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A Night In With Audrey Hepburn
Lucy Holliday
‘I laughed my slippers off!’ Alexandra BrownUnlucky in love, failed actress Libby Lomax has retreated into the world of classic movies, where the immortal lives of the screen goddesses offer so much more in the way of romance than her own life.After a terrible day where she has embarrassed herself in front of heartthrob actor Dillon O’Hara, she plonks herself down on her battered couch in front of her trillionth viewing of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Libby is gobsmacked to find actual Screen Icon, Audrey Hepburn, sitting beside her. Dressed in her little black dress, wearing her trademark sunglasses, Audrey offers advice to the hapless Libby between ladylike puffs on her vintage cigarette holder.Has Libby got what it takes to turn her life from a Turkey to a Blockbuster? With a little bit of Audrey Hepburn magic, she might just pull it off…







Copyright (#u3caa25fd-b5df-5df3-8efe-8a1283928b51)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
The News Building
1 London Bridge Street
London, SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by Harper 2015
Copyright © Angela Woolfe writing as Lucy Holliday 2015
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Cover design and illustration by Jane Harwood
Lucy Holliday asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007582242
Ebook Edition © May 2015 ISBN: 9780007582259
Version: 2015-04-11
Contents
Cover (#u4df85ffa-4157-52ff-903c-debc0af9011e)
Title Page (#uc9cf350a-4d8f-5ad8-a9b9-a975218b4157)
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Publisher

June 1999
There’s no way on earth I’m going to get this part.
For starters, the show is called The Sound of ‘Music’, and I’m about as musical as a rusty tin opener. Seriously, I can barely hold a tune. If the director and casting agent suddenly have a drastic change of heart, and decide instead to start auditioning the hundred-odd kids gathered here this afternoon for a brand-new musical called The Sound of Rusty Tin Openers … well, then I’ll be a shoo-in. Until then, though, I’d estimate my chances of winning the role of Louisa Von Trapp at roughly zero.
Oh, and for another thing, all the other girls here at the New Wimbledon Theatre with the label ‘LOUISA’ stuck to their chests are petite, blonde, and cute-as-a-button pretty.
Whereas I’m a bit gangly, my hair is the colour of double espresso, and even though I don’t think I should be walking about with a paper bag on my head, cute-as-a-button prettiness isn’t really my thing.
In fact, surely the director and casting agent are going to seriously question why I’m here at all.
It’s a question with a pretty straightforward answer, though: my mother.
And here she is now, bustling back over towards me and my sister Cass, fresh from five minutes of wrangling with the casting director’s assistant.
‘Did it!’ Mum practically yells, with the sort of triumphant fist-clutch Tim Henman is always doing on Wimbledon’s Centre Court, just a mile down the road from here, shortly before he’s knocked out of the tournament for another year.
‘Mum! Can’t you be a bit quieter?’
I mean, it’s embarrassing enough that she forced me and Cass to come to the auditions in matching, egg-yolk yellow dirndls (though actually Cass, a cute eight-year-old, looks rather fetching in hers, whereas I, an awkward thirteen-year-old, look like a badly stuffed rag doll, in a much smaller rag doll’s dress, after eating an entire deep-pan pizza); but now she’s drawing even more attention to the three of us.
‘They’ve agreed to move your audition half an hour earlier, Cass,’ Mum is going on, ignoring me, ‘because of the family emergency we have to get to.’
‘What family emergency?’ asks Cass.
‘You know. The important one,’ Mum fibs. ‘Anyway,’ she adds, lowering her voice so that only Cass and I can hear her, ‘the point is that it’ll get you in to audition ahead of the youngest Walker girl, so I’d be perfectly happy to say your grandparents were on fire if it did the trick.’
‘The youngest Walker girl’is Mum and Cass’s nemesis: a triple-threat nine-year-old (acting, singing and dancing) from an apparently unending line of showbiz Walkers. She has pipped Cass to the post for three big roles lately: Annie in the Aylesbury Waterside production of Annie, Cosette in a production of Les Mis at the Secombe Theatre in Sutton, and, most gallingly of all, Tevye’s youngest daughter Bielke in a nationwide-touring revival of Fiddler on the Roof. In fact, she’s over in the far corner of the lobby right now, practising some stunning-sounding arpeggios, and occasionally, for no terribly good reason at all, sinking into an impressive splits. (I don’t know if the splits are required in The Sound of Music, I don’t actually remember any in the Julie Andrews movie version, but it’s certainly doing a good job of psyching out all the other prospective Brigittas.) The last display of the splits caused three of them to burst into simultaneous tears and flee the auditions before their names were even called. Though it did earn the youngest Walker girl a pretty fierce telling-off from her older sister, another of the showbiz Walkers, who’s evidently here for the part of Louisa, and looking almost as unenthusiastic about it as I am.
‘They just need a chance to see you before they see her, darling,’ Mum is telling Cass, ‘and that part is yours. Now, do you need me to run through the words to the goatherd song again, or do you think you’ve got it now?’
‘I’ve got it, Mum!’ Cass may be a full five years younger than me, but she’s got roughly five times my chutzpah. ‘For God’s sake. Anyway, if I forget any of the main words, I’ll just skip as fast as possible to the Star Wars bit.’
Mum and I both stare at her, in confusion.
‘You know, the bits where I sing Yoda Yoda Yoda Yoda … I don’t understand, though,’ Cass adds, plaintively, ‘what Yoda has to do with The Sound of Music at all.’
I think I need a breath of fresh air.
‘Where are you going?’ Mum shrieks, as I reach across to one of the orange plastic chairs for my rucksack. ‘What about your audition?’
‘It’s not until ten past three, Mum. That’s three and a half hours away. Anyway, I thought I might go and find a quiet place to rehearse.’
‘Finding a quiet place to rehearse’often means I get left in peace for a while, without Mum coming and nagging me to help Cass learn lines for whatever audition or show is currently on the schedule, or without Cass coming and nagging me to give her a makeover so she looks like Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
Honestly, if I was rehearsing as much as I claim I am, I’d probably be acing it at this audition, exactly like one of the showbiz Walkers.
‘That’s probably a good idea,’ Mum agrees, because even if she must know there’s no chance of me getting this part, at least if I’m well rehearsed I won’t actually embarrass her. ‘Oh, and Libby …’ She’s reaching into her handbag for her mobile phone, and handing it over to me. ‘Please will you ring your father and remind him he’s picking you up from here at four o’clock, not home. I’ve already left him two voicemails, and I’m not calling him again. Why he thinks I’ve nothing better to do with my time than chase around after him trying to convince him to keep his rare appointments with his only daughter, I don’t know.’
‘He’s been busy,’ I tell her, ‘with the book.’
‘And the Pope,’ Mum replies, ‘is Catholic.’
Which means it’s time for me to get out of here, before Mum can start on about Dad’s book again. And the one thing this hideous waiting room really needs is Mum working herself up about Dad in a manner that would make you think they’d been divorced for only ten minutes instead of almost ten years.
I mean, she only divorced Cass’s father Michael six months ago, but she manages to remain calm – pleasant, even – throughout all her dealings with him.
‘OK, OK,’ I say, already backing towards the doors that lead to the main auditorium. ‘I’ll see you a bit later. Break a leg in there, Cass.’
But Cass has started to spritz her face with an Evian water spray and isn’t paying any attention.
I already know the auditorium at the New Wimbledon Theatre pretty well, from way too many days spent waiting around here last November while Cass was rehearsing Babes in the Wood, the festive season pantomime.
It’s so massive that it’s perfectly easy to squirrel yourself away far up in the upper circle, right at the back, and nobody will know where you are to bother you, even if they felt like it. So that’s exactly where I’m heading now, for a bit of peace and quiet. And it’s actually really, really nice up here, once you’ve recovered from the climb up the half-billion stairs, that is. Row F, that’s where I always used to hang out: I ended up feeling quite at home there on all those endless cold November days, with a good book, and my Discman, and a posh, weekly-allowance-busting chicken Caesar sandwich from the Pret a Manger opposite the station.
I settle down into seat number 23, perfectly situated halfway along the aisle, and reach back into my rucksack for my book.
Actually, my books. Three of them, placed on special order from our local library in Kensal Rise, and just come in yesterday.
Humphrey Bogart: A Biography.
The Man, the Dancer: The Life of Fred Astaire.
Enchantment: The Life of Audrey Hepburn.
Hmmm.
Now that I’ve actually got them, here in my hands, I’m not looking forward to ploughing into them quite as much as I’d thought.
They look a bit …
Well, I don’t want to actually think the word boring. Because these are all books that Dad recommended I read – books he recommends to his film studies students – and I doubt he’d have suggested them if they were really as dull as they look.
And I’m sure they won’t be dull at all, once I actually get into them.
It’s just that it’s the movies themselves I love, and not (what Mum, rather dismissively, calls) all the pontificating about them.
Which Dad doesn’t do. Pontificate, I mean. Even though it’s his job to pontificate, so it wouldn’t be wrong if he did.
I do sometimes think it’s just a littlebit of a shame, though, that he doesn’t seem to be able to really enjoy the movies themselves any more. Especially when it was him who introduced them all to me, on the nights when I used to go and stay at his place. And he picked them carefully as well, starting out with the lighter stuff – Some Like It Hot, It’s a Wonderful Life, Roman Holiday – when I was seven or eight, and moving on to more grown-up fare – Casablanca, Sunset Boulevard – by the time I was ten or eleven. I might not have always understood everything I was watching (in fact, in the case of Citizen Kane, for example, I understood precisely nothing of what I was watching), but that never stopped me being dazzled. I mean, just the Hollywood glow of it all. And Dad would make popcorn – well, he made popcorn a couple of times – and turn off all the lights so that, with his huge TV, it was almost like we were in a proper cinema … and these screen legends just seemed to come to life. Marilyn Monroe. Ingrid Bergman. Grace Kelly. Lauren Bacall. Audrey Hepburn – most of all, Audrey Hepburn.
No: I’m quite sure a book about Audrey Hepburn isn’t going to be dull. How could it possibly be? My favourite of favourites, the movie star I’ve worshipped from the moment I first saw her.
I’ll make a start on this one first – and leave Bogey and Fred Astaire for another day – so that I can talk about it with Dad when I see him tonight. He’s bound to have read them all already: he’s writing a book, my Dad is, not just about Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart, but a … hang on, what did he call it the last time he mentioned it? A definitive, fully updated, no-holds-barred history of Hollywood’s most exciting era. So it’ll be really nice, over dinner tonight, to discuss everything I’ve been reading, and hopefully—
‘Anything good?’
It’s a boy.
Sitting two rows behind me, on Row H.
Well, I say ‘boy’; he sounds – and looks, now I’ve spun round to stare at him – fourteen or fifteen, so ‘young man’ might be a more accurate description. He’s tall, maybe over six foot, if his legs dangling over into Row G are anything to go by, and he’s wearing a light brown Stüssy sweatshirt that matches his hair and, because it’s too big across his shoulders, makes him look a little bit lanky.
‘The book, I mean,’ he goes on. ‘Anything good?’ Then, probably because I’m just staring at him with a startled-goldfish look on my face, he adds, hastily, ‘I didn’t follow you up here, or anything, by the way. I was just sitting and having a bit of a break when you came in.’
‘A break from the auditions?’ I ask, in the sort of flat, bored-sounding voice you’re meant to use with boys (and that I’m not very good at; I always end up sounding like a depressed robot).
‘Christ, no! I’m not actually doing an audition. I’m just here with my sisters. My mum had to take one of my other sisters to an audition for the Royal Ballet School today, and she didn’t want them travelling all the way to Wimbledon on the buses by themselves.’
Sisters – plural – auditioning for this show, and another one trying out for the Royal Ballet School …
‘You’re not one of the Showbiz Walkers, are you?’ I ask.
He looks startled for a moment, and then laughs.
‘Bloody hell. Is that what my family’s known as?’
‘Sorry … I’m really sorry … that sounded weird. It’s only me who calls you that. And only in my head, I don’t say it to anyone else.’
‘It’s all right. Do you want a sandwich?’
It’s my turn to look a bit startled, because it’s such a non sequitur, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He’s busily opening a large plastic container on the seat next to him, and taking out a large wedge of something wrapped in waxed paper, some sliced tomatoes and fresh lettuce leaves, and a small penknife.
‘I always bring my own stuff when I know I’m going to get stuck waiting about at these stupid auditions,’ he’s saying, reaching down beneath his seat and producing, rather like a magician, an entire baguette in a paper bag. ‘And this cheddar is amazing. It’s Irish. My sisters got it for me for my birthday.’
‘They gave you cheese for your birthday?’
‘No, sorry, that sounds weird. They gave me membership of a cheese club. You get sent a different cheese through the post each month.’ He uses the penknife to hack, enthusiastically, at the cheddar. ‘So? Would you like a sandwich, or not?’
‘Yes. Please. I’d love a sandwich.’
‘Coming right up. I’m Olly, by the way. Olly Showbiz-Walker.’
I grin at him. ‘I’m Libby. Libby Lomax.’
‘So are you auditioning, then?’
I’m actually surprised he has to ask, thanks to the egg-yolk-yellow dirndl, and all. But it’s just possible he thinks I actually dress like this … I reach for my rucksack again and hastily drag out the grey hooded top I know is in there, pulling it on to disguise the worst of the faux-Austrian look.
‘Yes,’ I admit. ‘But only because of my little sister. She’s the showbiz one in our family. I’ve just ended up sort of sucked into it because of her.’
‘Oh? You look quite keen on the whole showbiz thing yourself.’ When I obviously look a bit confused, he gestures towards the book I’m holding. ‘Audrey Hepburn,’ he adds. ‘Are you a big fan?’
‘Isn’t everyone?’
He shrugs. ‘I’m not. I don’t get what makes everyone so gaga about her.’
I stare at him. ‘Not even in Breakfast at Tiffany’s?’
‘Never seen it. Never seen a single one of her films, now I come to think of it.’
‘Well, then, you can’t possibly say you don’t like her! And you really should see one of her films. There’s an Audrey Hepburn—’ I have to pause for a moment, because I almost always get this word wrong – ‘retrospective, right now, at the Prince Charles cinema in Leicester Square. A commemorative thing, because she would have been seventy this year. I’m going there with my dad this evening, in fact.’
‘Hmmm. You do know that The Matrix is on in Leicester Square, don’t you?’
‘The Matrix,’ I say, rather haughtily, ‘is notBreakfast at Tiffany’s.’
‘Right. OK. Well, you’re obviously a total Audrey Hepburn nut,’ Olly Walker says, cheerfully. ‘I can tell there’ll be no reasoning with you.’
‘I’m not an Audrey Hepburn nut!’ I protest.
On the other hand …
Well, I don’t tell many people this … in fact, I’ve never told anyone this, but I do sometimes have this … well, I don’t know what you’d call it. A daydream? A fantasy?
In which I imagine that I’m best friends with Audrey Hepburn; that she and I hang out together in amazing locations all over New York and Paris; that we window-shop on Fifth Avenue and take tea at the Ritz; and that, most of all, she’s always there to talk to me, to listen to me about stuff that’s going wrong in my life, to dispense calm and wise and perfectly judged advice, all the while looking breathtakingly chic in Givenchy couture and radiating her aura of gentle serenity.
Because I don’t know if you’ve noticed by now, but calmness and wisdom and gentle serenity aren’t things I have very much of in my real, non-fantasy life.
Or Givenchy couture, come to mention it.
And I know it might sound a bit weird – OK, I know it definitely sounds completely weird – but honestly, who wouldn’t want a best friend like Audrey Hepburn? Sweet, stylish, and utterly lovely in every imaginable way? Who better to ‘chat’ to, in your idle moments, about anything and everything that’s bothering you, from the unfortunate outbreak of zits along the entire length of your jawline the night before the end-of-term disco, to your mother’s refusal to accept that you might not be cut out for a career on the stage … to worrying, just occasionally, that your dad enjoys spending time in the company of long-dead movie stars more than he enjoys spending time with you …
‘Libby?’
Olly Walker is looking straight at me, a concerned expression on his face.
It’s a pretty good-looking face, now I come to notice it. He’s got these really interesting grey-coloured eyes, like pebbles on a Cornish beach, and his smile is sweet, and ever so slightly wonky, and – hang on, what’s going on here? – he’s reaching over the back of my seat, and taking my hand, and gently splaying out my fingers with his own, and …
Wrapping them around a large, freshly made cheese sandwich.
‘You look like you need this,’ he says, kindly.
Ridiculous of me. How could I ever have thought he was going to … what? Hold my hand? Kiss me?
‘Oh, no, no,’ I say, shoving the sandwich back in his direction. ‘You should have the first one!’
‘I’m all right. I’ll make another.’
And then Mum’s Nokia starts ringing, right at the bottom of my rucksack.
Annoyingly, I don’t get to the phone in time before it stops ringing.
‘You’ve got your own mobile phone?’ Olly Walker glances up from his sandwich-making, looking impressed.
‘God, no. This is my mum’s.’ I glance at the screen, which is displaying Dad’s number as the last caller. ‘I’d better call my dad back, if you don’t mind? He’s picking me up here after my audition.’
‘Of course. For your Audrey Hepburn retrospective.’
‘Yep. And,’ I add, because I’m getting the ever-so-slight impression that Olly Walker thinks the Audrey Hepburn retrospective is a little bit pompous, ‘to go for a meal in Chinatown.’
‘Hey, great, where?’ He’s looking a lot more interested in the Chinese meal than in the retrospective. ‘I know a couple of really amazing Chinese restaurants in Soho, if you’re interested? I did some work experience in a bistro in Soho last summer – I’m going to catering college when I leave school – and after we’d finished our shifts, all the kitchen staff would always head to this fantastic Chinese on Lisle Street …’
‘It’s OK. My dad’s booked his favourite place already. The Jade Dragon, on Gerrard Street. He’s a regular there.’
‘Oh, right.’ He looks a bit crushed, and it occurs to me, a moment too late, that – maybe? – he was trying to impress me with his work experience story. ‘Is it good?’ he asks me.
I can’t say whether it is or it isn’t, because I’ve never actually been to The Jade Dragon before. Dad’s planned to take me several times, but it’s never actually worked out. He’s been really, really busy over the last few months – well, years, I suppose – and a lot of our plans to go and have a nice meal together after a movie end up getting cancelled at the last minute.
Oh, the phone’s going again. I get to it quickly this time.
‘Marilyn, hi,’ comes Dad’s voice, as soon as I answer. ‘Look, you’re going to have to tell Libby I’m not going to make—’
‘Dad! Hi!’ (I remember, too late, that he prefers to be called by his first name, Eddie, rather than being boring old Dad.) ‘I mean, Eddie, sorry. It’s not Mum, it’s me.’
‘Libby!’ He sounds startled. ‘I didn’t expect you.’
‘No, Mum gave me her phone, I was meant to be calling you, actually, to remind you that you’re picking me up outside the theatre in Wimbledon. Not at the house.’
‘Yeah, that’s why I’m calling, sweetheart. I can’t make it.’
‘You can’t …’ I stop. I take a deep breath. ‘But I thought we were going to celebrate my birthday.’
‘Mm. That’s right. But we’ll do it another time, sweetheart, I promise.’
You said that, I almost say, the last time. And the time before that.
‘I’m just pushing really, really hard for this new deadline, and the college isn’t giving me any time off teaching like they said they were going to—’
‘That’s OK.’ I use my calmest, most mature voice, because I want Dad to know I’m not going to be a baby about this. ‘Obviously you need time and space to write, Dad. I mean, Eddie. It’s perfectly OK. We’ll do it another time, like you said.’
‘Exactly. I can always rely on you to understand, Libby. I’ll call with some dates, yeah?’
‘Well, I’m pretty free next weekend, and the weekend after that, or …’
‘Great. So I’ll call. And I’ll see you really soon, OK?’
‘OK, Eddie, just let me know wh—’
‘Bye, sweetheart.’
He’s gone.
I drop the phone, casually, back into my rucksack, and busy myself nibbling the outer edge of my sandwich. ‘It’s really good,’ I say. I don’t meet Olly Walker’s eye.
‘It’s your birthday?’ he asks, after a moment, in this weird voice – like, a super-gentle voice, all of a sudden, as if he thinks I might break or something.
‘No, no! My birthday was weeks ago. Well, months, actually, back in February.’
‘But you said, on the phone …’
‘Oh, that’s just because I didn’t get to see my dad on my actual birthday. He was … we were both really busy around then. So today was going to be a belated birthday thing. It’s no big deal. We’ll do it in a couple of weeks, or whenever.’
‘Right.’ He falls silent for a moment, then clears his throat and says, ‘Hey, you know, if you wanted to see a film and have dinner this evening anyway, I could always take you to The Matrix and a Chinese restaurant. If your mum would let you, I mean.’
‘Oh!’ I look at him properly now, startled. Is this … is a boy asking me on a date, for the first time ever?
‘I … I don’t—’
‘I’d get my sister Nora to come, too!’ he says, hastily, ‘so it wouldn’t just be, like, us two, or anything.’
Oh. Right. So it wasn’t a date, then. Of course it wasn’t.
Suddenly – I don’t know why, because it’s not like I’ve never been disappointed by something a boy has said or done before – I feel these awful, sharp tears pricking at the backs of my eyes. Without any further warning, three of them – I can feel each individual one – stop pricking the backs of my eyes and start sliding out of the fronts.
‘Oh, Jesus.’ Olly Walker, who can’t have failed to notice the tears, is looking agonized, as if he wishes he’d never mentioned films or Chinese food. As if he’d never heard of films or Chinese food. Or – most of all – as if he’d never met me. ‘I didn’t mean to … look, it doesn’t even have to be The Matrix! I’ll go and see your Audrey Hepburn retro-whatsit, if you want to. I’m sure Nora would much prefer that, anyway … oh, here she is now!’ he practically gasps with relief, waving like a drowning man towards the Upper Circle entrance several rows down, where a girl has just appeared.
Nora is, of course, the pretty, blonde, prospective Louisa who told the littlest Showbiz-Walker off for doing showy-off splits downstairs.
‘Olly, hi.’ She starts to make her way up the aisle towards us, squinting through the gloom, while I scrub away the tears with the back of my hand. ‘I just came to say they’ve moved Kitty’s audition fifteen minutes later – something to do with another girl having a family emergency – so … oh,’ she stops next to row F, noticing me. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi,’ I gulp. ‘I’m Libby.’
‘I’m Nora. I’m Olly’s …’ She stops. ‘Are you crying?’
‘No! Not at all!’ I lie, putting on a huge, bright smile that, along with the tear-stained cheeks and the dribbly nose, probably makes me look a bit deranged, as well as a liar.
‘Olly!’ She turns to him. ‘What have you done?’
‘I didn’t do anything!’ Olly protests. ‘She was meant to be seeing her dad this evening, and he had to cancel.’
‘It’s nothing to do with my dad. Anyway, I’m fine. I’m not crying! In fact, I probably ought to be getting back downstairs, I’ve got an audition in … well, about three hours …’
‘Oh, God, not you, too.’ Nora Walker pulls a sympathetic face that makes her look just like her older brother, for a moment. ‘This is seriously the last one of these godawful things I’m agreeing to come to just to keep my mum happy. And you don’t look any keener on it than I am.’
I’m torn between sounding like a wuss who can’t stand up to my mum, and sounding like the sort of person who actually wants to star in The Sound of Music at the New Wimbledon Theatre.
‘Do you want to go and get a drink, or something?’ Nora Showbiz-Walker asks, in a properly mature-sounding voice, rather than the one I was trying to use with Dad earlier. ‘There’s a café just over the Broadway that does these really amazing smoothies.’
‘Oh, I know the one,’ Olly chips in. ‘They do a pretty good lemon drizzle cake, too.’
I’m starting to wonder if it shouldn’t be the Showbiz Walkers so much as the Food-Obsessed Walkers.
‘I can leave my little sister annoying everybody downstairs for a bit,’ Nora adds. ‘Or you could go and chaperone her, Olly.’
‘Oh. I thought I might come and have a smoothie and a bit of cake,’ Olly says, looking like a Labrador that’s just been deprived of a doggy treat. ‘It’s hours until we can get out of here.’
‘Fine,’ Nora sighs. ‘I’ll ask one of the mums to keep an eye on her. If you’d like to go and get a drink, Libby, that is?’
‘Yes. I’d love to.’
‘Ace. Why don’t you walk Libby over there, Ol, and I’ll go and find a random stage mum to watch Kitty.’
I don’t suggest that she ask my mum, unless she wants her little sister to end up suffering a nasty and suspicious accident that takes her out of the running for the part of Brigitta and, potentially, any other role for the rest of her child-acting life.
Olly looks hesitant for a moment – presumably concerned that, if left alone with me, I’ll start bawling like a baby again – but then Nora adds, cheerily, ‘And order me something with lots of pineapple and stuff in it. But not kiwi. I hate kiwi,’ and starts to head back down the aisle towards the doors. So he doesn’t really have much choice about the being-left-alone-with-me part.
Still, he’s a trooper, because he just starts to gather up his stuff ready to leave, while I do the same, and then we both start to make our way towards the Upper Circle exit doors too.
‘You’re wrong about The Matrix, by the way,’ he says, as we reach the doors and he holds one of them open for me. ‘I mean, it may not be Brunch at Bloomingdales, or whatever your Audrey Hepburn thing is called—’
‘It’s not called Brunch at Bloomingdale’s!’ I gasp, until I see his grin and realize that he’s joking.
‘Dinner at Debenhams, then?’ he hazards.
‘Supper at Selfridges?’ I suggest.
‘Lunch at Liberty’s?’
‘Tea at Tesco’s?’
‘Now, there’s a movie I’d definitely go and see,’ he says, with a bark of delighted laughter.
As we start down the half-billion stairs, I zip up my grey hooded top as far as it will go. This is partly to hide my own delighted smile – because I’m not sure I’ve ever made a boy laugh like that before – and partly because I don’t want anyone in the café to choke on their smoothie when a thirteen-year-old girl wanders in wearing an egg-yolk-yellow dirndl.


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Everyone on set is looking suspiciously gorgeous this morning.
The catering bus is filling up quickly on our location shoot near King’s Cross this morning, with crew members already on their second (or third) bacon roll of the morning, and actors and actresses sipping, piously, at large mugs of tea and honey. All over the bus, people are looking as if they’re off for a Big Night Out. There are freshly blow-dried hairdos, newly fake-tanned legs, and more layers of mascara than you can shake a stick at. Everybody looks stunning.
And then there’s me.
Today is myfirst day in my brand-new speaking role, after months of being a random, silent extra.
Unfortunately, the role I’m playing is Warty Alien. So this morning I’m wearing the most grotesque costume you’ve ever seen in all your life.
I give it one last go with Frankie the Wardrobe assistant as she passes by my table now, just to see if there might have been some sort of mistake.
‘You’re absolutely sure,’ I say, ‘that I’m down on your list as Warty Alien? I mean, there couldn’t have been a spelling mistake? And it isn’t meant to be … I don’t know … Party Alien?’
See, that couldn’t be too bad. Especially if I could wear one of the alien costumes like my sister Cass wears, in her starring role as one of the Cat People. They’re actually quite sexy – skintight silvery bodysuit, mysterious eye mask, high-heeled knee boots – and even if I had to accessorize it, as Party Alien, with, say, a silly paper hat and a hula skirt, I’d still look halfway decent. Especially if I had to wear a hula skirt, in fact, because it would hide whatever horrors the silvery bodysuit would reveal in the bum region. Two birds, one stone!
‘Sorry, Libby. There’s no spelling mistake. Anyway, the part’s not actually called Warty Alien, you know. You’re down on my list as—’ Frankie glances down at the notepad she never lets more than two inches from her sight – ‘Extra-Terrestrial Spaceship Technician.’
(This basically means that I’m playing an alien version of a Kwik Fit mechanic, and explains why my one and only line – my Big Break! On National Television! – is: ‘But fixing the docking module could take days, Captain, maybe even weeks.’Look, I never said it was a good line.)
‘OK, then,’ I say, desperately, ‘are you sure this is definitely the costume the Extra-Terrestrial Spaceship Technician is supposed to wear?’
‘Well, you’re more than welcome to query that with the Obergruppenführer. Because if there had been any kind of an error, it would be her mistake.’
The Obergruppenführer, otherwise (just not very often) known as Vanessa, is the production manager. It’s probably obvious, from her nickname, that she’s not the sort of person you want to accuse of making mistakes. Particularly not when you’re a lowly extra on a surprise hit TV show, with literally thousands of out-of-work actors ready to kill their own grandmothers to take your job instead.
‘Anyway, I don’t know why you’re complaining,’ Frankie adds, over her shoulder, as she sashays in impractical four-inch heels to the bus’s exit. ‘In technical terms, that costume is a work of art, you know.’
I stare down at the vomit-green latex suit I’ve been sweating into since seven o’clock this morning and pick up the separate alien head that’s sitting on the chair beside me. The head features one particularly giant pustule, right in between the eyes. It doesn’t look like a work of art.
‘God, Libby, is that your costume?’
It’s Cass, squeezing into the seat opposite me.
And I mean literally squeezing, because she’s some-how managed to inflate her already fulsome cleavage by another couple of cup sizes, and given herself the biggest blow-dry this side of Texas. She’s not changed into her Cat Person costume yet, so the eye-popping cleavage is (barely) contained by a teeny pink hoodie with the zip pulled scandalously low, and I’m quite sure she’s teamed this, as she always does when she’s all out to impress, with either an equally teeny pair of denim cut-offs, or a sassy towelling micro-skirt.
(We’re half-sisters, by the way. Different dads. Even though the irony is that actually, my dad is the better looking out of the two: her dad, Michael, is a nice-but-nerdy geologist while my dad is as handsome as he is an utter waste of good oxygen. Anyway, Cass is quite definitively the better-looking out of us two: blonde, blue-eyed and curvy while my hair and eyes are from an uninspired palette of browns, my bosom is very nearly non-existent, and the only reason you’d ever call me ‘curvy’ is because I have a sturdy bottom half that’s seemingly impervious to all forms of exercise.)
‘Yes, it’s my costume,’ I tell Cass, with as much dignity as I can scrape together under the circumstances. ‘It’s a technical work of art, as a matter of fact.’
But Cass has already lost interest. ‘So, do I look OK? Do I look better than Melody? Do you think he’s going to notice me?’
Melody is the lead actress on our (sci-fi, if you hadn’t already guessed) TV show, The Time Guardians.
The he that Cass is referring to is Dillon O’Hara, our brand-new star. Whose first day on set it is today and who – in case you were starting to wonder – is the reason that everybody has turned up to work this morning in their Saturday Night Best.
‘I’m sure he’ll notice you, Cass. You look very eye-catching.’
‘You’re sure? Because you do know, don’t you, the kind of girls Dillon normally goes out with?’ To back up her point, Cass rifles in her bag for this week’s copy of Grazia magazine, puts it down on the table next to the script I was given this morning, and jabs a manicured finger at the front cover. ‘That’s the competition.’
It’s a paparazzi shot of a blonde Victoria’s Secret model – I can’t remember her name, but she’s platinum blonde and buxom, with legs roughly a mile high – exiting a nightclub with Mr O’Hara.
I hate myself for thinking it, given that the wretched man is keeping an entire cast and crew waiting for him on location this morning while he decides if he can be bothered to show up or not. But he’s annoyingly gorgeous. If you happen to be a fan, that is, of ripped torsos, muscular shoulders and angelic cheekbones. His hair is sooty black, his eyes almost match, and he’s stocky and well muscled in a way that implies not so much a life spent pumping iron while gazing into a gym mirror, but long teenage summers spent working on building sites. Shirtless, probably. Getting an all-over tan on that ripped torso …
‘Rhea Haverstock-Harley,’ Cass spits, gazing at the Victoria’s Secret model with loathing. ‘You know she won Hottest Woman in the Stratosphere again in Made Man magazine’s Hundred Hottest list this year?’
Oh, well, now Cass has reminded me of the name, I do, vaguely, know this. And I also recall that, in a (deliberate? publicity-seeking?) echo of the whole Naomi-Campbell-throwing episode, this double-barrelled Rhea girl got in pretty big trouble a few years ago for hitting her hairdresser with her phone. Which, now that I’ve remembered it, has sort of put me off Dillon O’Hara a bit, even though I don’t think he was going out with her at the time.
‘Oh, Made Man,’ I scoff, with a practised air. (Cass didn’t make the top 100 in the most recent poll. I’ve not quite recovered, yet, from the sobbing 3 a.m. phone calls I received from her last week, four nights in a row.) ‘What do they know? And anyway, there’s more to life than just being leered at in your bra by a bunch of drooling pervs, you know.’
‘You’re so right, Lib. I’m going to show them all tomorrow night, by the way.’
(Tomorrow night is the Made Man party celebrating their pathetic poll, and Cass is attending. She may not be Top 100 material, but she’s pert and blonde and on TV, which is evidently quite enough for an invite.)
‘That’s the spirit, Cass!’ I undo one of my Warty Alien gloves, reach across the table and pat her on the hand. ‘You show them all!’
‘That’s why I bought the dress I’m going to wear. It’s got a massively plunging neckline, and it’s totally sheer down the back, so you can sort of see my bum – but through the lace, so it’s really classy.’
‘Cass, no, that isn’t what I meant by show them all …’
‘And I’ll need you to alter that ruby pendant thingy. It’ll look amazing with the dress, but remember I said I’d prefer it longer, so the ruby bit dangles right down into the top of my cleavage.’
That ruby pendant thingy is actually a garnet necklace I made for Cass’s twenty-fifth birthday; painstakingly crafted, to be more accurate, from a gorgeous garnet cabochon (garnet being her birthstone) and a vintage Swarovski-crystal teardrop charm, both hanging from a gold-plated chain that I customized with teeny-tiny garnet-coloured crystals at intervals along the length. Pendant-making may only be a hobby, but I did put a fair amount of work into this particular one, and the chain was so expensive that I could only afford to make it an eighteen-inch pendant (sitting elegantly against Cass’s collarbones) rather than a twenty-four-inch one (nestling brassily between her breasts).
‘I can’t make it any longer,’ I tell her. ‘I don’t have a replacement chain.’
‘Well, bung the ruby bit on the end of a bit of ribbon, or something,’ Cass says, airily unconcerned about compromising the artistic integrity of my creation. ‘I just need it to draw maximum attention to my boobs.’
‘I don’t think you’ll need a necklace to do that.’
‘No, Libby.’ She looks very serious. ‘I really have to pull out all the stops if I’m going to stand a chance up against Rhea Haverstock-Harley.’
‘Surely,’ I say, feeling a bit like whatshisname standing in the sea, telling the tide to go back, ‘you shouldn’t really be in hot pursuit of Dillon O’Hara anyway, Cass. If he has a girlfriend, that is. Not to mention the fact that you have a boyfriend of your own.’
His name is David, apparently. I say ‘apparently’ because Cass hasn’t introduced him to either me or Mum yet. All I know about him is that he’s a ‘talent manager’ for a big showbiz agency, so it’s perfectly possible that he’s covered from head to toe in huge warts, just like my costume, but oozing real pus – and Cass would still be perfectly happy dating him.
‘David isn’t my boyfriend. We’re just seeing each other.’ She emits a sigh of exasperation, as she always does when I don’t just happily spout whatever it is she wants to hear. ‘You’re no use, Cass. I’m going to text a selfie to Mum, see if she thinks I should change into something a bit sexier.’
‘Christ, no, don’t do that!’
I’m not yelping this because I fear that the only thing ‘a bit sexier’ than Cass’s plunging top and micro-shorts is a thong bikini, and I’m trying, as her big sister, to protect her remaining modesty.
I’m yelping this because if Cass texts Mum, Mum will call right back. And after lengthy discussion of Cass’s outfit options, she’ll finally ask to speak to me. And then she’ll ask exactly what part I’ve been given and what my costume is like.
You see, my lack of enthusiasm for the Warty Alien costume isn’t down to the fact that I was secretly thinking I might be the one to catch Dillon O’Hara’s eye if he ever makes it to the shoot this morning. I mean, even if I wasn’t perspiring in puke-coloured latex, I don’t think for a minute that he’s going to stop dead in his tracks, grab the nearest passing crew member and whisper, ‘By God, tell me the name of that flat-chested brunette with the pear-shaped bottom, for until I have bedded her I shall go mad with lust! Mad, I tell you.’
The reason, in fact, is my mother.
The thing is that she’s not only my mother, but also my agent, and the one responsible for badgering The Time Guardians’ casting director until the poor woman eventually cracked and agreed to promote me – against my will, I might add – from Extra to Bit-Parter. So it’s not exactly ideal that the first words I get to speak in an acting role in the last five years are going to be from behind a vomit-green, wart-covered alien head, which renders me not only revolting but also – much more importantly, from my mum/agent’s point of view – invisible.
‘Well, you’re not being any help,’ Cass retorts, ignoring my plea and starting to undertake her very favourite activity – posing for selfies with her mobile phone camera – while I decide that the best way to avoid Mum for a bit longer is to leave Cass to it and go and find myself a bacon roll instead.
After all, I tell myself, as I lumber off the catering bus in my Warty Alien feet, it’s not as if I need to worry about tummy bloat while I swelter away inside my layers of concealing latex, is it? And anyway, the bacon rolls are exceptionally delicious, and made to order by lovely Olly Walker, who’s been one of my best friends ever since I met him, donkey’s years ago, at that godawful Sound of Music audition in Wimbledon. He runs the on-location catering van, so I can go and have a chat with him while simultaneously waiting to be called by the assistant director to deliver my line, and – most important of all – avoiding my mother.
*
Olly is not currently at his catering van. He wasn’t there when I fetched my first bacon roll before going to Wardrobe at eight this morning either, so when I reach the head of the queue, I ask his sous chef, Jesse, if he’s all right.
‘Hasn’t he called you?’ Jesse asks, squirting ketchup onto three waiting rolls he’s just finishing off for Liz, the production assistant (pretty, blonde, and Dillon-ready in a crop top and skin-tight jeans, so I can only assume the bacon rolls are actually for some hungry electricians or cameramen, or something, and not for her to snarf down herself).
‘No. Well, he might have done. I’ve left my phone in my bag.’ I don’t add: because, although I’m twenty-nine years old, I’m still avoiding my mother.
‘He’s gone in his van to the studios. Mentioned something about doing a furniture run. First to Woking and then to you and your new flat?’
This, really, should be making me a bit less stressed about the whole Mum-and-my-Big-Break situation: the fact that I don’t have to go back to her house after work this evening and have her harangue me about my career over the kitchen table. Tonight, if she wants to harangue me, she can do it over the phone while I relax at my very own kitchen table in my very own flat!
It’s not much – it’s really, really not much, just a tiny one-bed above a parade of shops on Colliers Wood High Street; I’ve seen hip-hop producers’ downstairs loos, on MTV Cribs, that are at least three times the size – but I’m going to make it cosy, and homely, and lovely.
Of course, a slight barrier to this, up until a couple of days ago, was that I’ve managed to reach my ripe old age without actually acquiring the basics you need to make a flat look cosy and homely.
I don’t mean cashmere throws and Venetian glass lamps and Victorian writing desks. I mean – and this is a bit embarrassing to admit – a sofa, a table, and a double bed.
I was bemoaning this fact to Olly when he came round to Mum’s in his van the night before last to pick up my boxes full of clothes, books and other bits and bobs, and that’s when he told me about the Pinewood props store. Pinewood Studios, which is where the majority of The Time Guardians gets filmed, is home to an enormous treasure trove (well, a giant corrugated-steel warehouse) of old furniture that’s been used, over the years, to dress the sets of countless films and TV shows. Lots of it is pretty ropey, some of it is surprisingly lovely, and none of it is really used any more. Olly knows about this treasure trove because his Uncle Brian – not his actual uncle, just an old friend of his former-actress mother’s – is the security guard there. Oh, and because Olly’s former-actress mother, who now runs an amateur dramatic society in Woking, is always getting him to raid the props storeroom to bring her set dressing for their productions. Anyway, on Olly’s advice I popped round there when we were shooting at Pinewood yesterday, and managed to put aside a handful of surprisingly lovely things to furnish my flat.
I thought I was going to head back there tonight, with Olly in his van, and pick up the stuff before heading all the way back to Colliers Wood to collect my keys, but obviously it must fit Olly’s schedule better to go to Pinewood himself this morning.
‘Thanks, Jesse. Oh, and I’ll have one just like those, please,’ I add, pointing at the row of bacon rolls he’s wrapping in greaseproof paper to hand over to Liz.
‘You’re kidding,’ Liz says. ‘You can’t seriously be planning on eating a greasy bacon roll.’
Which is a bit personal, isn’t it? I mean, Liz and I have chatted in the ladies’ loos at the studios before, but that’s about it. I wouldn’t have thought we were anywhere near friendly enough for her to—
‘Vanessa,’ she says, in a hushed, reverential (OK, terrified) tone, ‘will literally kill you if she sees you eating so much as a Polo mint while you’re wearing that costume.’
‘This costume?’ I ask, glancing down at my alien head, because I can’t believe a bit of dripped ketchup is going to make the thing look that much worse.
‘It’s one of the most expensive costumes we rent,’ she says, rather piously, as if the money is coming out of her personal bank account and leaving her unable to pay her gas bill. ‘If Vanessa finds out there’s so much as a single, solitary stain on that latex …’
‘OK, forget the bacon roll,’ I tell Jesse. ‘I’ll just have a coffee and a muffin.’
‘A blueberry muffin?’ gasps Liz. ‘Filled with sticky, purple-staining berries?’
‘Fine! Just the coffee, then.’
Which is not going to hit the spot in any way. I mean, I was up at 5 a.m. this morning, in Wardrobe at 7, and I’ve been sweating out vital calories inside this horrible costume ever since.
I think I’ve got a half-eaten packet of peanut M&Ms in my bag, though. I can go and retrieve it from where I think I left it, back on the catering bus, and see if there’s a message on my phone from Olly at the same time.
The bloody costume slows me right down, though. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried walking anywhere while wearing half a stone’s worth of baggy latex, but it’s not the most enjoyable way to get about.
Honestly, on days like today, I seriously wonder what the hell I’m doing pursuing a career in acting. Though, to be entirely fair to the Warty Alien costume, there’s scarcely a day goes by when that thought doesn’t occur. I’m only stuck in the bloody job because of a childhood spent following Cass from audition to audition, during which time I utterly failed to gain any decent qualifications – or other career ideas – of my own.
Well, that and the fact that I’ve always had a bit of a fixation with the movies, and I’ve spent far too long kidding myself that grunting about as a non-speaking extra on iffy British TV shows is halfway to the Old Hollywood magic I’ve long been seduced by.
Far too long, because I don’t think any of my Hollywood heroines ever had to schlump around the arse-end of King’s Cross in latex warts on a boiling June morning …
‘Cheer up,’ a fellow alien says, passing me by on its way out of the Wardrobe trailer nearby. ‘It might never happen.’
‘Easy for you to say. You’ve lucked out.’ I mean this because it – he, I guess, from the voice inside his alien head – is nowhere near as grotesquely attired as I am. His is more like a spacesuit: Guantanamo-orange canvas with a matching orange plastic bubble helmet. No latex, no warts, no problem. ‘But thanks for the moral support. It’s nice when us extras stick together for a change.’
‘You’re welcome. I mean we have to, don’t we, with these arsehole lead actors swanning around the place?’
I snort. ‘When they can even be bothered to turn up, of course.’
‘Oh?’
‘We’re all waiting for his Lord Chief Arsehole to decide whether we’re worthy of his time or not. Dillon O’Hara, I mean,’ I add, for clarification of the ‘Lord Chief Arsehole’ bit.
‘Really? Because I heard he was only called for eleven a.m. So in fact, if he turns up in the next half-hour or so, he’ll actually be early.’
‘Bollocks,’ I snort. ‘He’s late because celebrities like him love to be late. It’s their favourite way of proving to people what a big shot they are.’
‘Be fair to the poor guy,’ the alien extra says. ‘Maybe he got stuck in traffic.’
‘If there’s anything at all he got stuck in, it’s more likely to be some leggy supermodel.’
And then I stop talking.
Because the alien extra is taking off his helmet, and it turns out that he’s not an extra at all.
It’s Dillon O’Hara.
‘That was fun,’ he says, a wide grin spreading over his face. His accent is Irish now, instead of the English one he – I now realize – has been putting on for the last couple of minutes. ‘I felt a bit like a prince in a fairy tale. You know, the kind who disguises himself as a peasant in order to mingle with the real peasants and find out what they truly think about him.’
I’m mortified.
But at the same time, I have to say, I’m outraged. Because not only has he just quite deliberately set me up, he’s also – I’m fairly sure – just pretty much called me a peasant.
‘I didn’t mean to imply,’ he says, as if he’s read my mind, ‘that I think you’re a peasant.’
‘I should bloody well hope not.’
‘But then, to be fair to me, you did just call me – now, what was it? – Lord Chief Arsehole.’
‘That was different …’
‘That’s true. It was behind my back, for one thing.’
‘It wasn’t behind your back!’
‘Well, it wasn’t to my face.’
‘You set me up! You … entrapped me.’
‘Oh, stop getting your knickers in a twist. If you’re wearing any knickers beneath that thing,’ he adds. ‘I mean, Jesus, these costumes are like a bloody sauna as they are, without adding extra layers beneath them, aren’t they?’
I would say something in reply – I’m not sure what, exactly, because it’s not often that I get asked by strange men if I’m wearing any knickers, let alone strange men like Dillon O’Hara who, now that I come to notice it, is even better looking in real life than he looked on the pages of Cass’s Grazia – but I’m stunned into silence by the fact that he’s starting to take his clothes off.
Seriously: he’s undoing the Velcro down the front of his jumpsuit, peeling the fabric off his shoulders and down to his waist and then – oh, dear God – pulling his T-shirt up and over his head to reveal the most perfect torso I’ve ever seen in my entire life.
I’m not exaggerating: his shoulders are wide and packed tight with lean muscle, he has a smooth, rock-hard chest, and an actual, proper six-pack where most men – my horrible ex-boyfriend Daniel, for example – sport varying sizes of beer gut.
‘Ahhhhh.’ He lets out a sigh of satisfaction. ‘That’s better. They told me, the nice Wardrobe girls, that I’d be more comfortable if I took my T-shirt off, but I got all shy.’ He grins at me, in an extremely not-shy sort of way. ‘I assumed they were just after my body.’
I can’t tell, dazzled as I still am by the ridiculous perfection of the body in front of me, whether his cheeky arrogance is attractive or annoying.
I think, probably, it’s fifty-fifty.
For now, anyway, I need to concentrate on not staring while Dillon swivels round and takes something out of the back pocket of his jeans.
It’s an open packet of Benson & Hedges, from which he’s pulling a cigarette.
‘No!’ I yelp, and then, because he looks rather startled, I explain: ‘I mean, you can’t. Vanessa will have your guts for garters if you light up in costume.’
‘Vanessa … Vanessa … oh, you mean the scary production lady?
It’s reassuring to realize that Dillon is as scared of Vanessa as the rest of us.
‘Yes.’
‘But I’m the big star, right? I should be allowed to do whatever I want, whenever I want?’
I think he’s joking …
‘Or,’ he adds, with another of those grins, ‘I could just nip round the back of this catering bus and have a sneaky smoke where Vanessa won’t catch me. Might be safest all round, hey?’
‘I think that would probably be best.’
‘Join me?’
‘Huh?’
‘Join me? In a cigarette?’
‘Oh … I don’t smoke.’
The moment the words leave my lips, I regret saying them.
I mean, I don’t have to go all ga-ga over the man to be able to admit Dillon’s attractions. And yet here I’ve just turned down the opportunity to continue this little chat – while he remains, I should point out, completely shirtless – just because I don’t actually smoke cigarettes.
Which is nuts, because it’s not like I’ve never smoked. I used to. Admittedly only when I was drunk, and not since I was about nineteen, when I went on a trip to Paris with Olly and smoked so many overpowering French cigarettes that it put me off for life.
But is this sort of hair-splitting worth missing out on another few minutes in Dillon’s company, when he’s never likely to exchange another word with me again?
‘What I mean to say is that I try not to smoke.’
‘Oh, well, if you’ve given up, then all credit to you—’
‘No, no, I haven’t given up! I’ve failed completely at it! Love smoking. Love it to death. Literally to death, probably, the amount I smoke!’
‘Then be my guest.’ He hands me the cigarette he’s holding, takes another for himself and then reaches into his back pocket again for a lighter.
‘So you’re one of the extras, right?’ he asks, flicking the lighter on and holding it out towards me.
‘Mnnh-hnngh.’ This is because I’ve got the cigarette in my mouth. ‘I’ve sort of been promoted, though,’ I add, once the end is lit. ‘I mean, I’ve got my first line to speak today. It’s not exactly a proper part, and obviously I get to wear the ugliest costume on set, but …’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I’ve seen worse.’ He takes an expert puff on his own cigarette, blowing the smoke in the opposite direction from me (which is courteous of him, seeing as I’m technically smoking too; I just haven’t risked actually inhaling yet in case I cough and sputter, unattractively, all over him). ‘I’ve an ex or two that looked a bit like that,’ – he nods at the alien head I’m clutching in my hand – ‘without their slap on.’
This is unlikely. But I appreciate his generosity.
‘Anyway, if you’re one of the extras, you probably know a thing or two about the way things work around here.’
‘Work?’
‘Yeah, every show I’ve ever worked on, the extras are always the ones who know how it all works. Who’s the biggest diva. Who’s got the biggest coke problem. Who’s getting it on in the props storeroom. I mean, there’s always somebody getting it on in the props storeroom, isn’t there?’
Given that I’m about to furnish my entire flat from the props storeroom, I can only hope that he’s joking about this.
‘So?’ he asks. ‘Dish the dirt! Tell me who to avoid, who to cultivate, who I’m going to get a stonking great crush on …’
‘Don’t you have a girlfriend?’ I suddenly blurt.
No, I’m not sure what’s wrong with me, either.
His black eyes narrow. ‘That’s a very personal question.’
‘Sorry, I only asked because … well, I read things in Grazia, obviously … not that I read a lot of celebrity gossip! Only when I’m in the waiting room at the dentist, or something. Hardly ever.’
‘You hardly ever go to the dentist?’
‘No! I mean, yes! I go loads!’ I say, continuing my apparent quest to make him think I have poor dental management and stinky cheese-breath. ‘Well, not loads … a normal amount, I’d say … Actually, it’s my sister Cass who reads all the gossip magazines—’
‘Then tell the silly cow not to believe everything she reads in them.’
‘Hey!’ I don’t care how gorgeous he is, standing here with his bare chest, and chivalrously blowing smoke away from me. ‘That’s my sister you’re talking about.’
‘Sorry.’ He looks, and sounds, instantly contrite. But then he is an actor, I suppose. Still, he repeats it. ‘Sorry. That was unforgivably rude of me.’
‘It was, a bit.’
‘It’s just that the girlfriend thing … it’s private, you know?’
‘Yes. Of course. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.’
‘Ah, you’re all right … Sorry, I’ve just realized I don’t know your name.’
‘Libby. Libby Lomax.’
‘Well, you’re all right, Libby, Libby Lomax. I’ll forgive you for calling me an arsehole. And for lying to me about being a smoker.’
Damn it; I’ve let the bloody thing practically burn itself out in my hand.
‘I am a smoker! I just forgot I had one,’ I say, popping the cigarette back into my mouth and hoping I can look one-tenth as sexy as him when I take a drag on it …
‘Dillon!’
Shit. It’s Vanessa, coming out of Wardrobe and walking towards us.
If she catches me smoking a cigarette, I’ll be off this location shoot in even less time than it would take Dillon to talk Cass into bed with him.
Instinctively, I do the first thing that springs to mind, which is to pull on the head I’ve got squashed under my arm.
It’s a nanosecond later that I realize I still have the cigarette between my lips.
But it’s OK! It’s OK, because all I have to do is walk past Vanessa and go, as fast as I can, round the other side of the catering bus, where I can pull my head off and take the cigarette out.
Or at least, I could, if she weren’t blocking my way with her arms folded and a scowl on her face.
‘Libby,’ she hisses, none too quietly, ‘what the fuck are you bothering Dillon for?’
‘She wasn’t bothering me, Vanessa, don’t stress about it.’ Dillon taps me on the shoulder from behind, and when I wheel round unsteadily he’s holding out one of my latex gloves. ‘You dropped this.’
‘Thank you,’ I mumble, snatching the glove and making to turn away again. But he stops me.
‘You’re smoking,’ he says.
Traitor! He’s sold me out, and right in front of Vanessa, too.
‘I mean, you’re really smoking, Libby.’
He’s staring into my eyes, through the pin-holes in my Warty Alien head, with such intensity that I can’t help but think … Is he saying he fancies me? I mean, nobody’s ever called me ‘smoking’ before, and certainly not someone as smoking-hot himself as Dillon is, but I suppose weirder things have happened—
‘For fuck’s sake!’ Vanessa ruins the moment by screaming, at Obergruppenführer volume, from behind me. ‘Her fucking head’son fire!’
At the very same time as she screams this, I inhale an extremely unpleasant smell that can only be burning latex.
OK, so I know the Thing To Do in a fire is to stay cool, calm and collected. I know the worst thing you can do is to panic, because you just start to drag other people under with you …
Oh, hang on a minute, that’s drowning.
In a head-on-fire scenario, panic, I suspect, is perfectly acceptable.
‘Shit!’ I almost out-scream Vanessa, pulling at my head in a wild frenzy. But it isn’t coming off! It isn’t coming off! ‘Get it off, get it off, get it off me!’
‘For fuck’s sake!’ Vanessa is yelling, again, as she stampedes away from us toward the catering bus door. ‘We need the fucking fire extinguisher!’
‘There’s no time for that.’ I hear Dillon’s voice, and then feel his hand grab my wrists to stop me ineffectually yanking at my head. ‘Stop,’ he orders, ‘and keep still.’
Then he grips the alien head, pulls it clear of my actual head, and throws the smouldering latex down onto the ground.
And then everything goes black.
I haven’t fainted, by the way. I think Dillon’s just thrown his T-shirt over me to put out any lingering sparks.
There’s a brief, stunned silence.
‘You all right under there?’ Dillon asks, a moment later.
I open my mouth to say ‘Just about’ when I’m hit, smack in the middle of the face, with a powerful jet of very cold liquid.
I gasp, which draws a large portion of sodden T-shirt into my mouth. I gag, splutter, and double over.
‘Fucking hell!’ I hear Dillon say, from my position near his groin. ‘It was under control. You didn’t need to blast the poor girl with the fire extinguisher!’
Ah, so it was very cold foam, then. Just in case I didn’t look like enough of an idiot with a wet T-shirt over my head … no, it has to be a foam-covered T-shirt instead.
But Vanessa clearly isn’t in any kind of mood for sympathy.
‘Libby! What the fuck are you playing at?’
‘Hey, leave her alone.’ I feel a hand on my shoulder, pulling me upright. ‘Let me get that off you,’ Dillon says, pulling at the T-shirt.
‘I’m fine! Might be better to leave it on for a bit longer, actually!’ Like, until the end of time. Or at least until I’ve regained my composure, and until everyone on the catering bus – whom I can now hear leaning out of the windows, asking each other what’s been going on, and having a good old chortle when they hear the answer – has gone home and, ideally, sixty or seventy years down the line, died, without me having to face them again. I grip onto the T-shirt at neck level. ‘Better not to … you know … expose burnt skin to the air.’
‘Shit, did your skin burn?’ Dillon rips the T-shirt off my head in one smooth movement; he’s obviously a man accustomed to removing items of clothing from women. ‘Oh, don’t worry, you’re all right. It’s only your hair.’
‘Only my hair what?’
‘That’s been burnt off.’
‘My hair’s been burnt off?’
‘God, no, no, no.’
I feel weak with relief, until he goes on.
‘I mean, not all of it. Only most of the right side. Unless …’ He studies me for a moment. ‘I’m sorry, maybe I just didn’t notice. Did you have a lopsided haircut when I was talking to you five minutes ago?’
‘No!’ I yelp, clutching the side of my head. I’m horrified to feel short, crispy, burnt bits where there used to be, if not exactly locks worthy of a Victoria’s Secret Angel, at least a perfectly decent amount of hair.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Libby, it’s only fucking hair.’ Vanessa is snapping her fingers at one of the crew members leaning out of the bus window to come and take the fire extinguisher from her. ‘It’ll grow back. Unlike the chunk you’ve burnt out of that costume!’
‘I’m really sorry, Vanessa. It was an accident.’
‘Yeah, it was an accident.’ Dillon backs me up. ‘I mean, nobody would intentionally set light to themselves like that. Unless they were a Buddhist monk, or something. Which you’re not, are you?’
Before I can answer, there’s a collective wheeze of mirth from the watching crew members, and one of them starts up – oh, so hilariously – a chant of Om.
‘Ah, give her a break, guys.’ Dillon grins up at them and pats me on the shoulder. His hand stays there. I don’t breathe in case this alerts him and he decides to move it. ‘Poor girl’s had a nasty shock. You know, one of you baboons could make yourselves useful and get her a nice cup of sweet tea, instead of standing there taking the …’
His eyes suddenly flicker sideways.
Which is hardly surprising, given that my sister has just teetered into view.
Lord only knows what Mum texted her after seeing the selfie, but Cass has ramped up the sexiness by roughly one hundred degrees centigrade. She’s changed into her Cat Person costume, for the show, but with a few little tweaks that only a certifiable man-eater like Cass is truly capable of. She’s unzipped the front of the skintight jumpsuit down to a near-pornographic level, replaced the regulation black Dr Martens with – and I can only assume she either brought these with her this morning, or borrowed them from a streetwalker a little closer to King’s Cross – a thigh-high pair of stiletto-heeled boots, and coated her mouth in what is surely the entire contents of a tube of Nars Striptease lip gloss.
Part of me wants to applaud her for such brazen, no-holds-barred chutzpah.
A much larger part of me wants to rip off her thigh boots and beat her over the head with them.
Because Dillon’s hand has just dropped off my shoulder. And I’ve just dropped off his radar.
‘Oh, my God!’ Cass squeals, clasping her hands to her mouth and doing a pretty decent performance of Distraught Woman. ‘Libby! My darling sister! What happened?’
‘Your darling sister set fire to her fucking head,’ Vanessa snaps. ‘Costing me six hundred quid for a replacement costume in the process.’
‘Oh, my God!’ Cass says, again. (Her performance might be decent, but the script has its limits.) ‘And your hair, Libby! What have you done to your beautiful, beautiful hair!’
Which would be a nice thing for her to have said, if it weren’t for the fact that I suspect it’s just a vehicle for her next trick, which is to break down in melodramatic sobs and clutch a hand to her (ballooning) chest, as if she’s about to swoon.
‘Woah, there!’ Dillon slips an arm around her waist. ‘Let’s go and get you a hot, sweet cup of tea.’
The same hot, sweet cup of tea that he promised me a moment ago. And which, I can’t help but notice, the entire leering gang of crew members is practically leap-frogging each other off the bus to fetch for her.
‘I’m sorry!’ Cass gulps. ‘It’s just such a terrible shock …’
‘Oh, for crying out loud,’ Vanessa mutters, which actually makes me feel quite fond of her all of a sudden.
‘Of course it is, sweetheart,’ Dillon is saying, in a melted-dark-chocolate tone quite unlike the one he was using while he was chatting to me. ‘You just need that tea, and a nice sit-down …’
‘I do,’ Cass replies, dabbing prettily at dry cheeks. ‘I do need a lie-down.’
You have to give it to her (and Dillon, no doubt, will do exactly that), she’s good at this stuff. The Damsel in Distress act (when I’m the only one round here who’s got any reason to be in distress); the subtle hint that she’d rather be lying down than sitting …
‘I’m Dillon, by the way,’ Dillon is murmuring, putting a hand in the small of her back and steering her in the direction of the leap-frogging crew members on their way to Olly’s catering truck.
‘And I’m Cassidy …’
Vanessa and I watch them go, united – for once – in irritation.
‘Your fucking sister,’ says Vanessa.
To agree would be disloyal; to disagree would be rank hypocrisy. So I don’t say anything.
‘You’re all right?’ she asks, gesturing at my burnt hair. ‘Not actually injured or anything?’
‘No, I’m OK.’ I’m touched that she’s concerned. ‘But thanks, Vanessa, and I’m really sorry again about—’
‘Good,’ she says, briskly. ‘Then I don’t need to get the first-aid guys over before you leave.’
‘Leave?’
‘The shoot. The show, in fact.’
I stare at her. ‘You’re … firing me?’
‘Well, of course I fucking well am. You’re lucky I’m not also charging you for the costume you’ve just wrecked.’
‘But I … this was meant to be my big … I mean, I need the money for my rent … And my mother is going to …’
‘None of that is my problem.’ She turns on her heel. ‘Sorry, Libby,’ she adds, in a flat tone of no regret whatsoever. ‘But can you please just return the costume to Wardrobe and get off my set?’
There’s absolutely no point in arguing. All I can do now is do as she says and get out of here while I still have my dignity.
OK, while I still have a shred of dignity.
OK, before I annoy her any more and she decides to charge me six hundred quid into the bargain. Because, in all honesty, I think my dignity has pretty much gone the way of my hair. Along with the ability to pay the rent on my flat, and the long-awaited approval of my mother.
Still, at least the Om-chanting crew are no longer around to witness my walk of shame. I suppose I have to be grateful for small mercies.


(#u3caa25fd-b5df-5df3-8efe-8a1283928b51)
I’m due to pick the keys up from my new landlord, Bogdan, at six o’clock this evening, but there are several things I need to get done before then.
The first, and let’s face it, most important, being to buy a hat.
This I accomplish by nipping in to the huge TK Maxx near Marble Arch tube, grabbing the largest straw sunhat I can find (thank God it’s a sunny day, so I have an obvious excuse to be wearing it) and taking off the label to wear it immediately after handing over the fiver it cost me.
And it’s a good thing it was reasonably cheap, because my next stop is at the cheese shop on New Quebec Street, where I’m due to collect forty quid’s worth of eye-wateringly expensive (and probably just eye-watering, ha-ha) cheese that I ordered a couple of days ago. It’s for Olly, as a thank-you gift for all his help with the move and the furniture. I racked my brains for quite a while to come up with something I knew he’d love – a sci-fi movie box-set, a kitchen-y gadget for messing about with when he’s cooking (for fun, staggeringly) at home – but in the end I thought some serious cheese was a great gift for someone who’s … well, as serious about cheese as Olly is.
As we both are, in fact. Cheese was one of the very first things we bonded over, and cheese has continued to play a front-and-centre role in our friendship ever since. We sometimes go to cheese-tasting evenings – right here, at Le Grand Fromage on New Quebec Street, or at Neal’s Yard Dairy in Covent Garden; we once went to an entire cheese festival, at some Nineties rock star’s country farm down in Somerset; when I was nineteen and he was turning twenty-one, we celebrated his significant birthday by taking the Eurostar over to Paris for the day, wandering around the first arrondissement, from fromagerie to fromagerie (with l’occasional stop-off at le bar on the way), buying more cheese than we could possibly afford, and eating most of it on the Eurostar on the way back home. Le Marathon de Cheese, we called it, and we’ve long talked about repeating the performance.
The owner of Le Grand Fromage recognizes me by now, and waves to me from behind the counter as I make my way through the door and into her shop.
‘Hi, there! Libby, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right!’ I don’t know her name; she did mention it to me once, but I’ve forgotten it and now it’s too embarrassing to ask again. In my head I just call her The Big Cheese Woman. Which makes her sound like she’s made entirely from wheels of cheddar, with mini Babybels for her eyes and nose, when in fact she’s a pleasant-looking forty-something with a petite figure and an enviable choppy haircut. (Enviable even before I burnt half my hair off this morning. Right now, I might actually kill to have hair like hers.) ‘You called to say my cheese order was ready?’
‘That’s right! All cut and ready to go. The Brie de Meaux, the Fourme d’Ambert, and the aged Comté. Oh, and something else …’
‘No, no, nothing else,’ I say, hastily, because I’m not sure my precarious bank balance can take any more posher-than-posh cheese just now.
‘No, I was just going to say that I’m popping in a little sample of something for you to try. A goat’s cheese. Because don’t I remember you asking about a particular goat’s cheese the last time you were in? Something rolled in ash, with a cross shape printed in it?’
Oh, my God.
Is it possible that she’s found the ‘mystery cheese’ from Le Marathon?
There was this one particular goat’s cheese, in all the cheeses we stuffed ourselves with on the way back home on the Eurostar that day, that Olly and I still talk about in mystic, hallowed terms, the way football nuts might talk about a incredible volleyed header that won a cup final. It was light as a soufflé and tangy on the tongue, it was rolled in ashes with a cross shape on the top, and we’ve never been able to track it down before or since.
‘Hold on a sec.’ The Big Cheese Woman is heading off the shop floor and into the cool, straw-lined room at the back where all the cheeses are kept.
If this really is the mystery cheese, it will be a big moment. I know it sounds silly, but the search for this cheese has been a bit of a thing for me and Olly for the past decade.
Though I suppose, if I’m being entirely honest, that some of our obsession with tracking down the cheese is – for both of us – our unspoken way of detracting attention from the Mistaken Thing that happened on that Paris trip, in a corner booth in a quiet bar somewhere on the Left Bank.
Which is that, just after we ordered a second bottle of white, we suddenly, somehow, found ourselves kissing as if our lives depended on it. An extremely Mistaken Thing to do when you’ve been friends for years and when, thanks to your Best Friendship with his sister, his entire family have sort of unofficially adopted you as one of their own.
I’m still not sure how it happened exactly. All I can really remember is that one minute we were talking about unrequited love, and Olly was telling me about the girl that he’d loved from afar for, well, it sounded like years, but I must have got that bit wrong and then the next minute we were snogging as if the world was about to end. I’ve no idea which of his friends it was, even all these years later – Alison, probably, the old college friend he eventually went out with for several years. The kiss was finally interrupted by the arrival of that bottle of wine. Realizing what we had just done and in a bit of a panic, I blurted out, ‘Well, when you get to kiss the real love of your life just make sure you’re not as drunk as we are!’ and laughed like some sort of crazed lunatic – just to make absolutely sure that Olly knew I understood that he was unrequitedly in love with another girl, and that I wasn’t going to get all silly and take that kiss as anything other than a Chablis-induced mistake. I think that is what I thought anyway. Now I just remember the look on his face as I spoke the words and the feeling of teetering on the verge of something and of stepping back from the edge.
And thank God we did! Olly must have been as drunk as I was or utterly appalled by the fact he’d just ended up in a drunken clinch with his little sister’s best mate. Either way, he didn’t have much to say at all until we caught our Eurostar a couple of hours later, by which time the mystery cheese had found its way into our lives and we could spend the journey home talking about that instead) because neither of us has ever mentioned the Mistaken Thing since. I’ve barely even let myself think about it, in my case, and I’m certain in Olly’s case, too.
‘Was this the one you were looking for?’
The Big Cheese Woman has re-emerged, and is holding a cheese out towards me. I stare at it: it’s flat, and circular, and ash-covered, with a cross on the top.
‘Um … I’m pretty sure it could be … I’d have to taste it to be certain …’
‘Yep, well, that’s why I thought I’d pop one in your order. It’s called Cathare, and it’s made near Toulouse. You must let me know if it turns out to be the right one or not.’
After a morning like the one I’ve had, I actually feel like I could leap across her counter and kiss her. Blow the fact I’d squash the precious cheese in the process.
‘That’s so nice of you!’
‘Oh, it’s nothing! Happy to try to help. Now, the other cheeses will be … thirty-seven pounds in total, please.’
I can feel myself actually wince as I hand over my debit card.
‘Sorry,’ the Big Cheese Woman says, clearly noticing my wince. ‘The Comté was a pricey choice, I’m afraid.’
‘No, it’s fine. I mean, it’s not your fault. I just … well, I lost my job today, that’s all.’
‘Oh, my God! I’m so sorry to hear that!’
‘Oh, no, don’t worry. It’s absolutely fine. Better than fine, in fact.’
She gives me a funny look. ‘Really?’
‘Yep. Losing my job,’ I tell her, ‘is going to turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.’
This is the tactic I’ve decided to take, anyway, since I slunk away from King’s Cross this morning with my tail between my legs. Accentuating the positive. Because in all seriousness, what’s the point of sitting around weeping and wailing and gnashing my teeth? Where will it get me? Nowhere, that’s where. And anyway, I’ve got loads to be cheerful about. I have my health. I have my friends. I will have – when I pick up the keys a couple of hours from now – a brand-new flat.
The trick, for the time being, is just to try and ignore the fact that I haven’t told my mother I’ve lost my job and that I might not be able to pay next month’s rent to my slightly scary new landlord.
‘Wow. I really admire your attitude!’ the Big Cheese Woman tells me, handing over the machine for me to type my PIN into. ‘Positive thinking will get you a long way in life.’
‘Exactly!’ I say, (also ignoring the fact that, actually, positive thinking hasn’t got me all that far in life up to this point). ‘It’s just like trying to track down this mystery cheese! Where would we be if we all just gave up at the first hurdle?’
‘That’s the spirit!’ But the Big Cheese Woman can’t cheer me on any more, because she’s just being asked by another customer if she stocks organic Roquefort. She hands me my Visa and my carrier bag, and I head out into the warm sunshine.
It’s only when I peer into the carrier to check that she’s put the receipt inside that I realize she’s only charged me half what she should have, and thrown in a packet of posh shortbread biscuits into the bargain.
Which is lovely of her, and proves that a positive attitude reaps its own rewards.
Oh, and talking of lovely, and positive attitudes, my phone has just pinged with a text from my best friend, Nora.
U in the new flat yet??? Hope my bro is helping you get settled? Nxxxx
Nora’s ‘bro’ is Olly, and they’ve pretty much ended up as surrogate brother and sister to me since that day I met them in the big old Edwardian theatre in Wimbledon. It’s weird, actually, now that I think of Olly as my surrogate brother, to remember that first meeting. Specifically – thanks, teenage hormones – the part where I thought he might be about to kiss me. Anyway, despite them coming from a proper showbiz family (there’s not just their mum with her am-dram group in Woking, but also one other sister who’s now a dancer with the Royal Ballet, and of course Kitty, the youngest, who’s a presenter on a Saturday morning kids’ TV show), Nora has the most serious, grown-up job of anybody I know: she’s an A&E doctor at a huge teaching hospital in Glasgow.
I miss her like mad.
Though, of course, now that I’m about to get settled in my own flat, it’ll be easy as pie for me to invite her and her lovely fiancé Mark down for the weekend. We’ll be able to do all the kinds of things you can only do when you’ve got your own place: brunch on Saturday morning – perhaps with Olly, too, if he can make it – and a casual party on Saturday night, with random friends dropping round with bottles of wine while I whip up a delicious stew in the kitchen … or maybe Olly could come over again and do the stew bit, come to think of it, because I can’t actually cook for toffee. And, seeing as it’ll be a rare weekend off work for Nora and Mark, I don’t think she’d be too happy if she ended up having to administer emergency medical treatment to the other guests if I’ve accidentally poisoned them with my Lancashire hotpot.
On way to flat right now!! I text Nora. BTW it’s possible have tracked down mystery cheese from Le Marathon.
She must be in a lull between ward rounds, because amazingly she texts straight back: You and Olly and that bloody cheese. V exciting re flat. What is big plan for first night on your own?
Hmm, that’s a good question. Because, in all honesty, my plan – once Olly has come and gone, that is – is to put on my pyjamas and curl up in front of one of my favourite old movies on my iPad. Perhaps, for maximum granny-era bliss, with my vintage bead-box and my ribbon bag for a bit of cosy crafting at the same time.
I mean, come on, it’s not like it’s knitting, or anything.
But I can’t tell Nora this. Nora thinks it might as well be knitting. (Though unlike Cass, she at least fully appreciates the results, and I’m hoping she’ll love the beautiful, Breakfast at Tiffany’s-inspired necklace I’m currently working on to give her to wear on her wedding day.) More to the point, Nora worries that I spend far too long not dealing with my problems in the real world by escaping into Hollywood fantasy.
She’d worry even more if I ever admitted that I still, sometimes, allow myself these silly daydreams I used to have when I was about twelve, where Audrey Hepburn is my best friend, and we spend our time hanging out together.
I mean, I don’t do it often these days, I’d like to point out, if that makes me sound any less weird and sad at all? Only when I feel in need of a bit of comfort.
And we all do weird things for comfort, don’t we? Some people eat entire tubs of Phish Food ice cream. Some people have kinky sex with complete strangers. So it’s pretty harmless, surely, that I occasionally like to zone out with an imaginary shopping trip, or afternoon tea, or night out dancing, in the company of the delightful Miss Hepburn?
My phone pings with another text from Nora: Please Libby for love of all that is holy don’t tell me you’re just going to string beads and watch back-to-back Audrey Hepburn films in your PJs all night. If u wanted to do that u could have stayed living in old bedroom with your mother.
Damn and blast her.
No intention of anything of sort, I text Nora back. Am planning productive evening of unpacking, sorting out, and then might spend five mins on Amazon looking up best cookbook to buy for delicious stew-making.
Which is met with total silence, either because she’s been called away to a life-threatening medical emergency or because she just doesn’t believe me.
Anyway, I need to hop back on the tube now and make my way to Colliers Wood, because it’s time for me to pick up the keys to my brand-new, grown-up, very own home.
*
The shops in the little parade beneath my new flat are an eclectic mix, with one unifying theme.
BOGDAN’S TV REPAIRZ
BOGDAN’S DIY SUPPLIEZ
BOGDAN’S CHICKEN ’N’ RIBZ
And finally, just in case you started to worry that Bogdan didn’t get quite enough of a good deal on the letter Z from his sign-making people:
BOGDAN’S PIZZA PIZZAZZ!
My particular flat, somewhat unfortunately, is right above this final one. But still, this might have its advantages, because I won’t even have to change out of those pyjamas Nora is being so negative about if I get a sudden craving for pizza, with pizzazz or otherwise, at ten o’clock at night.
And it’s at Pizza Pizzazz that I’m due to collect the keys, where Bogdan the landlord has left them for me.
The keys are handed over to me by a very large, rather frighteningly silent woman (who does not possess, if truth be told, the smallest hint of pizzazz), and I let myself in at the little door outside the pizza parlour before climbing the stairs all the way to the third … no, hang on, I forgot, fourth floor, where there are three doors arranged around a little landing. Which is odd, because I only remember there being two doors. Anyway, mine, Flat F, is on the side closest to the street.
I try to control the little chill of excitement I get as I turn the key in the lock, and …
OK, it’s … well, it’s quite a bit smaller than I remember.
I told you I’d seen rappers’ downstairs loos that were bigger, didn’t I?
I think, actually, that I’ve also seen public conveniences that are bigger.
I step inside, trying to estimate how big it really is (eight feet by ten?) and offset this against how big I remember it (fifteen feet by ten?).
How can it have shrunk by seventy square feet since I first saw it? And – by the looks of things – lost a window and … an entire shower room … at the same time?
Though it’s the very last thing I want to do, I’m going to have to phone the landlord.
He picks up after a couple of rings.
‘Is Bogdan.’
‘Bogdan, hi! It’s Libby Lomax …’
‘You are happy with flat?’
‘Well, that’s the thing, Bogdan, I—’
‘You are liking renovations?’
‘Renovations?’ It’s only now that I notice the smell of fresh paint and the faint hint of sawdust. ‘Um, Bogdan, have you … put up a partition wall, or something?’
‘Well observed, Libby. Am turning one flat into two.’
As I stare around the place now, it’s quite clear that this is exactly what he’s done. Turned one small flat into two tiny ones, taking one of my two windows and my only bathroom with it.
‘You are liking? Is perfect, yes? Is more compact, is more cosy, is more easy to be keeping clean …’
‘But Bogdan—’
‘And you can be recommending next-door flat to friend, perhaps? I am thinking girl friend,’ he adds, for clarity, breathing hotly into his end of the phone. ‘As you will be needing to share bathroom.’
‘Bogdan.’ I try to sound as stern as possible, so he’ll know I’m Not Messing Around. ‘What have you done with the bathroom?’
‘Is only across hallway. Have put it all in new. Is what girls like, yes? New bathroom suite for pampering? For shaving the legs, for taking the bubble bath, for putting on the body lotion …’
I make a mental note to ask Olly to check this bathroom out for hidden cameras before I so much as brush my teeth in there.
‘But the thing is, Bogdan, I’m paying rent for a flat twice the size of this one.’
‘But you are getting brand-new bathroom suite.’
‘A brand-new shared bathroom suite! Across the hallway from a flat you’ve cut in two!’
‘Is chic studio,’ he counters. ‘Is minimalist lifestyle.’
‘But I don’t want a studio!’ I ignore the fact that this place, with its wonky partition wall and its general aroma of sawdust, isn’t even in the region of chic. ‘I wanted a proper flat, Bogdan! With a bedroom and a bathroom.’
‘In Moldova,’ Bogdan tells me, sternly, ‘whole families, with ten children, are living in less than half space than you are getting now.’
Which – if it’s true – makes me feel like the worst kind of spoilt brat.
On the other hand, he would say that, wouldn’t he? He’s the one trying to fob me off with a divvied-up flat.
I mean, look at this place. I’m never going to be able to do any of those things I planned here. Those cosy stew parties, for example: how am I (or how is Olly) going to cook when the kitchen space has been reduced to a tiny corner with a single wall-hung cabinet, a two-ring hob and a mini-fridge? And where are my friends going to fit when they pop round for the evening with bottles of red wine? I may not have hundreds of friends, but right now I’m worried that even letting Nora bring Mark with her is going to be an issue. And it’s even worse than this! I’d almost forgotten about the furniture Olly is bringing round any minute now. Yes, I was very careful about choosing only small pieces, but obviously there was nothing in the props storeroom that was actually doll-sized. The lovely leather armchair I picked out will fit in OK, but only if I abandon any hope of also fitting in the little gate-legged table. And I’d chosen this really nice walnut-wood coffee table, and a small but incredibly useful chest of drawers, and Olly is bringing me an old futon from his own flat …
Where the hell is it all going to go?
‘Bogdan. Look …’
The buzzer goes.
That’ll be Olly. With all my furniture.
I can’t leave him to wait, because he’ll probably be pulled up on a yellow line on the main road, with traffic wardens circling like vultures.
‘I have to go. My friend Olly’s just arrived with my furniture.’
‘Dolly?’ Bogdan asks, excitedly. ‘She is good girlfriend of yours …?
‘Olly. Short for Oliver. A boy friend. Well, not like a boyfriend, but …’ Actually, there’s no harm in Bogdan thinking I have a boyfriend. The buzzer goes again. ‘I’ll call to discuss this again tomorrow,’ I say, in the firmest tone of voice I can summon.
‘I will be looking forward to it, Libby. You can be telling me what you are thinking of new bathroom suite.’
I press the entry-phone buzzer to let Olly up, and open my front door just as he turns the landing onto the fourth floor.
‘Lib.’ He takes the last three steps in one and envelops me in an enormous hug. ‘I haven’t been able to get hold of you all afternoon. Are you OK?’
‘Well, the flat’s half the size I thought it was going to be,’ I say, into his chest, ‘and the landlord seems to have a college dorm fetish, but I suppose it could be …’
‘I meant what happened on location today. The fire thing.’ He pulls back and looks down at me, wincing, as if he hardly dares peek under the straw sunhat I’m still wearing. ‘I wasn’t sure how much to believe of what the crew were saying, but have you actually burnt off all your hair?’
‘No, no, only half. Do you promise not to laugh?’
‘Of course.’
I wouldn’t do this for many people – in fact, Olly and Nora are pretty much the only ones I can think of – but, with a bit of a flourish, I take off my sunhat.
Olly presses his lips together, hard, but he can’t disguise the fact they’re curling upwards.
‘You promised,’ I remind him, ‘not to laugh.’
‘I’m not laughing. I’m absolutely not. Honestly, Lib, it’s not even that bad …’
‘Liar.’ I open the front door further so he can come in. ‘Anyway, believe it or not, losing half my hair – oh, and my job, by the way – is only the second worst thing that’s happened to me today … Ta-da!’
With another flourish, I display my chopped-in-half flatlet.
‘You lost your job?’ Olly says. He’s staring at me, and not at the flatlet.
I nod.
‘But … that sucks.’
I nod, again.
‘Well, do you want me to speak to Vanessa for you? Threaten to put the catering truck on strike if you’re not reinstated as … hang on, what was the part you were meant to be playing today?’
‘Extra-terrestrial Spaceship Technician.’
‘… reinstated as Extra-terrestrial Spaceship Technician? I’m serious, Libby, I’ll do it. And Vanessa would have to listen to me, because if there aren’t any bacon sandwiches ready at six in the morning the next time that crew is on location, she’ll have a riot on her hands.’
‘That’s really nice of you, Ol, but I don’t want that.’ I don’t add the obvious – that wild horses couldn’t drag me back to work on The Time Guardians after my toe-curling humiliation this morning – but there’s no need to, because I can see that Olly gets it without me having to say anything. ‘I’ll be fine. Job-wise, I mean. I’ve pre-paid the first month’s rent to Bogdan, and I’ll find something new in time to cover next month’s.’
‘Sorry – Bogdan?’
‘Oh, yeah, he’s my new landlord. In fact, that reminds me, Olly, you don’t happen to know what a secret camera in a bathroom might be hidden behind, by any chance?’
‘What?’
‘It’s just that Bogdan seems to have a bit of a thing about girls taking showers and putting on body lotion …’
‘OK, that’s it.’ Looking more than just a little alarmed, now, Olly picks up my jacket from where I’ve hung it on the back of the door, and holds it out for me to put on. ‘You’re coming back to my flat tonight.’
‘No, Olly, seriously, it’s fine. He thinks I’ve got a boyfriend now, anyway.’
‘Who?’
‘Bogdan.’
‘No, I mean, who does he think your boyfriend is?’
‘Oh, well, you, of course. So apologies, Ol, but you’ve just accidentally got stuck with me as an unwanted girlfriend!’ This is getting dangerously close to Mistaken Thing territory, I realise, so I add, hastily, ‘But don’t worry, you can dump me as soon as I’m sure there really aren’t any hidden cameras in the bathroom. Or anywhere else, for that matter.’
Olly turns round for a moment to hang my coat back up on the door, which takes him a lot longer than you’d think, because he keeps fumbling with the loop on the inside of the collar and almost dropping it on the floor.
‘Well, anyway,’ he says, as he eventually succeeds in getting the coat hung and turns back to me, ‘I’m a little bit worried about getting all your furniture in here. The place is quite a bit smaller than I thought it would be.’
‘Yes, that’s what I was trying to tell you earlier. Bogdan’s put that bloody wall up and made one flat into two!’
Olly gazes around the flat for the first time – well, gazes is a bit inaccurate, given that it only takes about three-quarters of a second to look at the place in its tiny entirety – and lets out a whistle.
‘You know, I really don’t think the furniture is going to fit.’
‘Look, can’t we start bringing it up before I start panicking about that?’
‘Lib, there’s no way we can get all that heavy stuff up here by ourselves. Which is why I asked Jesse to meet me here … ah, hang on. That could be a text from him right now.’ He fishes in his jacket pocket, takes out his phone, and nods. ‘Yep. That’s him, on his way from the tube. Look, I’ll go down and meet him, and you can crack …’ He produces, from the paper carrier I’ve only just noticed he brought with him, a bottle of champagne. ‘… this open!’
‘Oh, Olly, you shouldn’t have.’
‘Well, you don’t move into a new flat every day. Not even a chopped-in-half one with a pervert for a landlord.’
I laugh. I can’t help it.
‘My wine glasses are all in the boxes you picked up from Mum’s yesterday, though.’
‘Ah, well, that’s precisely why I brought a few of those boxes in already and left them at the bottom of the stairs. I’ll get Jesse to start bringing them up while I get the van open.’
‘No, no, don’t worry. I’ll come down and get them.’
We tramp all the way down the four flights of stairs together, then he heads off to his van, parked just round the corner apparently, and I start lugging one of my cardboard boxes up to my flat … then go back down to get another … then another …
The last thing I want to do is criticize Olly, not when he’s being so lovely and so helpful, but he and Jesse are taking a bloody long time to start getting this furniture in, aren’t they? I mean, seriously, it’s only a small armchair, a coffee table and a three-drawer plywood chest. If it weren’t for the bulk, I’m sure I’d be able to bring them up by myself.
Still, at least I’ve had the time to get all these boxes up, and I ought to be able to find the glasses in one of them. This one, most likely, that I’ve labelled NESPRESSO MACHINE AND MISC: sounds like it’s where I might have packed my kitchen bits and bobs. I open it up just as I hear a rather out-of-breath voice behind me.
‘I’m telling you, Lib. This isn’t going to fit.’
It’s Olly, who’s coming through the doorway. He’s purple in the face with exertion, his shoulders are straining underneath his T-shirt, and he’s gripping one end of the most enormous sofa I’ve ever seen.
Not only enormous, in fact, but upholstered in some truly terrible apricot-hued rose-patterned fabric that makes it look like a bomb has gone off in the world’s most twee garden centre.
‘Well, it might technically fit,’ an equally purple-faced Jesse grunts, inching through the door with the other end of the sofa, ‘but there’s not going to be much room for anything else.’
‘But this isn’t the sofa I put aside!’
‘What do you mean?’ Olly cranes his head round to look at me.
‘I mean, this isn’t the sofa I put aside! I didn’t put aside a sofa at all, in fact! It was meant to be a leather armchair.’
‘Well, this is the stuff Uncle Brian told us you’d chosen.’
Uncle Brian has made, it appears, a terrible, terrible error.
‘And there isn’t a leather armchair in the van,’ Olly adds. ‘There’s this sofa, and the oak blanket box, and the big mahogany chest of drawers, and …’
‘But I didn’t choose any of those things either! I chose an armchair, and a little walnut coffee table, and a small chest for my clothes.’
‘Walnut coffee table?’ Olly turns back to Jesse. ‘Hang on – where have I seen a walnut coffee table recently?’
‘There was one in the stuff we dropped off with your mum last night, for the Woking Players,’ Jesse says, scratching his head in a manner that suggests he’s not quite cottoned on to what’s happened.
Whereas it’s becoming fairly clear to me that the Woking Players are getting my furniture, and that I am getting the Woking Players’ set-dressing for whatever Noël Coward play or Stephen Sondheim musical they’re performing for the next couple of weeks.
‘I’m really sorry, Lib.’ Olly bends his knees to lower the sofa to the floor, and indicates that Jesse should do the same. I can hardly blame them; it must weigh a tonne. ‘Do you want us just to take it back to the van?’
‘Yes … well, no … I mean, did you bring that futon you mentioned?’
‘Futon …’ Olly looks blank-eyed for a moment, until recognition dawns. He slaps a hand to his head. ‘Shit. I forgot about that.’
‘It’s all right. But you’d better leave the sofa here. I’ve not got anything else to sleep on.’
‘Are you sure? I mean, apart from anything else, it’s a bit … well, up close, it’s pretty pongy.’
‘Sort of—’ Jesse leans down and inhales one of the overstuffed cushions – ‘doggy-smelling.’
He’s right, in one sense: the smell coming up out of the sofa cushions, now that they mention it, is distinctly doggy. More specifically, the smell of a dog that’s been out in the rain all morning and is now drying by a warm radiator, whilst letting out the occasional contented fart. Quite a lot like Olly and Nora’s ancient Labrador, Tilly, who farted her way to the grand old age of seventeen; she died five or six years ago but I can still remember her musty pong. Not to mention that there are deep grooves scratched into the wooden part of the arm on one side, as if the rain-dampened dog had a good old go with its claws on there before heading off to dry.
I stare up at Olly, despair taking hold. ‘Did you really think this was the sofa I’d chosen? You didn’t stop to question it at any point?’
‘Well, I don’t know your precise taste in soft furnishings!’ Olly says, indignantly. ‘You make vintage-style jewellery. I thought maybe you wanted a vintage-style living room.’
‘This sofa isn’t vintage style, it’s …’ I glower down at the sofa, blaming it, in all its apricot-hued vileness, for everything that’s gone wrong for me today.
I mean, let’s not beat around the bush: it’s been a torrent of crap ever since I got out of bed this morning. Losing half my hair, losing my job, getting short-changed out of a proper flat, Cass riding off into the sunset with Dillon …
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, plopping myself down, wearily, on the sofa, whereupon a cloud of doggy-smelling dust billows out. It actually makes my eyes water, which obviously makes it look like I’m crying. The irony being that, actually, that’s exactly what I feel like doing. If it were just Olly here, and not Jesse, whom I barely know, I’d probably be bawling my eyes out right now. ‘You’ve been so lovely,’ I sniff. ‘You, too, Jesse, for lugging the bloody thing all the way up here. I’m sorry.’
There’s a short, slightly awkward silence, ended by Olly folding his six-foot-three bulk onto the cushion next to me and putting a brotherly arm around my shoulders.
‘Look, Lib. Why don’t we leave the rest of the furniture in the van to take away with us, and then go and find your new local? Save you worrying about wine glasses.’
Much as a drink at the pub – even the inauspicious surroundings of the dodgy-looking one (no doubt owned by Bogdan) down the road – would probably do me good right now, I just don’t have any energy left to make a positive out of the evening. Honestly, all I want to do right now is stick to Plan A: dig my pyjamas out of one of the boxes, pop open the champagne so I can scoff the lot myself without having to worry about finding any glasses, and – oh, heavenly bliss, after the day I’ve endured – curl up in front of Breakfast at Tiffany’s (or Tea at Tesco’s as Olly calls it, in honour of our first meeting)on my iPad.
‘Thanks, Olly, but I’m really tired. I think the best thing is to get an early night.’
‘Ooops, sorry.’ Jesse makes a beeline in the direction of the front door. ‘You don’t want a third wheel around at this time of night. I’ll leave you two to it.’
‘Us two?’ I blink up at him. ‘God, no, no, me and Olly aren’t—’
‘We’re not together, mate,’ Olly interrupts, firmly. ‘I’m fairly sure Libby meant an early night on her own.’
‘Ohhhhh … OK, I just thought … still, I’ll be on my way, anyway.’
‘Thanks again, Jesse. You really must let me buy you a drink, I’m really grateful …’
But he’s already gone.
‘Sorry about that,’ says Olly, not meeting my eye. Which is understandable, because the Mistaken Thing is rearing its mortifying head for the second time tonight – twice more than it normally does in the space of months or even years – and I know he’d like to put it back in its box as fast and definitively as possible. ‘I’m not sure where he got that idea. But in all seriousness, are you sure you’re going to be OK here tonight? I mean, you don’t even have anything to sleep on.’
‘Yes, I do. What’s the point of having a colossal sofa if it can’t double up as a bed for the night?’
‘Well, if you’re sure … look, why don’t I come over tomorrow night and help you unpack, then we can talk more about what you’re going to do next? I’ll even cook you a slap-up dinner, how about that?’
‘In this kitchen?’
‘Oh, ye of little faith. Have you forgotten that time I cooked an entire three-course meal in Nora’s student bedsit? With only a clapped-out old microwave and a single-ring electric hob?’ He casts an eye over my minuscule ‘kitchen’. ‘This is professional-standard by comparison. I’ll do you a nice roast chicken. Easy as pie. Oh, and I’ll even make a pie, come to think of it. A pie of your choosing. Lemon meringue, apple and blackberry … your pie wish is my command.’
‘That’s lovely of you, Ol, but let me cook for you, for a change. As a thank you for all your help.’
‘Er …’
‘Oh, come on! I’m not that bad a cook! I can rustle up a tasty stew.’
‘Can you?’
I give him a Look.
‘OK, OK … well, that would be lovely, if you’re sure, Libby,’ he says, looking pretty un-sure himself. ‘And I’ll bring that pie for dessert.’
‘Thank you. For everything, I mean.’
‘Any time.’ He leans over and gives me a swift – very swift – kiss on the top of my head as he gets to his feet. ‘You know that.’
I can’t help but feel a bit empty, when I’ve closed the door on him and have the flatlet to myself again.
Well, to myself and the Chesterfield.
Which, now that we’re alone together – me and the Chesterfield, that is – is just making me feel sadder than ever. I mean, look at it: after its moment of glory on screen, whenever that was, it’s done nothing but moulder away in Uncle Brian’s storeroom ever since.
‘Well,’ I say to the sofa. ‘Everything’s all turned to shit, hasn’t it?’
The sofa, unsurprisingly, has nothing to say in reply to this.
‘I mean, let’s just look at my life, shall we?’ I go on, squeezing round the sofa’s bulky back and picking up my wine bottle from the melamine counter (because if I’m starting to chat to the furniture, then I really, really must be in need of a drink). ‘Because it’s not as if things were exactly terrific this morning, before I lost my job, half of my flat and half of my hair.’ My voice has gone rather small, and very wobbly, so I’m extremely glad that I’m only talking to the sofa, even if it might also be an early sign of impending madness. I hate getting upset in front of real people. No: not just hate it: I just don’t do it. Won’t do it. Haven’t done it, I’m stupidly proud to say, since I blubbed in front of Olly and Nora the first day I met them, at the New Wimbledon Theatre, when my waster of a father cancelled my birthday plans at the last minute. ‘It’s not as if I was making a big success of myself.’
I unscrew the cap, take a large swig, and then another, and then I squeeze my way round the back of the Chesterfield so that I can plonk myself down on one of its doggy-smelling cushions. Then I reach for my bag and dig around to find my iPad. I balance it on one of the sofa’s wide arms – one thing its bulk is useful for, I suppose – and then I go to my stored movies, and tap on Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Because the only way I’m ever going to make it through tonight without drinking all this wine on my own, ordering the largest pizza I can find at Bogdan’s takeaway, scoffing down the entire lot and then – inevitably – drunk-dialling my horrible ex-boyfriend Daniel, who will be just as distantly condescending as he was for the majority of our short relationship, is if I’ve got Audrey to get me through.
I suppose it’s one (and only one) thing I have to be grateful to my father for: the movies. For the way the movies make me feel. For the rush of mingled excitement and serenity that I feel when I settle into the sofa, now, to the orchestral strains of Moon River. And look at Audrey: just look at her. Gliding onto the screen, her beautiful face impassive behind those iconic Oliver Goldsmith tortoiseshell sunglasses, her body moving with dancer’s grace in that black dress. And then there’s that offbeat pearl-and-diamanté necklace and matching tiara, which look precisely like the kind of thing a little girl would pick out of their grandmother’s jewellery box to play dressing-up with, and which – despite Dad’s irritation – were precisely the things I was most dazzled by, when I first watched the movie with him, as a nine-year-old. Those glittering jewels made me think, back then, that this otherwordly being must surely be some sort of princess, and they’ve not lost any of their magic now that I’m two decades older.
Which reminds me: Nora’s bridal necklace.
I haul myself up from the Chesterfield – no mean feat when you could lose a double-decker bus or two down the back of these cushions – and s-q-u-e-e-z-e my way back round it to get to the ‘kitchen’, where most of my boxes are sitting, waiting for me to unpack them. My bead-box will be at the top of one of them, somewhere … yep, here it is, with Nora’s necklace neatly folded inside. In my mind’s eye it was always meant to look like something Holly Golightly might window-shop on one of her jaunts to Tiffany’s, but I don’t know if it’s quite there yet. I’ve strung some gorgeous vintage beads along a plain necklace cord – mostly faux pearl, with the occasional randomly dotted silver filigree – either side of this delicate but dazzling diamanté orchid I found in a retro clothing store in Bermondsey one rainy Saturday when I’d accompanied Olly over there to a food market. The orchid was a brooch, originally, but I’ve used a brooch converter on the back pin to make it a charm suitable for a necklace. I’ve already finished it off with a silver clasp at the back, but I think I might dig out my chain-nosed pliers, remove the clasp, then really Audrey-fy the whole thing up by adding another row of pearls and random filigree beads either side of the orchid, thereby turning a pretty pendant into a dramatic layered show-stopper …
A little way behind me, somebody says, ‘Good evening.’
I spin round, wondering, for a split second, if madness really is setting in, and if – seeing as I was talking to the sofa a few moments ago – I’m starting to hear the sofa talk back to me.
But it’s not the sofa. It’s someone perched, in fact, on the arm of the sofa.
And that someone is Audrey Hepburn.


(#u3caa25fd-b5df-5df3-8efe-8a1283928b51)
OK, first things first: obviously it’s not actually Audrey Hepburn.
I mean, I may just have been chatting to my new sofa, but I’m not 100 per cent crackers, not yet. Obviously there’s no way this is the real, bona-fide, sadly long-dead Hollywood legend Audrey.
But second things second and third things third: if she’s a lookalike, she’s a bloody good one (she’s dressed exactly, but I mean, exactly the same as the Audrey Hepburn I’ve just been watching on screen: black dress, sunglasses, triple-strand pearls and all); but, more to the point, what the hell is an Audrey Hepburn lookalike doing in my flat in Colliers Wood at eight thirty on a Wednesday evening?
Before I can ask this question – while, in fact, I’m still doing a good impression of a goldfish – she gets to her feet, leans slightly over the melamine worktop and extends a gloved hand.
‘I very much hope,’ she says, ‘that I’m not barging in.’
Wow.
She’s got the voice down absolutely pat, I have to say. The elongated vowels, the crisp, elocution-perfect consonants, all adding up to that mysterious not-quite-English-not-quite-European accent. Exactly the way Audrey Hepburn sounds when you hear her in the movies.
‘But how did you get in?’ I glance over at the door, which I’m sure I locked when Olly and Jesse left. There’s no way she can have come in that way … Unless she has a key, of course … ‘Oh, God. Did Bogdan send you?’
Her eyebrows (perfectly arched and realistically thick) lift up over the top rim of her sunglasses.
‘Bogdan?’
‘The man who owns this block. Owns most of Colliers Wood, by the looks of it.’
‘Colliers Wood?’ she repeats, as though they’re words from a foreign language. ‘What a magical-sounding place!’
‘It’s really, really not.’
‘Where is it?’
‘You’re joking, right?’
She stares at me, impassively, from behind the sunglasses. (Oliver Goldsmith sunglasses, I can’t help but notice, in brown tortoiseshell, so she’s certainly done a thorough job of sourcing a fantastic replica pair from some vintage store or other. Or some shop that sells exact-replica Audrey Hepburn gear, because that necklace she’s wearing is an absolute ringer for the one the real Audrey was wearing on my iPad screen a few minutes ago.)
‘It’s in London. Zone Three. Halfway between Tooting and—’
‘How wonderful!’ She claps her hands in delight. ‘I adore London! I lived here just after the war, you know. The tiniest little flat, you wouldn’t believe how small, right in the middle of Mayfair. South Audley Street – do you know it at all?’
‘Yes. I mean, no. I know South Audley Street, but I don’t know where you … rather, where Audrey … look, I don’t mean to be rude, but you have just sort of … showed up. And I’m not sure I’m happy about other people having keys to the flat, so perhaps you could tell Bogdan …’
‘Darling, I’m awfully sorry, but I really don’t know this Bogdan fellow at all. In fact, it’s just occurred to me that you and I haven’t introduced ourselves properly! I’m Audrey.’ She extends a gracious hand, emitting a waft, as she does so, of perfume from her wrist: an oddly familiar scent of jasmine and violets. ‘Audrey Hepburn.’
‘Right,’ I snort. ‘And I’m Princess Diana.’
‘Oh, my goodness!’ She bows her head and drops into an impressively low curtsey. ‘I had no idea I was in the presence of royalty!’
‘No! I mean, obviously I’m not …’
‘I should have realized, Your Highness. I mean, only a princess would have jewels like that.’
I’m confused (make that even more confused) until I realize that I’m still holding Nora’s half-finished diamanté and pearl-bead necklace in my hand.
‘No, no, this isn’t real.’ I shove the necklace back into the bead-box. ‘And I’m not Your Highness. I’m not a princess.’
She glances up, still balanced in her curtsey. ‘But you said …’
‘Yes, because you said you were Audrey Hepburn. Now, don’t get me wrong, you’re doing a fantastic job …’
Which she really, really is, I have to admit, the longer I stare at her.
I mean, I know anyone can recreate the Breakfast at Tiffany’s look without too much trouble – the dress, the sunglasses, the beehive – but she’s really cracked the finer points, too. Her hair isn’t just beehived, it’s exactlythe right shade of chestnut brown; her lips are preciselythe right shape and fullness; her complexion is Hollywood-lustrous and oyster-pale.
Oh, and it’s just occurred to me that I can pin down that familiar jasmine-y, violet-y scent, after all: it’s L’Interdit, the Givenchy perfume created specially for Audrey Hepburn, of course. Mum and Cass gave me a bottle of it several Christmases back.
‘Does it take a really long time?’ I suddenly blurt out.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The whole Audrey look. The hair. The make-up. Does it take a really long time?’
‘Oh, well, I have dressers to help me when I’m working, if that’s what you’re asking about. And of course I have darling Hubert to make me the most perfect frocks – this is one of his that I’m wearing right now, in fact! Do you like it? He’s such a brilliant designer – and, trust me, it takes some brilliance to put me in a long dress and not make me look like an ironing board! – and such a dear friend, too!’
As she talks, a second possibility is starting to dawn on me.
Which is that she’s not an extremely good professional lookalike but is, in fact, an escaped lunatic.
Because she really seems to believe that she is Audrey Hepburn. In the way that you hear about people really believing that they are (usually) Napoleon, or Jesus Christ. Or Princess Diana, come to that.
‘Look,’ I say, more gently than I’ve been speaking for the past couple of minutes. ‘Perhaps it would be best if you tell me who I can call. A friend? Boyfriend? A … well, a nurse?’
‘Nurse?’ She laughs, musically. ‘But I’m not ill!’
‘Well, of course! Absolutely you’re not ill!’ I’m nowhere near well enough versed in psychology to know whether someone who thinks they’re Audrey Hepburn could become dangerous if confronted with the fact that they’re not. ‘But it’s getting late, and I’ve got quite a lot of unpacking to do. So if you’d rather I just called you a taxi …’
‘I can help you with the unpacking!’
‘God, no, that’s not what I meant!’
But she’s not listening. She’s tripping daintily over to my boxes, kneeling down beside them and starting to pull off the masking tape.
‘I adore unpacking,’ she says. ‘Making a house a home! Well, in your case, a flat. And this one is simply delightful!’
Now I know she’s suffering from delusions.
‘Though I must say, darling, you’ve not done yourself any favours by putting this huge sofa in here. You’d be far better off with some sort of lovely leather armchair … Goodness! What on earth is this?’
She’s pulled the Nespresso machine out of the top of the box she’s kneeling beside, and is gazing at it, from behind her sunglasses, in awe and wonderment.
‘Is it a camera? A microwave oven?’
‘It’s a Nespresso machine,’ I say, rather irritably, because whether it’s an act or whether it’s a delusion, this whole thing is starting to get a bit much. I’m even starting to wonder if putting in a quick call to Bogdan might be just the thing. After all, if your dodgy landlord can’t get rid of Audrey Hepburn lookalikes who won’t leave your flat, what is he good for? ‘You must have seen the adverts, with George Clooney.’
‘Is he any relation to Rosemary?’ she asks, brightly.
‘Rosemary Clooney? I don’t know, might be a nephew or something. Now, I’m really sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to—’
‘Oh, no, darling, he can’t be a nephew! Rosemary would have told me if she had a nephew!’ She turns back to look at the Nespresso machine, taking her sunglasses off so that she can gaze at it more closely. She puts the sunglasses down on the melamine. ‘Nespresso, you say? It sounds as though it’s the sort of thing that might make you a cup of coffee?’
‘Yes, that’s exactly what it does, but you already …’
I stop.
She’s looking right at me, without the sunglasses.
And I feel a bit funny, all of a sudden.
Because – and this is going to sound certifiably insane, I have to warn you – now that I can see her eyes, I’m not so sure that she’s an escaped lunatic after all. Or a professional lookalike, for that matter.
I think that, maybe … well, that maybe she is Audrey Hepburn.
I warned you I’d sound crazy.
I mean, what am I actually saying here? That Audrey Hepburn is miraculously, Lazarus-like, back from the dead? And that instead of coming back from the dead to visit her beloved family, or continue her charity work for UNICEF, she’s dropped by my titchy little flat in Colliers Wood instead?
No: of course I’m not saying that. Nobody comes back from the dead, to Colliers Wood or anywhere else, for that matter.
But the way those eyes are looking at me … and you can’t fake eyes. Yes, you can buy coloured contact lenses to make them the right shade of chocolate brown; yes, you can bung on a shedload of false eyelashes; yes, you can master the art of the perfectly feline kohl flick.

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