Page 70 of The Love Hack

When I arrived at Amelie and Zack’s Chelsea apartment building, still almost hyperventilating with shock and anger, a woman was just leaving, a small white dog that looked like a series of cotton-wool balls joined together under her arm. She gave me a half-recognising smile and held the door open for me, so I smiled back and slipped into the lobby.

From a surprise point of view, good: I was going to see my sister for the first time at her door, rather than over the security video. From a time point of view, bad: I’d missed out on valuable seconds that I could have spent not having broken the news yet.

But I was here now and there was no point in delaying further. I stepped up to the elevator and pressed the up button, and the doors opened immediately (bad), so I stepped in and pressed the button for the fifth floor. Seconds later, I was in front of the apartment, a blank, glossy teal-coloured door with a brushed steel number screwed onto its surface.

I took a deep breath and knocked, and waited.

There was total silence for a few moments. The corridor was quiet and somehow sterile – there were no cooking smells, I couldn’t hear any TVs playing or voices laughing. It was like being on a stage set waiting for the curtain to rise.

Then the door opened and Amelie stood there, a look of blank enquiry on her face that was immediately replaced by surprise and then delight.

She squealed and hopped and flung her arms round me and hugged me so tight I almost dropped the coffees. She smelled different – presumably some fancy new American shampoo she’d starting using. She felt thinner than usual, her shoulders almost frail under the free hand I used to return her hug.

‘Oh my God. Lucy. It’s actually you. Is this real?’

I said, ‘I thought I’d surprise you.’

‘You have. Oh my God, it’s the best surprise ever. How did you find out the address? Did you ask Zack?’

Shit. I wasn’t ready to tell her I’d just seen her husband – not yet.‘I asked Mum. I didn’t want him to know I was here, either.’

That at least was true. But her excitement made me feel like the biggest fraud ever.

‘Come in. Let me show you our flat.’

She let me go, then changed her mind and hugged me again before letting go properly, turning round and leading me into the hallway. She was wearing stone-coloured yoga pants and a cropped cream jumper with over-long sleeves that almost covered her hands. In the gap between the trousers and the top I could see the knobbly ridge of her spine. Her hair was damp, piled on her head with a scrunchie, and she wasn’t wearing any make-up. Her skin was pale and there were dark circles under her eyes.

Still, she shone with pleasure at seeing me. I wondered how long that would last.

‘So here’s the kitchen,’ she said. ‘It’s just one end of the lounge, really, like you saw in the photos. Come on and I’ll show you the rest.’

The blinds were closed so the apartment was shadowy, but Amelie did something with a remote control and they whooshed up, revealing a view of another glass building opposite and the black, skeletal shapes of trees against the navy blue sky.

‘They’re all the same, imagine,’ she said. ‘I mean, not down to the cushions and things like that, but essentially, it’s like a filing cabinet for expats. Like being in Married at First Sight. Here’s the bathroom – all the towels and everything were here when we moved in, it was so weird. And that’s the bedroom but I can’t show you because it’s a total pigsty. But took at the amazing storage in the hallway – all the cleaning stuff and the ironing board and everything just vanishes behind these sliding doors, and that’s where you keep your coats and things in winter, isn’t it genius?’

‘Amazing,’ I enthused, my stomach feeling heavier and heavier by the minute.

‘Have you eaten? I had a salad earlier and I’ve got nothing in. But there’s wine? Or water?’

‘Water would be great.’

She poured two glasses from a filter jug and handed me one. Then we sat down next to each other on the sofa, and I realised that now I had no choice but to tell her why I was there.

‘So how are things?’ I began. ‘You look–’ she looked tired, drawn and too thin, and I was worried. But I wasn’t going to jump right in and say that. ‘You look like you’ve really settled in here. Tell me all about everything.’

Amelie shrugged, taking a sip from her water glass.

‘There was nothing to do really,’ she said. ‘I mean, I was all excited about going to Crate, Bath and Barrel or whatever it’s called and picking stuff for the flat and making it all homey, and even having some our things taken out of storage and shipped over, but it was all here. Literally every last pillowcase. So it’s been a bit of a let-down on that front.’

‘But what about the other fronts?’ I pressed. ‘How’s Zack? What’s being married like?’

‘Honestly, it’s pretty much the same as not being.’ She returned her glass to the coffee table and gnawed at a ragged cuticle for a second. ‘Only we see even less of each other. Zack only ever gets home at stupid o’clock and after the first week I gave up waiting for him and started going to bed. I’ve been so fucking tired. But he says that’s what it’s like here, everyone works long hours and if you don’t you look like a slacker, so…’

Yeah, Zack, I thought, a slacker’s exactly what you looked like earlier, snogging your colleague in a bar. A sleazy, cheating, rat-faced slacker.

‘Why’ve you been so knackered?’ I asked. ‘Are you over that stomach bug thing you had?’

She looked down at her hands and half-shrugged. ‘Kind of. Mostly. But tell me about you, come on, Lucy. What made you decide to come out here on your own? I can’t believe you did. Who’s looking after Astro?’

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