I Heart London (12 page)

‘You’re not even thinking about it though, are you?’ she whispered as Grace gripped Alex’s finger and giggled. He looked up through his floppy black fringe and waved her hand at me.

‘Hey, Aunt Angela,’ he said on behalf of Grace. ‘I think you’re weird because I’m awesome but you don’t want to get in on this.’

And with that, my ovaries exploded.

‘So, where are we going for dinner?’ Jenny broke the tension with her usual charm. ‘I’m super-hungry.’

‘David was going to get fish and chips,’ my mum replied, still completely discombobulated. It was actually amazing to see. ‘Does that sound all right? We can get something else if you’d like.’

Annette Clark was actually deferring to Jenny Lopez. Louisa squeezed my hand in amazement. So this was where we’d been going wrong all these years − asking permission, being respectful, worrying what she would say. All along we should have been telling her what was what. From the look on his face, my dad was having a similar realization.

‘That sounds awesome,’ Jenny said, glowing. ‘Fish and chips. And tea! And scones. Awesome.’

‘Naming everything on the table is going to get real tired, real fast,’ Alex replied, still bouncing Grace on his knee and causing my womb to spasm uncontrollably. ‘It sounds great, Mrs Clark. But let me and Angela go. You guys shouldn’t have to go out of your way for us.’

‘Well, if you’re sure …’ Once again, my mother relented. And smiled. Sort of. ‘Angela knows the place we like.’

‘She does,’ I agreed. ‘But I’m not taking Grace. Can you imagine anything more heartbreaking than a baby smelling like a chippy?’

‘I should take her home.’ Louisa picked up her cue and took the baby from Alex. I took the opportunity to poke her little round cheeks. And nose. And belly. It was sort of addictive. ‘But I’ll see you tomorrow?’

‘Tomorrow,’ I confirmed, kissing her on the cheek and kissing Grace on the head. So soft. So, so soft. ‘Text me when you’ve got home.’

The front door shut behind Lou while Alex put on his jacket and stood up beside me.

‘So, five cod and chips?’ I grabbed my handbag from the counter and dabbed on more lip balm. I wasn’t happy about leaving the house again before I’d been properly beautified.

‘I’m sure you and I can share a chips,’ Mum replied, fussing over Jenny and buttering some bread. ‘Surely you don’t want a full bag to yourself?’

‘Surely she does,’ Jenny replied. ‘But we’ve got to get her ass into a wedding dress, right, Annette? So it’s sharesies on the chips, Angela.’

My mother laughed. Out loud. For people to hear. My dad remained silent.

‘Come on.’ Alex took my hand in his and pulled me towards the door before I Darth Vadered my mother to death. ‘Show me where this chippy is.’

Outside, the evening was warmer than I’d expected, but I was glad I was wearing a jumper. Dad’s garden was enjoying the early summer, and the smell of freshly cut grass and roses made me smile. Not only because it meant Mum had made him mow the lawn for my arrival, but also because it smelled of home. New York could smell of a thousand wonderful things at once, but the clean, glossy green smell of cut grass? Unless you followed one of the giant mutant mowers around Central Park all day, it was hard to find. But here it was, right by the front door.

‘Who do I have to pay to see you smile like that more often?’ Alex said, slipping his arm around my shoulders and placing a very gentle kiss on my lips.

‘When do I not smile?’ I asked, returning his kiss and holding him tightly. The sun was just starting to dip down low and, nap or no nap, I was fading fast.

‘Seems like we’ve both been too busy lately.’ Alex stretched his arms out so wide his shirt came untucked, showing just a hint of his hard, flat belly. ‘There hasn’t been nearly enough smiling.’

‘Well, don’t get used to it while we’re staying in this house,’ I said, grabbing one of his outstretched hands and pulling him down the garden path. ‘Fish, chips and then bed.’

‘I can totally get behind that,’ he said as he followed me, holding on to my hand as we went.

The strangeness that had hit me in the kitchen followed Alex and me down the road and across to the shops. These were streets I’d wandered endlessly as a teenager. Suburban Surrey with its family-friendly cars and its privet hedges and its bright and sparkly net curtains. I’d walked back and forth from the library with my mum, arms full of books she thought were inappropriate but let me read anyway. I’d wandered around aimlessly in cycling shorts and baggy T-shirts with Louisa, eating Push Pops from the corner shop and wondering if the boys we liked liked us. And I’d driven up and down them with Mark, listening to him moaning about visiting my parents. Me and these streets had a lot of history. Alex clashed wildly against the four-wheel-drives and Little Tikes play sets that lay out on the lawns we passed. His shirt was too tight, his tie was too skinny, and he looked altogether too confident. Loose shoulders, long strides, black hair. He looked like a skyscraper in the middle of a row of semis.

‘I’m so glad you came out early,’ I said, speeding up my step to fall into stride alongside him. ‘Is there anything you want to do tomorrow? We are sort of on holiday − we should do something fun.’

‘You’re not going to like this, but I think we should do something with your folks tomorrow,’ Alex suggested. ‘Look at it from their position. You just walked through the door, their house is full of loud Americans they’ve never met before and one of them thinks he’s going to marry their daughter.’

‘Thinks he is?’

‘OK,
is
going to marry their daughter,’ he said, pulling my left hand up into the air and waving my engagement ring in my face. ‘But they’re probably just as freaked out as you. We should, I don’t know, go to some country pub or something. Or take them out for lunch somewhere. I want to make a good impression.’

‘Alex, you’ve saved me from spinsterhood and you held a baby,’ I said, trying to process his family Sunday lunch idea, incorporating Jenny as our overenthusiastic Labrador. ‘You’re golden.’

‘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 points. 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.