“Here.” He walks over to what I thought was a cupboard, unhooks the front flap, and displays the mirrored Art Deco fittings inside. “You see, here’s where your bottles go . . . here are your highballs . . .”
I gaze at it, completely smitten. A real, genuine, 1930s cocktail cabinet. I’ve always wanted a cocktail cabinet.
Just think, if we had one of these in the apartment it would change our lives. Every night Luke and I would mix martinis, and dance to old-fashioned songs, and watch the sun go down. It’d be so atmospheric! We’d have to buy one of those old-fashioned record players with the big horns, and start collecting 78s, and I’d start wearing gorgeous vintage tea dresses.
We have to have this. We have to. This isn’t some boring chair, or set of shelves. This is different. Luke will understand.
“How much is that?” I say, trying to sound nonchalant. I’m rather good at getting good prices in this shop. The trick is to sound as though you don’t care whether you buy it or not.
“This?” Arthur looks at it thoughtfully, and I hold my breath. “This really should be seven hundred dollars. But since you’re taking the trunk as well . . . I could let you have the pair for . . . eight hundred?”
Eight hundred dollars. For a wedding present and a unique cocktail cabinet that we’ll treasure all our lives. I mean, this isn’t like buying some pair of shoes that you’ll forget about. This is a genuine investment for the future.
“I’ll take them!” I beam at Arthur Graham.
“Excellent!” He smiles back. “You have a very good eye.”
Luke and I’ve been living together in New York now for a year, and our apartment is on West 11th Street, in the really nice leafy, atmospheric bit. There are ornate little balconies on all the houses, and stone steps up to all the front doors, and trees all along the pavement. Right opposite us lives someone who plays jazz piano, and on summer evenings we stroll up to the roof terrace that we share with our neighbors, and sit on cushions and drink wine and listen. (At least, we did that one time and I’m sure we will again.)
As I let myself into the house, there’s a pile of post for us in the hall, and I quickly flick through it.
Boring . . .
Boring . . .
British Vogue!
Boring . . .
Oh. My Saks Fifth Avenue store card bill.
I look at the envelope for moment, then remove it and put it in my bag. Not because I’m hiding it. Simply because there’s no particular point in Luke seeing it. I read this really good magazine article recently, entitled “Too Much Information?” in which it said you should filter out the day’s events rather than tell your partner every single tiny thing and overload his or her weary mind. It said your home should be a sanctuary, and that no one needs to know everything. Which, when you think about it, makes a lot of sense.
I put the rest of the post under my arm and start to walk up the stairs. There aren’t any letters from England, but then, I wouldn’t expect there to be today, because tonight we’re flying home for the wedding! I just can’t wait.
Suze is my first friend to take the plunge and get married. She’s marrying Tarquin, who’s a really sweet guy she’s known all her life. (In fact, he’s her cousin. But it’s legal. They checked.) The wedding’s going to be at her parents’ house in Hampshire, and there’s going to be loads of champagne, and a horse and carriage . . . and best of all, I’m going to be her bridesmaid!
At the thought, I feel a pang of yearning. I’m so looking forward to it. Not just being bridesmaid—but seeing Suze, my parents, and my home. It occurred to me yesterday I haven’t been back to Britain for over six months, which suddenly seems like a really long time. I completely missed Dad getting elected captain of the golf club, which was his life ambition. And I missed the scandal when Siobhan at the church stole the roof money and used it to go to Cyprus. And worst of all, I missed Suze getting engaged—although she came out to New York two weeks later to show me her ring.
It’s not that I mind exactly, because I’m having such a great time out here. My job at Barneys is perfect, and living in the West Village is even more perfect. I love walking through the tiny tucked-away streets, and buying cupcakes at the Magnolia Bakery on Saturday mornings and walking back through the market. Basically, I love everything I have here in New York. Except possibly Luke’s mother.
But still. Your home’s your home.
As I reach the second floor, I hear music coming from our apartment, and I feel a little fizz of anticipation inside. That’ll be Danny, working away. He’ll probably have finished by now! My dress will be ready!
Danny Kovitz lives upstairs from us, in his brother’s apartment, and he’s become one of my best friends since I’ve been in New York. He’s a fabulous designer, really talented—but he’s not that successful yet. Five years after leaving fashion school, he’s still waiting for his big break to come along. But like he always says, making it as a designer is even harder than making it as an actor. If you don’t know the right people or have an ex-Beatle as a father, you might as well forget it. I feel so sorry for him, because he does deserve to succeed. So as soon as Suze asked me to be her bridesmaid, I asked him to make my dress. The great thing is, Suze’s wedding is going to be stuffed full of rich, important guests. So hopefully loads of people will ask me who designed my dress, and then a whole word-of-mouth buzz will start, and Danny will be made!
I just can’t wait to see what he’s done. All the sketches he’s shown me have been amazing—and of course, a handmade dress will have far more workmanship and detail than you’d get off the peg. Like, the bodice is going to be a boned, hand-embroidered corset—and Danny suggested putting in a tiny beaded love-knot using the birthstones of all the bridal party, which is just so original.
My only slight worry—tiny niggle—is that the wedding’s in two days’ time, and I haven’t actually tried the dress on yet. Or even seen it. This morning I rang Danny’s doorbell to remind him I was leaving for England today, and after he’d eventually staggered to the door, he promised me he’d have it by lunchtime. He told me he always lets his ideas ferment until the very last minute—then he gets a surge of adrenaline and inspiration. It’s just the way he works, he assured me, and he’s never missed a deadline yet.
I open the door and call “Hello!” cheerfully. There’s no response, so I push open the door to our all-purpose living room. The radio is blaring Madonna, the television is playing MTV, and Danny’s novelty robot dog is trying to walk up the side of the sofa.
And Danny is slumped over his sewing machine in a cloud of gold silk, fast asleep.
“Danny?” I say in dismay. “Hey, wake up!”
With a start, Danny sits up and rubs his thin face. His curly hair is rumpled, and his pale blue eyes are even more bloodshot than they were when he answered the door this morning. His skinny frame is clad in an old gray T-shirt and a bony knee is poking out of his ripped jeans, complete with a scab that he got Rollerblading this past weekend. He looks like a ten-year-old with stubble.
“Becky!” he says blearily. “Hi! What are you doing here?”
“This is my apartment. Remember? You were working down here because your electricity fused.”
“Oh. Yeah.” He looks around dazedly. “Right.”
“Are you OK?” I peer at him anxiously. “I got some coffee.”
I hand him a cup and he takes a couple of deep gulps. Then his eyes land on the pile of mail in my hand and for the first time, he seems to wake up.
“Hey, is that British Vogue?”
“Er . . . yes,” I say, putting it down where he can’t reach it. “So—how’s the dress doing?”
“It’s going great! Totally under control.”
“Can I try it on yet?”
There’s a pause. Danny looks at the mound of gold silk in front of him as though he’s never seen it before in his life.
“Not yet, no,” he says at last.
“But it will be ready in time?”
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“Of course! Absolutely.” He puts his foot down and the sewing machine starts whirring busily. “You know what?” he says over the noise. “I could really do with a glass of water.”
“Coming up!”
I hurry into the kitchen, turn on the tap, and wait for the cold to come through. The plumbing in this building is a little bit eccentric, and we’re always on at Mrs. Watts, the owner, to fix it. But she lives miles away in Florida, and doesn’t really seem interested. And other than that, the place is completely wonderful. Our apartment is huge by New York standards, with wooden floors and a fireplace, and enormous floor-to-ceiling windows.
(Of course, Mum and Dad weren’t at all impressed when they came over. First they couldn’t understand why we didn’t live in a house. Then they couldn’t understand why the kitchen was so small. Then they started saying wasn’t it a shame we didn’t have a garden, and did I know that Tom next door had moved into a house with a quarter of an acre? Honestly. If you had a quarter of an acre in New York, someone would just build ten office buildings on it.)
“OK! So how’s it—” I walk back into the living room and break off. The sewing machine has stopped, and Danny’s reading my copy of Vogue.
“Danny!” I wail. “What about my dress!”
“Did you see this?” says Danny, jabbing at the page. “‘Hamish Fargle’s collection demonstrated his customary flair and wit,” he reads aloud. “Give me a break! He has zero talent. Zero. You know, he was at school with me. Totally ripped off one of my ideas—” He looks up at me, eyes narrowed. “Is he stocked at Barneys?”
“Erm . . . I don’t know,” I lie.
Danny is completely obsessed with being stocked at Barneys. It’s the only thing he wants in the world. And just because I work there as a personal shopper, he seems to think I should be able to arrange meetings with the head buyer.
In fact, I have arranged meetings with the head buyer for him. The first time, he arrived a week late for the appointment and she’d gone to Milan. The second time, he was showing her a jacket and as she tried it on, all the buttons fell off.
Oh God. What was I thinking, asking him to make my dress?
“Danny, just tell me. Is my dress going to be ready?”
There’s a long pause.
“Does it actually have to be ready for today?” says Danny at last. “Like literally today?”
“I’m catching a plane in six hours!” My voice rises to a squeak. “I’ve got to walk down the aisle in less than . . .” I break off and shake my head. “Look, don’t worry. I’ll wear something else.”
“Something else?” Danny puts down Vogue and stares at me blankly. “What do you mean, something else?”
“Well . . .”
“Are you firing me?” He looks as though I’ve told him our ten-year marriage is over. “Just because I’ve run a tad over schedule?”
“I’m not firing you! But I mean, I can’t be a bridesmaid without a dress, can I?”
“But what else would you wear?”
“Well . . .” I twist my fingers awkwardly. “I do have this one little reserve dress in my wardrobe . . .”
I can’t tell him I’ve actually got three. And two on hold at Barneys.
“By whom?”
“Er . . . Donna Karan,” I say guiltily.
“Donna Karan?” His voice cracks with betrayal. “You prefer Donna Karan to me?”
“Of course not! But I mean, the seams are actually sewn . . .”
“Wear my dress.”
“Danny—”
“Wear my dress! Please!” He throws himself down on the floor and walks toward me on his knees. “It’ll be ready. I’ll work all day and all night.”
“We haven’t got all day and all night! We’ve got about . . . three hours!”
“Then I’ll work all three hours. I’ll do it!”
“You can really make a boned embroidered corset from scratch in three hours?” I say incredulously.
Danny looks abashed. “So . . . um . . . we may have to rethink the design very slightly . . .”
“In what way?”
He drums his fingers for a few moments, then looks up. “Do you have a plain white T-shirt?”
“A T-shirt?” I can’t hide my dismay.
“It’ll be great. I promise!” From outside comes the chugging sound of a van pulling up and Danny glances out of the window. “Hey, did you buy another antique?”
An hour later I stare at myself in the mirror. I’m wearing a full sweeping skirt made of gold silk—topped by my white T-shirt, which is now completely unrecognizable. Danny’s ripped off the sleeves, sewn on sequins, gathered hems, created lines where there were none—and basically turned it into the most fantastic top I’ve ever seen.
“I love it.” I beam at Danny. “I love it! I’ll be the coolest bridesmaid in the world!”
“It’s pretty good, isn’t it?” Danny gives a casual shrug, but I can see he’s pleased with himself.
I take another gulp of my cocktail, draining the glass. “Delicious. Shall we have another one?”
“What was in that?”
“Erm . . .” I squint vaguely at the bottles lined up in the cocktail cabinet. “I’m not sure.”
It took a while to get the cocktail cabinet up the stairs and into our apartment. To be honest, it’s a bit bigger than I remembered, and I’m not sure it’ll fit into that little alcove behind the sofa where I’d planned to put it. But still, it looks fantastic! It’s standing proudly in the middle of the room, and we’ve already put it to good use. As soon as it arrived, Danny went upstairs and raided his brother Randall’s drinks cupboard, and I got all the booze I could find in the kitchen. We’ve had a margarita each and a gimlet, and my invention called the Bloomwood, which consists of vodka, orange, and M&M’s, which you scoop out with a spoon.
“Give me the top again. I want to pull in that shoulder tighter.”
I peel off the top, hand it to him, and reach for my jumper, not bothering to be modest. I mean, this is Danny. He threads a needle and starts expertly gathering along the hem of the T-shirt. “So, these weird cousin-marrying friends of yours,” he says. “What’s that about?”
“They’re not weird!” I hesitate for a moment. “Well, OK, Tarquin is a tiny bit weird. But Suze isn’t weird at all. She’s my best friend! You’ve met her!”
Danny raises an eyebrow. “So—couldn’t they find anyone else to marry except their own family? Was it like, ‘OK, Mom’s taken . . . my sister, too fat . . . the dog . . . mmm, don’t like the hair.’ ”
“Stop it!” I can’t help giggling. “They just suddenly realized they were meant for each other.”
“Like Harry Met Sally.” He puts on a film-trailer voice. “They were friends. They came from the same gene pool.”
“Danny . . .”
“OK.” He relents, and snips off the thread. “So, what about you and Luke?”
“What about us?”
“D’you think you’ll get married?”
“I . . . I have no idea!” I say, feeling a slight color coming to my cheeks. “I can’t say it’s ever crossed my mind.”
Which is completely true.
Well, OK. It’s not completely true. Maybe it has crossed my mind on the very odd occasion. Maybe just occasionally I’ve doodled “Becky Brandon” on my notepad to see what it looked like. And I might possibly have flicked through Martha Stewart Weddings once or twice. Just out of idle curiosity.
Perhaps, also, it’s occurred to me that Suze is getting married and she’s been going out with Tarquin for less time than me and Luke.
But you know. It’s not a big deal. I’m really not into weddings. In fact, if Luke asked me, I’d probably say no.
Well . . . OK. I’d probably say yes.
But the point is, it’s not going to happen. Luke doesn’t want to get married “for a very long time, if at all.” He said that in an interview in the Telegraph three years ago, which I found in his file of clippings.
(I wasn’t poking about. I was looking for an elastic band.) The piece was mainly about his business, but they asked him about personal stuff too—and then they captioned his picture Brandon: marriage at the bottom of agenda.
Which is absolutely fine by me. It’s at the bottom of my agenda, too.
While Danny’s finishing off the dress, I do a little housework. Which is to say I tip the dirty breakfast dishes into the sink where they can soak, dab at a spot on the counter—and then spend some time rearranging the spice jars in the spice rack, according to color. That’s such a satisfying job. Almost as good as organizing my felt-tip pens used to be.
“So do you guys find it hard living together?” says Danny, coming to the door and watching me.
“No.” I look at him in surprise. “Why?”
“My friend Kirsty just tried living with her boyfriend. Disaster. All they did was fight. She said she doesn’t know how anyone does it.”
I slot the cumin jar next to fenugreek (what is fenugreek?), feeling rather smug. The truth is, Luke and I have had hardly any problems since living together. Except maybe the incident when I repainted the bathroom and got gold glitter paint on his new suit. But that doesn’t count, because, as Luke admitted afterward, he completely overreacted, and anybody with sense would have seen that the paint was wet.
Now that I think about it, perhaps we’ve had the odd teeny little dispute about how many clothes I buy. Perhaps Luke has on occasion opened the wardrobe door and said in exasperation, “Are you ever going to wear any of these?”
Perhaps we’ve also had the odd argu-frank discussion about how many hours Luke works. He runs his own very successful financial PR company, Brandon Communications, which has branches in London and New York and is expanding all the time. He loves his work, and maybe once or twice I’ve accused him of loving work more than me.
But the point is, we’re a mature, flexible couple who are able to talk things through. We went out to lunch not long ago and had a long talk, during which I sincerely promised I would try to shop a bit less and Luke sincerely promised he would try to work a bit less. And I reckon we’re both making a pretty good effort.