by Lindsey Kelk
The cop nodded and turned her attention to Jenny, who was doing a fine job of nodding and looking stern. She would have made a brilliant lawyer if she could have been bothered with going to law school.
‘Delia,’ I turned away slightly, just in case she told me that Cici had thrown herself off the Empire State Building and taken Grace with her. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to control my reaction. ‘I’ve lost Grace. Or I’ve lost Cici and Cici has Grace. She’s kidnapped her, she has totally kidnapped Louisa’s baby and—’
‘Angela, calm down,’ she ordered on the other end of the line. ‘I know where she is.’
‘You spoke to her?’ I shouted, spinning back to Lou, Jenny, the interested usher and the police to give them all a double thumbs up. It was hard to say which one looked less impressed. ‘Where is she?’
‘I called the office to talk to you and Megan told me what was happening,’ Delia explained. ‘I’m sorry, she’ll be where she is every Christmas Eve.’
‘Sacrificing goats?’
‘She’s at Macy’s,’ Delia sighed. ‘I’ll meet you there.’
Of all the places I might have expected to find Cici Spencer on the average Christmas Eve afternoon – Saks Fifth Avenue, Cipriani’s, the seventh circle of Hell – the toy department of Macy’s was not, and would never have been, on the list. Louisa, Jenny and I leapt out of the police officers’ squad car, the siren still blaring, as we pulled up outside the department store. Louisa hadn’t said a word on the way over, she’d just kept rocking backwards and forwards, occasionally forgetting to breathe and then having to take a series of short, sharp breaths. Jenny was calmly rubbing her back while I babbled over and over and over. Cici went to see the Macy’s Santa Claus every Christmas Eve, had done ever since she and Delia were little girls and became obsessed with Miracle on 34th Street. Which was exactly what she’d be needing when I got my hands on her.
Accompanied by our new police entourage, the three of us pushed through the last-minute shoppers, struggling through revolving doors en masse.
‘This way.’ The male police officer had clearly spent more time in the toy department than any of the ladies in our party and led the way to the escalator. It only took a couple of minutes to find the huge queue of kids patiently waiting to deliver their lists to Santa – altogether too late in my opinion – and right there, at the head of the queue and about to dump Grace into the lap of a questionably motivated old man, was Cici Spencer.
Louisa ran at her with a battle cry, the likes of which I had previously only heard on Braveheart or EastEnders, and grabbed her daughter right out of the hands of Father Christmas, throwing her at me before launching herself at Cici. But this wasn’t her first time. Quick as a malnourished cat, Cici took off around Santa’s sleigh, followed by Louisa. Baubles and tinsel and dozens of candy canes flew across the store as Cici pushed over the beautifully decorated trees behind her, trying to slow Louisa down with some sort of festive assault course. But there was no way. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned but New York had no fury like a mother scared and Lou was currently channelling all the fear that she had lost her daughter into kicking Cici Spencer’s arse. It was a form of therapy that I supported.
‘Oh, boys and girls!’ Santa Claus struggled up from his seat and stepped forward to break up the fight, losing his hat in the process. I was quite impressed to see that his beard seemed to be entirely real. ‘Let’s not fight at Christmas.’
With Bing Crosby crooning a seasonal backing track, the cries of all the children who had been waiting to see Santa and not two thirty-year-old women chasing each other around a department store growing and the fear that Grace had been sold to Brad and Angelina completely assuaged, I was actually starting to feel quite Christmassy again. I mean, at least I’d seen the Rockettes. On their third go around the sleigh, Louisa finally caught up with her prey, reaching out for a handful of blonde hair and pulling. Hard. Hampered by her pencil skirt and high high heels, Cici went down way too easy. It was disappointing really, she should have known better – this wasn’t the first time she’d been beaten up by my mates.
‘Really, ladies, not in front of the children,’ Santa puffed, falling backwards onto his jolly red bum, wrapping an arm around Louisa as he went.
‘Sorry, Santa.’ She struggled against Saint Nick’s grasp, reaching across to get another slap in. ‘She has to die.’
For all the presents he’d been lugging around, Santa wasn’t that strong. I glanced over at Jenny to see her calmly popping chocolate-covered raisins into her mouth. Without taking her eyes off the action, she held out the box. Me and Gracie both helped ourselves.
‘Funny Mummy,’ Grace whispered into my ear.
‘What the fuck is going on?’ Cici screeched, shielding her face from Louisa’s miniature lady fists. ‘Get her off of me!’
The female police officer, or Officer Jackson as I had learned she preferred to be called, pulled Louisa off as gently as possible while the male policeman, or Officer Moretti to his friends, checked that the child I was holding was in fact Grace and that she was in fact perfectly all right. I turned her around in my arms and confirmed her identity as she began pulling my hair.
‘She’s fine,’ I said as she began to laugh. ‘Right as rain.’
‘Santa!’ she shouted, pointing back at a very perplexed-looking Father Christmas. ‘Anala, Santa!’
It really was quite the impressive scene. Several huge trees had been upset, their decorations and branches strewn across the store. Santa was still sat on his arse, seemingly unable to get back up again. Three elves were crouched down beside Cici, presumably wondering why the nice lady had just been attacked by three crazies accompanied by the police when she’d been waiting in the queue with the little girl for the last hour. Just as everything seemed to have calmed down, a giant stuffed Rudolph rocked gently for a moment and then toppled over, the light bulb in his nose making a faint popping sound.
‘You stole my baby!’ Louisa choked, before jumping up from the floor, desperate for another crack at Cici. ‘You bloody mental. I’m going to kill you.’
But Officer Jackson and the biggest elf were too quick. They rushed in between her and her target, pinning Lou’s arms behind her back as gently as humanly possible. Lou sobbed and sank to her knees, the look of terror in Cici’s eyes, seemingly enough punishment for the time being. Lou’s own face was covered in scratches from the Christmas trees, her hair full of pine needles. At least she would smell nice.
‘Did everyone hear that?’ Cici squealed, looking around for witnesses. The lucky cow had a far more receptive crowd than we had at Radio City. No quiet shushing and shocked gasps here, oh no. These people couldn’t get their phones out fast enough to take pictures. ‘She threatened to kill me. Arrest her.’
‘If you can explain to us why you have the lady’s child with you,’ Officer Moretti said, holding out his hand and helping her to her feet, ‘then I’m hoping we can agree that this was a huge misunderstanding and everyone can spend Christmas at home.’
‘I’m her assistant,’ she said, pointing to me before turning her attention to straightening her hair and batting her lashes. Officer Moretti was very handsome, to be fair. ‘And they left … left Grace with her so they could go to the theatre.’ Cue more accusatory pointing. ‘Grace was going crazy cooped up inside so I told Angela I would take her out of her way so she could work in peace. It’s Christmas Eve, I thought this would be a nice thing to do. This is all Angela’s fault.’
Unhappy with my implication, all the potentially unflattering photos and running out of chocolate-covered raisins, I decided I’d had enough.
‘Why weren’t you answering your phone?’ I shouted. I didn’t like pointing, my mother said it was rude. ‘Explain that!’
‘It was on silent,’ she snapped back. ‘I always have it on silent in the office, it’s company policy.’
Oh. Thinking about it …
‘And why did you steal the fashion pages I was approvin
g?’ I demanded.
‘What?’ Cici looked completely nonplussed for a moment before delving into her alligator-skin Birkin, much to Jenny’s displeasure, and producing the pieces of paper Grace had been colouring before they left my office. Along with all ten pages of the fashion section.
‘She must have grabbed them off the desk when we walked out,’ she explained. ‘I swear I didn’t know I had them.’
‘Next you’ll be telling me you didn’t sabotage the approvals system this morning to make the magazine late.’ More shouting, more pointing. I felt like Poirot without the moustache. ‘And that you didn’t tell Jesse to kiss me at the Christmas party and that you haven’t been having an affair with him all along!’
Louisa gasped and grabbed Grace out of my arms, covering her ears with her hands. The scandal.
‘Ew, the guy with the glasses?’ Cici handed over the crumpled pages from her bag. ‘You made out with that nerd? Ha. As if.’
‘So you’re not having an affair with him?’ The pointing seemed a bit like overkill but I persevered.
‘Please. I don’t date guys from Brooklyn,’ she sneered.
And even though it was blatantly an insult, it did seem like a legitimate defence.
‘And you didn’t sabotage the approvals system?’ I deflated slightly, feeling more like Miss Marple, only after she lost at bingo rather than solved a case.
‘Angela, I really don’t have some epic revenge planned,’ Cici sighed, picking pine needles out of her sweater. ‘I didn’t even spit in your coffee.’
Everyone looked doubtful at that one, including the police officers and they’d only just met her.
‘I didn’t!’ she insisted. ‘I thought about it, sure, but really it’s just not me. I genuinely wanted to make this work. For Delia’s sake. And so Grandpa didn’t cut off my trust.’
‘But that stuff you said at the party,’ I reminded her, ‘about an editorial position opening up soon?’
‘Yeah, because that whore on the fashion desk is pregnant,’ Cici explained. ‘Don’t you know anything about your own magazine?’
Apparently I did not.
I was also pretty certain said ‘whore’ was married and, in fact, not a whore at all, but then no one had ever accused Cici of being a feminist.
Satisfied that no crime had actually been committed, other than a couple of kids being traumatised by a hot blonde-on-blonde cat fight, Officer Jackson gave us all a stern ticking-off while Officer Moretti took Jenny’s phone number. I assumed it was in case he had any follow-up questions-slash-wanted to bone her.
‘Excuse me,’ Santa suddenly squeaked from his not-so-comfy spot on the floor. ‘Could someone help me up?’
‘Oh my God.’
Delia arrived just as Cici was hobbling back into her heels, Lou was pulling bits of broken bauble out of her ponytail and everyone was beginning to feel a little bit foolish. The elves were trying to calm the crowds and over Delia’s shoulder I saw some besuited Macy’s managers staggering towards us, jaws officially dropped. Looking around at the chaos we had created, I could understand why. It must have been like walking in on the nativity scene in bizarro world.
‘I passed the police on their way out.’ She touched my arm as she ran past me to her sister and slapped her arm, hard. ‘What happened?’
‘Ow, bitch.’ Cici slapped her back as the two faced off. It really was disconcerting to see them together. Good twin and evil twin. Nice twin and mean twin. Just like the Olsens … ‘I didn’t do anything. I was just bringing Grace to see Santa Claus like Grandpa always did with us.’
‘You don’t take someone’s baby anywhere without asking them,’ Delia said in a low, firm voice. It was just like on all those pet training programmes I definitely hadn’t spent hours watching when I didn’t have a pet of my own. ‘She’s not an animal, she’s a person.’
‘She’s fine,’ Cici replied, pouting at Grace who waved and immediately stretched her arms out for her new best friend with a whiny squeal. Stockholm Syndrome took hold so quickly when they were young. ‘Look, she loves me.’
‘Maybe we should get out of here?’ Jenny suggested, waving around at the crowd we’d gathered. ‘Lou, Gracie must be ready for a nap?’
‘I don’t know about her but I am,’ Louisa said, wiping smudged mascara from under her red eyes and pushing her hair back into something approximating a ponytail. ‘Let’s just go.’
‘I’ll take care of everything with the store,’ Delia reassured me, her eyes widening at the carnage before her. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ I said, assuming ‘taking care of’ meant she was about to get the Spencer chequebook out. ‘It was a misunderstanding. No one’s actually to blame. Sort of.’
I glared at Cici who beamed at me with renewed enthusiasm.
‘Back to the office, boss?’ she asked, stepping over a still incapacitated Santa Claus. ‘You’re probably going to need a big coffee if you’re going to get the magazine approved on time.’
‘Oh, fuck off,’ I said, rolling my eyes at Delia and mouthing my apologies.
‘I’ll see you in five,’ she called as I turned my back. ‘Maybe ten if there’s a line in Starbucks.’
‘You’re going back to work?’ Jenny asked, looking exhausted. ‘And she’s going back to work?’
‘No rest for the wicked,’ I replied, resting my head on her shoulder. ‘And I have to send a courier to Newcastle to get a mine’s worth of coal to put in her stocking.’
‘I understood the word courier,’ Jenny said, squeezing me into a half-hug. ‘But I’ll just assume that you meant you’re going to kick her ass when you’re done with the magazine.’
‘More or less,’ I nodded as we strolled back outside into a snowy Herald Square.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I wasn’t sure who was more surprised to see who when I limped back into the office with Cici at my side. Megan rose as we walked by her desk, but without the necessary brain cells to explain I waved her away and threw myself in the general direction of my desk, hoping I’d land on something solid that would bear my weight.
Unfortunately, I landed on Jesse.
‘Oh, fucking hell,’ I muttered. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’
‘I fixed Censhare,’ he said as I crumbled into my chair, a broken, empty shell of a human being. ‘Everything is uploaded, we just need you to approve the last pages.’
‘What was wrong with it?’ I asked, wiggling my mouse to bring my computer screen to life. My computer screen and a headache. Bleurgh.
‘Megan put my password in wrong and locked it.’ Jesse pushed his glasses back up his nose while we both pretended this wasn’t massively awkward. ‘It just shuts down instead of explaining and she hasn’t had to do it on her own before, it wasn’t her fault.’
‘Shouldn’t IT have been able to fix that?’
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘If they’d known that was what was wrong, they could have reset the passwords but our IT team suck, so …’
I nodded, closing my eyes and pressing my fingers into my temples. It was almost four o’clock, I had a lot of work to do, and at the end of all of that I still had to go home, deal with my parents and brine a twenty-pound turkey. I wondered if there was still time to convert to Judaism.
‘Angela, am I fired?’
I opened my eyes and tried not to look quite as annoyed as I felt.
‘No, Jesse,’ I grunted. I was rubbish at staying mad with people but I really, really wanted to get better. I figured this was a very good opportunity. ‘No one’s getting fired.’
‘Oh. OK. Phew,’ he smiled and gave me a double thumbs up. ‘And yeah, I know I said it before and everything but, uh, I feel real bad about the whole … thing.’
‘You should,’ I replied as my head throbbed.
‘We just get along, you know?’ Some people didn’t know when to stop talking. ‘And I broke up with my girlfriend a few months ago and I’ve been real down ever since.’
�
�Right.’
‘She was amazing. So beautiful. Like model beautiful. And you kind of reminded me of her.’
‘I did?’
Well, I had been wearing more blusher lately.
‘Not because you look anything like her,’ he said, kicking my self-esteem in the boob. ‘No way. She was, like, six feet tall, long dark hair, so beautiful. So, so beautiful. But you’re kind of funny like she was. And you’re normal looking. I didn’t want to be with someone that into their looks again. I guess I thought maybe it would work out better if I dated a normie. A funny normie.’
A funny normie. I had been called worse. But not in a while.
‘Right.’ I really wanted this conversation to be over. ‘I don’t want to talk about any of this again. I just want things back to normal as soon as.’
‘Understood.’ With a half-smile and a salute, Jesse headed for the door. ‘But now you’re back we really do need those pages approved ASAP. Everything goes to print at five. I’ll be back in an hour.’
Closing my eyes again, I dropped my head onto my desk and whimpered. Maybe things didn’t have to be quite so back to normal quite so quickly?
One hour and five minutes later, despite barely being able to read, let alone spell, I ticked the approval box on the last page of the magazine. I never, ever wanted to have to do that again. And looking on the bright side, there was a good chance I would get fired before the end of the day and would never have to.
I was waiting for Jesse to bound into the office and tell me I was free to leave when there was a soft, ladylike knock on the door. Looking up, instead of a sexually frustrated hipster, I saw Delia smiling at me, perfectly turned out as ever.
‘Hey,’ she said, holding up two huge Starbucks cups. I held out my hands and rejoiced. Just what I needed, more caffeine. Really, my stroke could only be days away.
‘Hi,’ I mumbled. I was embarrassed. Delia had seen many of my meltdowns but today really hadn’t been my finest hour. Well, specifically the last three of them. Before that I had been operating at an average level of shoddiness.