It was a lie. I thought she was reliable when it came to turning up on my doorstep with a bag full of Galaxy and three bottles of wine, but I thought she was horribly unreliable and, if possible, even more unprofessional when it came to keeping a job. And mostly I thought that because it was true. In and out of retail jobs, a brief flirtation with teacher training and a puppy love infatuation with the idea of becoming a twenty-first century Avon lady, Amy had a commitment problem when it came to work. And men. And everything else on earth.
However, that didn’t seem like a helpful opinion in that moment so I kept my mouth shut and smiled. Amy gave me a cheerful grin in return and slipped her arm through mine. Ours was a long-term love affair. We’d been friends since before we could talk and some days I wished we could go back to those times. Like now.
‘That is very good to know,’ she said with a big grin. ‘Because I’ve been thinking. You clearly can’t work out whether to shit or wind your watch without help so I’m coming to Milan with you.’
‘No you aren’t,’ I said, stunned.
‘I am,’ she corrected. ‘I’m going to be your assistant. Like that lady down there.’
I peered over the balcony and saw an exhausted, harangued-looking girl rubbing oil into one of the model’s chests.
‘You might actually need an assistant,’ Paige said, shrugging. ‘And god knows, you do need a life coach. Like, all the time.’
‘And that’s what I’m here for.’ Amy spread out her arms with a flourish. ‘I can fetch, carry and make sure you don’t ruin your life, all at the same time.’
‘Amy, I—’
‘I’m a great multitasker,’ she added, nodding at Paige.
I sat and stared at my best friend, clicking the tips of my bitten-down fingernails together.
‘Tess …’ Amy reached across the sofa and took both my hands in hers. ‘It’s going to be awesome.’
Why did her words sound more like a threat than a promise?
‘I’ll have to clear it with my agent,’ I muttered, accepting defeat far too easily. I’d never been able to say no to Amy. It was like denying a pitbull puppy a treat. So little and cute, you couldn’t bear to turn it down and you kind of knew that if you did, it would rip your hand off and take it anyway.
‘Now, are we still pretending to talk about work? Is this yours?’ she asked me, letting go of my hands and reaching over to grab a full-to-the-brim glass of white wine from the coffee table. ‘Amazing, thank you.’
‘What else would we be talking about?’ Paige asked, straightening her pink silk top and grabbing her own wine to get it out of Amy’s reach. It was nice to see the new friends had at least one thing in common: getting hammered in the middle of a work day.
‘Nothing,’ I replied as fast as I could, quietly glad that Amy had taken away my wine. I was not a good drinker. ‘One hundred per cent work talk only.’
‘If you really want to go for the advertising job as much as you say you do, maybe you should go for it.’ Paige casually glanced over at the shirtless men, flickered an eyebrow and shook her head. ‘Photography won’t be the easy option.’
‘Yeah, and maybe you could even go from working six days a week to the full seven?’ Amy replied. ‘I’m sure it would only freak you out to have to spend your birthday with your friends instead of in the office. Or Christmas. Or New Year.’
‘You work over Christmas?’ Paige looked horrified. Then took a drink. Then looked horrified again.
‘No, it’s fine,’ Amy said, waving her hands and her wine around in the air. ‘Tess isn’t normal. Tess is a martyr. She’s happiest when she’s miserable.’
Paige nodded. ‘That explains why she went for Nick.’
‘I’m happiest when I’m busy,’ I said before Amy could pounce on the mention of his name. ‘There’s a difference.’
For the want of a better plan, I picked up an empty glass and poured in a couple of slugs of wine. I was not a big drinker for good reason. More than three drinks and I could not be held responsible for my actions. More than four and I couldn’t remember them anyway. But this definitely felt like a legitimate wine-to-the-rescue moment. Amy took hold of my wrist, raising the glass to my mouth, and I drank obediently, disappointed in my appalling lack of willpower.
‘How do you feel right now?’ Paige asked. ‘If you had to make the decision right now, pick one and never do the other ever again, which would it be?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, wishing I didn’t see Nick and Charlie in my head when she asked that question. ‘I had a plan, you know? I knew where I was going and I knew what I wanted. And now it’s like, boom! decision time. But if I make the wrong decision, what happens then? I’m buggered. Completely buggered and miserable and I die alone with seventeen cats all called Steve. It’s too hard.’
‘Have I missed something? How does picking the wrong job leave you as a crazy cat lady?’ Paige looked swiftly from me to Amy and back again. ‘Were you drinking before you got here?’
‘She’s not drunk,’ Amy said, patting my hand as though I was a deranged nana. ‘She’s just not really thinking about the jobs, are you?’
‘Oh, bloody hell.’ Paige rolled her eyes. ‘And we were doing so well at avoiding the subject of cock. OK. Hang on a sec, I just need to set up this last shot and then we can get trashed and talk about this properly.’
Trashed? I looked at my watch. It was barely even three o’clock.
Amy looked at me with a ‘well?’ expression, an already empty wine glass in her hand. I genuinely didn’t know where she put it; the woman was miniscule and drank more than Lindsay Lohan on the average Thursday.
‘What?’ I picked up my glass and gave my wine one more sip. ‘Spit it out.’
‘Have you explained it all to Charlie?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘Have you heard from the other one?’
‘No.’
Just then, my text message alert sounded loudly in the bottom of my handbag and every internal organ jumped. Even my spleen wanted to know who was it was from. It was Charlie.
One by one, my organs settled back into their usual positions, consoling each other on their way down. I didn’t know why I was surprised. Nick wasn’t going to call. Nick wasn’t going to call. Nick wasn’t going to call. And no matter how many times I told myself that, it did not feel any better.
‘Speak of the devil,’ I said, my voice unexpectedly scratchy. ‘Charlie wants to know where we are.’
‘Tell him to fuck the fuck off, we’re talking about him, not to him,’ Amy replied. ‘You thought it was Nick, didn’t you?’
‘It’s fine,’ I said for the millionth time, tapping out a quick message to Charlie. ‘Everything is fine.’
‘So,’ Paige reappeared at the top of the stairs with her hands on her annoyingly slim hips, ‘can we please get to the bottom of this?’
‘Yes please.’ Amy cocked her head to one side and squinted at me. ‘But we’ve been going too easy on her. Tess, quick-fire decision time: Charlie or Nick?’
‘There is no decision to make.’ I could hear my voice rising along with my blood pressure as I spoke every syllable. ‘You know we’re not talking about him.’
‘The name Nick is verboten,’ Amy explained to Paige. ‘I’m not allowed to mention him, even though she’s been checking her phone to see if he’s called every