I Heart Christmas (8 page)

‘This?’ I pointed at him, then at myself, then at the floor. ‘You rented this apartment?’

‘I bought this apartment,’ he said, not budging from the doorway. ‘It’s ours.’

I suddenly felt very, very sick.

‘You bought this apartment? It’s ours?’ I couldn’t really make words of my own so I repeated his, trying very hard to keep my voice even and my legs straight. ‘This is our apartment? That you didn’t tell me about? That you bought? Without telling me?’

‘I’m feeling like maybe you’re not as excited as I had hoped you would be.’ He advanced on me slowly, hands held out, either to hug me or hold me off, I wasn’t sure. ‘It was supposed to be romantic. It’s an amazing apartment, babe, let me show you around.’

It was too much. Before he could take another step, I sank to the floor, crossed my legs and rested my head in my palms, hiding behind my hair. Alex had bought an apartment. In Park Slope. Without asking me, without telling me, without even hinting that he was thinking about moving. Usually, I couldn’t get him to order from a new pizza place without having to bribe him with sexual favours. I couldn’t even begin to understand what had possessed him to do this.

‘Don’t freak out, OK?’

I heard my husband outside the safety of my hair but I couldn’t quite look up, not just yet.

‘I was talking to this guy down at the recording studio and he told me he was selling and I came by to take a look and all I could think was how perfect the place is, how much you would love it,’ he explained. ‘Listen, Angela, there’s an office for you, there’s even a soundproofed room downstairs in the basement that I could turn into a studio. The guy used it for practice but it would be perfect for recording. And there are two bedrooms so we could have a place for guests or, you know, maybe a nursery.’

Oh, no.

After a series of deep, calming breaths I remembered from the single yoga class I’d taken three years ago, I parted my hair and peered out at the man I had married. Alex was squatting in front of me, an earnest look on his face that was somewhere between ‘what’s wrong with you?’ and ‘I know I’ve fucked up.’

‘Alex, you bought an apartment without telling me,’ I croaked. ‘What happened to us telling each other everything?’

‘It was supposed to be a surprise.’ he offered with a double thumbs up.

‘A surprise is a Kinder Egg,’ I replied, reminding myself to focus on the matter at hand and not on whether I wanted a Kinder Egg. Which of course I did, I wasn’t made of stone. ‘This is a house.’

Alex bit his lip and reached out to take my hand. ‘Can I show you around?’

Dizzy, I pushed myself up off the floor, ignoring his outstretched hand, and dusted off the back of my shorts. With a sigh, I rolled my eyes at his sad puppy face and allowed him to lead me around the seemingly endless apartment. He was right – it was beautiful, it was perfect, it had everything. Where our current apartment, our home, was brand new and sparkling, this place had character. It was all original features and sympathetic remodelling. The rooms were plain and empty but they were also big and airy and full of light. The bathroom had a roll-top bath – my interior design kryptonite. I was powerless against it. And then there was the garden. Actual grass in an actual outdoor space that was bigger than the average paddling pool. Slowly, I started to see how our lives could fill the space. My desk in the office alongside a big, squishy armchair for reading-slash-online shopping, our bed in the bedroom by the enormous sash window, Alex’s instruments lining the room of his new studio …

Once I’d got over myself, I could see exactly what he could see – this place was made for us. Maybe not the people we were when we met but the people we were now. I couldn’t imagine scared, fresh-off-the-plane Angela rolling up to a leafy Park Slope address with her Marks and Sparks weekend bag, a spare pair of pants and a crumpled bridesmaid dress, but this Angela? Even in my denim shorts and specially-shipped-from-Marks-and-Sparks black tights, I could see it. If I squinted. I was absolutely the sort of woman who lived in a place like this and went out to buy her husband freshly baked bagels on a Saturday morning. Or at least the kind of woman who thought about it, fell asleep again and ended up eating Corn Flakes and illegally streaming
Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway
.

‘Well?’ Alex hadn’t spoken in an age. He looked genuinely worried. ‘What do you think?’

‘Can we afford it?’ I asked. I was my mother’s daughter after all.

‘You can’t,’ he replied, gazing at the fireplace as lovingly as I had ever seen him look at me. ‘Seriously, you make no money for the hours you work, it’s crazy. But, you know, I’ve been saving for this for years and with the advance for the new album …’ He stopped getting it on with the apartment fixtures momentarily and looked back at me. ‘We’ll be flat-ass broke for a while until we let the other place but yeah, we can afford it.’

And that was when I realised. He must have been planning this for ages. While I’d been all late nights at the office and dragging myself through Monday to Friday so I could sleep through the weekend, Alex had been quietly working away and plotting our future. The sneaky, wonderful git.

‘What do you think?’ he asked in a soft voice I loved.

‘I think it’s amazing,’ I said, mentally punching myself in the ovaries for not being appropriately grateful for what a wonderful man I had. ‘I can’t quite believe it but it’s amazing. You’re amazing. Thank you.’

Alex smiled down at me then cupped his hands around my face and kissed me for what felt like a very long time.

‘Just don’t ever, ever do this again,’ I said, actually punching him in the belly. ‘Because I will fucking kill you.’

‘Duly noted,’ he laughed, rubbing his stomach and pushing me away. ‘Not that I can imagine we’ll need to move for a very long time. This is going to be a great place to raise a family.’

I pulled him back to me, pressed my head into his chest, ignoring both his family comment and the fleeting concern as to whether or not I was still getting an actual Christmas present.

‘Eurgh,’ I mumbled into his sweatshirt. ‘I hate moving.’

‘Oh, yeah …’ Alex’s voice wavered slightly. ‘I figured the sooner the better so I kind of started arranging that already.’

Here we go. I held my breath and counted to ten.

‘That’s awesome,’ I said, as positive as possible. ‘So after Christmas, yeah?’

‘Next week.’ I felt him tense up but there was no fun in punching him when he was expecting it. ‘A week from today.’

‘You want us to move house, across Brooklyn, in seven days?’ I shrieked, composure forgotten. So this was what hysteria felt like. ‘Four days before Christmas?’

‘I’ll do everything,’ he replied as quickly as was humanly possible. ‘I’ll hire the movers, I’ll get the new stuff we need, I’ll make sure it’s perfect. I just thought it would be nice to do Christmas in our new home, you know? And you’re taking the week off so you’ll be around to make sure I don’t fuck up.’

‘And we have plans for that week,’ I said. ‘It was supposed to be relaxing.’

‘Really?’ He raised an eyebrow and looked away. ‘Fighting my way around an ice rink in Central Park isn’t really my idea of relaxing.’

‘Well, it was supposed to be fun,’ I clarified. I turned to take a wistful look at the roll-top bath. Roll-top baths made everything better. ‘And I just wanted us to spend some time together.’

‘It’ll all be fine,’ he said with false certainty. ‘You can still go off and do all your holiday stuff while I organise the move.’

I stared up at him, trying not to look disappointed. Disappointment had a terrible tendency to be misread as ungratefulness and that wasn’t what I was feeling. The whole point of taking this week off, the whole reason I was more excited about this Christmas, even more so than any other, was because I was finally going to be able to spend some time with him. And while it was true, moving house did mean spending time together, I had a funny feeling it wouldn’t be quite so romantic as holding hands beneath the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.

‘We’ll figure it out, I suppose,’ I said with sagging shoulders. ‘I don’t know what else to say.’

‘Whatever it is, can you say it outside?’ Alex rubbed the back of his neck and pulled the keys out of his pocket. ‘I just remembered we left Karen out there and she’s probably frozen to death by now.’

On the doorstep, Karen was talking on her phone, shivering against the winter wind that had sprung up while we were inside. Well, at least the frozen face thing made sense now – Karen was an estate agent, she could afford Botox and she faked smiles for a living. I stared back over my shoulder as Alex locked the door. A new house was definitely better than cooking lessons. Or a three-way.

After saying our goodbyes, Alex wrapped a leather-clad arm around my shoulder and began chattering away about home improvements as we hunted for a place to get brunch in our new neighbourhood. As we walked, I tried to ignore the overwhelming feeling of panic that was growing in my stomach. My poor, tiny brain was too confused to process what was going on and so the rest of my body was having to pick up the emotional slack. I knew everything that was happening was incredible. Alex had bought us an actual, honest to Santa, real family home, I had been handed an amazing opportunity at work and I was about ten minutes away from eating several thousand pancakes, but I couldn’t fight the feeling of being completely swallowed up. Somewhere along the line I’d gone from having nothing better to do than take a week off to watch chestnuts roasting on an open fire to taking over the magazine and moving house in a week. Had everyone forgotten who they were dealing with or had I?

CHAPTER FIVE

I didn’t know anyone who jumped up and down and cheered for Monday mornings but since I’d started at
Gloss
I’d taken Monday dread to a whole new level. Before, it meant replying to all the emails I’d ignored on Friday, a bit of a telly hangover from
Mad Men
,
Game of Thrones
or
True Blood
, depending on the time of year. Now Monday meant press day, which meant checking, rechecking and re-rechecking every word on every page of the magazine.
Gloss
might only have been a teeny, tiny weekly but there were still a good deal of stern looks, raised voices and little cries in the toilets. Mostly Mary took care of the stern looks and raised voices while I, admittedly, was the one having a little cry but now, since she was off on the Love Boat, I had the pleasure of being in charge of the whole shebang. There had been a time when I thought working on a proper magazine at a proper publishing company would be all glamorous like
The Devil Wears Prada
but in reality it was turning out to be very stressful and a lot of hard work. Like in
The Devil Wears Prada
. And so far Stanley Tucci had yet to appear to cover me in free Chanel, although I was still hopeful. Hopeful or stupid. I needed a fairy godfather to keep me in designer goods and empowering speeches.

For the want of an avuncular gay mentor, I let Delia drag me out for lunch. Even though I really wasn’t supposed to be out of the office on press day, I really needed to update her on Cici’s nervous breakdown. It was only fair.

‘I can’t believe how long it’s been since we went out for lunch.’ Delia speared a piece of lettuce and munched away happily, as though it was real food. ‘Hasn’t it been ages?’

I nodded in agreement, and shovelled a mouthful on quinoa down my throat, wishing I hadn’t ordered quinoa. One day I would learn not to order something just because I’d seen Jamie Oliver going on about it. It was horrible. We’d settled on The Breslin for our powwow which was always a bit more trendy than I wanted it to be. It was the kind of place that said ‘totally come in jeans!’ but then when you came in jeans it raised an eyebrow as if to say ‘oh, you came in jeans.’ But it was far enough away that there wouldn’t be anyone else from the magazine there, yet close enough that I could escape without being missed. Plus, the food was delicious. As long as you didn’t have the quinoa.

‘I’m so glad you were able to sneak away,’ Delia said as the waiter refilled our water glasses with impressive stealth. ‘It’s like we never have time for each other anymore. Hanging out with you was the best thing about
Gloss
, it really was, not that I’m not really excited about the new role. I’m really excited. But I’ll miss you.’

‘Yeah, I didn’t think I’d see you before the Christmas party,’ I said, eyeing the bar for celebs. There was a man who looked a bit like Michael Fassbender three tables over but when he stood up he was so short that if it was Michael Fassbender, I didn’t want to know. Why kill the dream?

‘Holiday party,’ Delia corrected me. ‘Non-religious.’

I pouted but said nothing, persevering with my grains.

‘But I’ll be there. I’m glad you’re coming. I never know anyone I actually want to hang out with and I have to go because Grandpa would go crazy if he heard I didn’t go, even though he never goes, but still he expects me to go which is complete double standards, you know?’

If my food hadn’t been so bloody awful, I might not have noticed that Delia was rambling. I stopped chewing for a moment and tried not to freak out. Delia was nervous. Delia was never nervous. What was going on?

‘The exec floor is really dull,’ she carried on, sipping water quickly and then punching her fork into yet more lettuce. ‘I don’t think they’re even doing secret Santa. Isn’t that awful? Grandpa says I’ll get used to it but I don’t know … Maybe it is too soon, maybe I don’t have the experience. I suppose we’ll see. How’s your appetiser?’

‘It’s horrible,’ I said, with fear in my heart. Whatever was going on, I really wanted to know before my main course arrived because if I was getting fired, I was changing my order to the burger and getting a cocktail while I still had a company credit card. ‘Delia, what’s wrong?’

‘Why would anything be wrong?’ she asked in a voice so high pitched it hurt my ears. ‘I’m just a little stressed. That’s all it is.’

Now I knew she was lying. Delia Spencer had never been stressed in her entire life. She was so in control, I had wondered more than once if she wasn’t actually some sort of media magnate cyborg, created by her grandfather to take over the family business. The only evidence to the contrary was her sister. Oh. Fuckity fuck. Of course, her sister.