Lindsey Kelk - A Girl’s Best Friend

You deserve better. I want to be better.

All my love,

Nick

Given how fast and how fiercely I had fallen in love with him, I only realized after he left that I really didn’t know all that much about Nick Miller.

The fact I’d never seen his handwriting until he wrote this letter should have been the least of my worries but, looking at it now, it was all I could think of. Before the tears could start, I folded the note along its one crease, once sharp, now so soft I worried it would tear in two from being opened and closed so very many times, and tucked it back inside my passport, back underneath my pillow.

Maybe I didn’t know that much about him but what I did know was how much I missed him. I missed the sound of his voice when he laughed and when he said my name. I missed the little growling noise he made before he ate. I missed the way he would kiss the top of my head before I fell asleep and how he let me put my cold feet on his warm legs in bed and how he always laughed at his own terrible jokes and how he made me feel brave and proud and utterly myself. Ever since he’d called things off, it was as though someone had taken all of that away and no matter how hard I looked, how determined I was to work these things out for myself, I could not find the answers. I didn’t want to need him like this but I did want him to need me . It was all so confusing.

It turned out I could lie to myself about a lot of things if I thought they were for the greater good. I could tell myself that Charlie would forgive me and that we would be friends again. I was happy to pretend I wasn’t at all jealous of Amy’s sudden success and I almost believed it when I told people I didn’t regret walking away from a career in advertising to make cups of tea and sweep up studios but I couldn’t keep telling myself stories about Nick any more.

We had spent two weeks together and one hundred and thirty-six days apart. He hadn’t called, he hadn’t written, but then neither had I. Every time I opened my inbox, I looked for his name; every time my phone rang, the split second before I saw who was calling, I hoped it would be him. The fact he hadn’t even tried to speak to me since he left me in Milan was the reason I found it so hard to fall asleep every night but the thought of calling him and having him tell me he didn’t want me and never really loved me? That was the thing that woke me up in a cold sweat. I wasn’t lying when I told Paige I hadn’t contacted Nick because I wanted to concentrate on work but I wasn’t telling the whole truth either. I’d lost Charlie’s trust and friendship, my career was in shambles, Amy was thousands of miles away and only moving further from me, but with Nick’s letter safely under my pillow, and the tiniest spark of hope that we could still be together one day, that I could get back the things I had lost, I got to keep something.

When anxiety woke me in the middle of the night, it was the memories that lulled me back to sleep. I let myself remember the time we walked through Milan, hand in hand. The time we kissed in the square in front of the opera house. The look on his face when I told him that I loved him. I indulged in our days in Hawaii, swimming in the waterfall, sitting on the beach at sunset. The memories I kept locked away, day in and day out because, in the middle of the night, they felt like a warm blanket pulled right up to my chin on the coldest of nights but in the daytime, they were blinding. A constant reminder of what I no longer had.

It was easy to believe in dreams at night but the tiny spark of hope that I carried around all day was starting to burn my fingers. Something was going to have to change.

‘You sound a lot happier today,’ Amy said. ‘Way less like you’re going to kill someone.’

‘I do feel a bit less homicidal,’ I replied, running to the underground station to avoid the sudden shower that had started the second I left the studio. ‘Today is definitely an improvement.’

‘I can’t believe you’re working on a Sunday,’ she clucked, disgusted. ‘You know how I feel about that.’

‘I do but lots of people work weekends and the world doesn’t end. Actually, it would be more likely to end if they didn’t. Anyway, I’ve only got today and Monday left with the lovely Ess, I think I can manage that.’

I thought I could, I wasn’t absolutely certain.

‘Then I ought to get this out the way while you’re in what passes for a good mood,’ Amy said. ‘I’m definitely not going to be home for Christmas.’

‘Oh.’

‘Obviously it would have been better if Kekipi wasn’t dead set on this bloody New Year’s Eve wedding but he’s been such a bridezilla about the whole thing and Domenico was insistent that they had to get married in Italy and we could only get the Park Avenue Armory on the twenty-third so we were kind of stuck with all the dates.’

‘Oh.’

‘Between the presentation on the twenty-third and flying to Milan for the New Year’s wedding, going anywhere else in between is just impossible – I’ll have so much to clear up on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. You know they only take Christmas Day as holiday here?’

‘Makes sense.’

I wondered whether or not I still had the receipt for her Christmas present so I could take it back and swap it for a sackful of coal.

‘I completely understand.’

‘But here’s what I was thinking …’ Amy was still talking, the strain in her voice breaking into a familiar giddiness. ‘You should come here!’

‘To New York?’

‘To New York!’ Amy confirmed. ‘It would be amazing. I miss you so much and Al and Kekipi would love for you to be here at Christmas. God knows how I’ve managed this long without you, so please come? I need you!’

‘No you don’t,’ I replied. ‘You’ve done everything by yourself so far. You’re going to be fine.’

I looked up at a snowman hanging from the telephone pole above me. His big white bum shone yellow in the smog but the bulbs had gone in his top half and nobody had bothered to replace them. His cheery grin and corncob pipe were lost in the drizzle and the whole effect was really rather sad.

‘All right, I might not need you but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t come,’ she replied. ‘I want you there. I want you to see the presentation – we’re using your photos and I know you got an invitation – and take me for drinks when I’m crowing on about how amazing I am to anyone who will listen. Tess, Christmas in New York – you know you want to.’

I did. Amy knew I’d always wanted to go to New York but I’d never had the time, Amy could never afford it and Charlie hated to fly, so year after year, it had passed me by. But New York for Christmas … I had a sudden vision of myself, wrapped up in a cosy coat, mitten in mitten with Amy, buzzed on good cocktails, laughing with Kekipi and getting a grandfatherly hug from Al.

God, it was tempting. It would definitely be better than curling up on the settee with my family, drinking five cups of tea and putting away an entire box of half-price Christmas chocolates. Well, the chocolate part didn’t sound that bad but the rest of it sounded incredibly depressing. And all too familiar.

‘Well?’ Amy was as impatient as ever. ‘Unless you’ve been stunned into silence by my genius, this is the part where you’re supposed to make agreeing noises. Wow, Amy! What a good idea, Amy! I’m on my way, Amy!’

‘I want to come,’ I said, having already talked myself out of it. It was way too expensive, it was way too far, I didn’t even have any mittens – and what if Veronica got me more work? ‘But I’m saving for somewhere to live. And you’re supposed to be working, aren’t you? I know it’s going to come as a shock to you but you’re expected to do it nearly every day.’