I walked out and slammed the door for the second time. Not knowing what else to do, I grabbed my phone and dialled.
‘Hello?’
‘Louisa?’
‘Angela?’
I was confused. I’d dialled my mum’s house, not Louisa’s.
‘Where’s my mum?’ I asked. I wasn’t sure I could cope with this.
‘She’s making tea, I just brought the wedding photos around on the way to tennis. I got them yesterday,’ Louisa said.
Just hearing her voice brought it all back. Not the wedding or Mark’s cheating, but my actual life. My twenty-seven years of life. She was having tea with my mum on a Saturday morning, looking at the wedding photos, at me in the wedding photos, as though none of the last three weeks had happened. And I guessed to them, most of it hadn’t.
‘Where are you, Angela?’ Louisa asked. She wasn’t shouting and she didn’t sound angry. ‘Your mum said you’re still in America.’
‘I’m in New York,’ I sat down on the bottom step of the staircase, ‘I’ve been here since …’
‘Gosh, doesn’t it seem like a long time ago,’ Louisa sighed. ‘I wish the honeymoon could have lasted longer …’
‘Louisa,’ I said slowly, ‘aren’t you pissed off with me?’
‘Pissed off with you?’ she asked, sounding shocked. ‘Aren’t you pissed off with me?’
I bit my lip and stared at the doorway, my eyes welling up fast. ‘But I ruined your wedding,’ I gasped, trying not to let the tears go all at once. ‘I am so sorry.’
‘Oh, Angela,’ Louisa sobbed, tears catching in her voice across the line. ‘Is that really what you’ve been thinking for three weeks? I thought you’d be angry with me. I’m the one in the wrong, I should have told you about Mark and that slag Katie as soon as I found out.’
‘Mum said he’s moved in with her,’ I whispered, pulling my knees up. ‘Have you seen him?’
‘I’ve seen them at the tennis club,’ Louisa said reluctantly. ‘But he knows what me and Tim think of him, we’re not exactly sharing a post-match drink. Oh, Angela, please don’t tell me you’ve been out there all on your own thinking I don’t care?’
‘I haven’t been on my own,’ I managed. ‘I’ve been staying with a friend, this girl I met, but I think I’m going to have to come back soon.’
‘Of course you’re coming home,’ Louisa said. Her voice was so familiar, yet it sounded foreign, I’d been immersed in American accents for such a long time now. ‘You can stay with us. We’ll look after you.’
‘I’ve been offered a job, on this new magazine,’ I said, trying to find some strong ground to stand on. ‘I’ve been doing some stuff for the website here, and they’ve offered me a staff writer job.’
‘There you go. It’s not all bad then is it? Why don’t you go and pack your bag and come back. Come back today, I could meet you at the airport tomorrow! I can’t stand thinking of you there, being upset on your own. Please Angela, I just want to know you’re all right. I just want to see you.’
‘I haven’t been on my own,’ I said again, looking out of the door, watching New York buzz by. ‘And I love it here. Honestly, I’ve actually been sort of OK.’
‘You don’t sound it, Angela,’ Louisa sighed. ‘Why don’t you call me when you’ve booked your flight. You know what we need, we need Ben & Jerry’s and Dirty Dancing.’
‘I’ve already done all that, Louisa.’ I shook my head, remembering why I had left in the first place. ‘Things aren’t perfect here, but just coming home won’t make everything better either.
‘Angela, you need your friends, listen to yourself!’ she replied. ‘What Mark did was bloody awful, and we’ll never forgive him for it, but you have to come home sooner or later. You can’t run away for ever.’
‘I don’t think you understand,’ I said, standing up and walking out into the almost fresh air. ‘I’m not running away. I was, when I left, I was, but now I’ve got some real opportunities here. Some really exciting things have happened.’
‘It always seems that way when you’re on holiday,’ Louisa was starting to talk to me as if I were drunk. Or five years old. It was frustrating. ‘But be real Angela, you’ve got to get on with life.’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ I nodded, rounding the corner and looking up at the Chrysler Building. It still broke my heart, it was so beautiful. ‘But coming home wouldn’t be getting on with life, it would be going back to something I was unhappy with.’
‘Angela,’ Louisa was starting to get impatient. ‘I get it, you think you’ve put the Mark-cheating-on-you-thing behind you.’
‘Don’t tell me what I think,’ I said, my voice growing stronger. ‘And yes, Mark is a shit. If I ever see him again, I’m likely to try to castrate him, but what he did to me wasn’t nearly as bad as what I did to myself …’ I could almost hear Alex’s words coming out of my mouth. Fancy that. ‘I hadn’t been happy with him for years. He wouldn’t have looked at someone else if things were good between us. I should have left him, Louisa, but I was too scared. I wasted years of both our lives. Just pissed them away.’
‘But—’ Louisa tried to interrupt, but I wasn’t ready to stop.
‘And in the last three weeks, I feel like I’ve actually been living. Making good decisions, doing good things. If I came back now, what would happen?’
‘You’d be with people who love you and care about you,’ Louisa said. Her voice certainly didn’t sound like that of someone who loved and cared about me. I took a deep breath before I said anything else. Before I could, I heard the call waiting beeping quietly on the line.
‘I have to go, Louisa,’ I said, shielding my eyes and looking back up towards the apartment. I could see Jenny pressed up against the window, looking for me, her phone in her hand. ‘I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do, but can you tell Mum I’m OK, and I’ll call on Monday?’
‘Angela, for God’s sake,’ Louisa sounded incredibly cross, ‘you’re living in a dream world. Wake up and come home’
‘I don’t know about that,’ I said, shrugging. ‘But I’ll know by Monday. Love you, Louisa, I’m glad you’re OK.’
Before she could start trying to talk me home again I hung up. Jenny had already rung off, and when I looked up at the window, she had vanished. I wasn’t ready to go back in there just yet, but I wasn’t ready to belly up and go back to London either. I needed somewhere to think.
For an hour I wandered the streets. Down, across, across, up, back down again. I didn’t even realize I’d arrived at the Empire State Building until I walked straight into the queue of people.
‘Watch where you’re bloody going,’ an unnecessarily fat British man tutted and sighed as I backed away with incoherent apologies. ‘Bloody Americans,’ he nodded to his companion, ‘they’re so bloody rude.’
Finding a tiny space outside a pharmacy on the corner of the street, I stared up at the building, but it didn’t offer any easy answers. Just memories forged from countless hours of TV and movie watching, spliced with scenes from my visit with Alex. Feeling choked by the