It was the same voice that said, yes, you do look fat in those jeans and no, wearing red lipstick doesn’t brighten up your face, it makes you look like a tart. I hated that voice. Part your mother, part your year nine Biology teacher and part Jeremy Kyle. Living with Jenny had really helped me put The Voice back in its box where it belonged, but right now it was coming through loud and clear. So I did what any good English girl would do and ignored it completely, pushing it down, down, down until it was just a bad feeling in my stomach instead of a bellowing in my ear. Jenny would tell me the only way to silence it was to address the issues. Jenny was American. I chose to quietly hope it would go away on its own, like a medium-sized spider or a funny rash in a special place. Since there was sod all I could do about the visa on a Saturday night, I decided to stash those concerns all together. May as well give myself an ulcer for lots of problems rather than just one, surely? I would not worry about things for the next twelve hours. There. Done. Sort of.
‘Ready?’ Alex had gone all out for the party. Not only had he washed and brushed his hair, he was wearing a suit, shirt and tie. I had forgotten he owned a suit, shirt and tie. It was silly how good he looked. The suit and tie were black and skinny, the shirt was white and shiny. If he’d been a girl, he would have been doing a spin in his high heels to show off, but since he was a manly man, he was just pushing his feet into his black Converse. Which should not have worked with the outfit, but, irritatingly for someone with her trotters rammed into very pinchy pumps, he looked great.
‘So who’s going to be there tonight?’ Alex asked as we shut the door behind us and I felt the icy sting of the New York winter on my bare cheeks. At least tonight it was just the cheeks on my face. Living by the water was wonderful. We had a beautiful view of Manhattan, and in the summer, sitting on the rooftop with a cold glass of wine and a gentle breeze, it was perfection. But in winter, that gentle breeze became razor blades on your skin with a nice after-splash of TCP to really freshen things up.
‘Big crowd? Intimate gathering?’ He took my hand and squeezed it, pretending he wasn’t terrified of either.
‘It’s Jenny,’ I squeezed back, trying to get the feeling back into my fingers. ‘She’ll have invited everyone she’s ever met. Hopefully they won’t all come at once.’
‘Cool, whatever,’ he replied, fumbling in his pocket for a MetroCard. ‘I haven’t seen her in forever.’
It was cute of him to pretend that wasn’t a relief. I knew full well he was terrified of my best friend, and of crowds in general. Alex could happily entertain thousands of people from the safety of a stage, but parties made him uncomfortable. He would go along, smile, nod, laugh when appropriate, shake his head when required and everyone would love him, but I could tell. Once a high-school music nerd, always a high-school music nerd. Despite everything he’d accomplished by the age of thirty-one, he was always waiting for the popular kids to kick him out of their kegger. He had explained to me what a kegger was. I wouldn’t have been invited to one either. It was funny when you found out that men were exactly like women sometimes.
After scrabbling down the stairs and dodging a platform full of parkas, I managed to throw myself onto the L train and squeeze myself into a seat as soon as the doors opened. Alex stood in front of me, half shouting over the rumble of our journey about the trains he’d taken in Tokyo. Opposite, I could see two girls checking out his backside. I wanted to be offended, but it really was a great arse.
‘See how easy it would be for him to replace you?’ The Voice interrupted Alex’s story to remind me how very attractive my boyfriend was in our neighbourhood. Clearly, he was hot wherever he went, but in Brooklyn, he was like hipster catnip. And I was prepared to bet anything that the two girls in their denim cut-offs over black fishnets finished with scuffed-up DMs hadn’t sat around all afternoon watching gay vampires with toothpaste on their spots. They had probably been making jewellery out of electrical equipment or painting pictures of something very deep and meaningful with hummus.
‘You have to come with me next time,’ Alex said as I tuned out the bad-news bears in my own head. ‘You can’t leave me with Craig and Graham again. You’re gonna love Japan – honestly, everywhere we went I was like, Angie would go crazy for this. I think the guys were kinda sick of me by the end.’
‘Next time,’ I smiled. Hurrah, I had kept my promise not to mention my lack of visa.
‘When you’ve got your visa, we’ll go everywhere.’ He nudged my knee with his and I forced myself not to kick him in the balls.
‘Yep.’ I looked back at the hipster girls behind him. They didn’t need toothpaste spot cream or visas. They did need to learn some manners, though.
The party was wall to wall with people, just as I’d predicted, and most of them were hatefully beautiful. I hadn’t even taken my coat off before Alex had to give me a not-particularly-gentle punch in the shoulder to get me to stop staring at the three perfectly muscled men wearing nothing but red fur-trimmed Speedos.
‘I – it’s Christmas …?’ I said, defending myself. While having another look.
‘Yeah, Santa’s been working out,’ he replied, openly miffed. I kissed him on the cheek and steered my eyes away, but really, it never hurt to see him a little jealous. I was trying to be a grown-up, but I was still a girl.
‘Angie!’ Jenny squealed and jumped up from the sofa as though I was the only suitable kidney donor in all the world and I’d just walked into the hospital to save her life. From the glazed look in her eyes, she’d more likely be looking for a new liver under her tree. She was hammered. ‘You look adorable. Are those my shoes?’
‘They are your shoes,’ I confirmed. ‘I didn’t think you’d mind since you made me wear a PVC maid’s outfit last night.’
‘Did you burn it?’
‘I did.’
‘Good.’
It was nice to be considered adorable, but I couldn’t help but think that sometimes it might be nice to be considered a stone-cold fox like Jenny. If I’d known she was going to be wrapped up in a red Herve Leger bandage dress, I might have worn a different colour, but, like Delia and Cici, though with considerably less vitriol, there was no point in competing with Jenny.
‘There are so many people here.’ I waved a hand at my face, fanning warm air right back at myself. Last winter, I’d spent more than one day wearing a scarf and mittens indoors. Our building suffered from a severe case of knackered boileritis, but the sheer number of bodies in the room was keeping things nice and toasty. And speaking of bodies, I peered around her hair to look for Jenny’s very beautiful boyfriend. ‘Is Sigge around?’
‘Over there.’ Jenny pointed at the trifecta of half-naked men by the window as she gave Alex a kiss on each cheek and a perfunctory hug. He was scared of her for a reason. She insisted on keeping what she referred to as a professional distance with regards to their being friends. According to Jenny, it was her job to keep Alex on his toes, a fact that wasn’t lost on him. He was on his tiptoes whenever Jenny was around. He always tried his best with her, but I could feel he was on edge, hence the suit and tie. I was under no illusion that the dress-up was for me, but the two of them getting along so well gave me a happy.
‘I didn’t recognize his abs,’ I said, trying to be as nonchalant as possible. I wasn’t terribly good at it. ‘It’s so different seeing them in person.’
‘Right?’ Jenny sipped her champagne. It looked like love in her eyes, but it could just have been booze. ‘He thought it would be funny. I tried to explain to him it was a little Zoolander, but that just made it worse. Now they keep flashing each other Blue Steels and giggling like women.’
The three of us looked over at the model playpen across the room. Such sharp cheekbones.
‘That’s my boyfriend,’ Jenny sighed. ‘Can you believe it?’
‘I’d