CHAPTER FIVE

      When a washing machine crashed through my ceiling a week earlier, it had been somewhat disconcerting. But now I had become oddly used to squeezing past the hunk of Hotpoint determined to get between me and my breakfast cuppa.

      Right after they completely destroyed my kitchen, Lorraine and Vi had promised they would have it all sorted out before the weekend, but after a failed attempt at trying to pick it up and drag it out to the street on our own, I’d been living with what could have passed as modern art to some people, and a huge hole in my ceiling, for more than a week. On Sunday morning they’d lowered down a basket of pastries and, after that, it was fair to say I wasn’t nearly as upset about the situation as I could have been.

      ‘Good morning!’ Vi called through the Hello Hole as we’d christened it. I waved back and grabbed a Tetley teabag out of the pot and tossed it into my travel mug. You could take the girl out of England, etc. ‘Sweet outfit. Big day at the office?’

      ‘Trying to make a good impression.’ I flipped the ends of the black ribbon I’d tied in a bow around my neck and prayed the white silk shirt wasn’t a mistake. ‘Do I look presentable?’

      She squatted down to take a closer look and I gave her a quick twirl.

      ‘Very nice, the shirt is smart, the skirt is sexy, everything’s working for me,’ she gave me a thumbs-up and I poofed up my little black mini. ‘Great getaway sticks, lady.’

      ‘And now it’s black tights season again and I don’t have to shave every day, you’ll be seeing a lot more of them,’ I replied, returning her thumbs-up as the kettle boiled.

      ‘And if all else fails, you can just spill water on your blouse and call it a day,’ Vi suggested. ‘Your boss is a dude, after all.’

      ‘Note to self, buy water,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

      ‘I’m sorry it’s taking so long to get everything figured out.’ She pulled at the hem of her Harvard T-shirt as she folded over to sit on the floor. ‘Lorraine’s brother’s best friend is a builder and he specializes in restoring townhouses and period places. I’m really hoping he can come and take a look tonight.’

      I poured boiling water from the kettle into my travel cup and swished the teabag around until the water was more or less brown before removing the bag and tipping in half a pint of milk. My mother would have died if she could see what passed for tea in this house these days.

      ‘Any chance he’ll be able to clear this out?’ I asked, tapping the washing machine with my black Saint Laurent pointed pump. ‘If I’m honest, a great big washing machine in the middle of a small kitchen is more of a problem than the Hello Hole.’

      Naming the gaping chasm in the ceiling had probably been a bad idea. It now felt more like something from a Nineties sitcom than a potential structural disaster.

      ‘You’re telling me,’ Vi sighed. ‘I’ve got Lululemon leggings in there – no way I’m going to be able to save them now. I guess it’s better not to try and force it open, though, right? In case it explodes or something?’

      I chose not to tell her how I’d spent fifteen minutes trying to jimmy the door open with a butter knife three nights earlier. It was late, I couldn’t sleep and curiosity had got the better of me. Bloody thing would not budge.

      ‘Well, it is a washing machine, not a nuclear bomb, but I think we should probably leave it alone,’ I said, sipping tea as weak and feeble as I was.

      ‘I’ll text as soon as I know when the builders can start.’ She rolled upright and waved through the hole. ‘Have a great day and show that boss man who’s really boss.’

      ‘It is actually him,’ I replied with a wave of my own. ‘He’s been quite clear about that.’

      ‘Eurgh, patriarchy,’ she muttered as she vanished from sight. ‘Catch you later.’

      ‘I wish I was a lesbian,’ I mumbled, staring up into Lorraine and Vi’s beautiful kitchen. There was an actual herb garden in the window box. The only thing in our window box was pigeon shit. ‘I wonder if there’s a course you can take.’

      ‘There is,’ Vi shouted, apparently still in her kitchen. ‘But they’d make you leave your hot husband and I know for a fact he does all the cooking in your house.’

      ‘Noted,’ I called back, my cheeks flaming red as I barrelled out of the kitchen and towards my front door. ‘Thanks, Vi.’

      Park Slope was one of my favourite parts of New York and not just because I lived there. It was post-Halloween and pre-Thanksgiving, meaning the giant cobweb decorations and animatronic skeletons were gone but the pumpkins remained. Every single stoop was covered in gourds, plastic, ceramic and even some real ones. If you’d left real pumpkins on the doorstep in my village when I was growing up, someone would have lobbed them through the neighbour’s greenhouse by the next morning – we just wouldn’t have known what else to do with them. The streets all round mine were wide and tree-lined and all the houses looked like they’d come straight out of a Woody Allen movie, usually complete with a neurotic man chasing a much-too-good-looking-for-him younger woman to boot. There was the odd modern concrete block dotted here and there, but, for the most part, our neighbourhood was all elegant brownstones and townhouses. It looked like the New York I knew from the movies. That was the strange thing about my city, even if you’d never stepped foot in the place, you already knew it by heart. The skyline, the streets, the parks and the subways, New York belonged to everyone.

      Sipping my tea as I walked down to the 9th Street subway station, I let myself dream of buying a townhouse all to ourselves one day. Our apartment was one of two in the building; we had the ground floor and the basement while Lorraine and Vi had the top two floors. Maybe if I didn’t get fired, I’d become the editor of Belle