I Heart London (22 page)

I opened the door to find Mark standing there on my doorstep just like we were sixteen and felt my stomach flip. Just not in the good way.

‘One minute.’ I held up a finger, slammed the door shut in his face and raced into the downstairs toilet to throw up. Well, there went breakfast. I was going to have no trouble getting into my dress on Saturday. I cleaned myself up, gargled with Dad’s disgusting Listerine and went back to the door. There really was no getting out of this now.

With an added, just-puked glow, I opened the door again, offering Mark what I hoped was a dazzling smile. ‘Sorry,’ I said, pushing him out of the way and locking the door behind me. ‘Forgot something. Shall we go?’

‘And so we decided to start our own magazine.’ I kept my eyes safely on the road ahead of me as we pulled up alongside Richmond Green in Mark’s Range Rover. The same Range Rover. I couldn’t look at the back seat, also known as the scene of the crime, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to look at Mark. Even I knew beating him to death wasn’t a good idea while he was at the wheel, despite what the devil on my shoulder was suggesting. ‘So that’s what we’re doing. It’s called
Gloss
. I’m going to be in charge of the website and work with the editorial team on the actual magazine too. It’s good. It’s going to be good.’

‘Sounds like you’ve been busy,’ Mark commented, reversing into a parking spot and turning off the engine. ‘I wish I had half as interesting a story for you.’

Up until the car stopped, it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d been crowned King of England − I hadn’t let him get a word in edgeways. I’d always been a nervous talker, but this was ridiculous. Every second of silence seemed to turn back time. From the moment I’d got into the car, everything had started slipping away − New York seemed like just a memory. Alex? No one but a boy in a band I saw one time. Jenny? A figment of my overactive and extremely fashionable imagination. The whole thing made more sense as a fever dream I’d had after falling asleep listening to MTV and reading
Grazia
. Sitting in my old seat, in my old car. Mark was still wearing the same aftershave. It was all I could do not to rest my hand on his thigh, just like old times. I didn’t want to, it was just habit. A bad habit. How did people cope with break-ups without leaving the country? I tried to picture my apartment, my walk to the subway, the Manhattan skyline waiting outside the window, but it felt like I was looking at someone else’s photographs.

The only way to bring it to life was to keep talking, to force it to exist. Only the more I talked it up, the less realistic it seemed. Mark certainly seemed to be having trouble believing me. And why should he believe me? I was that lazy, dumpy girlfriend who sat on his sofa churning out sad little stories about mutated amphibian ninjas to scrape out a living. That Angela would never have done half the things I had done. At least, she would never have survived them.

‘Sit outside?’ Mark asked, snapping me out of my confusing pity party. ‘Pint?’

‘Yeah,’ I nodded, following him over to a picnic bench by the Cricketers. Once upon a time, it had been ‘our’ pub. I wondered if it was still his. He vanished inside the darkened bar and I pulled out my phone to check for messages. Nothing but a quick text from Louisa, reinforcing the feeling that I’d imagined every event of the past two years. I spun my engagement ring around my finger as I read the message − she was crying off any bridesmaiding for the day because Grace was sick. I wondered if she really was ill or if Lou was just sick of me and Jenny, but I’d promised myself I’d make it up to her at the hen do anyway. As soon as I worked out what I was making up for exactly.

Richmond was as calm and peaceful as it always was. I gazed out across the green and thanked the sun for trying to shine. It wasn’t quite all the way there, but, like me, it was giving it a go. I remembered all the summer Saturdays Louisa, Tim, Mark and I had spent on that lawn with a picnic basket. Well, first with bags of McDonald’s and bottles of cider and then with Tesco bags full of baguettes and brie and those mini bottles of prosecco, and then eventually a proper wicker basket, picnic blanket, real glasses and everything. Or at least, Louisa and Tim had bought us the set for Christmas before we broke up. I figured Mark and Katie were using it now. I was destined to remain a plastic bag person. I’d only break a real glass anyway.

‘Here you go.’ Mark appeared with a pint in each hand and two bags of Kettle Chips hanging out of his mouth. ‘They didn’t have salt and vinegar.’

‘S’fine.’ I took the bag of Spicy Thai. ‘I’m used to it. They don’t have them in America.’

‘Fucking hell.’ Mark opened the Sea Salt and laughed. ‘How do you survive?’

‘I manage,’ I replied with narrow eyes. His overfamiliarity was irritating. ‘So, what have you been up to?’

‘Work mostly.’ He chomped on a crisp thoughtfully, blue eyes looking to the heavens for a better answer. ‘Banking’s not the best place to be right now. The hours are just as bad but the job security’s gone. Bonuses are down, perks are off the table completely. Do you know, I have to work until nine now before they pay for a car to get me home?’

‘That’s just terrible,’ I said, trying to look sympathetic. ‘You couldn’t just get the tube like a normal person?’

‘After nine? Back to Wimbledon?’ He looked as though I’d just proposed he walk barefoot across the Sahara. ‘I remember a time when you wouldn’t leave the house unless I promised to come and collect you in the car.’

‘Well, as the great Gary Barlow once said, everything changes,’ I retorted, sipping my pint. And it was disgusting. ‘I only really take the subway now. It’s just easier.’

‘I still can’t believe you’re living in New York,’ Mark said, smiling his easy smile and shaking his dark blond head. ‘Sounds like a lot has changed. For you.’

‘It has,’ I agreed, mentally preparing my speech. ‘It’s good—’

‘Never really been a big America fan,’ he said, cutting me off with a rap on the table. ‘Vegas maybe. LA’s all right. But New York’s not for me. I can’t see how anyone can stand it. Terrible place.’

‘How so?’ I asked coolly. Really? He was going to sit there and slag off my city?

‘It’s just so rush-rush-rush.’ He waved his arms around his head and gave a mock shiver. ‘Dirty taxis, overpriced restaurants, terrible beer. And the people? What a bunch of arseholes. They all think they know better.’

‘I actually think the people are really friendly,’ I said, turning my glass round on the spot. ‘And it’s not such a rush once you get into the rhythm.’

‘Or if you don’t get off the settee?’ He laughed again then tried to choke it off when he saw my face. As it happened, I spent a very healthy amount of time on the sofa, but he didn’t get to make a joke about it.

‘Well, New Yorkers can be as friendly on the sofa as English people are on the back seats of their cars,’ I said as calmly as I possibly could. Mark spluttered and spat a mouthful of beer out onto the pavement. ‘That’s quite friendly, isn’t it?’

‘Angela.’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and remembered his stiff upper lip. ‘Do we have to?’

‘Oh God, you’re so English.’ I couldn’t help but laugh. It felt good. I sat up, leaning my elbows on the table and looked him in the eye. ‘Mark, I don’t care.’

‘I know it wasn’t ideal, the way it happened,’ he said, wiping stray spots of ale from his chin. ‘I never wanted it to work out that way, but things with me and you, they were—’

‘Seriously,’ I cut in before he said something he would regret. ‘Really. I don’t care.’

I wasn’t sure if it was true, but I certainly didn’t want to hear the excuses he’d been working on for two years. This, I reminded myself for the umpteenth time, was closure, not revenge or retribution. I didn’t need to hear his whining, I just needed to show up, look amazing and leave the bigger person. Not physically bigger, though; I had lost a bit of weight.

‘Good to know.’ He sipped at his beer again with caution. I let him finish a whole mouthful before I started talking again. Just in case. If he spat on my dress, I would have to kill him.

‘So, I’m engaged.’ I splayed my fingers out on the table and let the ring twinkle against the dark wood. ‘Not to you.’ I clarified.

‘I assumed we were officially off when I found your engagement ring in a bag of piss,’ he replied crisply. I looked up suddenly. Oh yeah. I did that. ‘So who’s the lucky chap?’

‘It’s a funny story,’ I started with suspicion. I knew Louisa and Tim must have mentioned Alex to him − there was no way it hadn’t come up in conversation over the past two years, even if they didn’t exactly hang out often these days. And he totally already knew I was engaged − his mum would have been on the phone to him faster than
Gossip Girl
when she found out.
‘You know that band Stills? We saw them at the Garage years ago.’

‘Don’t remember,’ he sniffed. Ha. I had him on the ropes.

‘Well, we saw them,’ I carried on, moving in for the KO. ‘Anyway, I met this guy in a coffee shop one day and he turned out to be the lead singer. And then he turned out to be my fiancé.’

‘You’re getting married to a bloke in a band?’ Mark did not look nearly as beaten as I would like. In fact, he was trying very hard to cover a very smug expression. ‘Really, Angela?’

‘Really, Mark.’ I was confused. ‘And that’s funny because?’

‘It’s just a bit of a cliché, isn’t it?’ He started helping himself to my crisps. That shit wouldn’t fly when we were together and it certainly wasn’t going to fly now. I snatched the packet back. ‘You bugger off to New York with a cob on and shack up with a musician? What, do you think you’re Sid and Nancy?’

‘That’s an interesting way of looking at what happened,’ I sniffed. ‘Although I suppose I did have “a bit of a cob on” at the time. But I’m not just shacked up with a musician, I’m getting married. And hopefully not knifed to death in the Chelsea Hotel.’

‘I don’t want you to think I’m being an arsehole,’ he said, trying to reach across the table and cover my hand with his. ‘But I’m trying to make you see sense here. You can’t run off to New York and marry a rock star on the rebound. That’s not how life works.’

‘I’m not on the rebound,’ I screeched, entirely unconcerned about the old couple at the neighbouring table. ‘This didn’t happen yesterday. I’m not a sixteen-year-old groupie.’

‘Will you calm down?’ Mark hissed across the table. ‘I forget how long you’ve been gone. You’ve clearly spent far too long with the Americans.’

‘Or just enough time away from you,’ I countered. ‘Don’t talk to me like I’m a child.’

‘Then don’t behave like one,’ he snapped back. ‘Don’t be so stupid. Do you really think this man is going to marry you? He’ll probably have moved when you get back or your keys won’t work and all your stuff will be on the street.’

‘Given that he’s here with me and we’re getting married on Saturday, that seems unlikely,’ I said triumphantly.

Mark gave a quick demo of his famous goldfish impression, with bonus opening and closing. I swept a stray piece of hair out of my face and folded my arms. Ah-ha. Have that, you bastard.

‘You’re getting married on Saturday?’

‘Yes.’

‘And that’s why you’re home?’

‘Yes.’ Well, sort of.

‘Were you going to tell me?’ He had suddenly gone very pale. ‘If I hadn’t called?’

‘Would it matter?’ I felt myself flush opposite him. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Of course it would matter,’ he mumbled, pushing crisps around in the open packet. ‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘Stop calling me stupid.’ I was losing my temper incredibly quickly and that was not part of my be the bigger man plan. ‘You don’t know me. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Yeah, I do know you Angela,’ he said, raising his voice. ‘I’ve known you since you were sixteen. I know your mum, I know your dad, I know you’re allergic to penicillin, I know you put two sugars in your tea even though you tell people you only have one, I know you love reading those crappy celebrity magazines in the bath for hours on end, I know you won’t go out in flip-flops until you’ve painted your toenails.’

He paused for breath and turned down the volume slightly.

‘I know you would go out and buy me Lemsip at the first sign of a cold. I know the smell of mushy peas makes you yak but you never complain about me having them. I know
Watership Down
makes you cry. I know that you were my first and I was yours and this is just the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.’

I didn’t know who was more stunned − me or the old couple beside us.

‘Does he know all that?’ Mark pressed his lips together in a thin, tight line. ‘This Alex?’

‘He knows I get easily upset at the death of cartoon rabbits and that I’m thoughtful enough to buy cold medicine when needed, yes,’ I replied in a low voice. ‘But I don’t think he’s terribly concerned as to who I lost my virginity to.’

Mark stood up with a start. ‘I meant you were my first love. But whatever.’

He clambered out of the table, kicking it as he went and spilling his unfinished beer everywhere.

‘Oh, I say.’ The old man beside us winked at his wife.

‘Drama,’ she replied, lifting her gin and bitter lemon.

‘Oh, bloody hell.’ I snaffled a handful of crisps and legged it across the road after him.

‘And I’m the one who got all American and dramatic?’ I ran up behind Mark and gave him a good hard push in the back. ‘What was that all about, you woman?’

He carried on walking in silence until he was right in front of the car and then turned around with a face like thunder.

‘You’re an idiot,’ he said in a perfectly calm voice. ‘I hope you know that.’

‘As it happens, I do,’ I replied. ‘But I don’t know what that’s got to do with you.’

He huffed and puffed for a moment, looking left and right before grabbing my shoulders and shoving me roughly against the car.

‘What the—’ But I wasn’t given a chance to finish my question because Mark had his tongue so far down my throat, I was pretty sure he could feel my liver. It was hardly the most romantic moment of my life, but for a couple of seconds, it was my life again. My old life. He smelled the same, he felt the same − it was too much.