Читать книгу Amber Green Takes Manhattan - Rosie Nixon - Страница 6
ОглавлениеI nuzzled in and breathed deeply. I could sniff the vulnerable patch of bare skin just under his collarbone all day long. It was light outside now and I couldn’t get back to sleep. My mind was spinning. I traced the edge of Rob’s tattoo lightly with my finger. An intricate feather design on his upper arm, it was quite a work of art and had taken me by surprise the first time I saw it in full, after our first date. He had teased me with glimpses of it poking out of T-shirt sleeves for a long while before that. It had taken three sittings to create, by the steady hand of a Muswell Hill tattoo artist. The feather, he said, was to symbolise the freedom of flight; to remind him that he too was free to fly, if he ever needed reminding. Deep and meaningful! I teased him at the time, but the sentiment had played on my mind a bit ever since. Tonight it was resonating strongly to me. Does he want to just take off and fly away from me? Leave me broken hearted, like his last girlfriend?
It all started yesterday evening.
Rob came to the door in tracksuit bottoms and a baggy hoodie. I loved him in his comfy house clothes. He was holding Pinky under one arm.
Pinky: the cute pet micro-pig partly responsible for getting us together. Rob had adopted the little piggy and relocated him from Los Angeles after Pinky was abandoned by one of my former ditzy Hollywood clients. Yes, really! It all happened last year, during my temporary job as stylist to the stars Mona Armstrong’s assistant. Rob doted on the creature – literally worshipped the sawdust Pinky walked on. He was more than a pet; he was his child.
Of late, I’d noticed that the novelty of having an alternative to a house cat was starting to wear off for Rob’s flatmate. Ben was, understandably, getting fed up with the lingering smell of pig pee in the hallway, trotter prints on the sofa, and the wet snout he regularly found snuffling in his clean laundry. But when you looked into Pinky’s dark little eyes you could forgive anything. Well, Rob could. In the same way that I became pretty pathetic whenever I looked into his.
The little creature squealed in what I’m sure was piggy happiness when he saw me on the doorstep.
‘Ben’s here,’ Rob warned, meaning no proper kissing until we reached his bedroom.
I smiled, pulling on his tracksuit cord. ‘I can control myself.’
Rob hovered by the door. He looked anxious.
‘Everything okay?’
He paused for a bit too long. ‘Sort of. I’ll explain later.’
I followed him into the living room. Ben was in his usual position, lying full length across one of the sofas, bare feet and lanky legs dangling off the end, a litre bottle of Coke by his side. He was sweaty, like he’d not long been home from the gym.
Theirs was such a boy flat. It was sparse and functional, yet still managed to look untidy. The front room consisted of a large flat-screen TV, two sofas, a coffee table and an Ikea rug that should never have been bought in cream because it had rarely seen a vacuum cleaner in the two years they had lived here. Shelves crammed with DVDs and books in no particular order and curtains that didn’t quite stretch across the width of the whole window. No surprises, then, that they affectionately referred to their home as ‘the pigsty’.
‘So have you heard the big news?’ Ben said when he finally took his eyes off the TV and registered my presence.
‘No,’ I looked at Rob, confused.
‘Pinky’s gay,’ Ben blurted out, shifting himself sideways to get a proper view of both of our faces.
Rob smirked: ‘Don’t flatter yourself.’
‘Oh, it’s nothing to do with me – though if he fancies me, who can blame him? Pinky always goes for the guys. C’mon, bet you’ve noticed too, haven’t you Amber?’ He winked at me.
‘Enlighten me, Ben,’ I said cynically. I could tell he was desperate to get on with his story.
‘Nina’s bulldog, Freddie: Male. Can’t stop sniffing around his rear every time he comes over. The cat from next door: It’s a Tom, and Pinky’s entire face lights up every time he jumps over the fence. His trotters could barely move fast enough when he tried to chase him the other morning, I saw it with my own eyes. And I’m not joking, he takes an unhealthy shine to your and my boxers in the laundry basket, Rob, mate. You might not have noticed, but I certainly have.’
I chuckled and dug Rob in the ribs. ‘Got competition, have I?’
‘What is it they say?’ Rob asked, stooping to gently place Pinky on the floor and ushering him towards Ben. ‘Takes one to know one?’
‘Oh, I’ve got nothing against gays, you know that, Rob. Two of my best mates are gay and I went to a gay wedding last year – granted most of the guests fancied me, but that’s another story. No, I’m wondering if there’s a marketing opportunity here – “Meet Britain’s First Gay Miniature Pig” – I can see him being a hit in Soho. Don’t you think, Amber?’
I tried not to laugh.
Rob scowled in mock irritation. ‘Pinky and I are going to make dinner, and if you’re on our side you’re invited to join us, Amber. Get yourself a takeaway Ben.’
‘Flouncing off in a strop – so camp!’ Ben uttered, turning back around and taking the TV off pause.
I followed Rob into the kitchen and watched him lovingly top up Pinky’s bowl of slop. The fact he was an animal lover was one of the things I adored about Rob. He couldn’t walk past a cat in the street without stopping to give it a stroke.
‘So, tell me more about your day,’ I said, opening the fridge on the hunt for white wine. Rob failed to hear me; he seemed lost in thought.
‘You okay?’
‘Hey?’ He almost jumped. ‘Sorry, just sorting Pinky out then I’ll get dinner on. We’re having fish. Okay with you?’
‘Sounds great. Do you have any wine in here?’
‘There’s a bottle in my bag in the hallway, should still be slightly cold.’ He seemed nervous and it wasn’t like him not to open a bottle straight after a stressful day at work.
He was making me feel jittery too. I found the wine and returned to find Rob scrolling through emails on his phone. He was lost in thought as I unscrewed the top and poured us each a glass.
‘Shall I get the oven on then?’ I asked.
Finally, after dinner on our laps in front of some terrible sci-fi film Ben refused to turn off, Rob opened up. We were in his bedroom and I was reading an email from my boss, Joseph, who wanted a load of changes to the clothes I’d chosen for our latest window display at Selfridges.
‘How was I supposed to know he wanted muted candy colours rather than brights?’ I moaned. ‘He could have mentioned the fact two weeks ago when I started pulling it all together. It’s so frustrating.’ Rob was miles away. ‘And he’s asked me to come into work naked tomorrow.’
‘Eh?’ He’d spent the last ten minutes fiddling with the iPod dock, but there was still no sound coming out.
‘He’s asked me to… nothing. Perhaps you can tell me what happened at work? You’re clearly not listening to me.’
He turned and sat on the bed next to me. Then he looked at me earnestly. ‘Louise, the series producer, had a chat with me about a pitch the company’s just won for a shoot in New York,’ he began.
‘New York, wow,’ I uttered, though I felt my stomach knot as I sensed what was coming.
‘It’s to make a fly-on-the-wall series about Angel Wear.’
‘As in, Angel Wear, the underwear company?’ I asked.
‘Right,’ he said, avoiding eye contact. The knot in my stomach was pulled tighter. ‘She’s asked if I want to produce it – there’ll be directing involved too.’
‘In New York?’ I repeated, just to check I’d heard correctly. A mental image of the Angel Wear lingerie models popped into my head, all tanned, long-limbed perfection.
‘Yes, it would mean moving out there – for at least three months, maybe longer.’
I took a moment to process this. ‘Do you want to do it?’
‘I don’t know.’ He looked truly pained.
‘Well, when do you have to let her know?’
‘As soon as possible, they’re keen to get visas in place and a team out there in the next few weeks.’
I knew I must look as if I was desperately trying not to cry, every muscle in my face straining to retain its composure. I ached for him to pull me into a big bear hug and kiss my forehead reassuringly. But he didn’t. I’m not even sure he noticed my strange facial expression because he just lay back on the bed and sighed.
‘Listen Amber, I’m not sure about all the details yet, maybe I won’t take it, I thought I wanted to move away from this kind of telly. But it’s an opportunity to direct. I’m going to talk to Lou properly in the morning. I just wanted you to be in the loop.’
I managed to utter the words, ‘Yes, great, just got something in my eye,’ and escaped to the bathroom where I locked the door behind me. I sat on the side of the bath and held my head in my hands as I tried to imagine what this meant for us. Finally, I find someone I really like – someone I think I love; someone I can imagine building a life with – and now he’s going to move to New York. Maybe I’m destined to be single forever, after all.
When I finally emerged from the bathroom, Rob was already in bed looking at his phone again. Self-consciously I undressed, pulling on one of his T-shirts and awkwardly undoing my bra and wriggling out of it without showing any flesh. Instead of finding my usual sleep position: legs entwined with his, face buried in his chest, I stayed on my side. My feet were freezing.
And now, here I was, lying in bed awake at five in the morning, thinking too much, sniffing him and stalking his tattoo.
The events of last spring were still raw in my mind, nine months later. A fateful trip to Hawaii had changed the course of my life: I had finally realised Rob did have feelings for me; my then boss, Mona, completely lost the plot; and my best friend Vicky ended up shagging Trey Jones, the Trey Jones, the famous film director and man who we were meant to be watching get married. You couldn’t have made it up.
Vicky moved in with Trey in LA almost immediately, but it had taken Rob and me a whole four months after that to finally get together, when he tracked me down at work in London. I’ve been starring in my own rom-com ever since – Vicky providing the ‘com’, even from the other side of the globe.
Rob had said he needed to be out of the house extra early in the morning, which wasn’t unusual, but this morning I was happy to pretend to be still asleep while he tip-toed around the room, gathering his clothes before going off to shower. I stirred as he gently kissed my cheek goodbye but waited for the front door to slam before I got out of bed and dragged myself to the bathroom.
I’d gone to sleep trying to convince myself that things are never so bad in the cold light of day, but why did I still have the same feeling of impending doom? I tried to tell myself that three months was nothing – it would be over in a flash. But when you’ve only been dating for five months, it feels like forever. As a waterfall of hot water cascaded onto my head, I was lurched out of my despondency by the even more horrific realisation that there was no shampoo or conditioner in this shower. And soon after that, I realised there was none anywhere in the bathroom, so I went to work with hair washed in Lynx Deep Space shower gel. The day could only get better.
I called Vicky as I walked to work from Oxford Circus tube. ‘He’s going to be filming underwear models.’ Saying it aloud made it sting even more.
‘Man, that’s tough,’ said Vicky, confirming what I already knew.
‘Underwear models!’ I exclaimed again, thinking that making them sound faintly ridiculous might make them less threatening.
‘I heard you. The Icons all have legs up to their armpits, washboard stomachs, perfect racks, peachy—’
‘Yes, yes, okay, I think I know what an underwear model looks like, Vicky. I feel crap as it is, no need to rub it in.’
She paused, before replying, measuredly, ‘What I was going to say was peachy bottoms – and air for brains. Amber, stop doing the paranoid girlfriend thing and rise above this. It’s you who Rob’s going out with, and that’s not going to change. Well, unless you start acting all insecure and paranoid about the underwear models and their peachy bottoms that he will be filming. Not dating or having sex with – just filming. Okay?’
‘Okay.’ She didn’t have to spell it out quite so bluntly. Although she had hit the nail on the head.
‘Anyway, when are you coming out to see me?’ She changed the subject. ‘Not being funny but it’s been nearly a year, and you still haven’t got on a plane. We’ve got tons of space. I’m even naming a suite after you – the Green Suite. Come on Am, book it! Bring Rob too if you want. I’m going nuts out here in this huge mansion. And I need some English humour, desperately. I also need digestive biscuits dunked in Earl Grey tea. But most of all, I need us!’
She was right. I needed ‘us’ too. I missed Vicky so much – her wry sense of humour and the hilarious escapades we’d got up to when we shared a home.
‘Anyway, how’s things with you?’ I asked
‘Not great, to be honest. Why do you think I’m still awake at two in the morning and not at a party? I’ll tell you, because I’m lying in bed – alone – trying to work out what I’m doing with my life.’
‘Oh, honey, sorry to hear this, and I’ve been banging on about me. What’s going on?’
‘Nothing really. And that’s half the problem. I’m so bored here, Amber. Trey’s out at the crack of dawn each day and back late, if he comes back at all. He’s working on a big feature film and although it’s filming in LA, I hardly see him. I know more about our pool cleaner’s life than my own boyfriend’s right now. I even made lunch for the hedge trimmer yesterday, I was so bored of cooking for myself. He was pretty hot, as it goes, I was starting to find his strimmer sexy. Honestly, if Trey hadn’t come back that evening… Amber, I don’t know what I’m doing out here.’
‘You found his strimmer sexy? That’s desperate. Have you told Trey how you’re feeling?’
‘If I had a chance I probably would, but, like I said, he’s barely here and I don’t want to do the whiney girlfriend on the phone thing. I never wanted to be that girlfriend, but I’m getting close to having no option. Be careful what you wish for, Amber, maybe there’s more spark living apart.’
‘But not living in separate continents. God, it’s never straightforward is it? What are we going to do?’
‘I wish we could go to the Chamberlayne and get drunk.’
‘Me too. I could murder a girlie drinking session with you.’
‘I miss you so much, honey. I keep thinking of my room in the flat. At this rate, I could be back before you know it.’
‘Listen, let’s keep each other posted, okay, and if it all goes wrong, of course you can just move back. We’ve still got the flat, your room is exactly as you left it, and we’ll just carry on like before. Our lives weren’t so bad, were they? Sainsbury’s must be suffering from a loss in revenue from hummus and Popchips since you’ve been away, I’m sure they’ll welcome you back with open arms too.’
Finally, she laughed. ‘You’re right. It will be fine. This film is meant to end in a couple of weeks and then Trey’s mentioned a holiday in Mexico, so I’m sure we’ll be back on track. And Rob does love you, Amber, I know it. He might not take the job anyway.’
‘I s’pose. Let me know if you speak to Trey. Love you, bestie.’
‘Love you more. Night night from here.’
I had our Kensal Rise flat pretty much to myself these days. Trey, being loaded, was paying Vicky’s half of the rent so they had a London bolt-hole, but they were yet to use it; the one time they popped back for a premiere, he checked them into a suite at the Soho Hotel. Even so, she was definitely still there, haunting the place. Some of her belongings were still strewn around her room and many of her pictures still hung on the walls: the black-and-white framed print of Brigitte Bardot in the living room, cigarette casually hanging from her lips, wind-swept hair, black scarf tied loosely around her neck, to remind us how to be cool, like Brigitte; the collection of Instagram photos from various holidays, printed out and carefully framed, to remind us of our best moments, if ever we needed reminding – usually on the Saturday nights when we were in our PJs, having a living room picnic in front of Ant and Dec. It was all so carefree, silly – and single.
And now here we were, coupled up in our late twenties. Much as I loved the days of being in a platonic relationship with Vicky, I was so happy about that fact I didn’t have to face the prospect of being a thirty-year-old spinster. While Vicky always had some guy on the go, whether it was ‘Sunday Simon’ or ‘Sexy Jim from the art desk’, I was a bona fide ‘car crash’ when it came to relationships; another traffic-based pun on my full name, Amber Green. Yes, after ten years in the single wilderness, it felt so good to have someone who would go to the twenty-four-hour garage for a family bag of Maltesers or run me a bath after a shitty day at work; someone who embraced the role of human hot water bottle, taking pleasure in warming my block-of-ice feet when I got into bed. Life was great. But now the thought of Rob taking off for New York was following me around like a shadow.
The walk along Oxford Street from Marble Arch was very different in January compared with before Christmas. The strings of bright lights across the road were gone and, bar a few sad, forgotten decorations in some shops, the festive period had been packed away. The London sky was heavy with big, grey clouds.
Christmas came and went in a bit of a blur, to be honest. Rob went to his mum’s big house in Holland Park and I went to the family pile (read: suburban semi) in deepest North London. As per usual, everything revolved around my sister’s six-year-old daughter, Nora: ‘Nora prepared the Brussels sprouts!’; ‘Nora nearly recited that song from Matilda by heart!’ The ‘Nora Show’ was in full effect. And it was every bit as grating as a pantomime – for three days solid. Urgh, listen to me. My New Year’s resolution is to be nicer to Nora.
After polishing off a couple of morning glasses of dry sherry, moving on to prosecco and red wine with lunch, then on to port, by way of a Baileys, I was feeling very fluffy around the edges by nine o’clock. Instead of watching Big for the trillionth time with my sister and Nora, who was being allowed to stay up as long as she wanted, much to my horror, or allowing my dad to beat me at Trivial Pursuit circa 1990, again, I called it a night. Apart from booze, the only thing keeping me going through the day was texting Rob and later sexting with him until I fell into a port-induced coma in the tiny spare bedroom, because my old bedroom had been commandeered by – you guessed it – Nora. Rob seemed to be having a much more civilised day, his mother having decided to take him and his older brother, Dan, plus Dan’s fiancée, Florence, out for a champagne Christmas lunch in a trendy Notting Hill restaurant, then home for charades and posh liqueur chocolates. Maybe next year I’ll be there too. Please Father Christmas, I promise I’ll be good all year.
There wasn’t even time for a Boxing Day lie-in for me. The only downside to working at Selfridges – although based on my Christmas, it could be classified as a bonus – was that I had to be at work at five in the morning on Boxing Day. Alongside our regular team we had twenty contractors and, behind huge vinyl stickers, we carefully stripped the fairy-tale festive display from the windows, and then the glass was covered with shouty red paper advertising the January sales. As Big Ben chimed nine in the morning, a stampede of hungry customers from all around the world charged through the doors and set to work dismantling the entire store, snapping up the designer bargains of the year. It was the shopping equivalent of the bull-run through Pamplona. As fervent fashionistas turned the shop into a glorified jumble sale, our windows team sloped back to bed. This time I headed to my own bed in Kensal Rise. Work was a distant memory by evening, because Rob came over in a Christmas jumper with a mountain of leftover cheese and we roasted chestnuts and scoffed Quality Street cuddled up on the sofa watching Elf. All I needed was him. We were lost in each other and I had never felt happier.
But now, the heady glow of Christmas had disappeared, along with the shine on my relationship, it seemed.
As I entered my super-cool work place through the staff entrance round the back of Oxford Street at nine thirty, I felt a sense of pride. I’d been working as a window designer at Selfridges for six months now and it was my dream job. Finally, that irritating voice in my head telling me to ‘get a proper career’ could shut up because I finally had a proper career. Instead of dreading the point in conversation with friends of my parents or mates of mates down the pub, that would eventually crawl around to the inevitable, ‘So, what do you do, Amber?’ I could embrace the question, invite it even, because I had a decent response.
‘Oooh, what are you working on now?’ they often asked.
‘It’s all a bit hush-hush,’ I’d tease, though it was actually the truth – pulling back the vinyl to unveil the new Selfridges window display was a big, closely guarded event.
‘Jesus, what happened, babe?’ my boss, Joseph, exclaimed as I entered the studio.
‘Happy Tuesday to you, too,’ I sneered.
‘Sorry, babe, but if you’re sick, perhaps you should go home. Pale and interesting is not this season.’
‘I’m not ill, just tired,’ I muttered, marvelling at how stupid I was not to get a muffin as well as a coffee from Starbucks on the way in. Thankfully, our studio office was at the very top of the shop, and when we weren’t tucked away up here, we were downstairs tweaking the windows. I was rarely required for face time with senior management.
Joseph, the creative director for visual merchandising at Selfridges, never looked sloppy, just like his name was never abbreviated to Joe. Tall, handsome and confident, he was fancied by literally the entire female workforce – despite the fact he was gay. He wasn’t particularly camp, which made a certain portion of his admirers cling on to the fantasy that he could be ‘turned’. And of course all the gay guys – which was most of the male staff – had a deep yearning for him, too. Joseph blatantly knew he was God’s gift, and strutted around the store like Mr Selfridge himself. His hair was wavy and shoulder length and he wore it tightly tucked behind his ears, like ram’s horns. If you didn’t know better, to look at him you’d think he was French – arty, Gauloises-smoking, air of superiority – but when he spoke his dialect was pure Joey Essex. Everyone was a ‘babe’ and life was ‘sweet’.
After working with him for half a year, I was getting to know the real Joseph and, although he genuinely lived the life of a moisturising modern man who adhered to the five:two diet and had been known to get hooked up to a reviving vitamin-packed IV drip during his lunch break, at the end of the day he was a first-class creative director and I loved having him as my boss. As well as my solid experience styling the windows at Smiths boutique, I think he was wowed by my time spent assisting Mona – in our world, it would be hard not to be – as he gave me the job without a second interview. When I started, he took me under his wing as a protégée of sorts and it was a great position to be in. It gave me some protection from the less friendly, uber fashiony senior managers who swanned around our floor in their top-to-toe designer threads, trying to catch a glimpse of Joseph.
Then there was Shauna: white fingernails with gold tips, big gold hoops and curly afro hair, channelling a modern day Diana Ross. Her iPhone clicked in my face and then traced my body. A deeply unflattering video of my stunned mug and greasy-looking hair was now playing live on Snapchat. Shauna loved to share. She worshipped at the altars of Instagram and Snapchat and was dedicated to the daily documentation of selfies, shoefies, Instafood, Instacocktails, Instacats – and fairly often me, with #nofilter.
‘You’re so ’grammable today, babe,’ she said, crouching down to snap my Starbucks cup as I placed it on my desk. Until that moment, I had failed to noticed that the barista had scrawled the word ‘Antler’ on it, instead of my real name. Shauna found it hilarious and shared the image with her 1.4 thousand followers. ‘Big night, deer? Get it – Antler, deer?’
I frowned. ‘So I look like something the cat dragged in, can we all just get over it, please?’
Shauna sucked in her cheeks and waggled her finger at me, intimating that I was not one to talk about anything this morning.
Joseph broke us up. ‘Now, now ladies, there’s no time for bickering today, Jeff wants the final designs for the summer windows by EOP, so I need you to finish the edit. And that’s before we get cracking on phase two of the “Chelsea” display.’
The great thing about my job, especially on days like today, was that time passed quickly. I loved putting the mood boards together and then sourcing clothes from the collections about to hit the shop floor to bring it all to life. We were always working on two themes at any one time, currently we were completing the spring windows, inspired by the famous Chelsea Flower Show, and also planning our big summer production, a homage to the ‘Traditional British Seaside’, which would come into play soon after. I was transported from grey January to sunny July and a world of ninety-nines, beach huts, rubber rings, candy-coloured Kate Spade bags, Linda Farrow sunglasses, Matthew Williamson bikinis, palm-print dresses and everything in between. Heaven.
Although Shauna and I didn’t always see eye to eye outside work, we were a great team in the studio, her eye for props perfectly complementing my choice of fashion from the designer look books. The time flew as I busied myself finalising clothes for the Chelsea windows and lining them up on rails ahead of Joseph’s inspection – a cacophony of vibrant pink, lemon, lilac, peach and turquoise, the sartorial equivalent of a fragrant bouquet. Bright clothes were amazing for lifting my mood. But they couldn’t stop me from checking my phone every five seconds. Nothing from Rob.
