It Had to Be You (15 page)

‘Treacherous
bitch
,’ she muttered.

One of Lizzy’s colleagues came over to her desk. ‘I’m doing a Frappuccino run to Starbucks. My treat.’

‘Leave me alone!’ Lizzy howled. ‘Can’t you see I’m in the middle of a meltdown?’

Lizzy’s fug had showed no sign of abating. Normally such a positive person, it was like dark forces had crept into her body and taken over. At work she took to hunching over her computer on Justin’s Facebook page, reading out his status updates in a horrible baby voice. ‘“Justin was at Café Boheme with Natalie Chloe Dunn.” That’s the third time they’ve eaten out this week! Oh my God, that’s
sick.
He’s posted a picture of two spoons coming out of an ice-cream sundae!’

Everyone in the office avoided her as if she had the Ebola virus. Lizzy’s desk became a quarantined pit of misery as work piled up and her inbox threatened to explode under the weight of unanswered emails. In the street she had pavement rage every ten seconds and hissed at
Big Issue
sellers who got in her path, even if they had cute dogs with neckerchiefs. On the bus she took to muttering ‘Get a room’ loudly if a couple even dared to look at each other.

By the end of the week Poppet and Nic had staged a crisis intervention, and forced Lizzy to come to a free music concert in Hyde Park.

‘You have got to get a grip,’ Nic told her. ‘When did you last shave your legs?’

Lizzy swigged wine straight from the bottle. ‘What does it matter?’ she snarled. ‘Like anyone’s going to ever run their hands over them again.’

‘Can we have our old Lizzy back please?’ Poppet pleaded. ‘I don’t like being scared when I pick up the phone to you.’

The two factions eyeballed each other across the picnic rug. Lizzy on one side, Nic and Poppet on the other. East versus West, a Berlin wall of Tesco canapés and bottles of two-for-one Zinfandel between them.

In the end Nic gave it to Lizzy straight. ‘Look, we all know what Lemar said about if there was any justice in the world, and at the moment you’re feeling pretty hard done by because Justin has got a new girlfriend already. But you have to snap out of this because you’re in danger of turning into a giant twat. Are you receiving me?’

Lizzy opened her mouth to retaliate before the realization finally hit. Nic was right. She
had
been acting like a complete idiot.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said meekly. ‘Will you forgive me?’

Poppet grinned. ‘Of course we forgive you, silly!’

‘Does that mean you’re going to stop cutting and pasting me all Justin’s status updates with the word DIE after them?’ Nic asked.

They made Lizzy – or rather ‘Heidi Milton’ – immediately defriend Justin on Facebook and had a toast to her re-found sanity. ‘I’ve been really worried,’ Poppet told her. ‘You were so brave about the breakup. I thought you were having some kind of delayed reaction.’

‘Maybe I was.’ Lizzy watched a jet streak across the evening sky. ‘I guess I just believed that
I’d
be the one who’d meet someone first, and Justin would stay a single universal woman-repellent after what he’d done. Or, even if he
did
meet someone, she would be fatter and uglier than me, and he’d live the rest of his days in regret.’ Lizzy shook her head. ‘I was pissed off he got in there first. I was pissed off I was replaced so quickly – with someone hot. I was REALLY pissed off that he got away with this whole thing without a mark on him. How is that fair?’

That was the nub of the matter really. Good things didn’t always happen to good people. People did bad things and got away with it. Karma wasn’t always your friend. Nic was right. You just had to suck it up.

‘Life’s a long game,’ Poppet said wisely. ‘You never know how it will pan out. It’s just annoying how it always seems to be the men who move on first. Remember Anthony Fraser from uni, who got engaged to three different girls in our first year? Men can just turn their feelings on and off like that. I don’t get it.’

‘Because men are one-dimensional numpties with only enough room in their emotional bank for what’s going on directly in front of them.’ Nic threw a salted cashew at a loitering pigeon. ‘Women are far more whimsical and sentimental. They spend months self-flagellating themselves about the: “What if’s” and the: “If I’d done that/hadn’t done that we’d still be togethers”. Whereas men are already thinking: “Clare from accounts is pretty hot. How do I get to bang her?”’

‘
You’re
a woman,’ Poppet pointed out.

‘And I think like a man. You have to stay one step ahead in this game, Pops.’

A couple on a picnic rug near them had been getting more and more amorous. The girls watched as the man rolled on top of his companion and started dry humping her.

‘You see?’ Nic said to Lizzy. ‘Do you really miss that?’

‘It’s so unseemly!’ Poppet lamented. ‘There are no standards of decorum these days. Next thing you know it will be legal to have sex in the street!’

Someone threw a condom packet at the couple and everyone around them cheered. ‘
You
can talk,’ Nic told her. ‘You gave Pencil Dick Pete a blow job in a churchyard!’

‘Don’t say that!’ Poppet squealed. ‘I thought it had been deconsecrated!’

Time with your friends was all a girl needed to feel that all was right with the world again. The next day the girls hired a pedalo on the Serpentine and then went to sit in a pub beer garden where they drank so much Pimms that Poppet was overcome by a bladder emergency on the bus home and semi-wet herself, just like old times. Back at her flat they carried on drinking until they all passed out in Poppet’s king-size bed.

Even after vast amounts of alcohol, Nic was unable to lie in. At some ungodly hour she went off to get the Sunday papers and left the other two sleeping off their hangovers. Lizzy was in the middle of a dream about quenching her thirst in a sparkling mountain stream when she felt a dead weight land on the bed.

‘Guess who’s split up?’ Nic held up the tabloid.

Lizzy prised her eyes apart. It was hard to make out what was going on in the grainy pictures. ‘News at Ten: You’re Dumped! Amber calls off engagement to Elliot after row in the street!’

‘Oh my God!’ Poppet sat up and immediately went green. ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

While Poppet hyperventilated into a wet flannel Nic read out the story in her best newsreader voice: ‘In dramatic scenes captured outside the Royal Albert Hall on Friday, Amber de la Haye finished with ITN hunk Elliot Anderson. In the astonishing exchange the fashion designer, thirty-one, was overheard emotionally telling her 32-year-old fiancé: “I can’t DO this any more.”’

Lizzy sat up to take a better look at the pictures. Elliot (in a black tuxedo) and Amber (in a white dress) were standing on the pavement in front of the Albert Hall, in the middle of what appeared to be a flaming row. In one shot Amber was gesticulating angrily with her hands, while Elliot had his arm out as if trying to pacify her. The montage finished with her storming off down the street, her long hair flying out behind her. Elliot was gazing after her looking utterly bereft. The paper had zoomed in on his face with the word
ANGUISH
underneath it, in case the reader was in any doubt.

‘Sheesh,’ Nic said. ‘To be in the public eye, eh?’

Lizzy felt physically sick. It was like watching herself back on that karaoke stage again. She wouldn’t be in Elliot’s expensive Italian leather shoes for all the money in the world.

The next day the split was being updated hourly on the
MailOnline
. Apparently the couple had been having problems for some time. ‘Amber tried hard to make it work,’ a ‘friend’ of the fashion designer was quoted as saying, ‘but sometimes loving someone isn’t enough.’

According to reports, Amber had fled to a bolt-hole in France. A long-lens paparazzi had captured her looking gaunt and beautiful behind a pair of her own-label sunglasses as she boarded a friend’s private jet. Next to it there was a picture of Elliot looking grim-faced as he arrived at work that morning.

Amber’s spokesperson had asked for her client ‘to be left alone during this difficult time’. Elliot had also refused to comment.

The Haven office was alive with speculation about the latest celebrity split. ‘I always thought Amber was way too cool for him,’ Bianca said. ‘She should be going out with Pharrell Williams or someone like that.’

‘She can go out with whoever she wants now.’ Lizzy answered her phone. ‘Hello, Haven?’

It was a small wobbly voice. ‘L-Lizzy?’

‘Karen? What’s wrong?’ Lizzy rushed into the meeting room to take the call and shut the door behind her. ‘Whatever’s the matter?’

‘I’ve been up all weekend trying to make the sums add up.’ Her client suppressed another sob. ‘I can’t afford to pay all my suppliers, Andy’s being a complete shit …’

Andy was Karen’s obnoxious ex-husband. ‘What’s he done now?’ Lizzy asked.

‘Just the usual mind games. I normally rise above it, but I’m on the edge at the moment. I feel like jacking it all in but they’ve given my old job away and there’s nothing else out there. I’m going to lose the house and me and Molly will end up homeless—’

‘You’re not going to end up homeless,’ Lizzy said firmly. ‘We just have to hang on in there. I believe in you, Karen.’

‘You’re about the only person who does. And I can’t even afford to pay you any more.’ She started crying again.

‘Karen, listen to me. Everything will be OK.’

‘How will it be OK?’ Karen sobbed. ‘I’ve run out of money.’

Lizzy bit her lip. If Karen couldn’t afford to pay Haven PR they would have to part ways. Unless …

‘How about if you pay a reduced rate for the time being? Would that help?’

‘W-w-what do you mean?’ Karen gulped.

‘How about if you only pay half of your monthly retainer until the end of the year? Things always pick up in the run-up to Christmas. You can pay back what you owe then.’

‘But what will Antonia say?’

Lizzy looked through the window. Her boss had her feet up on her desk as she laughed uproariously down the phone. ‘Antonia will be fine,’ Lizzy lied. ‘Besides, she hardly ever looks at the accounts. She won’t even notice.’

‘Things will pick up! It’s just been a bad few months.’ Karen sounded like she’d been given a last-minute reprieve from death row. ‘Oh Lizzy! You’re an angel!’

Lizzy hung up and immediately felt anxious. What had she just done?

‘We need to make this quick, people,’ Antonia barked a second later. ‘I’ve got a Skype session with my shamanic guru at 1 p.m.’ The morning meeting was meant to take place at 10 a.m., but it never happened until at least midday because Antonia was never ready on time.

There was a nerve-stripping screech from the other side of the office. ‘MINE!’ a child shouted. Antonia was having childcare issues so she’d brought Christiana into work with her. A makeshift crèche had been set up in a corner and the poor intern was saddled with babysitting duties while the rest of them crowded around Antonia’s desk.

Lizzy gave a quick update of where they were with the Santa’s Little Helper launch, which was happening that weekend in Aylesbury.

‘I’ll be coming along to that,’ Antonia announced. ‘Brian and Debbie will feel a lot better if I’m there to keep an eye on things.’

Hmm
, Lizzy thought. More like stand around on her phone all day and take credit if the event’s a success.

‘And Karen?’

Lizzy flushed guiltily. ‘What about Karen?’

Her boss looked up from her iPad. ‘Oh I don’t know, where’s she going this year on holiday? Can she recommend any good box sets? What have we got coverage-wise, you dingbat?’

There was a
thud
followed by a loud scream. The intern was kneeling on the floor with her hands over her nose. Christiana was standing over her with a staple gun in her hand.

‘Christy! Play nicely!’ Antonia bellowed. ‘Mummy won’t be long!’

Luckily Antonia had the attention span of a gnat with ADHD, so Karen was quickly forgotten. ‘I had a great idea in the bath last night for a cross-brand promotion,’ she told the team. ‘I’ve been reading this a
maz
ing book about how we all store all this negative energy from our ancestors in our gut, and I was thinking it would be a
maz
ing to team up the Happy Halo with A Helping Hand and call it A Helping Halo. The one-stop cleansing combo for every woman’s needs! What was the strapline I thought of?’ She looked heavenwards. ‘Fight off the demons of the past and become the warrior goddess you are destined to be!’

From the blank faces around her she might as well have been speaking in Mandarin. ‘If you could make that happen,’ she told Lizzy. ‘Set up meetings with the heads of Boots, Space NK, etc. Oh, and let’s get a date with Gwyneth Paltrow’s people in the diary, she’d be a great brand ambassador.’ She broke off. ‘No, Christy! Not the phone! Play nicely!’

Everyone watched as three-year-old Christiana wrestled the intern’s iPhone out of her hand and smashed it into smithereens against the wall.

Lizzy arrived at San Marco first that evening. ‘Lee-zee!’ Giuseppe bounded up like a pre-neutered cocker spaniel. ‘Haven’t seen you on the telly lately.’

‘Ha ha, very funny.’

‘My nephew, he meet someone now. But I always keep eye out for you. Come! I give you best table.’

Poppet and Nic arrived together ten minutes later. Nic was sporting a new, shorter haircut that made her look like she hurt people for a living.

Poppet was in a twitchy mood. ‘Did you see on Facebook that Emma Summers has got engaged?’

Nic looked up from her phone. ‘To that weird hairy guy with the squint?’

‘I think he’s had corrective surgery. That’s the fifth person I know who’s got engaged this year! They’re dropping like flies and I can’t even meet a man who wants to take me to the cinema and for a meal at Wagamamas afterwards! I’m going to be left on the shelf, I just know it.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Lizzy told her. ‘You’ll have to push me off first to get a space.’

Poppet wasn’t listening. ‘There was this thing on Mumsnet the other day about how twenty-nine is the prime biological window! Even if my Mr Right is out there, what if I don’t meet him until I’m forty? It will be too late to have children and even if we do manage to have one miracle IVF baby and get to be in
Bella
magazine, I’ll be chasing it round the park in my wheelchair!’