‘How far gone is she?’ I heard my dad puffing his way down to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Is it that musician’s? Is that why she’s engaged?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ Even though they couldn’t see me, I couldn’t resist an eye roll and emphatic wave of the hand. ‘I’m genuinely not pregnant. Alex did not propose because I’m up the stick. To the best of my knowledge, it’s because he actually wants to marry me.’
‘Right,’ she replied with a very subtle scoffing tone.
‘Thanks, Mum.’
‘Shall I book a flight? Do I need to go and get her?’ Dad was practically out the door already. ‘I’ll have to go to the post office and get some dollars.’
‘The post office,’ Mum seethed. Another of her arch enemies. ‘Go back upstairs. She says she’s not pregnant.’
‘She’d better bloody not be,’ he said, just loud enough for me to hear. ‘She’s not too old to go over my knee. That musician of hers as well.’
I fought the urge to remind him I’d only gone ‘over his knee’ once, when I was five and had purposely gone into his room, walked into the garden and thrown his best leather driving gloves into the pond so we wouldn’t have to go to my aunt Sheila’s. I was a petulant little madam. But he had apologized when I was twenty-five and told me I was right to have done it because my aunt Sheila was a − quote-unquote − right pain in the arse.
‘I can’t imagine why else you would think the best way for a mother to find out her daughter is engaged − to a musician, no less − that she has never met and who lives ten thousand miles away is to hear it from the village gossip on the Waitrose cheese aisle.’
I had to admit she had a point there.
The thing was, ever since my seasonal no-show, the subtle digs at Alex and his choice of profession had become out-and-out abuse. By the end of January she had written him off as Hitler and Mick Jagger’s love child. To most people, a musician was someone who played an instrument. To my mother, they had to be a lying, cheating drug addict whose only ambition in life was to knock up her poor, stupid daughter and then leave her destitute in a motel on the side of a highway with an arm full of track marks. It was a bit of a stretch. Alex didn’t even like to take Advil for a headache.
‘You told Louisa before your own family?’
Oh, Louisa, I thought to myself. Baby or no baby, you are dead.
‘Look, I wasn’t not telling you,’ I said, deciding to take a different tack. And to get off the kitchen floor because my bum was completely numb. ‘I just didn’t want to tell you over the phone. It didn’t seem right.’
Check me out − the dutiful daughter. For a spur-of-the-moment excuse, I thought it was pretty good. I tiptoed over to the sofa and replaced the tea towel with a blanket. Very chic.
‘Well, that’s probably because it isn’t right,’ she said, still sounding grumpy, but I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be disinherited. This time. ‘We haven’t even met this Alex character. It’s not right.’
‘He’s not a character, he’s a person.’ I took a deep breath, imagining the cold day in hell when Alex would sit down for afternoon tea with my mum and dad. ‘And you will meet him and you’ll love him.’
‘When?’
Oh cock.
‘Soon?’ I managed to make the word so high-pitched I swear the dogs next door started whining.
‘Bring him home for my birthday.’
And it wasn’t a question.
‘We’re having a bit of a do − nothing fancy, just something in the garden for the family,’ she went on. ‘And I want you there. And if he thinks he’s going to be part of this family, he’d better be there too.’
I put my mum on speakerphone and opened my calendar. Her birthday was in three weeks. Three very short, very unavoidable weeks. It wasn’t that I had forgotten, it’s just that until Facebook reminds me someone has been born, it just doesn’t register.
‘It’s a bit soon, Mum,’ I said slowly. ‘And the flights will be expensive …’
‘Your dad and I will pay.’
There was blood in the water, and Annette Clark never gave up until she got her kill.
‘For both of you. As an engagement present.’
‘Right.’ I felt very, very sick. Home. London. England. Mark. Everything I’d left behind.
‘And you’ll stay here.’ She was really enjoying herself now. ‘With your dad and me. Oh, Angela, you’ve made my birthday. David, get on Expedia, she’s coming home!’
And at that moment, I knew two things only. The first was that I was going to kill Louisa. The second was that I was going to have to go to London.
‘I didn’t tell her,’ Louisa whined into the phone as I hopped into a cab the next morning. The subway was down and I was already late for the office, having spent most of the previous evening drinking homemade margaritas while Alex stroked my hair and tried to talk me off the ledge. ‘It was Tim. It was a mistake.’
‘How did Tim manage to tell my mother I’m engaged?’ I fumbled in my satchel for a pair of sunglasses. The sun was too bright and my hangover was too sharp. ‘Is this because I broke his hand?’
Which I did. Almost accidentally. On their wedding day. I wasn’t sure if he’d forgiven me in the two years since I’d fled.
‘No.’ Louisa sounded tired. I had heard that was one of the side effects of having a baby, and according to my mother I’d know all about that. ‘He was in the supermarket and Mark’s mum was in there and going on about how Mark was going to New York for some conference—’
‘Mark?’ I suddenly felt very sweaty. And sick. And violent. ‘Mark Mark?’
‘Yes, Angela, Mark. You do recall? You were engaged to him for a million years?’
‘So Mark then?’ I said. ‘I just wanted to clarify that we were talking about the same scumbag.’
‘Yes, Mark.’ The word had lost all meaning. ‘So he was supposed to be going to New York for this conference because he’s just so important, and obviously Tim mentioned you were in New York, and obviously she couldn’t help having a dig, and so he casually dropped in that you were engaged. He didn’t mean to, honestly, and he had no idea she’d tell your mum. I mean, he didn’t know your mum was in there as well, did he?’
‘My mum is always in the supermarket,’ I replied, watching Williamsburg rush by, giving way to the Polish shop signs of Greenpoint and assorted acid-washed denim ensembles. ‘She lives and dies for Waitrose. I’m amazed they haven’t given her a job yet.’
‘Well, I just wanted you to know it wasn’t on purpose. Really, he was trying to do you a favour,’ Louisa bellowed over the Top Gear theme tune. ‘He’s totally Team Angela.’
‘But getting back to the important things, Mark is coming to New York?’ I didn’t need to see my reflection to know I had no colour left in my face. ‘When? Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ Louisa sighed. ‘He didn’t get the details. He is only a man, babe. And you know they don’t talk at all any more. It’s not like you’re going to bump into him, though, is it?’
‘No.’ I breathed out hard. My ex in my city. How dare he? Wasn’t there a law against cheating ex-boyfriends coming within five thousand miles of you? ‘It’s just sod’s law, isn’t it? I’ll be walking into work with my skirt tucked into my knickers and he’ll just