Читать книгу Lucy Holliday 2-Book Collection: A Night In with Audrey Hepburn and A Night In with Marilyn Monroe - Lucy Holliday - Страница 13

Bright daylight streaming in through the skylight is the first thing that wakes me up.

The second thing is the most appalling smell.

It’s not the Chesterfield.

What I mean is, it’s not only the Chesterfield, despite the fact I’ve been asleep with my head wedged into the back of one of its doggy-smelling cushions all night. It’s something even worse, something pungent and eye-watering …

Yesterday’s cheese.

Oh, God, yesterday’s cheese.

The Brie de Meaux, the Fourme d’Ambert, and the specially aged Comté. Oh, and the mystery goat’s cheese from Le Marathon. I forgot to give them to Olly and I’ve left them, by mistake, out of the fridge all night. Sitting in that broad shaft of sunlight that woke me up, and that’s probably been pouring through the skylight for at least an hour now.

I scramble off the sofa, pull my T-shirt up over my nose and mouth in the fruitless hope that it might take the edge off the pong, and delve into one of my boxes for a plastic bag I can scrape the cheeses into.

God, what an awful shame. All that gorgeous cheese, gone to waste. And I didn’t even get to see Olly’s face when I gave him the mystery cheese. Didn’t get to try it with him, our eyes closed in fierce concentration, as we tried to work out whether or not it was exactly the same taste and texture as the one we devoured on the Eurostar ten years ago.

I press the bag down to get the air out of it, knot it tightly (to discourage the Brie from making a break for freedom) and head for the door. There must be a rubbish bin area round the back of Bogdan’s takeaway where I can dispose of it.

As I open the door, though, I’m distracted from the smell of the cheese by the fact that there’s an enormous builder’s bum on the landing.

Attached to an enormous builder, that is: a man in low-slung paint-spattered jeans and – slightly unusually – a fuchsia-pink T-shirt, kneeling on the landing with his head in the bathroom doorway, fiddling with the plumbing at the back of the bidet.

He turns round when he hears me (or, more likely, when he smells me).

‘Good morning,’ he says, in a heavy Russian (Moldovan?) accent. ‘Am Bogdan.’

‘You’re not Bogdan.’

Because Bogdan is fiftyish, and moustachioed, and more than just a little sinister. Whereas this bloke is twentyish, and clean-shaven, and looks as if he wouldn’t say boo to a goose. As well as the whole fuchsia T-shirt thing, which sets him apart from the besuited Bogdan in more ways than one.

‘Bogdan is my father.’

‘Ohhhhhh … so you’re Bogdan, Son of Bogdan,’ I say, aware that I’m talking like one of the space crew from The Time Guardians when they encounter yet another episode’s worth of aliens.

‘Am Bogdan, Son of Bogdan,’ he agrees. ‘Am here for finishing off bathroom. Have fitted extracting fan. Will be putting up mirror’ – he nods at a full-length mirror, propped against the wall beside him – ‘on back of door. Right now am fixing bidet.’

‘Right. The thing is, um, Bogdan, that I don’t really need the bidet fixing. What I’d really, really like – and I have already mentioned this to your father, in fact – is for the partition wall in my flat to be taken down.’

‘Am not able to do this,’ he says, with a mournful shake of the head. ‘Am however happy,’ he adds (which is interesting as he doesn’t look ‘happy’ to be doing anything at all) ‘to be looking at problem with drain.’

‘I don’t think there is a problem with drain.’

‘Then what is smell?’

‘Oh, that!’ I wave the cheese bag at him. ‘I stupidly left some cheese out overnight, and … shit, sorry!’

My waving arm has caught the full-length mirror by the corner, tipping it sideways for a moment, until Bogdan, Son of Bogdan, with surprisingly lightning reflexes for one so large, shoves out a hand to stop it.

Which is when I get a look at my reflection.

‘Oh, my God!’

I put a hand to my hair.

My unevenly cropped hair, with a fringe at the front.

‘Something is wrong?’ Bogdan asks.

‘Yes! My hair!’

‘Is looking bit strange, is true.’

‘That’s not what I—’

‘As if you are madwoman. Who is cutting own hair. With breadknife.’

Bogdan’s (slightly brutal) opinion of my appearance is the least of my concerns.

Because it’s all coming back to me now … Audrey Hepburn appearing in my flat last night, before my very eyes … all that stuff with the Nespresso machine … me losing it a bit when I couldn’t find the pods … Audrey Hepburn suggesting a haircut …

But it was all a hallucination. I mean, I know that.

Which means that not only did I vividly imagine an evening in with Audrey Hepburn last night, but at some point during the course of this hallucination, I set about my own head with a pair of scissors.

Or, if Bogdan Son of Bogdan’s opinion is to be trusted, a breadknife.

Either way, it doesn’t sound the safest thing I’ve ever done.

And might just mean that the ‘madwoman’ description isn’t far off, after all.

‘Are you needing to be getting that?’

‘What?’

He’s pointing into the flat, where – I’ve just heard it, too – my phone is ringing.

‘Oh, yes … I suppose …’ I stumble back inside the flat and pick up the phone without checking who’s calling. Which is a huge mistake, because it’s my mother.

‘Libby?’

‘Mum, hi … look, this isn’t a very good time, actually.’

‘What the hell is going on?’

The even-more-than-usually-hectoring tone of her voice makes me think, for a moment, that she must somehow know about everything that’s gone on in (and to) my head in the last twelve hours.

‘I don’t know, Mum …’ My voice wobbles. I put a hand to my hair and pull fretfully at the disastrous fringe. ‘I guess it has to be the stress of the move, and what happened at work yesterday …’

‘What happened at work yesterday?’

So she doesn’t know. Well, right now, when I’m feeling this shaky, is not the time to tell her.

‘Right now is not the time to tell me,’ she snaps, as though she’s implanted some sort of device into my iPhone that allows her to read my mind (she couldn’t have done, could she?). ‘Are you on your way, at least?’

‘On my way …?’

‘To my flat! Have you forgotten what day it is?’

I have to rack my brains here … it’s June, so it can’t be her birthday … or Cass’s birthday …

‘Cass’s big night! The Made Man’s Hundred Hottest party! Aren’t you going to come and help get her ready?’

I sink into the smelly Chesterfield, where I’d rather spend every single minute of today rather than subject myself to Mum. Even the excitement of Cass’s Big Night won’t be enough to distract from the hysteria that will ensue when I show up, with my hair looking like this, to break the news about my unceremonious sacking.

‘The thing is, Mum, I’m not feeling all that well.’

‘So take a painkiller.’

‘It’s not pain, really, so much as something … viral.’ Yes! The perfect solution. I cough, loudly. ‘And obviously I can’t possibly risk giving anything to Cass, not before her big night.’

‘Rubbish. If it’s a virus it’ll take twenty-four hours for her to catch it,’ Mum says, briskly (and without, as far as I can see, the slightest bit of medical knowledge to back up this view). ‘Now, get a move on and get over here. We need someone to pop and get some lunch, and Cass’s dress needs picking up …’

‘Well, can’t you do all of that?’

‘Liberty!’ she hisses into the phone. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You know I need to stay with her while she has her extensions done, otherwise she’ll get carried away and end up looking like Lindsay Lohan on a bad hair day.’

‘Better that than a hobbit,’ I mutter.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Just get here,’ Mum says. ‘Now.’ And hangs up.

‘I am able to be fixing for you.’

Bogdan Son of Bogdan is hovering in the doorway. (I think he’d have come in, but there might not actually be room for him in the flat.)

‘It’s all right, Bogdan. I’ve got to go out. I’ll worry about the partition wall later.’

‘Am talking about hair. I am able to be fixing.’

I grab my grey hoodie from the heap it’s in on the floor and pull it on. ‘Thanks, Bogdan, but I only got into this mess in the first place because I didn’t wait for a professional to sort it out.’

‘Am professional.’ He reaches round into his back pocket, the one displaying the builder’s bum a few moments ago, and pulls out a little black leather case. This he opens to display a couple of pairs of shiny silver scissors and a small comb. ‘Please,’ he adds, in a low voice, ‘do not be telling father.’

‘That you … er … carry a little grooming kit wherever you go?’

‘That am trainee in hair salon. Evenings and weekends. In West End. Am good enough for West End. Also, West End is further from Colliers Wood. Is safer,’ he adds, meaningfully, and in a way that suggests he’s just as intimidated by Bogdan Senior as I am. Then he puts his huge head on one side and studies me for a moment. ‘Cannot be promising miracle,’ he says. ‘But can certainly be making look less like brush from toilet.’

I suppose I don’t really have anything else to lose.

A bit more hair, is all. But frankly even a Number One buzz-cut all over might be less of a disaster than my self-imposed do. At least it would look like a deliberate style statement, and not like I’ve gone loopy and set about myself with the breadknife.

Resignedly, I slump back down onto the Chesterfield. ‘All right. Give it a go.’

He slips one of the pairs of scissors out of the leather case. ‘Is not quite Mayfair salon. Try not to be thinking about smell.’

‘Oh, God, the cheese …’

‘Will be working fast, do not worry.’ He’s already started to snip. ‘Then you can be getting rid of cheese.’

‘Thank you, Bogdan, Son of … actually, I’ll just call you Bogdan, if that’s OK with you.’

‘Is fine. And is no need to be thanking. Is good practice. Besides this,’ he adds, scissors starting to fly, ‘am thinking you are having decent bone structure, if am able to find it.’

*

He found it.

Look, I’m not going to claim Audrey cheekbones. But Bogdan (Son of, etc) was right: I do have decent bone structure, and his super-short pixie crop has brought it out.

His genius scissors have done something feathery and choppy with all those dreadful wonky ends, and he’s shaped the disastro-fringe so that it makes my face look heart-shaped instead of hobbit-shaped.

It’s no mean achievement.

Honestly, if I were Bogdan Senior, I wouldn’t be banning a career in hairdressing and casting all kinds of aspersions (including some frankly unpleasant homophobic ones; Son Of told me quite a lot about his dad while he was snipping away), I’d be using my property empire to set Son Of up in a swanky salon all of his own as soon as possible, sit back and watch the satisfied customers roll out and the money roll in.

But disapproving parents are hard to deal with. And mine may not be a minor Moldovan crime lord, but I’m heartily glad that I’m able to arrive at Mum’s flat, now looking a lot less like brush from toilet than I did an hour ago.

Well, I say I’m arriving at her flat; actually I’m arriving at the sprawling new property development, taking up almost an entire block behind Baker Street, where Mum’s flat is located. It’s all very swanky and all very ‘Mum’: not just residential buildings but also several chichi shops, a couple of Hot New bars and restaurants, plus an über-hip day spa and gym – FitLondon – that’s already attracting an eager celebrity clientele to its acro-yoga classes and chakra-balancing massage treatments.

It takes me several minutes to wend my way past all of this, and the most expensive townhouses and apartments, to reach the small studio flats right at the back of the development, but I find number 710 without too much difficulty, having helped Mum move in here a few nights ago, and ring the bell.

Mum opens the door a moment later.

At least, I think it’s Mum.

Unless I’m seeing Hollywood legends again. Because the creature standing in front of me looks, thanks to the bizarre amount of hair covering it from head to waistline, an awful lot like Chewbacca.

‘What do you think?’

It’s Mum’s voice coming out from under all the hair, not Chewbacca’s plaintive roar, thank goodness.

‘I got Stella to do some extensions for me too, while she’s here!’ she adds. ‘Freshen myself up before summer school starts!’

(I should explain: Mum is using the proceeds from the sale of the house in Kensal Rise – the part she didn’t spend on a titchy studio apartment just off Baker Street – to buy a ‘Gonna Make U a Star’ franchise. They’re stage schools with after-school, Saturday morning and holiday-time acting, singing and dancing classes for children, exactly the sort of thing Cass (and I, somewhat less enthusiastically) used to attend. Mum’s new branch will be up and running, in a primary school back in Kensal Rise, a couple of weeks from now.

‘It looks … er …’

‘Cass says it makes me look ten years younger.’

This means that Cass has simply nodded, without bothering to listen, and whilst simultaneously texting, flipping through OK! and watching back episodes of Keeping Up with the Kardashians on her iPad.

But still, I’ll fib and agree, because life’s just easier that way.

‘They’re great, Mum. Really very—’

‘Oh, my God, Libby.’ She’s swept back a hank of extension and is now able to see out. ‘What have you done to your hair?

So much for my freshly discovered cheekbones. So much, in fact, for the fact that after Bogdan trimmed my hair, I felt so good that I even braved a slight change from my usual jeans and grey hoodie, rooted around in my wardrobe boxes and dug out the black Burberry trench-coat I bought in a designer discount sale when I was feeling unusually flush with money having done a radio voiceover ad a few years ago. And which has remained unworn ever since, because I never felt chic enough to pull it off until now. I mean, I’ve still got my jeans and a grey hoodie on underneath, to be fair. Which is probably stupid of me because, I’ve only just realized, the hood will be bulging at the back and making me look less like Audrey Hepburn and more like the Hunchback of Notre-Dame.

‘Don’t you like it?’ I ask Mum.

‘That’s not the point.’ She stands back as I go through the door into the flat, folds her arms and gives me a long, disapproving once-over. ‘Long hair is so much more versatile! What if you want to audition for a period drama? RTE have just started casting one on the lives and loves of the Brontë sisters, as it happens.’

‘Oh, Mum, I’m not sure if I’m really cut out to play a Brontë, no matter what my hair—’

‘No, darling, I was going to suggest you try out for a part as one of the servants. I was talking to the casting director yesterday – I mean, don’t you think Cass would just be perfect as Emily Brontë? – and my radar went on for you when she mentioned that they’re going to need loads of non-speaking actors to play the housemaids and the village yokels. Stuff like that.’

I’m not sure what I’m more depressed by: Mum’s certainty that the very highest I can possibly rise in my career is playing a non-speaking housemaid-slash-village yokel, or the (frankly horrifying) image of Cass murdering the role of Emily Brontë.

‘But they won’t look twice at you if you turn up looking like that!’ Mum complains. ‘Wigs are way too expensive to bother wasting them on the extras!’

‘Well, it’s done now. And, in all honesty, Mum, I’m not sure I really want to go up for another non-speaking role in anything. In fact, I’ve been thinking that it might be time to look for another job. A non-acting job, I mean. I’m not sure exactly what, right now, but …’

‘I suppose they might be able to put you in a mob cap, or something,’ she muses. ‘Perhaps if you wore one when you went to the audition … or a straw bonnet, maybe, like a yokel might wear …’

‘Muuuuuum! Is that Libby? Is she finally here?’

I’m actually grateful for Cass bellowing for me, for once, before Mum can suggest any more Ye Olde Country Bumpkin regalia for me to wear to an audition I don’t want to go to.

‘Yep, Cass, I’m right here.’

I slip past Mum and up the stairs to the bedroom, where Cass is currently sitting on the bed like Lady Muck, while her usual hairdresser, make-up artist, and maid of all work, Stella, is hanging plastic sheeting all over the en-suite shower room.

I’d be a bit concerned that something right out of an episode of Dexter is going to happen if it weren’t for the fact that Stella is surrounded by spray-tan equipment, and that Cass is lazily scooping her freshly extended hair up into the huge polka-dot shower cap she only ever uses when she’s about to be St-Tropez’d to within an inch of her life.

‘Oooooooh, Libby!’ Stella stops what she’s doing and stares at me out of the en-suite door. ‘I love your hair!’

I’ve always liked Stella, who’s an old friend of Cass’s from stage-school days (before sensibly deciding to opt out of show business and start up her own mobile-beautician business instead) but I like her now more than ever.

‘Thank you!’ I beam at her.

‘Are you nuts, Stell?’ Cass, still fiddling with her shower hat (and yes, she does indeed have her phone in the other hand, and her iPad, plus a copy of OK!, open on the bed in front of her). ‘She burnt half of it off yesterday.’

‘Burnt it?’ Stella – and Mum, coming up the stairs behind me – ask, in unison.

‘Muuu-uuuum!’ Cass rolls her eyes. ‘I told you that already!’

‘You did no such thing!’ Mum says.

‘Oh. Well, I meant to. Libby burnt half her hair off yesterday and got fired. Hi, Lib,’ she adds, ‘can you go straight out to Starbucks and get me a … oh!’ She’s glanced up at me for the first time. She frowns. Then she scowls. ‘Your hair! You look … you look like …’

‘She looks just like Audrey Hepburn!’ Stella declares.

There’s no time for me to be thrilled by the comparison, because Mum is staring at me with her arms folded and her mouth pinched.

‘Fired, Libby?’ she says.

‘Yes, but it wasn’t my fault. Well, not completely. I had this little accident with a lit cigarette …’

‘And when were you going to mention it to me? Your mother. Your agent.’

‘It only happened yesterday,’ I say, in my most practised not-a-big-drama voice, so as to bring about a modicum of calm (growing up in a house with Mum and Cass, it’s a tactic I’ve used a lot over the years). ‘Anyway, I didn’t think it was worth bothering you with, when you’ve got so much on. You know, with Gonna Make U a Star, and everything.’

(This is another tactic I’ve used a lot over the years – changing the subject, mostly back to something Mum or Cass really want to talk about: themselves.)

‘She looks nothing like Audrey Hepburn,’ Cass is pouting, staring at me in the mirror, then looking at herself, then back at me again. ‘Maybe I should go short. What do you think, Stella?’

‘After three hundred quid’s worth of hair extensions?’ Stella asks.

‘Well, if Libby looks that good, I’d look amazing.’

‘You are not cutting your hair!’ Mum barks at her. ‘It’s bad enough I have one daughter who looks like a lesbian!’

‘Honestly, Marilyn,’ Stella says, ‘you need to chill. Libby looks great!’

‘Stella, please.’ Mum is icy. ‘Can you just get on with Cass’s tan, please, and leave the serious family matters to us?’

‘Mum, for God’s sake, it isn’t a serious family matter. I mean, it might have been, if the accident with the cigarette had been any worse,’ I add, pointedly, because it occurs to me that Mum hasn’t expressed the slightest concern about this part of it. ‘But really, it’s not a huge deal. In fact, it might even be an opportunity for me to—’

‘Not a huge deal? It was your first speaking part in five years! Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to get you that job?’

‘Oh, come on, Mum, it was only a shitty little one line part.’ Cass is getting off the bed, taking her robe off to display her pertly naked body, and heading for the shower room. ‘Vanessa found another random extra to do it about two minutes after she kicked Libby off the set.’

‘Thank you, Cass,’ I say.

‘You’re welcome,’ she says, completely missing my sarcastic tone.

I’m not so distracted by Mum’s growing histrionics, by the way, that it doesn’t occur to me to think: if Cass knows that my role was filled two minutes after I was thrown off the set, maybe she wasn’t otherwise occupied with Dillon O’Hara after all.

‘After all the work I’ve put into your career!’ Mum is saying, sinking onto the bed in a soap-opera-worthy display of grief. ‘I just don’t know how you could do this to me, Libby.’

This is the point, normally, at which my patience would run thin and I’d fling myself out of Mum’s apartment in a red-faced whirl of silent fury, slamming doors and muttering expletives, making 1) absolutely no headway with my mother, and 2) a bit of a fool of myself into the bargain.

But today is different.

It’s not just because of my new haircut, and the confidence it’s given me.

Actually, do you know what: it’s nothing to do with my new haircut, or the confidence it’s given me.

It’s because of last night, and my all-too-vivid encounter with Imaginary Audrey.

Just because I hallucinated her (and just because I hallucinated her being weird about my Nespresso machine and wrecking my hair with a pair of kitchen scissors; though mind you, the wrecked hair turned out not to be a hallucination after all) it doesn’t mean that her legendary poise and grace and loveliness felt any less poised and graceful and lovely. And though I’ll never have her cheekbones, her waistline, or her ineffable style, I feel like I might just be able to achieve a bit of her poise and grace, if I really make the effort.

So instead of flinging and slamming and muttering, I take a very, very deep breath, and say, in a voice of poised, graceful loveliness (well, not a sweary mutter, anyway), ‘Mum, come on. I haven’t done anything to you. It was all just a silly accident.’

‘Oh, really? Because right now, Liberty, I have to ask myself: how much of an accident could this possibly have been?’

Poised. Graceful. Lovely.

‘Mum. Seriously. Do you really think I’d have set my head alight on purpose?’

‘Well, I’m sure you didn’t do it actually on purpose. But you may have done it unconsciously on purpose.’

Poised. Graceful. Lovely.

‘I mean, I just find it interesting,’ Mum goes on, as if she’s garnered some sort of psychological expertise from a first-class degree at Oxford University, rather than a monthly subscription to Top Santé magazine and a secret addiction to Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle website, ‘that this so-called accident happens the very first time you get a speaking part in years. A speaking part I arranged for you.’

‘Mum …’

‘Or,’ she goes on, ‘it could have been because you subconsciously wanted to sabotage the whole thing before you had a chance to fail.’

‘Oh, for crying out loud!’ I snap, my poise and grace wobbling in the face of Mum’s torrent of psychobabble nonsense.

Unless … well, was I subconsciously sabotaging myself?

It has just the tiniest ring of truth about it, I have to admit.

‘You used to do it all the time when you were a little girl.’ Mum is on a roll now. ‘That time you accidentally-on-purpose stubbed your toe the day before the Cinderella audition, do you remember? I put it down to jealousy of your sister, because she was up for the part of Cinders and you were only trying out for the chorus, but now I’m wondering if it was nothing to do with Cass, and simply because you couldn’t handle the pressure …’

‘It was an am-dram panto! In Hounslow! There wasn’t any pressure!’

‘Well, of course there wasn’t, because you couldn’t audition and you never got the part! And what about your Year Five carol concert, when you had a solo line in Twelve Days of Christmas? You came down with a so-called sore throat half an hour before curtain-up.’

The way I recall this event, I still managed to croak my way, half a dozen times, through the ‘Six Geese A-Laying’ verse before collapsing straight after the concert with a fever of 103 degrees and then being in bed with tonsillitis for a week.

‘And what about that day when the Royal Ballet scouts were coming to Miss Pauline’s, and you slipped getting out of the shower and knocked yourself out on the towel rail …’

‘Mum, for the last time, it was an accident!’ All attempts at Audrey-esque poise have vanished. ‘And I didn’t come all the way over here this morning for a psychiatric evaluation!’

‘Yeah, Mum, there’s loads of stuff we need Libby to do!’ Cass calls from the bathroom, where Stella has started to blast her with fake-tan spray. ‘I need my dress picking up from the dry-cleaner’s and I need some Spanx picking up from the Selfridges lingerie department and I need my ruby pendant altering – so it highlights my boobs better, Lib, remember?’

‘I remember.’

‘… and I need my I’m Not Really a Waitress for my pedicure – that’s an OPI nail polish, Libby, by the way – and I need …’

‘I know it’s an OPI nail polish, Cass, thank you.’

‘Well, they’ll have it in the spa at FitLondon. And can you go there first, please, or my toenails will never be dry in time?’

I’ll be dispatched on any menial errand, to be honest, if it gets me away from Mum’s amateur-psychology codswallop.

‘Fine. I’ll go there first.’

‘This discussion is not over, Libby!’ Mum calls after me as I start to head down the stairs. ‘As soon as Cass’s big night is over …’

But I’m closing the front door behind me.

The worst is over, at least.

Because that’s the thing: as soon as Cass’s Big Night is over … what? Mum will just move onto the next project she’s earmarked for Cass – Emily Brontë, a Made Man magazine cover, Strictly Come Dancing; neither she nor Cass will care that much as long as it keeps her in the public eye – and my embarrassing sacking will be forgotten.

And when Mum does find three minutes to think about it again, and book me in for another extras job on whatever TV drama is particularly desperate right now, I’m just going to decline. Summon back a soupçon more of that Audrey poise and tell Mum politely, but categorically, No.

Of course, I do need to crack on with finding another job in the meantime. The rent on my new flat – even if I can persuade Bogdan Senior to halve it, which I doubt – isn’t going to grow on trees.

Rent money that, it only occurs to me as I approach the entrance to FitLondon, I’m just about to blow on OPI nail polishes and Spanx pants for Cass, because she didn’t give me any money to pay for it all and she’s notoriously bad at paying me back.

Obviously this isn’t going to fly, not now that I’m dealing with a minor Moldovan crime lord. I need to go back to Mum’s and get some cash from her, or I’ll be easily forty quid out of pocket before I know it.

As I turn away from FitLondon’s entrance doors, back towards the flat, my phone suddenly bleeps with a text.

It’s Olly:

Any decision on pie yet? The pie world is your oyster. Suggest, however, not oyster.

I smile, and start to text back:

Am willing to be guided by you on all matters pertaining to pies. Always enjoy that banof—

Before I can finish typing fee, I bump into a woman hurrying towards the doors. Literally bump into her, I mean: our arms tangle and we’d probably have bumped noses if it weren’t for the fact that she’s about a foot taller than me.

‘Sorry!’ I say.

‘For fuck’s sake, stop texting and watch where you’re bloody going!’ she barks.

This is slightly unfair – not to mention rude – because her head was down and she’s wearing a baseball cap pulled right over her eyes, which themselves are shaded in huge crystal-encrusted sunglasses, so I’d be surprised if she could see where she was going either. But I don’t expect much else from an A-list model, which I’m assuming she is. A-list because of the baseball cap and shades; model because she’s practically six foot tall in her gym shoes, with perfect melons of breasts jutting out of her skimpy cropped top. Familiar-looking breasts, if it doesn’t sound too weird to say that … I’ve seen them somewhere before – and recently, at that. She pushes past me to the FitLondon entrance, jabs a few times at the entry pad, and then strides through the sliding doors as they open.

It’s her rear view that clinches my suspicions. Her bum is pert, perfect, clad in tiny hot-pink yoga shorts and belongs, I’m pretty certain, to the girl I recently saw in the pages of Grazia, coming out of a nightclub with Dillon O’Hara: Rhea Haverstock-Harley, Victoria’s Secret model and assaulter of hairdressers.

And a moment later I’m absolutely certain, because about ten leather-jacketed paparazzi seem to appear out of nowhere, flashing their cameras in the direction of the doors and yelling, ‘Rhea! Rhea!’ after her as she vanishes inside and the doors close behind her.

Which is pretty definitive, let’s face it.

‘Stuck-up bitch,’ one of them mutters, charmingly, as they give up taking dozens of photos of a blank set of sliding glass doors and mooch back, en masse, to wherever it was they came from. One of the coffee bars in the piazza, I expect, because there’s no entry pad there, and nobody can stop them going in.

My phone pings, again, from inside my jeans pocket.

This time it’s not Olly – to whom I must send the pie reply, now I think of it – but Mum.

Tell spa to put nail polish on my account. Also u need entry code for FitLondon entrance. Is Cass’s birthday.

Of course it is. Mum’s code for pretty much everything is Cass’s birthday.

And it’s nothing to do with the fact that Cass’s birthday is the first of January, and so therefore a memorable date. My birthday is 14 February, as it happens, which is a pretty memorable date, too; but, as far as I know, Mum has never used that for anything.

Well, 0101 it is, then.

I turn back to the FitLondon entrance and key this in on the entry pad that Rhea Haverstock-Harley has just used. The doors slide open and I step through.

‘Sorry, sorry … coming through!’

This is from a short, rather podgy man, hurrying through the doors behind me. Extremely podgy, actually, given that he’s wearing a tracksuit and trainers and carrying a squash racket: isn’t squash meant to burn about a zillion calories each time you play? And are you even allowed to be this podgy (borderline obese, in fact) if you’re a member of a celeb gym, frequented by Victoria’s Secret models in bright pink hot pants? I feel scruffy enough as it is – and unwelcome, too, given the hatchet-faced receptionist bearing down on me as I take a few steps further into FitLondon’s hallowed halls.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ she yells – actually yells – at me.

‘I’m just here to get some nail polish,’ I say, completely astonished and – I have to say – already composing the complaint email to the FitLondon customer services team in my mind. ‘My mum’s a member here, so …’

‘Where did he go?’

‘Who?’

‘The man who came in with you!’ She glances, frantically, in all directions, before practically sprinting back along the hallway, an impressive feat in four-inch heels. Reaching a glass reception desk at the far end, she grabs a phone, dials a number, and then says into the receiver: ‘This is Pippa, on reception. Can you send one of the personal trainers out here, please? Some idiot member of the public let a paparazzo in!’

It takes me a moment to realize that the paparazzo must have been the plump man with the squash racket.

And that the idiot member of the public must be me.

‘Send Willi, if he’s around,’ Pippa the receptionist is going on. ‘I need one of the bigger guys like him, in case things get … well, where is Willi?’ There’s a short silence, while she listens to the reply on the other end and continues to glower at me. ‘Teaching a private yoga class? But I don’t see anyone booked in for private yoga on the system …’

Suddenly, a flicker of understanding passes across her face, and she turns rather pale beneath her perfectly sprayed-on tan.

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘That sort of private class.’

Then she bangs the phone down and heads for a door, right next to where I’m still standing, marked YOGA STUDIO 1.

‘Willi?’ she calls, knocking hard on the door. ‘Just to warn you and your – er – client … we’ve had a security breach, so just be …’

Before she can add careful, the door is flung wide open and the squash-racket-holding paparazzo is literally carried out, WWF-style, by a very tall, very wide blond man who looks as if he’s been hewn out of marble and who’s wearing nothing – and I mean nothing – except a tubular bandage on one knee.

Behind them, her crop top askew, and hoiking her pink hot pants back up from mid-thigh, is a purple-faced and livid-looking Rhea Haverstock-Harley.

‘The camera, Willi!’ she’s yelling at the large naked blond man. (Willi, evidently. Which, as it happens, is exactly where I’m trying not to look.) ‘Don’t throw him out until you’ve got his camera!’

‘You can’t take that!’ the paparazzo wheezes, as Willi grabs the Nikon strap around his neck – that was why he looked clinically obese; the huge camera hidden under his hoodie – and pulls it off. ‘That’s my property!’

‘And this is private property,’ Pippa the receptionist barks, scurrying to the sliding doors to press the Exit button. ‘You’re trespassing!’

‘She let me in!’ the paparazzo says, jabbing a finger in my direction. ‘If a member invites you in, it’s not trespassing!’

‘She’s not a member,’ Rhea Haverstock-Harley says. (Actually, more like asks. In an incredulous tone of voice. As in, ‘She’s not a member?’)

‘No, she’s not,’ Pippa confirms, crisply, as Willi finally wrests the Nikon from the paparazzo’s grasp, bends down and dumps him on the paving slabs outside the door.

I have time to feel a brief stab of sympathy for the prone paparazzo – not because of his unceremonious exit, but because nobody deserves that view of Willi (so to speak) – before I feel a sharp tap on my shoulder. It’s Rhea, towering over me like a semi-clad, platinum-blonde Gorgon.

‘What the fuck did you let him in for?’ she screams. ‘Who do you work for? The Sun? The Mail? Popbitch?’

I’m tempted, for one insane moment, to reply, ‘MI5, actually’, but decide against it. This is, after all, a woman with previous form for assault. Christ only knows what it was that the poor hairdresser did to deserve being smacked in the chops with a flying smartphone, but it couldn’t possibly have been as bad as accidentally outing her as a cheating strumpet.

‘No one,’ I say. ‘I don’t work for anyone. Though, actually, I did work with your boyfriend – Dillon, I mean – ever so briefly …’

‘He’s behind this?’ she spits. ‘I swear to God, if you tell him what you saw here today … well, you didn’t see anything, OK?’

‘Just a private yoga lesson?’ Willi suggests, his voice much more polite – and Swedish-sounding – than I was expecting.

‘A naked yoga lesson?’ I can’t help saying.

‘Nobody’s naked,’ Pippa says, soothingly, grabbing a towel from the stack on her desk and – thank God – handing one to Willi.

He folds it neatly in two and hangs it around his neck.

‘For fuck’s sake, Willi!’ Rhea yells, as Pippa grabs another towel and actually puts this one around his waist herself. ‘I’m serious,’ she adds, fixing her ocean-green eyes on me again with much the same expression as a Tyrannosaurus Rex probably used on whatever unfortunate herbivore crossed its path at lunchtime. ‘You didn’t see anything. So there’s nothing to report back to Dillon. Got it?’

‘Look, I don’t really know him, even. And I’m certainly not—’

She’s already spun round, and with a brisk, ‘Willi!’ over her shoulder, is marching back in the direction of Yoga Studio 1. To do whatever it is they were up to when the photographer caught them. Whatever it is that has Willi scampering after her like an eager bloodhound.

‘Naked yoga,’ I mutter, as the door closes behind them.

‘Yes.’ Pippa folds her arms and stares me down. ‘Naked. Yoga.’

‘Fine. Whatever.’ Because really, it’s no skin off my nose if Rhea Haverstock-Harley is getting naked with anyone, for yoga purposes or otherwise, beyond the fact that I think she’s certifiably insane for cheating on Dillon O’Hara with Big Blond Willi. ‘Can I go to the spa and buy some nail polish now, please?’

‘I’m sorry, this isn’t the entrance to the spa.’

‘Oh. Could you tell me how to get to the spa entrance, then?’

‘The spa is closed.’

It’s clear from her tone of voice that she means the spa is closed to me.

I’m not about to stand around and argue. Cass’s toenails aren’t worth the indignity.

‘OK, well, thanks anyway.’ I press the Exit button, relieved to feel the cool, unscented air on my cheeks, and almost equally relieved to see that the paparazzo has got up, dusted himself down and is walking back across the piazza, presumably to moan about his confiscated Nikon to his comrades.

And I need to go back to Mum’s and tell Cass she’ll have to send Stella out for her nail polish instead.

I’m halfway across the piazza when I see Dillon O’Hara walking towards me.

He’s talking into his iPhone.

‘… fourth message I’ve left for you this morning,’ he’s saying, tersely, into it. ‘I thought you might have gone to your yoga class, so I’m heading to your stupid bloody gym now. We need to talk about this, Rhea. Call me when you get this message …’

There’s a flicker of recognition in his eyes when he glances up from his phone, a moment later, and sees me a few feet away from him. He’s about to pass me by, I think, with the merest of polite smiles. Which would be fine by me, because I’m not sure I can look him in the eye after hearing him leave that message, and having just seen what Rhea is doing in her ‘yoga class’.

But the flicker of recognition has turned into – no pun intended – more of a spark.

‘Do I …’ He stops. ‘Sorry, do I know you from somewhere?’

‘Yes. From yesterday.’

‘Sorry, love, but I can barely remember what I had for breakfast this morning.’ He does look a bit rough, it’s true: unshaven and slightly bleary-eyed (albeit still simmeringly gorgeous). ‘You’ll have to remind me.’

‘I’m Libby. From The Time Guardians. Remember, with the, er, unfortunate cigarette incident?’

‘Oh, yeah! Of course! Fire Girl!’

Which is a much better nickname than I thought anyone would come up with. Quite charming, in fact. Makes me sound a bit dangerous, a bit sexy.

‘Did you do something different,’ he goes on, ‘to your hair?’

‘You mean apart from burning half of it off yesterday?’

He grins. ‘Apart from that, yeah.’

‘Well, I had to go bit shorter,’ I say, putting a hand to it, suddenly self-conscious. ‘You know, to even it out.’

He puts his own (perfect) head on one side and looks at me, hard, for a long, long moment.

‘It suits you.’

I’m unable to reply anything other than a mumbled, ‘Really?’

‘Absolutely. I’m liking the little …’ He wafts a hand near the top of my face. ‘This bit. The fringey thing.’

And then his phone bleeps.

While he reads the text that’s just come through on his phone, I digest (no, I savour) the last nine words he’s just said.

When he looks up again, his face is frozen.

He doesn’t say anything at all for a moment.

Then he says, ‘You know, I don’t know why more girls don’t get their hair cut really short. I mean, it makes a bit of a change, doesn’t it? You know, from all those long, swooshy manes.’

Rhea. He’s talking about Rhea.

Or, I suppose, any one of the fifteen bazillion other leggy Amazonian models he’s dated.

But, most likely, given the text message and the icy look on his face when he read it, Rhea.

I get this sudden twist, deep in my gut, on Dillon’s behalf. It’s sort of horrible to be standing right here with him knowing exactly what I’ve just seen Rhea doing with Big Blond Willi, and knowing that Dillon doesn’t have a clue.

He shoves his phone back into his jacket pocket. ‘So!’ he says, in a dangerously light-hearted tone of voice. ‘Looks like I’ve got a spare hour or two on my hands.’

‘Oh?’

‘Well, I thought I might be able to meet my sort-of girlfriend here – you know, that one you’ve been doing all that reading about in the gossip magazines, during your once-every-five-years trip to the dentist – but that’s not happening. Needs a massage. Pulled something in her yoga class.’

You have to give Rhea credit. Pulled something in my yoga class isn’t, technically, lying.

‘So I can get stuffed, apparently. Even if I blew off a big meeting with my agent to find her this morning.’

‘I’m really, really sorry, Dillon.’

He gives me a distinctly funny look. ‘Jesus, there’s no need to sound so devastated. My agent will forgive me.’

‘Of course. I just … feel bad. That you went to all the trouble. Cancelled your plans, and all that.’

The funny look softens. ‘That’s really sweet of you, darling.’

Darlin’.

I actually feel my heart jump up into my throat. And then stay there, so that I’m incapable of saying anything in reply.

‘Tell you what, Fire Girl. Why don’t you come and say more nice things to me while I eat my lunch?’

‘Hhnh?’

‘I’ve got a couple of hours on my hands, didn’t you hear?’

‘Yes, but …’

‘So I need someone to come with me while I eat my lunch. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m terribly, terribly famous. If I eat lunch alone, I’ll get pestered the entire time by people wanting their picture taken, wanting me to sign their bras, women shoving their phone numbers into my pocket …’

‘How awful for you.’

‘I know. It’s a burden.’ He glances over his shoulder at the coffee bars in the piazza and lets out a little shudder, though whether because he knows they’re full of paparazzi or because he just thinks they look a bit snooty and pretentious, I couldn’t say. ‘I know a great little sandwich bar not too far away from here. What say I treat you to a tuna baguette. Throw in a packet of Wotsits, too, if you like.’

The trouble with all this charming banter is that I don’t know if he’s serious, or joking.

And, let’s face it, the most embarrassing thing in the world right now would be for me to assume he’s being serious, stride out towards this sandwich bar with a spring in my step and a song in my heart, only for him to call out after me that he was just kidding. The best strategy, probably, is just to banter back.

‘Well, if you’re really serious about those Wotsits …’

‘Oh, I am. Deadly serious. Though, I warn you, you’ll have to spring for a can of Fanta out of your own pocket.’

‘That’s only reasonable.’

‘I’m glad you think so.’ He sticks an arm out into the road to hail a black cab that’s just trundling by, opens the door and jerks his head for me to climb in. ‘Hop in, then, Fire Girl. Your tuna baguette awaits.’