‘So what’s new with you?’ Gemma asked, sitting down and flicking back her long black hair.
Angel took a deep breath. ‘I had a letter from someone who claimed to be my half-sister this morning.’ She thought she may as well come straight out with her bombshell news as she never knew how long she would have Gemma’s attention before it strayed back to Milo. But her friend was already distracted and busy opening up a pot of puréed baby food, ‘I wonder if Alonzo will microwave this sweet potato for me … Milo loves it. Did Honey like it? It’s packed with vitamins and is so good for them …’ She looked over at Angel. ‘Sorry, what were you saying?’
Angel grabbed her friend’s perfectly manicured hands. ‘Look at me and I’ll tell you! But I need your full concentration first.’
‘OK,’ Gemma promised. And when Angel repeated her comment, her friend was suitably shocked.
‘Do you think she really is your half-sister? I mean, it would be a great scam, wouldn’t it?’
‘Not that great,’ Angel replied. ‘As soon as we’d had the DNA test, we would know the truth.’ She paused and for a second looked wistful. ‘It would be good if there was someone decent I was actually related to.’
‘Even if she is your half-sister, she might still be a raving nutter,’ Gemma said darkly.
‘Cal’s going to get Sean to check her out. And then we’ll take it from there. It’s not like I’m going to arrange to meet her on my own or anything. I haven’t told Mum and Dad yet.’
Gemma arched one of her beautifully shaped eyebrows. That was one thing that hadn’t changed since she’d had Milo – she was still the most immaculately groomed woman Angel knew. ‘Never let it be said that your life isn’t full of drama.’
‘I could do without it,’ Angel replied. ‘This year is
supposed
to be about me and Cal trying for a baby. I don’t need any drama.’
Gemma smiled at her friend sympathetically. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll get pregnant soon.’ It had taken Gemma several years herself, during which time she’d had a miscarriage, so she knew what she was talking about.
After that their conversation turned to Angel’s TV show. Gemma was a beautician by profession but had always been a fashionista and had strong views about the styling on Angel’s show.
‘I think you need to get rid of Claudia. She has no idea how to style the women you have on the show. She makes them all look the same, in pencil skirts and heels, even the women who are only going to be able to wear heels for special occasions, not every day.’
‘You wear heels every day,’ Angel replied, but she knew Gemma was right.
‘I’ve
always
worn heels. It’s one of my trademarks.’
It certainly was. Angel was only surprised that Gemma hadn’t given birth in a pair of Louboutins.
‘I bet if you went back and interviewed those women a couple of months after they’d had the makeover, you would find them back in their old clothes. Jez does a good job with the hair, though.’ He was a complete natural in front of the camera as Angel had known he would be when she had pressed to have him on the show. She kept asking Gemma to come on as the make-up artist, but her friend kept making excuses, even though Angel knew that she would be brilliant.
Angel sighed. She really was going to have to do something about Claudia, even though she hated the thought that she might be responsible for someone losing their job.
Their main courses arrived. Angel had what she always did at the restaurant – tortelloni Aurora, pasta filled with ricotta cheese in a delicious tomato and cream sauce – while Gemma went for a salade Niçoise, and picked out all the potatoes. Along with her drive to be the perfect mother, she had also been pushing herself to lose the baby weight in record time. But if anything, Angel thought that Gemma had lost too much weight. Her pretty heart-shaped face looked a little gaunt. She had tried tactfully to suggest that maybe her friend should ease up on the diet, but Gemma had been very defensive.
After lunch the two friends headed off to the beauty salon round the corner which was owned by Gemma’s mum Jeanie, where Gemma worked part-time as a beautician. Angel loved the relaxed vibe of the salon and adored Jeanie, who was her mum’s best friend. She wished she could confide in her about the letter from Tiffany – she had always valued Jeanie’s down-to-earth, no-nonsense approach, but she felt bad about telling her before she had told her mum Michelle.
‘Nice lunch, ladies?’ Jeanie asked, as Angel and Gemma walked in.
‘I’m stuffed,’ Angel replied, flopping down on the sofa. ‘I might have to undo my jeans!’ And she un-popped the top button on her low-rise J Brand jeans.
‘So what am I doing with you today?’ Jeanie asked.
Angel stuck out her hands. ‘Nails. And I’d better have a facial, my skin is really bad at the moment.’
Jeanie walked over to Angel and considered her pretty, near-flawless skin.
‘If I look really hard, I think I can see one teeny-tiny spot on your chin.’
‘But look at the lines round my eyes!’ Angel wailed.
‘What lines? Your skin is just a little dehydrated. A facial will fix that.’
Jeanie flicked back her long glossy black hair. In defiance of the unwritten style rule that said that older women shouldn’t have long hair, she was growing hers. Gemma kept teasing her that she was mutton and should have a sharp bob, but Jeanie ignored her. And actually she looked fantastic.
Jeanie grinned cheekily. ‘Are you sure I can’t interest you in a vajazzle while you’re here?’
‘Mum!’ Gemma exclaimed, outraged at the suggestion.
‘Oh, don’t be such a prude, Gemma. Kimberly went on a training course yesterday and she’s raring to get those crystals stuck on! Everyone needs a bit of sparkle in their life.’
‘Not on their vajayjay!’ Gemma shot back. ‘It’s just
so
tacky.’
‘My own daughter – such a style snob. What do you say, Angel? It would make Cal’s night to discover you’d had one done. Kimberly can do all sorts of shapes: love hearts, four-leaf clovers, guitars …’
‘How about the Eiffel Tower?’ Gemma said sarcastically. ‘Or Elvis Presley’s face?’
Jeanie pretended to take the suggestion seriously, then said, ‘I think that might be stretching Kimberly’s creative skills. But what about a football Angel?’
‘Oh, what the hell!’ she replied. ‘Honey’s got a play-date after school so I don’t have to pick her up until six. I’ll go for the love heart.’
And much later that night, she managed to give Cal a very pleasant surprise. But one which she probably wouldn’t repeat as they woke up to find the bed covered in tiny crystals … and with Honey wanting to know what they were doing there.
TIFFANY SIGHED AND
looked at the clock. Another two long hours to go before she finished work. She was bored out of her mind but couldn’t show it. She had managed to get a temporary job at Kara’s dad’s gym, Fit2Go. As soon as Douglas heard that she was looking for a job, he had offered her the receptionist’s position. It was very nice of him and Tiffany was grateful, but very, very bored. She had only agreed to take on the temporary job when Kara had found out that the loathsome Gavin had frozen his membership, as she had zero wish ever to see him again. She spent her days giving the clientele marks out of ten for their sense of style, and surreptitiously flicking through
Vogue
for styling ideas while hoping that Kara – who managed the gym – would come out of the office and talk to her.
‘Good evening, how are you?’ Tiffany called out breezily to a forty-something woman, with an enviably toned body, whom she privately called Iron Woman. Mind you, thought Tiffany, her body damn’ well should be toned, given the hours and hours the woman spent at the gym. It was one of the rules of the job that she had to say hello to everyone, and goodbye. And smile. Tiffany was fed up of smiling, especially at some of the lads who seemed to think she was giving them the
come-on.
She wished that instead of her nametag she could wear a badge saying: ‘
No, I’m not flirting with you, it’s called customer service
.’ And then there was Billy, her ex. This was his gym and he had taken Tiffany’s new job there as a sign that she must still be interested in him and had stepped up his campaign to ask her out again. Every evening around six-thirty he would pitch up and lean on the front desk, and if he wasn’t trying to talk to her, he would be looking at her longingly. What to do about Billy?
And on top of the mind-numbingly boring job, she had yet to hear from Angel. Every time her mobile rang or beeped with a text message, Tiffany hoped it might be from her. She tried to be rational and tell herself that it didn’t matter whether Angel got in touch with her or not, that she had been perfectly happy before she knew Angel might be her half-sister, but she couldn’t help feeling rejected. Maybe the famous celebrity Angel Summer didn’t think Tiffany Taylor was an important enough person to be related to her …
She’d thought she was OK with this, but on this particular Friday afternoon, a full two weeks after she had tried to make contact with Angel, it had got to her.
‘Hiya, Tiff.’
She looked up from the computer screen and there was Billy, looking at her expectantly. ‘Got any plans for tonight?’
She shook her head. ‘I’ll probably have a drink with Kara.’
‘Kara and Harley are going to the cinema tonight … so I suppose you could tag along, like a saddo gooseberry, or you could come out for dinner with me? We could go to your favourite Indian.’
Billy didn’t give up. Tiffany considered him. He was looking especially cute in low-hanging jeans, showing off the top of his boxers, and a tee-shirt that revealed
his
muscular body, and she really didn’t feel like being on her own tonight. Maybe she could have dinner with him. And all right it wasn’t Nobu or Zuma or The Ivy or any of the other top restaurants Angel would go to, but the Indian he meant along Kentish Town Road was fab.
‘So long as you don’t think I’m going to have sex with you,’ she told him bluntly, thinking back to the last time they’d met up for dinner about a month ago, which had ended up with them going to bed together. They had reached the stage in their relationship where they could say pretty much anything to each other.
A young lad was going through the turnstile. Catching what Tiffany had said, he turned round and winked at her.
She rolled her eyes. ‘To clarify … this will be dinner as friends. And I don’t mean friends with extras.’
‘Sure, just friends,’ Billy replied, hardly able to contain his smile. Leaning over the counter, he kissed her on the cheek. ‘I’ll pick you up around eight.’
By half-past ten, Billy and Tiffany had worked their way through onion bhajis, poppadoms, chicken tikka masala, a lamb rogan josh, nan breads, pilau rice, and one and a half pints of Kingfisher beer.
‘Oh my God, I’m so full!’ Tiffany groaned, pushing her plate away. She leant back against the burgundy mock-velvet booth. The Indian scored nul points for interior design, but the food was divine.
Billy waved the last remaining poppadom in her face. ‘Sure I can’t interest you in this, madam?’
‘No way! I need to go and lie on my sofa.’
‘You could come and lie on mine,’ Billy said cheekily. ‘The boys are out, and I tidied up.’
‘I already told you, this is us as friends, not friends with extras,’ Tiffany said. But she was weakening. It had been a while and Billy did look especially fit and
she’d
had a stressful couple of weeks … Would it be so bad to go back to his, one last time?
‘Of course just as friends.’ He tried unsuccessfully to hide his pleasure that she was going to come back with him. ‘And you can tell me what’s on your mind.’
When Billy had picked her up, she had hinted that she was worried about something, meaning the situation with Angel, and as soon as she had said it, had regretted it. ‘Oh, it was nothing,’ she muttered now, forgetting that he knew her better than that.
‘Have you met someone else?’ he asked quietly.
‘Why would I be out having a curry with you on a Friday night if I’d met someone else?’
‘You’ve got a new job?’
‘Marie’s having a baby.’ Phew, that surely let her off the hook!
Billy had always got on well with her dad and Marie. ‘That’s great news, Tiff, but I don’t see why it is such a big secret?’ Damn, he wasn’t going to be put off so easily. It probably wouldn’t do any harm to tell him about Angel. She trusted him not to tell anyone. Besides, the way things were going, it seemed as if nothing was going to happen anyway.
‘You remember I met my real mum a couple of months ago?’
‘Oh, yeah, it didn’t go too well from what you said?’
Tiffany sighed. That was an understatement. ‘It was a total disaster. But she wrote to her social worker so that she could tell me …’ She paused. It was going to sound completely mad. There they were, sitting in their local Indian, surrounded by people having a Friday-night curry, a treat at the end of a long week, and she was going to come out with this revelation. She fleetingly looked away from Billy and her attention was caught by a man sitting alone. He was staring at her, and Tiffany had a funny feeling that she had seen him
before,
but she couldn’t think from where. He was striking-looking, with short brown hair in a buzz cut and deep brown eyes.
‘Tell you what?’ Billy urged her, and she looked away from the man.
‘OK, you’ve got to promise not to tell anyone – not any of the lads.’ Billy shared his student house with three other trainee teachers.
‘Sure.’
Tiffany sneaked another glance at the brown-eyed man. He was reading his book now; perhaps she had imagined seeing him somewhere before.
‘Tanya said that I had a half-sister.’
‘Yeah? I guess it can’t be that much of a surprise that you’ve got siblings. Your mum sounded pretty dysfunctional.’
‘It’s who it is. Tanya claims that my half-sister is Angel Summer.’
Billy looked suitably shocked. ‘What!
The
Angel Summer who’s married to Cal Bailey?’ Cal was one of Billy’s all-time sporting heroes. He had raised his voice in surprise and Tiffany immediately shushed him. She looked around anxiously but none of the other diners seemed to have heard.