I Heart Forever

Huh? I looked around at the fading smiles on my colleagues’ faces. That last bit didn’t sound nearly as fun as the part about the podcasts.

‘Beginning today, I will be restructuring our divisions to foster more progressive and creative brand development,’ Delia said, still smiling.

I pulled my sleeves down over my fingers and chewed the inside of my cheek. No big deal, it was just a lot of management speak, nothing to be worried about. Delia wasn’t Bob, Delia cared about people, not just money. Although she did like success. And it wasn’t as though she hated money. Hmm.

‘Instead of separating our brands by print, online and broadcast, we’ll be working in streamlined brand groups. Our women’s brands will all work together, our lifestyle brands, our men’s brands. We will streamline our business models and foster a new sense of synergy through content creation to create new opportunities to reach our readers wherever they are.’

‘Content creation?’ Mason whispered. ‘Synergy?’

‘Isn’t that the name of the computer in Jem and the Holograms?’ I whispered back.

‘After this meeting, we’ll be separating you into your brand groups and your HR manager will go over the new structure.’ Delia spoke with unquestionable authority. This was not a request, this was an order. ‘And I’ll be scheduling some time with all our editors individually over the next couple of days, to talk through any questions you might have and hopefully hear some great ideas about how we take Spencer Media forward.’

I looked down at the grinning T-Rex on my chest and for the first time since I’d bought it, regretted the decision to wear a bright red dinosaur jumper to work.

‘Now, I’m going to hand over to Peter, our vice president of HR and he’ll detail the breakout groups.’ She looked over at her grandfather, who gave her a nod and, against all laws of gods and men, flashed her the finger guns. Bob Spencer, doing the finger guns? Was it possible I’d fallen over and banged my head on the way into work? ‘Thank you, everyone, I’m very excited about the future of our company and that future begins right now.’

Considerably less enthused applause clattered around the room, spurred on by the iPad-clutching assistants who quickly opened the exits for Delia and Bob and immediately locked us back in the second they were gone. As soon as the doors closed, the sound of applause was drowned out by panicked whispers and the clacking of acrylic fingernails against smartphone screens.

‘Holy shit,’ Mason exhaled. ‘Restructuring and streamlining? This is not good.’

‘But Ghost is doing fine,’ I said, chomping down on the end of my pen until there was nothing left but a chewed mess. ‘And Gloss too. We’ll be OK.’

‘Yeah, but what about Belle?’ He nodded across the room to where the editor of Spencer Media’s flagship monthly fashion magazine was sat staring at the wall, ashen-faced. ‘Their circulation has been dropping for months. What if streamlining actually means folding?’

‘Delia loves Belle,’ I said, certain it was safe. ‘There’s no way she’d fold it. She started at Belle.’

‘Not to make myself unpopular, but this is Delia Spencer, the new company president, not Delia Spencer, your friend,’ he replied with an uncomfortable smile under his gingery beard. He had an excellent beard. ‘So many magazines have gone in the last few years. And Ghost isn’t doing that well.’

‘So, you were saying something about proposing?’ There was nothing like forcing a change in subject when you didn’t want to deal with reality. ‘Mason, this is so exciting.’

All the tension washed off his face and his eyes glazed over as he dug his phone out of his pocket.

‘I’ve been thinking about it for a while but this is Jenny we’re talking about, I want to get it exactly right,’ he explained as I clapped along in delight. ‘It’s almost the anniversary of when we met so I was going to ask Erin if we could go back up to her house upstate, the place we met? I want to do it there. You know Jen better than anyone else. What do you think about this ring?’

Flicking around at the screen for a second, he pulled up a picture of a beautiful ring. Yellow-gold band with a cushion-cut diamond nestled between two baguette-cut sapphires. Very sophisticated, very elegant. Completely wrong.

‘It’s stunning,’ I said, twisting my own emerald engagement ring around on my finger. ‘But no.’

‘No?’ Mason looked down at the phone as the smile fell off his face. ‘What do you mean no?’

Switching on my own phone, I opened my emails and tapped in Jenny’s name.

‘It’s in here somewhere,’ I muttered, poking my tongue out the corner of my mouth as I searched. ‘Wait, yep, this is it.’

Clicking on a link, I held up the phone triumphantly.

‘She sends me this about every three months,’ I said as Mason blinked at the Tiffany Embrace engagement ring and took the phone out of my hands. ‘And she’s been sending it every three months for the last five years. This is the ring. This is Jenny’s ring.’

Underneath his beard, I could see he’d gone awfully green. It was a diamond-studded platinum band with a huge brilliant cut diamond, surrounded by a halo of yet more diamonds. There were so many diamonds involved, it looked fake but according to the price tag, it most definitely was not. I figured I’d wait a while to email him the cost. From the look on Mason’s face, he wasn’t ready to learn how much Jenny’s eternal love went for. Or the matching wedding ring she wanted to go with it.

‘For real?’ he asked.

‘For really real,’ I promised.

‘If that’s the one she wants, that’s the one she’ll get,’ he said, recovering himself slightly. ‘You don’t happen to know her ring size?’

‘Five and a half.’ I slowly removed my phone from his vicelike grip. ‘That is also included on her email. I’ll forward you the details.’

He paused and took a deep breath. ‘She is going to say yes, right?’

I bit my lip to stop my smile. He looked so nervous, I could hardly stand it.

‘Of course she’s going to say yes!’ I leaned across my chair to wrap him up in a hug. ‘But just to make sure, let’s definitely get that ring.’

‘So then, they got a ten for their samba but I really didn’t think it was as good as the American smooth.’ I screwed up my nose as I tossed two Sour Patch kids into my gob. ‘Sometimes I don’t even know how they work out the scoring, I really don’t.’

‘Yeah, that’s a drag.’

‘It’s just not fair, you know? When everyone else is working so hard, he’s so obviously the judges’ favourite. I get annoyed.’

‘I know you do, I know you do.’ On a grainy Skype feed, Alex looked over his shoulder at the bustling marketplace behind him. ‘So now I’m all caught up on Dancing with the Stars, you want to tell me what’s really going on over there?’

‘How’s Myanmar?’ I asked, cheerfully popping another handful of sweets. ‘That’s where you are, isn’t it? Looks beautiful. When was the last time you had a shave?’

‘It’s amazing, and probably two weeks ago, and now seriously, tell me what’s going on,’ he ordered.

‘Just some changes at work.’ I tried to sound as casual as possible but I’d never been good at putting on a brave face. ‘They’re shifting some stuff around and I’m getting a new boss. Instead of a print division and a digital division, they’re putting us all into brand streams. Which I’m sure I’ll understand by the time I meet with Jo tomorrow.’

‘Jo?’ Alex scratched at his new scruff.

‘Jo Herman. She’s the new director of women’s brands,’ I recited through a mouthful of chewy sugary goodness. ‘Gloss is in good shape, I’m not worried.’

‘I see,’ he said calmly. ‘Is that your first bag of Sour Patch Kids today?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘No, it is not.’

‘I can come home.’ Alex held his hand up to the screen of his phone until I could trace the concentric circles of his fingerprint on my laptop. ‘There’s only a couple of weeks left and I think it’s very clear I could use a shower and a shave.’

A good wife would have immediately told him not to be so silly. A good wife would have thought about how excited he was the morning he left, how happy he was every time I spoke to him and the undeniable joy in each and every one of his postcards. But I did want him home. I hated that he’d been away for so long, I hated waking up in a big empty bed every day then tripping over his slippers every single morning because he wasn’t there to wear them. I hated cooking alone, eating alone, and then doing one person’s dishes. But that was more to do with the fact Alex always did the dishes.

‘Angela?’

‘No, don’t be silly. You’ll be home soon anyway,’ I made myself say. I might have been imagining it but I could have sworn he looked relieved. ‘Where are you off to next?’

‘Thailand,’ he replied. ‘Shawna’s friend told us about this amazing beach called Koh Kradan. No ATMs, no roads even. They shut it down half the year but it just opened, so we should be some of the first people to visit this season. We’re going to head out there tomorrow, kind of a last fling, you know? Before we’re back to a New York winter. And then you know it’ll be spring and we’ll be off touring the festivals. Did I tell you? We got an email from the label and they want us to play like, thirty dates across Europe. Graham is so psyched.’

‘Not even home and you’re already planning to leave me again,’ I smiled. It was good to hear him excited about getting back to reality, even if that reality was nicking off on tour all summer. ‘Good riddance, that’s what I say. Why even bother coming home in the first place?’

He laughed, knowing I was teasing. I would never tell him, but really, I was relieved. You’d think being married to a boy in a band would bring in the big bucks but over the last couple of years, the money had really started to fade away. Alex had always been good with his finances so things weren’t exactly hard, but between streaming services and general piracy, the only way for Stills to make real cash was by touring and flogging T-shirts. Drunk people at festivals bought lots of T-shirts. Drunk people at festivals were my favourites.

‘The place we’re going is literally deserted, so don’t freak out if I can’t call for a week or so,’ Alex added, immediately making me freak out. ‘I’ll email if I can, but if not I’ll shout when I’m back in Bangkok and let you know my flight details.’

‘That’s fine,’ I replied, overcompensating by adding about fourteen syllables to the word ‘fine’. ‘You’ll be back before you know it, just go and enjoy yourself. Don’t worry about me.’

I sounded more like my mother every single day.

‘I like worrying about you,’ Alex said. His lopsided smile shone through the screen. ‘That’s my job.’

‘Your other job is to get me a present,’ I informed him, returning his happy expression. ‘A really nice one.’

He laughed and scraped his hair back from his face, showing off the tan line around his forehead. ‘Consider it done.’

‘And it’s probably best you’re not around anyway,’ I said. ‘Mason is going to propose to Jenny and I don’t know if New York is ready for the attack of that bridezilla.’

‘Ahh, man, that’s so great!’ He looked truly pleased to hear the news. ‘I’m so pleased for them. Tell them congratulations from me.’

I loved how much he loved my friend. Honestly, he was such an amazing human being, he made me want to throw up. That, or I’d finally found my limit on eating Sour Patch Kids, and that seemed unlikely.

A brisk knock on the door of my office made me look up. It was Cici, tapping at her Cartier Tank watch.

‘I have to go,’ I said with a sad sigh, reluctant to say goodbye. ‘Meeting time.’

We tried to talk as often as we could but between the time difference and Alex insisting on travelling to countries where WiFi was not their strongest suit, it had already been five days since I’d last heard his voice and now I wasn’t going to hear from him in over a week? I felt another pang of pukiness as he resigned himself to me signing off with a nod. I loved him so much, I wanted to vom.

‘I’ll try to call you again before we leave for the beach,’ he promised. ‘And I’ll be home before you know it.’

‘I love you,’ I said, ignoring an impatient Cici who was busy sticking her fingers down her throat. ‘Have you got plenty of snacks?’

‘I ate crickets yesterday,’ he said with a completely straight face. ‘And Graham ate a boiled baby chicken still in the egg.’

‘OK, I’ve changed my mind, you need to come home,’ I ordered as he started laughing. ‘I love you, Alex Reid.’

‘I love you too, Angela Clark,’ he said, his face relaxing into a smile. ‘I’ll talk to you later if you haven’t overdosed on candy.’

I blew him a kiss, logging off my computer with one hand and emptying the sour sweets into my mouth with the other before beckoning Cici into the office.

‘Sorry,’ I said, holding a hand over my full mouth. ‘Alex.’

‘He’s still on his gap-year adventure?’ she sniffed and brushed non-existent crumbs off the chair on the opposite side of the desk before sitting down. ‘I hope you got him vaccinated against Ebola and HPV before he left.’

‘Didn’t you go on a spiritual journey around India a few years ago?’ I reminded her, trying to remember which vaccinations he’d had before he left. ‘And HPV is an STD, I don’t think you can catch that from travelling around South East Asia.’

‘No, you catch that from boning skanks,’ she replied, studying her glossy pink fingernails. ‘But I’m sure he’s definitely not doing that.’

‘Did you want something?’ I asked.

‘I did, I do.’ Cici combed her long blonde hair over her shoulder, the mirror image of her twin sister, Delia. It still unnerved me, how two genetically identical humans could be so different. On one hand, you had Delia, superhuman media mogul and now president of the company. As generous and gracious as she was ambitious, Delia always put the people she loved first. And on the other, you had Cici, a woman so concerned about the wellbeing of others, she once convinced an intern to take her new sleep medication for a whole week because she was worried it was making her gain weight. It turned out it wasn’t but it did give the intern night terrors so that was something fun to report back to her doctor.

‘I’ve been your assistant for, like, ever,’ she began and I bit my lip before I could reply. As if I needed reminding of that.

‘And I know I only got the job because my grandpa owns the company and my sister basically forced you into taking me on …’ She waved away the facts as though everyone found their jobs in the same way. ‘But I’m good, and you know I am.’

‘Yeah, I mean apart from the constant abuse and borderline bullying of the entire team,’ I said with a nod, ‘you’re the best assistant I’ve ever had.’

I didn’t bother mentioning the times she’d had my luggage blown up, sabotaged a press trip to Paris, fired our managing editor on press day (despite the fact she didn’t have the authority to fire anyone), semi-kidnapped my goddaughter or even the fact she was the only assistant I’d ever had.

Didn’t seem necessary.

‘I know there are going to be changes with the new company structure and I want to be considered for something new,’ she announced with the indisputable confidence of someone whose twin sister now ran the company her grandfather owned. ‘I want a bigger role, Angela, I’m ready.’

Sometimes, her born-and-bred Manhattanite assertiveness still made my meek British skin itch.

‘I’m not entirely sure what you’ve heard about the new structure,’ I replied, scanning my inbox to see if a company-wide announcement had gone out since this morning’s meeting but there was nothing. I was sure it wasn’t due to be announced until the end of the day, Bob always liked to avoid distracting the worker bees while there was honey to be made. Cici was getting insider information and it didn’t take a genius to work out where it was coming from (which was a relief, since the last IQ test I’d taken on Facebook had yielded less than impressive results). ‘Nothing’s been confirmed yet and I don’t think there are going to be any staffing changes, to be honest, at least not at Gloss.’

‘Yeah, I guess you should probably talk to Dee Dee. Or Jo,’ she said as she pushed up out of her seat, flicking her eyes around my office. ‘I’ve done my time here, Angela, it’s only fair.’

‘You work at a fashion magazine in Manhattan, Cici,’ I pointed out, trying not to sweat over her little name drop. ‘You’re not doing twenty-five to life at Rikers.’

Even through my concern, I took a moment to congratulate myself on my knowledge of New York’s prison system. And to think Alex said watching all those Law & Order marathons was a waste of time.

‘Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference,’ she replied. ‘I really feel like my assisting days are behind me and I’d appreciate your support. I’d hate for us to be working against each other on this.’

‘Well, I’ve enjoyed our talk.’ I stood up behind my desk while Cici picked up the giant neon Troll doll on top of my filing cabinet and turned it over in her hands before setting it right back down and wiping her hands off on her wine-coloured midi skirt. It was Prada. I knew because she had told me. ‘And I’ll think about it. Like I said, I don’t think there will be any roles opening up soon and we don’t have the budget to create anything. Do you think you’d want to work at any of the other magazines?’

The audacity of hope.

She looked back at me as though I was mad.

‘I feel like Gloss is my baby,’ she said with a shrug as she walked towards the door. ‘I wouldn’t feel right anywhere else. I’m sure you, me and Jo will figure it out.’

I stared after her as she closed the door gently and tried my hardest to work out why everything she said always sounded like a threat.

‘Gloss is my baby,’ I muttered, opening a drawer and pulling out an emergency bag of Monster Munch. ‘Why don’t you go and tell Jo that?’

That was me, Angela Clark, super-mature, adult-extraordinaire, and absolutely, 100 per cent, winning at life.

CHAPTER TWO

‘Never have I needed this more than I do today,’ I said, chucking back half my cocktail-in-a-teacup in one go. ‘Honestly, the day I’ve had.’

‘Um, OK?’ the waitress raised an eyebrow, clearly out of fucks to give and it was only ten past seven in the evening. ‘Can I get you anything else?’

‘Three more of these, please.’ I pointed at my half-empty cup. ‘For my friends. Who are on their way. Not for me.’

‘Girl, no judgement,’ she replied. ‘You do you.’

‘Still not entirely sure what that means,’ I admitted quietly as she disappeared down the dark narrow bar. ‘But I’ll try.’

Even though I was twenty minutes late to The Dead Rabbit, I was still the first to arrive. It was a while since we’d been there and it was nice to sink into a comfy corner seat in the dimly lit upstairs bar. In days gone by, Jenny had been a big fan due to its proximity to Wall Street, Wall Street bankers and Wall Street bankers’ wallets, but since she had settled down with Mason we hardly ever ventured this far south in Manhattan. Even though they didn’t live together officially, she spent almost every night at his Gramercy apartment, and her room in our old Murray Hill two-bedroom was little more than a glorified wardrobe.

Sipping the rest of my cocktail at a more dignified pace, I thought back to my Mason conversation that morning. Even though I was so excited for him to propose to my bestie, I knew keeping the secret was going to kill me. In general, people didn’t tell me things they didn’t want other people to know – case in point, Delia’s taking over Spencer Media and reorganizing the entire business on the sly. I had a hard time keeping schtum: whether it was due to excitement, extreme tiredness or straight-up idiocy, I was not a safe space for secrets. But this time, I was 100 per cent going to hold my water. For two months. Two long months. Emptying the rest of my drink, I pushed the teacup away and stared off into the distance.

He probably shouldn’t have told me.

‘Hey, sorry we’re late.’

Jenny and Erin blew into the bar in a cloud of perfect hair and expensive perfume. I surreptitiously stuck my nose into my own armpit to make sure my Dove was keeping up its twenty-four-hour freshness claim before Jenny hurled herself at me for a hug.

I pasted a bright smile on my face and clamped my lips together.

Don’t tell Jenny about the proposal, don’t tell Jenny about the proposal, don’t tell Jenny about the proposal.

‘Are you OK?’ Jenny asked.

Don’t tell Jenny about the proposal.

‘Maso— mais oui,’ I replied with a flourish to back up my sweet French save. ‘Yes. Absolutely. Why wouldn’t I be?’

She didn’t look entirely convinced but she didn’t ask any follow-up questions either. That went down as a win in my book.

‘We had a meeting across town and I thought it would never end,’ Erin said, explaining away their lateness and almost taking my eye out with her razor-sharp blonde bob. ‘Traffic is a bitch tonight.’

‘You could have taken the subway,’ I suggested. ‘No traffic down there.’

Erin and Jenny looked at each other and exploded into laughter.

‘And that’s why you’re the funny one,’ Erin smiled, shrugging off her oversized Burberry pea coat and dumping her Hermès Birkin on top of my MJ satchel on the spare chair. My bag slid to the floor sadly, ashamed to be in the presence of something so superior. Jenny grabbed it from the ground and passed the offending article back with a disapproving frown.

‘You’re still using this?’ she asked, pulling a lip gloss out of her own studded leather Alexander Wang duffel. ‘Angie, you must have like a thousand bags now, you have to let that thing go.’

‘You’re confusing my bag collection with yours,’ I told her, stroking the soft, supple brown leather. ‘Anyway, I love this bag. I think it gets better with age.’

‘It doesn’t, you should ditch it,’ Erin assured me. ‘Nothing does really. Red wine and George Clooney are literally the only exceptions to that rule.’

‘We’ll end up burying you with that thing,’ Jenny sighed as I cradled my bag in my arms to shield it from Erin’s cruel but worryingly accurate statements. ‘Sometimes I think all my work with you was for nothing.’

‘Give me a break,’ I begged as the waitress reappeared with our cocktails, ‘I’ve had a shitty day and my brain isn’t up to it.’

‘Same here,’ Erin said, clinking her teacup against mine. ‘I’ve been up since three – TJ has some kind of bug and I spent half the night stripping beds and cleaning up baby puke. And you know if he has it, Arianna’ll have it by tomorrow.’

‘To the glamour of motherhood,’ I said, clinking her back. ‘Cici announced she’s been my assistant for long enough and wants a “bigger role” at Gloss. Also, they’re completely restructuring the company and everyone is on the chopping block, which I probably should have mentioned first, so ha-ha, I win. Worst day in forever.’

Jenny peeled off her tight black sweater to reveal a low-cut black T-shirt and every man in the bar turned and looked.

‘Mason emailed me about the restructure,’ she said as she crossed her toned legs. If you got up and went running every morning like Jenny did, you could have legs like that, said the little voice in my head. I drowned it with another sip of my cocktail. ‘You’re overreacting. They haven’t announced any closures yet.’

‘The fact you added a “yet” on the end doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence,’ I told her. ‘It’s just unsettling.’

‘Not as unsettling as that demon spawn twin, Cici,’ Jenny corrected. ‘Surely you’ve put up with her for long enough? It’s time for her to disappear.’

‘The worst part is, she’s not actually wrong,’ I admitted, washing away the words with a mouthful of gin. ‘Most assistants move up after a couple of years and she’s been with me for three. As much as it pains me to admit it, she’s good at her job, even if her people skills are still, you know, a bit rough.’

Never had there been such an understatement.

‘I only wish she wanted to move to another magazine, I know the rest of the team would like to see the back of her.’

Erin stretched her arms above her head until her shoulders clicked. ‘I don’t know how you sit in an office with that woman every day. I’d rather have an underfed hyena outside my office. Do you keep a loaded gun in your desk?’

‘She is an underfed hyena,’ Jenny replied for me. ‘If not worse. Remember that time she threw out all the shoes under your desk?’

‘She thought I wanted to donate them to the homeless,’ I said weakly. ‘She said she was trying to help.’

Jenny blinked in disbelief. ‘Really, Angie? She thought you wanted to donate Chanel ballet pumps to the homeless?’

My stomach clenched tightly with the pain of loss and I took a sip to their memory. The worst part was, I was still paying off that credit card bill.

‘I read about the restructure – we sent Delia congratulatory flowers, of course. You don’t really think they’re going to close any magazines, do you?’ Erin asked, nervously clicking her fingernails. Erin owned a PR agency, the PR agency worked with the magazines, the more magazines closed, the more difficult her life became.

‘Gloss is doing fairly well,’ I said, repeating the same story I’d told a thousand times over already that day and hoped I’d start to believe it soon. ‘I’m sure we’ll be fine.’

Panicking would get me nowhere, I reminded myself. Listing all the magazines that had closed over the last three years would not help, I reminded myself. Imagining myself sat on the floor outside a Burger King with a sign that says ‘will work for nuggets’ was entirely unproductive.

‘So, I had a shit day, Angie had a shit day …’ Erin looked at Jenny. ‘Anything to add, Lopez?’

‘I’m breaking up with Mason,’ she replied casually, holding up her cup for a toast. ‘So yeah, cheers.’

I stared at her across the table. Now my deodorant really had some work to do.

‘What?’ Confusion crumpled Erin’s delicate features. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘No,’ Jenny replied simply. ‘I’ve been thinking about it and he really isn’t leaving me with much of a choice. So, I’m going to end it.’

‘Is today National Everyone Make Dramatic Statements Day?’ I asked, putting my cocktail down so I could fully and soberly concentrate on my best friend. ‘Because if it is, I missed a memo. What do you mean you’re breaking up with Mason?’

Jenny rolled her eyes as though we were the ones being irrational.

‘We’ve been dating for almost three years,’ she replied, all calm and rational and entirely unlike herself. ‘He knows I want to get married, we’ve talked about getting married but nothing has happened. I told him back in the spring that I wanted to get engaged this summer, and if he didn’t propose, I was going to have to end it. He hasn’t proposed. How long am I supposed to wait?’

‘You told him he had to propose or you’d dump him?’

I just wanted to be clear before I began screeching louder than an exceptionally miffed dolphin.

‘Yes.’

Exceptionally miffed dolphin noises are go.

‘That’s not very romantic, is it?’ I asked, my mind and my words racing. ‘You can’t break up with Mason because he hasn’t met your deadline, what happened to an old-fashioned courtship? What happened to waiting?’

How could I tell her she couldn’t finish with him because he hadn’t proposed, because he had just told me he was planning to propose, without telling her he had just told me he was planning to propose? Just thinking about it gave me a headache.

‘No, she has a point,’ Erin said, resting her hand on top of Jenny’s and giving it a reassuring squeeze. ‘This is New York, you’ve got to put your cards on the table right away. Some guys are happy to date forever and never seal the deal. I told Thomas I wanted to be engaged within six months of things getting serious, that’s how it is here, Angela. You were lucky to catch Alex when his light was on. Most of them need an ultimatum.’

I opened my mouth to argue but all that came out was a squeak.

‘You have to play the game,’ Jenny agreed. ‘It’s not easy out there.’

‘Especially when you’re over thirty,’ Erin added.

Everyone looked down at the table and took a drink.

‘I’m going to tell him tomorrow,’ Jenny said, nodding to herself. ‘I really don’t think he’ll be surprised. We’ve been seeing less and less of each other lately; maybe it’s better to kill it before it goes sour. Maybe this is what he wants and he daren’t admit it.’

‘Just like a dude,’ Erin agreed, clinking her cup to Jenny’s. ‘Ghost away and hope they break up with you.’

‘But Mason isn’t ghosting you,’ I protested. ‘You love him and I know he loves you.’

‘And sometimes winning means knowing when to lose,’ Jenny replied with a sad smile. ‘I do love him, but I want to get married, Angie, I want kids. And I’m not getting any younger. If he’s not going to give me those things, I’ll find them somewhere else.’

I looked over at Erin for support but she looked away. Yes, she was happily married now but after two divorces, a failed engagement, and two difficult pregnancies that only came about after inordinately expensive help from the magical Dr Laura, Erin wasn’t the first person to look to when you wanted someone to support your Happily Ever After rationale.

‘But what if you gave him one more chance.’ I was getting desperate. Jenny wasn’t terribly good at sticking to her resolutions, she was forever making huge statements and hardly ever saw them through but there was a resignation in her voice that I did not like the sound of. ‘I mean, when you tell him, he might propose. Maybe he’s just waiting for the right time.’

‘If he proposes after I tell him I’m breaking up with him, it’s gonna feel like he’s only doing it because I’m forcing him into a corner,’ she argued. ‘I gave him six months to decide whether or not he wanted to be in this for the long haul. I can’t keep waiting around or I’ll wake up one day and realize I’m forty. No offence, Erin.’