinking, no one was eating and lots of people needed somewhere to do their drugs, there was a queue a mile long. I crossed my legs for as long as I could before resolving to find another loo – this was a big restaurant, it was part of a hotel, there had to be more than one ladies’ room. Two seconds away from committing to book a room for the night just to have a wee, I finally found the wheelchair- and high-heel-accessible lav on the ground floor. And it was unlocked. Praise be to baby Jesus in the manger.