Amber Green Takes Manhattan

‘I heard you. The Icons all have legs up to their armpits, washboard stomachs, perfect racks, peachy—’

‘Yes, yes, okay, I think I know what an underwear model looks like, Vicky. I feel crap as it is, no need to rub it in.’

She paused, before replying, measuredly, ‘What I was going to say was peachy bottoms – and air for brains. Amber, stop doing the paranoid girlfriend thing and rise above this. It’s you who Rob’s going out with, and that’s not going to change. Well, unless you start acting all insecure and paranoid about the underwear models and their peachy bottoms that he will be filming. Not dating or having sex with – just filming. Okay?’

‘Okay.’ She didn’t have to spell it out quite so bluntly. Although she had hit the nail on the head.

‘Anyway, when are you coming out to see me?’ She changed the subject. ‘Not being funny but it’s been nearly a year, and you still haven’t got on a plane. We’ve got tons of space. I’m even naming a suite after you – the Green Suite. Come on Am, book it! Bring Rob too if you want. I’m going nuts out here in this huge mansion. And I need some English humour, desperately. I also need digestive biscuits dunked in Earl Grey tea. But most of all, I need us!’

She was right. I needed ‘us’ too. I missed Vicky so much – her wry sense of humour and the hilarious escapades we’d got up to when we shared a home.

‘Anyway, how’s things with you?’ I asked

‘Not great, to be honest. Why do you think I’m still awake at two in the morning and not at a party? I’ll tell you, because I’m lying in bed – alone – trying to work out what I’m doing with my life.’

‘Oh, honey, sorry to hear this, and I’ve been banging on about me. What’s going on?’

‘Nothing really. And that’s half the problem. I’m so bored here, Amber. Trey’s out at the crack of dawn each day and back late, if he comes back at all. He’s working on a big feature film and although it’s filming in LA, I hardly see him. I know more about our pool cleaner’s life than my own boyfriend’s right now. I even made lunch for the hedge trimmer yesterday, I was so bored of cooking for myself. He was pretty hot, as it goes, I was starting to find his strimmer sexy. Honestly, if Trey hadn’t come back that evening… Amber, I don’t know what I’m doing out here.’

‘You found his strimmer sexy? That’s desperate. Have you told Trey how you’re feeling?’

‘If I had a chance I probably would, but, like I said, he’s barely here and I don’t want to do the whiney girlfriend on the phone thing. I never wanted to be that girlfriend, but I’m getting close to having no option. Be careful what you wish for, Amber, maybe there’s more spark living apart.’

‘But not living in separate continents. God, it’s never straightforward is it? What are we going to do?’

‘I wish we could go to the Chamberlayne and get drunk.’

‘Me too. I could murder a girlie drinking session with you.’

‘I miss you so much, honey. I keep thinking of my room in the flat. At this rate, I could be back before you know it.’

‘Listen, let’s keep each other posted, okay, and if it all goes wrong, of course you can just move back. We’ve still got the flat, your room is exactly as you left it, and we’ll just carry on like before. Our lives weren’t so bad, were they? Sainsbury’s must be suffering from a loss in revenue from hummus and Popchips since you’ve been away, I’m sure they’ll welcome you back with open arms too.’

Finally, she laughed. ‘You’re right. It will be fine. This film is meant to end in a couple of weeks and then Trey’s mentioned a holiday in Mexico, so I’m sure we’ll be back on track. And Rob does love you, Amber, I know it. He might not take the job anyway.’

‘I s’pose. Let me know if you speak to Trey. Love you, bestie.’

‘Love you more. Night night from here.’

I had our Kensal Rise flat pretty much to myself these days. Trey, being loaded, was paying Vicky’s half of the rent so they had a London bolt-hole, but they were yet to use it; the one time they popped back for a premiere, he checked them into a suite at the Soho Hotel. Even so, she was definitely still there, haunting the place. Some of her belongings were still strewn around her room and many of her pictures still hung on the walls: the black-and-white framed print of Brigitte Bardot in the living room, cigarette casually hanging from her lips, wind-swept hair, black scarf tied loosely around her neck, to remind us how to be cool, like Brigitte; the collection of Instagram photos from various holidays, printed out and carefully framed, to remind us of our best moments, if ever we needed reminding – usually on the Saturday nights when we were in our PJs, having a living room picnic in front of Ant and Dec. It was all so carefree, silly – and single.

And now here we were, coupled up in our late twenties. Much as I loved the days of being in a platonic relationship with Vicky, I was so happy about that fact I didn’t have to face the prospect of being a thirty-year-old spinster. While Vicky always had some guy on the go, whether it was ‘Sunday Simon’ or ‘Sexy Jim from the art desk’, I was a bona fide ‘car crash’ when it came to relationships; another traffic-based pun on my full name, Amber Green. Yes, after ten years in the single wilderness, it felt so good to have someone who would go to the twenty-four-hour garage for a family bag of Maltesers or run me a bath after a shitty day at work; someone who embraced the role of human hot water bottle, taking pleasure in warming my block-of-ice feet when I got into bed. Life was great. But now the thought of Rob taking off for New York was following me around like a shadow.

The walk along Oxford Street from Marble Arch was very different in January compared with before Christmas. The strings of bright lights across the road were gone and, bar a few sad, forgotten decorations in some shops, the festive period had been packed away. The London sky was heavy with big, grey clouds.

Christmas came and went in a bit of a blur, to be honest. Rob went to his mum’s big house in Holland Park and I went to the family pile (read: suburban semi) in deepest North London. As per usual, everything revolved around my sister’s six-year-old daughter, Nora: ‘Nora prepared the Brussels sprouts!’; ‘Nora nearly recited that song from Matilda by heart!’ The ‘Nora Show’ was in full effect. And it was every bit as grating as a pantomime – for three days solid. Urgh, listen to me. My New Year’s resolution is to be nicer to Nora.

After polishing off a couple of morning glasses of dry sherry, moving on to prosecco and red wine with lunch, then on to port, by way of a Baileys, I was feeling very fluffy around the edges by nine o’clock. Instead of watching Big for the trillionth time with my sister and Nora, who was being allowed to stay up as long as she wanted, much to my horror, or allowing my dad to beat me at Trivial Pursuit circa 1990, again, I called it a night. Apart from booze, the only thing keeping me going through the day was texting Rob and later sexting with him until I fell into a port-induced coma in the tiny spare bedroom, because my old bedroom had been commandeered by – you guessed it – Nora. Rob seemed to be having a much more civilised day, his mother having decided to take him and his older brother, Dan, plus Dan’s fiancée, Florence, out for a champagne Christmas lunch in a trendy Notting Hill restaurant, then home for charades and posh liqueur chocolates. Maybe next year I’ll be there too. Please Father Christmas, I promise I’ll be good all year.

There wasn’t even time for a Boxing Day lie-in for me. The only downside to working at Selfridges – although based on my Christmas, it could be classified as a bonus – was that I had to be at work at five in the morning on Boxing Day. Alongside our regular team we had twenty contractors and, behind huge vinyl stickers, we carefully stripped the fairy-tale festive display from the windows, and then the glass was covered with shouty red paper advertising the January sales. As Big Ben chimed nine in the morning, a stampede of hungry customers from all around the world charged through the doors and set to work dismantling the entire store, snapping up the designer bargains of the year. It was the shopping equivalent of the bull-run through Pamplona. As fervent fashionistas turned the shop into a glorified jumble sale, our windows team sloped back to bed. This time I headed to my own bed in Kensal Rise. Work was a distant memory by evening, because Rob came over in a Christmas jumper with a mountain of leftover cheese and we roasted chestnuts and scoffed Quality Street cuddled up on the sofa watching Elf. All I needed was him. We were lost in each other and I had never felt happier.

But now, the heady glow of Christmas had disappeared, along with the shine on my relationship, it seemed.

As I entered my super-cool work place through the staff entrance round the back of Oxford Street at nine thirty, I felt a sense of pride. I’d been working as a window designer at Selfridges for six months now and it was my dream job. Finally, that irritating voice in my head telling me to ‘get a proper career’ could shut up because I finally had a proper career. Instead of dreading the point in conversation with friends of my parents or mates of mates down the pub, that would eventually crawl around to the inevitable, ‘So, what do you do, Amber?’ I could embrace the question, invite it even, because I had a decent response.

‘Oooh, what are you working on now?’ they often asked.

‘It’s all a bit hush-hush,’ I’d tease, though it was actually the truth – pulling back the vinyl to unveil the new Selfridges window display was a big, closely guarded event.

‘Jesus, what happened, babe?’ my boss, Joseph, exclaimed as I entered the studio.

‘Happy Tuesday to you, too,’ I sneered.

‘Sorry, babe, but if you’re sick, perhaps you should go home. Pale and interesting is not this season.’

‘I’m not ill, just tired,’ I muttered, marvelling at how stupid I was not to get a muffin as well as a coffee from Starbucks on the way in. Thankfully, our studio office was at the very top of the shop, and when we weren’t tucked away up here, we were downstairs tweaking the windows. I was rarely required for face time with senior management.

Joseph, the creative director for visual merchandising at Selfridges, never looked sloppy, just like his name was never abbreviated to Joe. Tall, handsome and confident, he was fancied by literally the entire female workforce – despite the fact he was gay. He wasn’t particularly camp, which made a certain portion of his admirers cling on to the fantasy that he could be ‘turned’. And of course all the gay guys – which was most of the male staff – had a deep yearning for him, too. Joseph blatantly knew he was God’s gift, and strutted around the store like Mr Selfridge himself. His hair was wavy and shoulder length and he wore it tightly tucked behind his ears, like ram’s horns. If you didn’t know better, to look at him you’d think he was French – arty, Gauloises-smoking, air of superiority – but when he spoke his dialect was pure Joey Essex. Everyone was a ‘babe’ and life was ‘sweet’.

After working with him for half a year, I was getting to know the real Joseph and, although he genuinely lived the life of a moisturising modern man who adhered to the five:two diet and had been known to get hooked up to a reviving vitamin-packed IV drip during his lunch break, at the end of the day he was a first-class creative director and I loved having him as my boss. As well as my solid experience styling the windows at Smiths boutique, I think he was wowed by my time spent assisting Mona – in our world, it would be hard not to be – as he gave me the job without a second interview. When I started, he took me under his wing as a protégée of sorts and it was a great position to be in. It gave me some protection from the less friendly, uber fashiony senior managers who swanned around our floor in their top-to-toe designer threads, trying to catch a glimpse of Joseph.

Then there was Shauna: white fingernails with gold tips, big gold hoops and curly afro hair, channelling a modern day Diana Ross. Her iPhone clicked in my face and then traced my body. A deeply unflattering video of my stunned mug and greasy-looking hair was now playing live on Snapchat. Shauna loved to share. She worshipped at the altars of Instagram and Snapchat and was dedicated to the daily documentation of selfies, shoefies, Instafood, Instacocktails, Instacats – and fairly often me, with #nofilter.

‘You’re so ’grammable today, babe,’ she said, crouching down to snap my Starbucks cup as I placed it on my desk. Until that moment, I had failed to noticed that the barista had scrawled the word ‘Antler’ on it, instead of my real name. Shauna found it hilarious and shared the image with her 1.4 thousand followers. ‘Big night, deer? Get it – Antler, deer?’

I frowned. ‘So I look like something the cat dragged in, can we all just get over it, please?’

Shauna sucked in her cheeks and waggled her finger at me, intimating that I was not one to talk about anything this morning.

Joseph broke us up. ‘Now, now ladies, there’s no time for bickering today, Jeff wants the final designs for the summer windows by EOP, so I need you to finish the edit. And that’s before we get cracking on phase two of the “Chelsea” display.’

The great thing about my job, especially on days like today, was that time passed quickly. I loved putting the mood boards together and then sourcing clothes from the collections about to hit the shop floor to bring it all to life. We were always working on two themes at any one time, currently we were completing the spring windows, inspired by the famous Chelsea Flower Show, and also planning our big summer production, a homage to the ‘Traditional British Seaside’, which would come into play soon after. I was transported from grey January to sunny July and a world of ninety-nines, beach huts, rubber rings, candy-coloured Kate Spade bags, Linda Farrow sunglasses, Matthew Williamson bikinis, palm-print dresses and everything in between. Heaven.

Although Shauna and I didn’t always see eye to eye outside work, we were a great team in the studio, her eye for props perfectly complementing my choice of fashion from the designer look books. The time flew as I busied myself finalising clothes for the Chelsea windows and lining them up on rails ahead of Joseph’s inspection – a cacophony of vibrant pink, lemon, lilac, peach and turquoise, the sartorial equivalent of a fragrant bouquet. Bright clothes were amazing for lifting my mood. But they couldn’t stop me from checking my phone every five seconds. Nothing from Rob.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_157b15ff-4930-51fa-8a8c-28f7694ceab7)

Two days had passed since Rob told me the news that he was thinking of moving to New York. In that time I had cried in the loos at work once, eaten MacDonald’s for dinner twice, bought a Marc Jacobs top I couldn’t afford, despite my staff discount, and looked at the Angel Wear website five thousand times as a conservative estimate. Krystal, Jessica, Roxy, Leonie, and Astrid were the names of the main Angel Wear ‘Icons’. I could tell you their vital stats by heart. And I hated their perfect thirty-four–twenty-four–thirty-four guts. It was now Thursday and today Rob had been unnervingly attentive, texting me more than usual just to see how my day was going and wanting to arrange to meet up. He’s taking the job and he’s feeling guilty, I know it. In my head, we were already on opposite sides of the Atlantic. But I hadn’t worked out how to handle things the next time I saw him, so I hadn’t yet replied. The reality was that we’d only been dating for five months. I couldn’t stop thinking about his feather tattoo. This could be Rob’s perfect opportunity to just catch the wind and fly.

Work continued to be a good distraction, but Joseph and Shauna didn’t do compassion. I’d come clean about Rob to Shauna in the loos the first morning, when she caught me redoing my mascara and, of course, she had blurted it out to Joseph.

‘Hate to say it, babe, but it sounds like a case of “He’s just not that into you”,’ Joseph said, causing my eyes to prickle all over again. I carried on tweaking a mocked-up candyfloss stand.

This morning, we were waiting for Jeff to come and cast his critical eye over our final plans for summer, when my phone rang: Rob.

‘Let me speak to him.’ Shauna tried to grab my iPhone from my hands, but failed, sending a fake nail onto the floor.

I spoke to Rob from the hallway outside the studio. It’s impossible to get any privacy around here.