‘I have no words.’ Amy sat cross-legged on the settee, clutching her neon-pink ankles, her face a picture of shock. ‘No. Words.’
Stretched out on the hardwood floor of the living room, I gently knocked the back of my head against the floorboards and pressed my feet into the sharp edges of the TV cabinet. Nope. Still couldn’t actually feel anything.
‘I know.’
‘No, really, all of it.’ Amy grabbed the remote and turned off the random episode of The Vampire Diaries that she had on mute. This was serious. ‘The agency, the cockwomble finally bloody growing a pair, Milan, that’s all awesome. But fuck me, Tess, I cannot believe she is such a complete and utter psycho.’
‘I know.’
For the last two hours, all I’d done was think about what might have been. What if Vanessa had shown my photos to her agent but admitted they were mine? I could have been a professional photographer for years. I might have left the agency and had a life. I might not have spent so long hung up on Charlie that I didn’t know how to have a functional relationship with another human being. Jesus, forget the relationship – I didn’t even know how to have a conversation about a relationship. Everything might have been different. She’d stolen my life.
Which was funny when you thought about it.
But, then again, everything might not. I might have said thanks for the offer, but I’ll stick with my torturous, low-paying, zero-regard office tomb, thanks, because that’s what my mother wants me to do. There was no way of knowing, and as Al had said, life was too short for regrets. It was, however, not too short for swift and violent retribution. If only I knew where she was.
‘So what are you going to do?’ I could tell Amy was feeding on the drama. I hardly ever gave her anything to get her teeth into, so this was like all her Christmases come at once. ‘What does your gut say?’
‘My gut says I need to not eat any more pineapple for about a year,’ I replied. ‘I don’t know. I’m too freaked out right now. I’m having more feelings than I knew one person could have at one time.’
‘Have some more wine,’ she said, grabbing the open bottle of white and pouring it into my Snoopy mug. ‘That’ll help.’
‘It won’t help because it’s half past twelve in the afternoon,’ I said, taking a swig. ‘But I will have some anyway because I don’t really know what else to do.’
‘You do seem very emotional,’ Amy said with as much sympathy as she could muster. ‘Like, more conflicted than when Jersey Shore finished, and I know how hard that was for you.’
‘I was just really worried about what would happen to them when the cameras stopped rolling.’ I sloshed my mug back onto the floor, trying not to spill any of the half-bottle of wine Amy had poured into it. ‘What life will they have now?’
‘So do you think you’ll go to Milan?’ She poured her own wine, switching the subject right back to where we started. ‘And are you going to call Nick? And tell him you love him?’
‘I don’t know.’ I needed so much more wine than there was in the universe. ‘And I don’t love him.’
‘Yeah, you do,’ she said, kicking me in the hip. ‘But I think you probably still love Charlie too.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said again. And again. And again.
‘Yeah, you do,’ she said again, this time kicking me in the head. ‘But that’s definitely more of a Stockholm Syndrome love. I’m team Nick. Deffos Team Milan.’
‘And what will you do if I go off to Italy?’ I asked, unfastening my plait and fanning my hair out around my head. ‘You going to stay here and get more and more sensible?’
‘No way,’ Amy yelped. ‘I’m coming with you. I want to meet this uber-amazing crazy sex wizard that’s finally shagged some sense into you.’
‘That is the most interesting interpretation of what’s gone down over the past week that anyone could come up with,’ I said, staring up at our manky ceiling. It needed painting so badly. ‘A different kind of sense, yeah?’
‘Of course the sensible thing to do would be to start the agency with Charlie,’ she explained, as though it was a thought that hadn’t crossed my mind a million times in the past hour. ‘But the amazing thing would be to go to Milan with Nick.’
‘What you’re forgetting,’ I pointed out from the floor, ‘is that Nick isn’t talking to me. So there’s not necessarily any Nick in the equation. And there shouldn’t be any Charlie in the equation, at least not in a sexy way. Not until I’ve decided what I want to do workwise.’
‘Want you want to do or what you think you should do?’ Amy asked. ‘Close your eyes and tell me what staying here and opening the agency looks like.’
‘It looks good,’ I said, flexing my toes. ‘It looks familiar. I know the work, I know the clients. It would be fun, owning the business, and maybe I wouldn’t get quite as drawn in as before. Maybe I’d be able to keep a better work–life balance.’
‘Yeah, right,’ she scoffed, her disbelief echoing around her own mug o’wine. ‘And what does going to Milan look like?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, a small smile in my voice. ‘I’d be taking photos, living somewhere new, working with Al. It could be incredible or it could be awful.’
‘Pretty sure even awful things are amazing in Italy,’ Amy said dreamily. ‘The telly says so.’
‘And the telly never lies,’ I confirmed solemnly.
‘So it’s head or heart, Tess,’ she replied. ‘What’s it going to be? And leave your baby box out of this, because we both know she’s Team Nick too.’
‘I need more wine.’
We lay in our respective positions, quietly drinking, Amy presumably planning our Italiano adventures and me flipping back and forth between the easy thing and the new thing. Charlie or Nick? Photography or advertising? What if I’d got lucky with the pictures in Hawaii? I might be terrible at the next shoot and then I’d be out of a job again. And it wasn’t like starting my own advertising agency with ready-made accounts and super-keen clients was a runner-up prize. I worked too hard and I forgot I was supposed to have a life outside the office, but I loved my job and I was good at it. There was no doubt or nerves there. And, yes, Charlie had made an epic, epic mistake by shagging Vanessa, but if he said he wanted to be with me, then he meant it, didn’t he? Whereas Nick didn’t even want to talk to me. I needed to email him, but I still didn’t know what to say. I needed all the information before I made a decision.
‘We need more wine,’ Amy announced from her perch on the settee. ‘That bottle’s dead.’
‘We’ve only just opened it.’ I looked over at the empty green glass beside my head in disbelief. ‘We are such drunks.’
‘We are modern women on the horns of a dilemma,’ Amy corrected. ‘We are culturally conditioned to drink. It’s Bridget Jones’s fault, not ours.’
‘There should be a bottle of sauv in the fridge then,’ I called as she hopped over me and vanished into the kitchen. ‘And bring the biscuits. I’m culturally conditioned to be greedy as well.’
I flapped my arms out by my side, making an imaginary snow angel, and carried on staring at the ceiling. It didn’t have any answers for me. Just like the stupid toaster. It really was time the flat started pulling its weight in the decision-making around here. But while the ceiling wasn’t great at telling me how to live my life, the front door was spectacular at providing an early warning system. Amy was in the kitchen. I was on the floor. There was only one other person it could be.
‘What are you doing down there?’ Vanessa stood over me, hands on her skinny hips, her hair falling in a perfect blonde curtain around her face as she stared down at the floor. ‘Have you had a stroke?’
‘No, but I feel like I’m about to,’ I said, not moving. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Ohh, I was at a spa,’ she sighed, shrugging off a shrunken leather biker jacket I didn’t recognize and throwing it on the sofa. ‘After all that shit I had to deal with last week, I needed a break. No phones, no Internet, no TV. It was amazing. Spiritual.’
She sat down and pulled her non-shattered, brand-new iPhone out of her pocket, sighing dramatically as she scanned her emails. I wondered if she even remembered that she had a BlackBerry in her room.
‘Gingernuts or Hobnobs?’ Amy shouted from the kitchen.
‘Oh God, she can piss off home,’ Vanessa spat, flicking at the iPhone screen. ‘I haven’t just spent three grand learning how to relax to have to deal with that mentalist when I get home.’
Even though I knew she could only be seconds away from something on her phone that would give away a hint at my adventures, I just couldn’t seem to get off the floor. Instead, I rolled over onto my side, curled into the foetal position and waited for Amy to come back into the living room.
‘I went with Hobnobs,’ she said, holding the packet in one hand, and the open bottle of wine in the other. ‘Gingernuts and wine seemed a bit tacky. Oh, look, you’re home. Amazing.’
Whatever witchcraft was stopping me from getting up and running for the hills froze Amy to the spot in the middle of our living room. Vanessa looked up from her phone, perplexed.
‘Have you two been doing mushrooms or something?’ she asked. ‘I’m going to bed. Fingers crossed you won’t be here when I wake up.’
‘You stole Tess’s photos,’ shouted Amy as loud as her little lungs would let her, pointing a finger at the accused.
‘What?’ To her credit, Vanessa looked completely and utterly flummoxed. ‘I did what?’
‘When Tess sold you her camera, you said her photos were your photos and that’s why you’re a photographer and you’re not really – you’re shit.’ She punctuated the ‘shit’ by slamming the full bottle of wine down on the tabletop beside her.
And yet still I could not seem to move.
‘Huh.’ Vanessa crossed her long, leather-covered legs and cocked her head to one side. ‘And how have you worked all this out, Sherlock?’
‘Might have, sort of, borrowed my camera back?’ I whispered from the floor.
‘Did you now?’ She was starting to sound a bit peeved. And I didn’t like it when she sounded peeved. It usually ended in something being broken. But still, best to get everything out in the open.
‘And there’s a chance I sort of pretended to be you and went on a shoot to Hawaii for Veronica, and then she called me in and I looked at your portfolio and that’s how I know.’
‘OK, I’m totally not following you now.’ She blinked twice and put down her phone. ‘You did what?’
‘She went to Hawaii and she took amazing photos and fell in love with an amazing man and you are a complete demon,’ Amy wailed.
‘There’s no way.’ Vanessa paled, very, very slightly, underneath her make-up. ‘There’s no way you did that. You probably haven’t moved off the floor since I left.’
‘It doesn’t really matter who did what or where I was or whether or not I used your name and stole a job.’ I felt eerily calm as I explained all of this from my ball on the floor. ‘What matters is you stole my pictures. You kind of stole my life. I think I’m going to be moving out.’
‘I’m calling Veronica,’ she snapped, grabbing her phone. ‘You better start packing. You need to find somewhere else to live, like now.’
‘Ooh, put it on speakerphone,’ I suggested. ‘I think we’d all like to hear what she’s got to say to you.’
Vanessa did not put the call on speakerphone, but it didn’t matter. Agent Veronica – my agent, Veronica – did a fine job of amplifying her own voice. I couldn’t quite make out the entire conversation, but it definitely included the words ‘you’re fucking fired’ and ‘you filthy, talentless little shitbag’. It was a bit like The Apprentice only not. Most importantly, Vanessa’s face was a picture.
‘I get it.’ She kicked off her heels and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. Uh-oh, she was styling for a fight. ‘This is because I shagged your boyfriend. You’re all in on it. It’s some weird revenge fantasy that you’ve cooked up between you.’
‘As if anyone would go to that much effort for you.’ I waved a hand in her general direction. From the floor. ‘Nope. Totes went to Hawaii. Totes took some pictures. They were totes better than yours.’
‘Bertie Bennett wants Tess to go to Milan and take pictures for his book and his exhibition because she’s amazing,’ Amy was shouting again. ‘And Charlie doesn’t love you anyway; he loves Tess. Nobody gives a shit about you because you’re literally the worst person in the entire world. And you’ve got fat thighs.’
‘Oh, that’s it.’ Vanessa jumped up, leapt over my prone form and gave Amy a good, hard shove. The Hobnobs went flying. I was very relieved she’d already put down the wine. ‘Get out of my flat right now, you little psychopath.’
‘You’re the psycho,’ Amy argued as Vanessa grabbed hold of a handful of her hair and started dragging her towards the door. ‘You stole Tess’s photos and passed them off as your own. That’s psycho!’
‘Not to defend her,’ I said, finally rousing myself to duck as they passed me on their way outside, ‘but what I did was a bit mental.’
‘Not helping, Tess,’ Amy squealed.
It was, as the gathering neighbours would attest, quite the scene. A barefoot Vanessa, in black leather leggings and a cropped baby-blue silk shirt, staggered down our front steps, still with a good handful of Amy’s bob. But that wasn’t to say Amy was losing the fight. Vanessa had a lot more hair to get hold of and Amy wasn’t missing any opportunity. As they hit the street, she leapt onto Vanessa’s back, still wearing nothing but a Snoopy T-shirt, her knickers and her neon-pink knee-highs. Finding my feet, I rushed to the top of the steps and slapped a hand over my mouth.
‘I’m going to kill you,’ Vanessa screeched, her arms wheeling around wildly.
‘Good luck,’ Amy yelled back, clamping what looked like a sleeper hold around Vanessa’s neck. Who could have known that all those Saturday afternoons spent watching wrestling with her granddad would come in handy in the end.
The pair of them scrambled up and down the street while people whipped out their camera phones and started filming. I didn’t know what to do. I knew I should stop it somehow, but where to start? Vanessa’s arms and legs shot out, trying to knock Amy off her back, but my best friend was too tiny and too quick. She looked like a rabid spider monkey trying to take on a bitchy giraffe. And this wasn’t her first fight with someone bigger than her.
‘What is going on?’
I was so engrossed in the action, not to mention the group of schoolkids on their lunch who had now surrounded the girls and started a very popular ‘fight, fight, fight’ chant, that I didn’t even see Paige coming up the steps.
‘Is that Vanessa?’ she asked, pointing at the tumble of shrieking limbs that was about to run right into a bus shelter.
‘It is,’ I said, the hand that had been clamped over my mouth moving down to my heart. ‘Paige, I’m so sorry. Please—’
‘Let me speak.’ She held out a thick brown envelope and shook her head. ‘There is a chance that I overreacted in Hawaii.’
‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘I should have told you about Nick. Or I shouldn’t have done what I did. Girl rules – you were right: I’m just as bad as Vanessa.’
‘You didn’t sleep with my fiancé,’ she said, looking a little bit embarrassed. ‘You fell for the irresistible charms of legendary man whore, Nick Miller. He emailed me, told me everything – that he made all the moves, that it was before we’d even met. So, yeah, I might have overreacted a little bit.’
‘I still should have told you,’ I replied as the fight rolled back past us again. The language on those two. ‘I’m really sorry.’
‘Then we’re both sorry. We can agree we both have terrible taste in men and we can forget all about it. And can you please take this bloody envelope,’ she said, waving it at me again before turning to watch the show. ‘Friend of yours?’
‘That’s Amy,’ I said, opening the packet and pulling out several large glossy prints. ‘They’ve had a disagreement.’
‘She just went straight to the top of my Christmas card list,’ Paige said, leaning against the low wall outside our front door and settling in for the show. ‘Can she take her?’
‘Amy could take down an ox. Vanessa’s been on borrowed time for years. All this,’ I flapped the photographs in their general direction, ‘is just the excuse she needed.’
‘I like her already.’ She looked back at me. ‘When she’s done, we should go and get a drink. I took the afternoon off to bring you those.’
As much as I wanted to watch Amy bash Vanessa over the head with a randomly acquired bottle of 7UP that I suspected had been supplied by the schoolchildren, I couldn’t take my eyes off the photos. They really were beautiful. Al looked happy, Martha looked stunning, the colours, the lighting, the story behind each outfit – it was all there, ringing through the pictures.
‘They’re really good, Tess.’ Paige interrupted my quiet moment of wonder. ‘And not a pineapple or a ukulele in sight.’
Before I could reply, a blur of blonde hair and black leather came tearing up the stairs.
‘Hi, Vanessa,’ Paige said, offering her a casual wave. With a black eye and a bloody lip, my flatmate paused on the steps, looking confused, angry and, more than anything else, terrified. ‘How’s it going?’
‘You’re all fucking mental,’ she spat, slamming the door to the flat and snapping all of the locks. ‘Do not even try to get in here. I’ll call the police.’
‘OK,’ I called back. ‘Let me know when you’re out and I’ll come and get my stuff.’
‘We’ve left a bottle of wine in there,’ Amy pouted, skipping up the steps entirely unscathed. ‘Hi, I’m Amy.’
‘Paige.’ The considerably less offensive blonde beauty offered her hand to my best friend and shook it heartily as the crowd in the street dispersed, disappointed. ‘Cocktail?’
‘Cocktail,’ Amy agreed, looking down at her outfit. ‘Probably going to have to be somewhere in Shoreditch, though.’
‘I know just the place,’ Paige said, pulling out her phone. ‘I’ve got a car waiting.’
I kept flipping through the photos – the black Dior, the Givenchy wedding dress, the red Valentino …
‘They’re beautiful,’ Amy said, taking them from my hands one by one. ‘I’m so proud of you.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, eyes trained on the Valentino. I pulled out my own broken phone and scanned my emails. And there it was. Nick Miller. I pressed as hard as I could on the screen to open the message before I lost my nerve. All that was there was a US phone number and two words.
Call me.
I blinked, checked again and smiled. Still there. I hadn’t hallucinated it. He had emailed me.
‘This is our car, ladies,’ Paige said, pointing at a big black people carrier pulling round the corner. ‘Shall we?’
‘Are you sure you don’t want to go back inside and, I don’t know, sort things out?’ Amy asked. ‘What if she goes mental and bins all your stuff?’
‘All my stuff is shit,’ I said with a shrug. ‘We’ll get new stuff.’
‘I didn’t want to say anything,’ she said, hopping from neon foot to neon foot, ‘but yeah, it is. And you’ll need new stuff for Milan.’
‘Or for the agency.’ I gave her a tiny but genuine smile and followed Paige down the steps, really not caring what we must look like. ‘Or whatever I end up doing. I don’t need to know everything right now, do I?’
‘Ha,’ Amy breathed, linking her arm through mine. ‘Who are you and what have you done with my best friend?’
‘I’m Tess Brookes,’ I replied, giving her a squeeze. ‘Pleasure to meet you. Now, how about that drink?’