‘Actually, I’m not that thirsty,’ I said, looking around for Sadie so I could give her a subtle kick up the ass. ‘But thanks.’
‘I guess there’s a first time for everything,’ Carrie Anne replied quickly. ‘Tell me, are you still doing something for Erin White?’
Ignoring the dig, I consoled myself with the fact that her manicure was chipped. Sometimes you need to find faith in the little things. ‘Uh, I’m the executive account director, if that’s what you mean?’
‘Darling, that’s wonderful, très bon,’ she said, looking past me as she spoke. ‘Isn’t it fantastic how they come up with all these titles these days? That must be hard to fit on a business card. You really ought to set out on your own. Like me.’
‘It’s a nice idea,’ I nodded thoughtfully. ‘But I really love working with the big brands, you know? It’s so long since I’ve organized a little event like this. I’m kind of jealous you still get to be so hands-on.’
Sensing the killing blow, Carrie Anne took a step back.
‘Jenny, tell me − ’ she waved over at someone I didn’t recognize across the room − ‘didn’t you used to date a guy called Jeff?’
Stunned, I felt every organ in my body seize up. Jeff was The One. Sure there had been others, including a very pretty but not terribly bright male model and a ridiculous on-and-off thing with one of Alex’s bandmates, but nothing that ever compared with Jeff. We had dated and then broken up and then dated and broken up, then he got engaged and somehow we still dated, but then he got married, only not to me, and so we broke up. For good that time. He was not the finest example of an emotionally healthy relationship in my back catalogue; if you were to open a dictionary and look for a definition of ‘That Guy’, you’d see a photo of Jeff Allen.
‘Sure,’ I squeaked, super casual. ‘A million years ago. We’re really good friends now.’
‘Jeff Allen?’
‘Yep,’ I confirmed, the words closely followed by the urge to vomit in my mouth.
I knew something brutal was coming because I could actually see her face move, and if ever there was anyone who could pass as a cautionary tale on how not to overdo it with filler, Carrie Anne was your gal. I rubbed my forehead, willing my baby Botox not to turn me into the same kind of walking, talking wax mannequin.
‘That’s so funny.’ Carrie Anne’s eyes burned. ‘I just hired his wife. Have the two of you met?’
Wow.
And I thought Carrie Anne was the person I wanted to bump into least in the entire world.
A tiny, bubbly, blonde proto-Carrie bounced over, brimming with enthusiasm and a desperate need to please. No kidding, she’d only just started working for Carrie Anne. We’d taken on a bunch of her former girls and they were all straight up dealing with PTSD. Not that I could have cared less at that exact moment. I would have thrown every single one of them under the bus to get out of that room, both metaphorically and literally.
I’d felt good in my Alexander McQueen black minidress when I’d left home. My Jimmy Choo over-the-knee boots were sexy yet tasteful, and even though I hated the cold, at least it didn’t make my hair frizz like the heat did and my carefully tethered messy bun had remained somewhat intact, but faced with this little bundle of blonde bounce, I felt like a haggard old witch dressed in a garbage sack and wearing Julia Roberts’ stripper boots from Pretty Woman.
‘Jenny, meet Shannon Allen.’ Carrie Anne tipped her head to one side and smiled. ‘Shannon, Jenny here used to date your husband “a million years ago”. Isn’t that funny? New York is so small.’
I watched, wondering how quickly I could burrow through the floor to China as a million thoughts went through Shannon’s pretty head. Her first thought, to remain professional, seemed to slip away as soon as Carrie Anne dropped the ‘date’ bomb. The second those words were out of her mouth, I saw her mentally flicking through the collated information about Jeff’s exes for a Jenny. I figured she’d come up trumps pretty quickly; I just didn’t know how much she knew.
‘Jen-ny,’ she said slowly. In fairness, the girl’s smile never faltered. If she weren’t married to the love of my life, I would have considered hiring her myself. ‘You dated Jeff?’
‘A million years ago,’ I repeated, trying out an experimental laugh. It didn’t really work. ‘A million trillion.’
‘You’re Jenny who he lived with?’ she asked as her expression clouded slightly. ‘Like, forever ago?’
I felt like Carrie Anne had kicked a puppy in the face and then handed it to me.
‘Forever and ever.’
The only way I could get out of this was to pretend it didn’t feel like I’d had my stomach sliced open and someone was running around the room using my intestines as streamers. What did I care if the only man I’d ever loved was married to this adorable, much younger, much blonder girl. She was wearing flats, for Christ’s sake. Who wore flats to a launch?
‘I’ll tell him you said hi … ’ Shannon’s brows started to knit together as all the stories, all the terrible his-side-of-them stories, fell into place. She wrapped her arms around herself and began to back away. ‘It was nice to meet you.’
‘You too,’ I said, hating myself for noticing that she was a little chubby and her dress clung around her belly.
Oh, holy shit. She wasn’t fat. She was pregnant.
My ex-boyfriend’s child bride was pregnant.
Jeff wasn’t just married, he was having a baby. And here I was, dressed like a very expensive stripper, waiting for my co-dependent flatmate to finish whoring herself out over a handbag so we could go home, order pizza and sob ourselves to single sleep. I pressed my hand to my forehead and stumbled back over to the coat check. Free bags and roommates be damned, I had to get out of there. Sadie would understand as long as I bought the pizza.
I might as well stop by the shelter on my way, I reasoned. Pick out a couple of unwanted cats and call it a day.
‘I still can’t believe Jeff is having a baby.’
Erin, my boss and non-Brit BFF, picked up a beautiful Proenza Schouler handbag and turned it over in her hands. I watched as every assistant in Barneys straightened their spine, only to slump back down when she put it back on the shelf. ‘He was such a dude. Can a bro have a baby?’
‘Uh, you have two, and I can think of a time when I wouldn’t even bother calling you on a Friday night, I would just head straight to Bungalow 8 and there you were,’ I pointed out, picking up the same PS bag and barely getting a shrug from the assistants. I didn’t give off the same rich vibe that Erin did. Because no one was as rich as Erin.
‘That’s not true,’ she said, turning her attention to the Saint Laurent collection. ‘Sometimes I was at Tunnel.’
‘I stand corrected.’
Barneys was a cut above the rest of the Manhattan department stores when it came to seasonal cheer. You knew what time of year it was, they had the requisite holiday window displays, but they weren’t all in your face with holly-jolly-happy crap as soon as you walked through the door. It was a safe place when you were ambivalent towards the fat guy in the suit, and ever since my coffee with Angie the day before, ambivalence was pretty much the most positive emotion I could muster.
‘Anyway,