A Girl's Best Friend

by Lindsey Kelk

  ‘Well, that’s a relief,’ he said, an uncertain look on his face I hadn’t seen before. ‘People were enjoying it?’

  I sat back, confused. Clearly he had dressed for the occasion – he was wearing a tux instead of a Grateful Dead T-shirt – and someone had definitely brushed his hair but something was wrong. The easy certainty he had earned from seventy-something years of living was missing and, if I had to put a label on it, I’d say he seemed sad.

  ‘Loving it,’ I said. ‘The collection was amazing, I really do think Jane would have been proud of you.’

  We sat quietly while the waitress presented us with an enormous doughnut that took up almost the entire paper plate. I hadn’t eaten anything since Jenny had squeezed me into two pairs of control pants and I was almost scared to even smell this in case I split all the seams on my borrowed frock.

  ‘I thought working on the collection would help,’ Al said eventually, a sad smile on his handsome old face. ‘It felt like she was with me again for a while.’

  I pushed the doughnut towards him but he shook his head. If a glazed bacon doughnut couldn’t cheer him up, I worried nothing could.

  ‘All that time I was in Hawaii, when everyone was calling me a recluse …’ He pulled a napkin out of the holder between us and began to tear it up into little strips of identical size. ‘All my friends and my family would ring me on the phone and tell me I couldn’t hide out there forever, that no good would come of holing myself up and pretending nothing had happened. They all wanted me to get back out into the world and do something.’

  He laid the strips down on the table, side by side, carefully matching them up together in perfect order like a feathery jigsaw.

  ‘And eventually I agreed to do the interview when Delia asked.’ He smoothed the shards of broken napkin until it almost looked like one piece again. ‘And along came you and Paige and Mr Miller and, of course, dear Amy. Everyone was so happy and Kekipi was bouncing off the walls at having guests again. I thought, perhaps they’re right. Perhaps spending the rest of my days walking up and down a beach, talking to a ghost, is a waste of whatever good years I have left. But I still didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t have any ambitions left, you see, all my dreams had come true, many years ago. And what are you meant to do with yourself when you don’t have a dream to pursue?’

  ‘Chase someone else’s?’ I guessed, pulling the sleeves of my sweatshirt over my fingertips.

  ‘Quite right,’ he said. ‘I thought, if I could do this for her, bring her designs to life, it would be as though we were working together again. But now it’s done she feels further away than ever. And everyone thinks I’m a laughing stock.’

  ‘You read the Belle article,’ I said.

  He nodded and blew lightly on the napkin and all the little pieces floated away from each other.

  ‘Industry nonsense, nothing changes on that front,’ he replied. ‘But if I’m honest, it all feels rather pointless.’

  ‘My opinion might not be worth much,’ I said, noticing how the fluorescent light above us made my dress glow a dark bronze, ‘but I think what you’ve done is amazing. You’ve honoured your wife’s memory, accomplished an ambition on her behalf, and you’re going to make thousands of people happy. How is that pointless?’

  Al didn’t say anything, didn’t look up, just drank his coffee. I frowned and shoved the doughnut out of my eye line. It was hard enough having to be the one who gave the life-affirming speeches without bacon-studded pastries messing with my concentration at the same time.

  ‘You’re not being fair to yourself.’ I sat up straight and adopted a more authoritative tone but I’d never been terribly good at tough love. ‘When I put this dress on, even with everything that’s been going on and how difficult it’s been, it made me happy. I felt special and beautiful and that was all because of this dress. Isn’t that something worthwhile?’

  ‘You should be happy,’ Al admonished me lightly. ‘And you are special and beautiful. A dress is just a dress, Tess, that’s all.’

  ‘And what would Jane say if you told her that?’ I asked, tapping him on the back of the hand. ‘She’s waited how long for you to get off your arse and make these dresses for her and now you’re going to turn your back on them?’

  ‘They’re just dresses,’ he repeated, staring over my shoulder at something no one else could see.

  ‘And I just take photos for a living.’ In theory, I added silently. ‘I’m not saving the world, I’m not curing cancer. Should I stop?’

  Al stared at the table for so long, I didn’t know whether to leave, shout at him or fuck it all and shove the doughnut into my face. Thankfully, Al cleared his throat before I had to make a decision.

  ‘I have to say …’ He picked up his knife and carefully chopped the doughnut in half. ‘You’re not bad at this motivational-speaking lark. If the photography doesn’t work out, you could always give that a go.’

  ‘One career change at a time,’ I said, accepting my half of the doughnut with great pleasure. ‘You should be happy. And if making the clothes doesn’t do it for you, go home, go surfing – and forget it all.’

  He picked up his half, took a bite and nodded.

  ‘But I think you might have enjoyed it.’ I picked off a bit of icing and popped it into my mouth. Oh dear God – it was incredible! ‘Maybe just a little bit.’

  ‘Perhaps a smidge,’ he replied with a wink. ‘Right up until this part. I really do miss my home an awful lot and dealing with all the buyers and the press, it’s reminding me why I moved to Hawaii in the first place. New York isn’t for old codgers like me, it’s a city made for you young kids.’

  ‘I don’t feel that young right now,’ I told him, moving from the icing to the cake. Sweet Baby Jesus in the manger, it was a good doughnut. ‘Mostly, I just feel tired.’

  ‘Unfortunately that’s one of the side effects of youth,’ Al clucked his tongue. ‘You really don’t appreciate it until you’re at least forty-five. I thought I knew everything when I first moved to America, I thought I was going to take over the world and, you know, I think I probably could have. And then one day I woke up and I was married, I had a son and I was fifty years old and I realized I hadn’t a clue about anything.’

  ‘I don’t think I could take over a sandwich shop,’ I replied. ‘But Amy could probably stage a pretty successful coup.’

  ‘The only difference between you and Amy is that she knows exactly who she is,’ he said. ‘Does that make sense?’

  ‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘I thought I knew who I was before, but now it’s all changing so fast. I wish someone would tell me, you know, describe Tess Brookes in three words, or something.’

  ‘You should never let anyone else tell you who you are,’ Al warned. ‘Or you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to be something you’re not. The difference between you and Amy is simply that she has no fear. She doesn’t compromise. You spend far too much time worrying about every possible outcome, whereas Amy acts first and worries later. Or sometimes never, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. She and I have that in common. Well, the younger me anyway.’

  I laughed, and it felt almost as good as eating the doughnut. Almost.

  ‘Is there a happy medium?’ I asked.

  ‘For some people,’ he said, licking his fingers clean. ‘But you can only change if you want to, not because someone else thinks you should.’

  ‘The last few months have been so hard,’ I told him. ‘Everything I thought was certain in my life has changed, me included. I feel as though I don’t really know who I am anymore.’

  ‘That happens to the best of us,’ Al said. ‘And I’m quite certain you’re going to be fine.’

  ‘I wish I had your confidence,’ I said. ‘I’m getting really tired of making the wrong decisions.’

  ‘You’re going to have to let me know precisely what we’re talking about before I can help on this one.’ He dusted off his hands on another fresh napkin but left this one intact. �
��Work or Mr Miller?’

  ‘Mr Miller,’ I said, shoving the remaining doughnut in my mouth. Maybe I’d give up on love altogether and concentrate on baked goods. ‘I’m a glutton for punishment.’

  ‘Things never seem to go smoothly with the two of you, do they?’ Al mused. ‘I wonder why that is?’

  ‘Because he’s the spawn of Satan?’ I suggested, dropping my arms on the table and nursing my chin. ‘And I’m an idiot?’

  ‘You realize, one has to ask,’ he said, leaning across the table to lower his voice. ‘What is it that keeps drawing you back together?’

  It was a fair question.

  ‘Obviously, he’s the only man left on earth and if I give up on him the human race will die out,’ I replied. ‘I can’t think of anything else.’

  ‘You’re sure there isn’t anything else?’ Al asked.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Positive?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘You can’t think of anything?’

  I pouted, thinking back to the moment I got in the taxi outside his house and how badly I wanted him to see him at the door.

  ‘If you’re going to say it’s because I love him, I’m afraid I’m going to need another doughnut and a machine gun.’

  ‘Humour me,’ Al said, stifling his laughter. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  With a bacony sigh, I gave him the PG version of events and then sipped my coffee while I waited for his verdict.

  ‘I say sleep on it,’ he said eventually. ‘You’ve really done all you can do.’

  ‘Oh.’ I was actually surprised. I was sure he would tell me to pick up the phone and hear him out. ‘I really thought you were going to tell me to give him another chance.’

  ‘That’s because really, that’s what you want to do,’ Al replied. ‘You could call him.’

  ‘But you just said not to!’ I frowned, clicking my neatly filed but terribly short fingernails on the table. ‘What should I do?’

  ‘You should do whatever feels right,’ he advised. ‘No one else can make this decision for you, Tess, however much you’d like them to. You have to do what you can live with.’

  ‘I can think of thousand reasons to call him,’ I said. ‘And a thousand more not to. I don’t think I’ve ever been this confused.’

  Al nodded. ‘You’re dealing with very confused young man.’

  ‘He’s not that young,’ I pointed out. ‘He’s thirty-six. No, thirty-seven. I think he had a birthday.’

  I knew full well he’d had a birthday. He was definitely thirty-seven.

  ‘You’re forgetting that troublesome Y chromosome,’ Al said. ‘Not predictable. And he’s far too intelligent for his own good, another one who overthinks everything. If I’d been in his shoes, I never would have made a play for my Janey. Remember, she was engaged when we met but I couldn’t ignore the way I felt.’

  ‘I think that’s exactly what he’s doing,’ I admitted and my sight sharpened as a fresh run of tears threatened to fall. ‘But I can’t force it, can I?’

  ‘If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be,’ Al added unhelpfully. ‘The path of true love never did run smooth.’

  ‘If he’s my true love, I might as well end it all now,’ I said. ‘Worst soulmate ever.’

  ‘I think you’re very lucky, Tess,’ he replied. ‘Very lucky indeed.’

  ‘How’s that?’ I wasn’t quite following.

  ‘Not many people find their soulmate, most of them settle for someone they can live with.’ Al rolled down his shirtsleeves and fastened the cufflinks. ‘And you’ve gone and found two of them.’

  I had?

  ‘I have?’

  ‘Imagine being so lucky as to have a Nick and an Amy,’ he said, nodding. ‘A surfeit of soulmates. Imagine that.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve got either of them right now,’ I said. ‘Amy’s going to be so pissed off when I get home.’

  Al gave a big, granddad-sized sigh. ‘She’s every right to be upset with me,’ he said, pulling twenty dollars out of his wallet and placing it on the table. ‘I let her down. Perhaps we both did.’

  If he hadn’t been paying for my coffee and doughnut, I could have really gone off him.

  ‘I can’t imagine what would have happened if I hadn’t asked my Janey to take a walk with me that Saturday afternoon,’ he said, pulling his long woollen coat from off his little metal chair and giving a whistle. ‘Where would we all be now?’

  I emptied my coffee mug and picked up my bag. ‘Shall we?’ I asked, nodding towards the door.

  ‘You should,’ he replied, wrapping a grey scarf around his neck. ‘I’m going over to the Armory before they break down Amy’s masterpiece. I do hope she can forgive me.’

  ‘She’ll understand,’ I promised, certain she would forgive Al, not so sure I’d be let off so lightly.

  ‘She is a remarkable young lady, that friend of yours,’ he agreed. ‘I consider myself very lucky to have met the pair of you.’

  ‘I consider myself very lucky that you told me about that doughnut,’ I said, looking longingly at the empty plate. ‘Maybe I should take one for Amy?’

  ‘Maybe you should take a dozen so we’ve got them for breakfast,’ he suggested, tapping a finger to his temple. ‘Full of good ideas up here.’

  ‘One or two,’ I said with a smile.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The plan was simple. I would go home. I would find Amy and, if she was a little bit mad at me, I would bribe her with doughnuts. If she was very mad at me, I would eat all the doughnuts myself and, if the fates allowed, spend Christmas in a diabetic coma. I was definitely due an extended nap, if nothing else.

  But that plan was thrown out of the window before I arrived at the house – the plan and half the contents of Al’s drawing room. At first I thought I’d walked too far but no, I was home. Apparently I’d missed the memo about an afterparty. The music was blaring out the house so loudly I could hear it a block away, all the lights blazing from every window. The shouting, screaming and smashing glass came later. As I tried the door handle, I realized the front door was unlocked and one of the carefully topiaried trees that sat inside the huge stone urns beside the front door had been draped in flashing fairy lights, while the other slumped sadly to one side, defeated.

  Tiptoeing over two abandoned champagne bottles, I pushed the door and stepped inside, petrified. Was there such a thing as party robbers in New York? Because it definitely sounded like a thing. I could almost see my mum rolling her eyes and saying ‘only in America’ when they called her to tell her how I had died.

  ‘Genevieve?’ I called into the darkness. ‘Are you there?’

  She didn’t strike me as the type to throw a rager while her boss was at a work do, but what did I know? We’d only just met.

  ‘Hey.’ A shirtless man with enormous pupils ran towards me, a red strip of silk tied around his head like a high-fashion Rambo. ‘Great sweater. That’s a hot look. That’s totally slammin’. I’m Ivan. What’s your name?’

  ‘Tess,’ I said, still trying to work out exactly what was going on. ‘Have you seen an older lady? Grey hair, smart outfit, she probably looks really angry right about now?’

  ‘Nuh-uh,’ he replied, bouncing up and down on the spot, pupils so wide I thought I might fall in. ‘I only know Amy. This is Amy’s place. You should talk to Amy.’

  ‘You know Amy?’ I asked, all of this beginning to make a horrible sort of sense. He had to be confused. She wouldn’t do this, not to Al.

  ‘Hey, you’re British!’ Ivan said, grabbing hold of me around the waist and throwing me into the air. ‘Amy’s British too! She’s the best, like, really, really, really the best. Do you want some Molly? Do you have any Molly? We should take some more Molly. If you have some.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t,’ I replied, holding the box of doughnuts high above my head as he carried me through the foyer and into the reception room. Someone was playing ‘Do They Know it’s Christmas?’ so loud, I could feel the
bass in my lungs. ‘Although I think tonight might be a good time for me to start on the class As. Please could you put me down?’

  ‘When we find Amy,’ he promised, grinding his teeth. ‘Amy will know who has the Molly. Maybe Amy has the Molly.’

  ‘If Amy has the Molly, Amy’s going to get a slap,’ I said as I bounced around in midair. ‘Ivan, please put me down before you hurt yourself; I’m bigger than you.’

  With one swift kick to whatever body part was at foot level, Ivan went down like a sack of shit. With the doughnuts safely in one hand, I yanked off my shoes and slipped the straps over my other wrist. I’d made it to the presentation, to Nick’s, to the diner and back again without an injury, I wasn’t about to break my ankle now.

  ‘Look who it is!’

  Over the booming music, I heard a familiar voice. Standing on a side table in nothing but a lime green vest and a pair of stripy knickers was my best friend, a bottle of champagne in one hand and what I hoped was a cigarette in the other. She looked like a dark-haired Miley Cyrus on a particularly bad night.

  ‘Snacks!’ She leapt to the floor and took a swig from the champagne. She didn’t offer it to me. ‘You went out for snacks! So that’s where you were.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked, snatching the bottle out of her hand. ‘Have you actually lost your mind?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ She kept on dancing, arms high up over her head, her hips thrusting to the beat. ‘Stop being a dick and give me whatever’s in that box.’

  ‘I’m not being a dick,’ I shouted, my hands now full of shoes, booze and baked goods. ‘Amy, what are you doing? Who are all these people?’

  ‘Friends,’ she said, looking around. ‘Well-wishers. People from the presentation. That was the party, this is the afterparty. Next, it’s the hotel lobby. At least, according to R. Kelly.’

  Even by Amy’s standards, this was bad.

  When we were seventeen, her mum went to Cornwall for a week with a load of women from the village line-dancing club and we decided to throw a party. After three days of scrubbing puke out of the living room carpet and pooling our combined savings to replace the telly after Gareth Stevens fell on top of it halfway through his Taekwondo showcase, we swore to each other that we would never throw another house party as long as we lived. But here we were, one of us in a fancy dress and a shit sweatshirt and the other, smoking and drinking in her underwear. It was like being seventeen all over again, only this wasn’t our house and I couldn’t convince myself that ‘there wouldn’t be that much of a mess in the morning’.