Kitabı oku: «I Heart Forever»

PROLOGUE

‘Angela?’

I looked up from a swamp of unfinished magazine pages to see my assistant loitering in the doorway.

‘Cici?’

‘You told me to let you know when it was seven,’ she replied, tossing her icy long blonde hair over her shoulder. ‘Because you can’t use a clock like normal people.’

‘It’s seven already?’ I said with a groan, sweeping all the pages up into a messy pile in front of my computer screen. I ran a hot hand over my forehead, into my own hair. My dirty blonde, very messy, and past-the-help-of-dry-shampoo hair.

‘See how the big hand is on the twelve and the little hand is on the seven?’ Cici replied slowly, pointing to the massive clock on my office wall. ‘That means seven o’clock. Ninety minutes after you stopped paying me, for anyone who might be taking notice of that kind of thing. Not HR, obviously, since they went home hours ago.’

‘Shit,’ I muttered. ‘I’m going to be late.’

Turning off my computer, I grabbed my Marc Jacobs satchel from the new coat stand I’d bought for my office. All that was missing now was a fold-out bed and a potted plant then I’d never need to go home. I paused for a second, wondering whether or not I could fit one in the corner. Maybe if I moved the coat stand …

Cici shrugged, her face perfectly even. I couldn’t decide whether she looked so expressionless because she’d had really great Botox, or because she genuinely didn’t give a shit. In my heart, I hoped for the former, but after years of working together, my head assured me it was the latter.

‘You should go home,’ I told her as I stuffed myself into my jacket, the sleeves of the cropped cashmere jumper I’d nicked from the fashion cupboard bunching up around my armpits. ‘Thanks for staying late, I really appreciate it.’

‘Yeah, whatever.’ Cici didn’t do ‘grateful’ unless it came with a hashtag. ‘I’m leaving now, I have a date.’

‘Me too,’ I muttered. Casting a quick look in the mirror on top of my filing cabinet, I grimaced at my wayward eyeliner and sad, sallow skin. Had I been outside at all today? ‘And we’re totally going to miss our reservation.’

‘But – you’re married?’ she replied, looking confused.

‘You can still go on dates when you’re married,’ I explained, licking my ring finger and swiping at my undereyes while Cici gagged in the corner. ‘It’s not forbidden.’

She looked at me, completely scandalized. ‘Does Alex know?’

‘The date is with Alex,’ I sighed as I gave up on my face. I’d fix it on the subway. ‘He’s leaving tomorrow.’

‘Oh.’ She frowned, clearly disappointed at the loss of potential drama. ‘Whatever.’

‘OK, great, see you in the morning,’ I said, flying out the door as fast as my high heels would carry me. Which wasn’t really all that fast, if I was being entirely honest.

‘I’m sorry,’ I shouted, the front door hitting the hallway wall with a bang. ‘We had to pull a feature and I had to write a replacement and I lost track of time. Just let me get changed and we can leave and—’

‘Or we could stay in?’

All the lights were out and my living room glowed with the light of a hundred tiny candles. He must have used an entire bag of the little Ikea tealights. I made a mental note to tell Jenny that yes, one human could need all those candles in one lifetime. The curtains were drawn, music played softly, and in the middle of the room was my husband, Alex, in all his worn jeans, faded Cramps T-shirt and barefoot glory. This was not a man who was dressed for the Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare.

‘But it’s your last night,’ I said, dropping my coat and bag to the floor and stepping cautiously across the room towards him. Do not set yourself on fire, do not set yourself on fire, do not set yourself on fire … ‘We’ve waited months for this reservation.’

‘That’s true,’ Alex took me in his arms and brushed my messy hair away from my face. ‘So, I guess I could go put on a suit, get on the subway, pay four hundred bucks for some fancy dinner – and come home still hungry – or I could just stay here with you?’

He rested his forehead against mine and smiled. I smiled back. Even now, he still gave me butterflies.

‘Not a tough choice, babe.’

‘But what are we going to eat?’ I whispered, the rumbles in my stomach threatening to eat the butterflies. ‘We haven’t got anything in.’

‘It’s all taken care of,’ he said, nodding across the room. ‘I am a man of many talents.’

Taking my hands in his, he led me over to our little dining table. It had been laid with more care than I thought possible, white linen tablecloth, proper napkins, single red rose in a miniature glass vase I was almost certain he’d borrowed from upstairs, and the classiest touch of all, two chilled bottles of Brooklyn Brewery’s finest lager with the tops already popped. The doorbell rang and I immediately started for the door. It was an old habit I just couldn’t seem to kill – what if it was post? Exciting post?!

‘I got it,’ Alex said, leaping nimbly through the candles and answering the front door.

I vaguely heard a muffled exchange while I stood by the table, unfastening the little buckles on my shoes and taking it all in. Ten weeks. He would be gone for ten weeks. No more kisses or romantic dinners à deux until November. Not that I was mad or sad or anything, other than extremely happy for my beloved husband. Honest. Only, I couldn’t remember the last time things had been so easy. All my friends were happy, my parents were off on a cruise somewhere mobile phones didn’t work, my job was going well, and things between Alex and I were perfect. Well, he was leaving me for months on end to go travelling around South East Asia but hey, what married couple didn’t go through that on your average Wednesday? No siree, no problems here.

‘Dinner is served.’ He opened the door with his foot and then kicked it closed behind him, two huge flat boxes in his arms, still steaming from the cool evening air. ‘Get your ass sat down.’

‘Pizza!’ I clapped, delighted, all my worries about how much I was going to miss him devoured by the growling in my belly. If he wasn’t the best bloody husband of all time.

‘One porkypineapple for me,’ he confirmed, moving the rose from the table to the kitchen top to protect it from the massive pizza boxes. ‘And one disgusting tuna sweetcorn, specially made for m’lady.’

‘You got them to make me a tuna pizza?’ I gasped as I pulled back the lid and inhaled. ‘Alex!’

Truly, this was a tremendous gesture of love. There were approximately fourteen thousand pizza restaurants in New York City and not one of them offered a tuna pizza on their menu. Even the places that sold tuna sandwiches as well, flat out refused to put canned fish on a plain cheese and tomato pizza. I’d been living in this country for six years and I still couldn’t understand why it was the biggest possible transgression a human could make. Buy a rifle in the supermarket? Oh, OK. Empty a can of tuna onto a margarita pizza? No bloody way.

‘I still don’t understand why America refuses to embrace it,’ I said. Who needed a seat at the chef’s table when you had an entire tuna pizza in front of you?

‘Because it’s gross?’ Alex suggested, settling down in front of his own enormous pie. ‘And you should be ashamed of yourself?’

I shook my head, peeling one massive, slightly floppy slice off the bottom of the box, pinching the edges of the crust with my thumb and forefinger then folding it in half. Alex watched approvingly. He’d make a New Yorker out of me yet. As soon as he got me to give up the tuna.

‘Firstly, they have it in Italy, where pizza comes from,’ I said with a mouthful of cheesy goodness. ‘And secondly, you’re defending the eating habits of a country that puts cheese in tins and aerosol cans. You can’t say squirty cheese is an acceptable food and then deny a woman her tuna pizza.’

‘Easy Cheese is a basic American human right,’ he replied, swiping a stray smear of tomato sauce from the side of my mouth with his thumb. ‘I get it, you can’t understand. You were brought up on toads in holes and spotted dicks, it’s practically child abuse.’

‘Ooh, I could go for a bit of spotted dick for pudding,’ I said, still chewing my pizza. ‘Have we got any custard?’

‘You’re disgusting – and I love you,’ Alex replied. The grin on his face turned wistful as he watched me eat across the table. I felt my cheeks blush and wiped the corners of my mouth with the back of my hand.

‘Do you think they have Easy Cheese in Cambodia?’ I asked.

‘I hope not,’ he said. ‘That’s kind of the whole point of going. Get away from the Easy Cheese for a little while, try something new.’

‘But I thought you loved Easy Cheese?’ I said, pulling a piece of sweetcorn off my pizza and popping it into my mouth, avoiding his gaze. ‘I thought Easy Cheese was the best thing ever.’

‘I do love Easy Cheese,’ Alex picked up his chair and moved it around the table until we were side by side, ‘more than anything, but my mind needs a break, though not from Easy Cheese. In a dream world, you know I’d take Easy Cheese with me.’

I paused to chew and swallow.

‘Just to be clear, I was using Easy Cheese as a metaphor for our relationship,’ I said, wiping my fingers on my napkin.

‘Really?’ Alex’s denim-clad leg pressed against mine. ‘I was definitely talking about Easy Cheese.’

I looked over at my husband’s sweet, smiling face and bright green eyes and tried my best to look happy for him. He had been planning this trip for almost a year and I knew he was doing his best not to get too excited in front of me. We’d debated going travelling together but there was just no way. For one, I had what my mother would refer to as ‘a proper job’ and couldn’t just nick off for months at a time and expect said proper job to be waiting for me when I got back. Alex had the time and the desire to spend weeks on end living out of a backpack. He was a musician, a proper one, in a band with a record contract that went on tour and sold records and everything. Well, he used to go on tour and sell records. Stills hadn’t played any big shows in a couple of years and record sales were slowing down at an incredibly alarming rate. Bloody Spotify. He needed this trip and I knew it, I wasn’t going to ruin our last night together by playing the ‘poor me’ card.

‘There’s still time for you to change your mind, you know,’ Alex said, nursing his beer. ‘This time tomorrow we could be on a river beach in Laos. This time next week, we could be checking out temples in Myanmar, next month dancing at a full moon party in Thailand.’

‘You know that I would if I could,’ I whispered, staring at his perfect features. His full lips, his sharp cheekbones, his shiny black hair that had obviously seen shampoo in the last forty-eight hours. ‘You know I’d love it more than anything, but asking for two months off at work would basically be the same as handing in my notice.’

It was a complete and utter lie. Two months of nothing but Alex Reid, all to myself? Yes, please. Two months of living out of a backpack in dirty clothes, without telly or online food delivery? I just couldn’t see it. The closest I’d ever come to roughing it was an abbreviated weekend at Reading Festival when I was seventeen and even that ended with my dad picking me up on the Saturday afternoon after I’d caved and tried to use the toilets. I hadn’t seen the inside of a tent since.

‘You could just quit,’ Alex stage-whispered into my hair, one arm snaking around my waist. ‘You could just leave.’

‘I really wish I hated my job,’ I replied, sliding my hand along his cheek. ‘And having a home. And food. And things.’

‘You do love things,’ Alex agreed with a theatrical sigh. He squeezed my hand in his and my engagement and wedding rings pressed sharply against their neighbouring fingers. ‘And I guess someone has to hold down a steady job. Looks like I’m stuck with Graham.’

Just because I would rather perform laser hair removal on myself than spend two months living out of a backpack did not mean I was fully OK with his going on this trip without me. Sure, I could play the supportive wife for a while but I’d seen Eat Pray Love, I knew what happened on these adventures.

‘You’ll barely notice I’m gone,’ he said, picking up a piece of tuna pizza and sniffing it with great suspicion before taking the tiniest of bites. He looked to be struggling far too much for a man who was about to spend several weeks subsisting on flash-fried insects, but whatever, all the more for me.

‘You’re going to be so busy with work and I know Lopez isn’t going to leave you alone for more than two minutes while I’m away. And I’m gonna call you all the time.’

‘You don’t need to convince me,’ I promised and the butterflies fluttered back into life as he ran a finger along my jawline, brushing against my bottom lip. ‘I’m glad you’re doing this. You’ve wanted to go forever, I know.’

‘It kind of feels like now or never,’ he agreed. ‘There’s no tour, no record to promote. And I won’t be able to do a trip like this once you’re barefoot and pregnant.’

I almost bit his finger off.

‘There’s only one of us who’s barefoot, right now, and I really hope neither of us are pregnant,’ I replied, my voice just ever so slightly shrill. ‘Unless there’s something you want to tell me?’

‘I didn’t mean right this second.’ He laughed at the look on my face with all the ease of someone who didn’t have a uterus. ‘I only meant, I won’t be able to take off on a trip when we do decide to have kids. If we decide to have kids.’

‘If,’ I repeated softly. I wanted to commit to a ‘when’ but it still seemed like such a huge leap into adulthood. I still couldn’t time my trips to the toilet properly when I was wearing a romper – how was I supposed to know how to raise a child?

‘I’m glad you’re going,’ I said, forcing certainty into my words. ‘It’s just, you’ve never been away for so long before. I’m going to miss you, that’s all.’

‘I’m going to miss you too,’ he said. Alex grabbed hold of both sides of my chair and turned it around to face him. ‘I’m going to miss you every minute of every day.’

‘That’s clearly an exaggeration,’ I replied as my heart began to beat just a little bit faster. His hands were still holding on to the seat of my chair and he leaned in towards me. He pushed my hair out of the way and pulled gently at the neck of my jumper, kissing my shoulder, my collarbone, my throat. ‘You won’t miss me while you’re asleep.’

‘I will,’ he protested, whispering right into my ear. I shivered all the way down to my toes. ‘I’ll dream about you every night.’

‘Well, that’s just ridiculous,’ I said, gasping as he pulled me out of my seat and into his lap. ‘You can’t control your dreams. You dream about whatever’s in your subconscious.’

‘Then let’s give my subconscious something to remember,’ he said, taking off my jumper and tossing it onto the settee. ‘We’ve got twelve hours.’

‘I’ve never been one to turn down a challenge,’ I replied as I yanked his T-shirt over his head and ran my hands down his tight, taut back. ‘You’d better set an alarm.’

Closing my eyes, I tried to concentrate on being right where I was. What good would it do to worry about what might happen? Alex would go, Alex would come back, and it would be fine. Everything was exactly how it should be, exactly at that moment. Now, all I had to do was keep every single thing in my life exactly the same, forever.

How hard could that be?