Читать книгу A Night In With Grace Kelly - Lucy Holliday - Страница 7

Hangover or no hangover, I’ve tidied the entire flat this morning – and hidden the offending copy of OK! safely at the bottom of the magazine pile – ready for Bogdan’s arrival at ten a.m.

Bogdan (Son of Bogdan) is – as the name might suggest – the son of my former landlord, Bogdan Senior, and now one of my greatest friends. He’s a part-time handyman and a part-time hairdresser (secretly, because his Moldovan crime-lord father would have a thing or two to say about the hairdressing if he knew about it), and both those skills have come in very handy to me since I got to know him. This morning, he’s popping over to help me put up a little flat-pack IKEA desk in the studio, so that I can work properly out of there until I decide exactly what to do with the space.

And, although he doesn’t know it yet, to discuss last night’s mystical arrival on the sofa. Because Bogdan is the only person in my life who’s undergone the full magical Chesterfield experience. My memory is forever imprinted, in fact, with the image of him sitting on the sofa, chattering away nineteen to the dozen with Marilyn Monroe, and – always the hairdresser – attempting to persuade her to ditch her trademark blonde (‘too much cliché, Miss Marilyn’) and become a brunette. Bogdan’s sang-froid in the face of the mind-boggling was nothing less than astounding and, though we’ve rarely spoken about it since, it’s been a huge relief to know that he’s in on the whole bizarre situation too.

I’ve just put the kettle on for one of Bogdan’s strong cups of black tea when there’s a knock all the way downstairs and I head down to let him in.

When I open the front door, he’s standing on the pavement outside wearing his usual air of mild-to-moderate tragedy, along with a pair of (extremely brave) rainbow-striped cargo trousers, and a T-shirt that informs me that Harry Styles Is Cute … But His Boyfriend Is Cuter.

I still can’t quite believe that his father hasn’t noticed anything about Bogdan yet. Though I suppose it’s possible that Bogdan leaves the family house in the morning wearing traditional Moldovan dress, or whatever else his scary dad would approve of, and then puts on his rainbow-themed, Harry-Styles-appreciating garb when he’s at a safe distance.

‘Good morning,’ Bogdan informs me now, in his usual lugubrious manner. ‘This is most exciting occasion.’

‘It is?’

‘New flat,’ he reminds me. He uses a huge hand to wave at the street. ‘In tiptop surroundings. Are you meeting celebrity neighbours?’

‘I don’t think I have celebrity neighbours.’

Bogdan makes a tsk noise before heading through the door and closing it behind him. ‘Of course you are having the celebrity neighbours. Is Notting Hill, Libby. Am thinking you will be bumping into Claudia Schiffer when you are popping to Whole Foods for guarana smoothies and cashew nuts. Am thinking you will be exchanging the nod with Elle Macpherson when you are going for early morning run. Am thinking …’

‘Hang on,’ I say, leading the way up the stairs. ‘What makes you think that now that I live in Notting Hill I’m automatically going to become some sort of healthy-living obsessive?’

‘But this is exactly what you must be doing!’ He sounds appalled that I’ve not considered this. ‘You are very pretty girl, Libby, but I cannot be making words into mincemeat.’

‘You’re not going to mince your words, you mean?’

‘Yes. Am saying that if you are successful jewellery designer living in Notting Hill, you are needing to be looking part.’ He gives my outfit – jeans and a grey hoodie, which to be fair to me I only slung on because I was tidying up this morning – a disapproving once-over. ‘Come to be thinking of it, guarana smoothie and early morning jog may be too advanced for now. Perhaps we are needing to be focusing on grooming basics before we are worrying about this.’

‘Thanks, Bogdan, but I don’t actually need your help with grooming basics …’

‘Am begging to be different. You are being in very urgent need of help with hair, for starters, Libby.’ He stares, in a woebegone fashion, at my straggly mouse-brown ponytail. ‘Am not able to be punching the pulls …’

‘Pulling punches,’ I correct him, and then, because I can’t deal with too many more incidents of Bogdan mangling his English idioms this morning, I go on, ‘Look, we can discuss my hair later. Right now, I need to talk to you about something more important.’

‘More important than hair?’

‘More important than hair, Bogdan, yes.’ I go over to the sofa and put a hand on the over-stuffed back. ‘It’s happened again.’

‘What is happening again?’

‘The sofa. You know. The … thing it does.’

His impassive face barely registers this, but then to Bogdan a magical sofa isn’t anything earth-shattering. He takes these things in his rainbow-coloured stride.

‘Someone new is appearing?’

‘Yes.’

He gazes down at the sofa. ‘Is Elizabeth Taylor?’

‘No.’

‘Is Jean Harlow?’

‘No.’

‘Is Ava Gardner?’

‘No.’ I lower my voice, though I couldn’t really tell you why. ‘It was … Grace Kelly.’

Just for a moment, Bogdan looks impressed. ‘I am loving her.’

‘Right, well …’

‘Seriously. Am being in love with her. She is my … how are you saying? Perfect woman.’

I glance at his Harry Styles Is Cute T-shirt. ‘Er … are you quite sure you have a perfect woman?’

‘There is no need for the being snarky. Am I ever asking you the personal questions about your specific sexual persuasions?’

‘Well, OK, no, you don’t ask me questions about my sexual persuasion, as such, Bogdan, no. But you’ve never exactly been shy about digging for details on my sex life with Dillon.’

My ex-boyfriend Dillon is – along with Harry Styles, Harry Styles’s ‘boyfriend’ and now, apparently, Grace Kelly – another person Bogdan has a heartfelt crush on.

‘Am falling in love with her,’ he goes on, lyrically, ‘from the moment am first seeing her in Mogambo. Was even trying to be growing moustache like Clark Gable, but is difficult as was only eleven at time.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought growing a Clark Gable moustache was difficult at age eleven. I’d have thought it was impossible.’

‘No, no. For me, this is perfectly possible. Is simply difficult as world is not ready for eleven-year-old boy with Clark Gable moustache. Am being on receiving end of the terrible mocking in streets of Chis¸ina˘u. Perhaps would have been different in London.’

‘I highly doubt that, to be honest with you.’

‘But Grace Kelly …’ Bogdan heaves a sigh. ‘Has ever there been such classical beauty? And such style! When am thinking of her in that wedding dress, am feeling—’

‘Yes, well, that wedding dress is what she popped up in last night,’ I say, hastily, before Bogdan can go any further down the route of the way Grace Kelly in her wedding dress makes him feel. ‘Right here on the Chesterfield.’

‘Right here?’ Bogdan murmurs, sitting down on the sofa and caressing, with one of his huge hands, the cushion beside him. ‘This is very exciting news, Libby. Very exciting indeed.’

‘Yes, I suppose it is exciting, kind of … I mean, she was a little bit bossy, to be honest with you. And she’s adamant that she’s the real one and I’m just popping up in a dream. As the manifestation of her subconscious.’

‘Is honour indeed,’ Bogdan says, ‘to be subconscious of Grace Kelly.’

‘Bogdan! I’m not her subconscious! Obviously.’

‘Of course. Am forgetting.’

‘And I don’t even know if she’s going to come back again, because she accidentally saw a magazine cover with her son on it and – well, I don’t know why, exactly – that made her vanish in a puff of smoke …’

‘Ah,’ says Bogdan, wisely. ‘This is very interesting Chicken McNugget of information.’

‘So, do you agree with me that we ought to try to find out a bit more? I wanted to ask you about that aunt you told me about the last time.’

‘Aunt?’

‘You told me once that you had an aunt who’s some sort of … I don’t know … mystic, or something.’ I feel foolish, to be honest, even saying the word. ‘And that she’s experienced this kind of thing before.’

‘The enchantment of the soft furnishings?’

OK, now I feel even more foolish.

‘Yes, Bogdan, the enchantment of the soft furnishings,’ I say, glad that it’s only me and him (and, possibly, the faint stirrings of Grace Kelly) in the room right now.

‘Ah, you are speaking of my Aunt Vanya. The sister of my father’s cousin’s second wife.’

This doesn’t sound much like an aunt to me, but I’m absolutely not about to get into a discussion of Moldovan cultural practices with Bogdan.

‘I was wondering if you could call her – this Aunt Vanya – and ask if she’d mind having a chat to me about it. Through you, obviously, so you can … er … translate.’

‘There is no need for making the call.’

‘Oh, OK, well, Skype, or something, then. I mean, whatever’s easiest, what with her being in Moldova.’

‘But Aunt Vanya is not living in Moldova. She is living in London. She is married to leading member of Haringey Council.’

‘Oh! That’s … I didn’t expect that.’ I’m really curious now. ‘And her husband – the Haringey Council man – he doesn’t mind that she’s a … a mystic? With a specialist knowledge of enchanted furniture?’

Bogdan shrugs. ‘He is man of world. Besides, he is experiencing some pretty strange things himself, in the cut-throat world of the politics of Haringey.’

‘Right. Well, I’d really appreciate it, Bogdan, if you could let me meet her some time soon?’

‘Will be getting in touch with her,’ he says, in a mysterious tone that makes me wonder if he’s planning to contact her by smoke signal, or Ouija board, or something, and then leaves me surprised when he simply pulls out his mobile phone. ‘The text message is probably the safest way. Last time I am speaking to her she is convinced her phone is being monitored by husband’s greatest rival, head of North London Waste Authority.’

‘OK, well, I’ll just nip up the road and get some milk for our tea, and maybe you could start taking a look at the flat-pack stuff while I’m gone?’

‘Yes, can be doing this. And after, we can be taking serious look at your hair.’

‘I’m fine with my hair, Bogdan.’

‘This is what is worrying me,’ he sighs. ‘Am sympathizing, Libby, that you are losing your soulmate. But this is no reason to be letting self go.’

‘I haven’t let myself go!’

‘Is important to be looking good for yourself, Libby, not just for man.’

‘I don’t have a man!’

He arches an eyebrow. ‘And you are never wondering why?’

OK, I’m not quite sure how I’ve ended up backed into this corner, but it’s a unique genius of Bogdan’s: to somehow bring us on to the topic of Men. More specifically, why I don’t have a Man. More specifically even than that, why I’m not, in the absence of anyone else in my life, going at it like a rabbit with my ex, Dillon O’Hara.

‘Am sorry for you,’ he’s going on, ‘that you are doomed never to be with your one true love …’

‘OK, I think doomed is a pretty strong way to put it. It’s just … the way the cookie has crumbled.’

‘… but this is no reason to hide away from the romance for the rest of life.’

‘I’m not hiding away from romance, Bogdan. And if you’re about to suggest that I’m doing anything of the sort, just because I’m not picking up the phone for a booty call with Dillon every night …’

‘Am not suggesting this. Well, am not saying this is bad idea …’ He looks serious – well, more serious than ever – for a moment. ‘But is time for you to be taking control of your own destiny. Am not saying has to be Dillon. But you are too young, Libby, to be coconut-shying away from men for ever. Too young and too pretty. And too nice.’

‘Oh, Bogdan.’ I feel a lump in my throat. ‘That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.’

‘Is nothing.’ His eyes narrow, for a moment. ‘Do not be thinking that this means am forgetting about catastrophe in hair department.’

‘Heaven forfend.’ I pick up my bag. ‘And I promise you, Bogdan, just for saying all that, the very next time I meet a tall, handsome stranger – because they’re just crawling out of the woodwork, obviously – I’ll let him sweep me off my feet and give me the full fairy-tale ending I so richly deserve, OK? Just for you.’

‘This,’ says Bogdan, evidently not picking up on my attempt at irony, ‘is what am wanting to be hearing.’

Then he goes back to texting Aunt Vanya while I head down the stairs, out of the front door, and towards the main road to buy the milk.

I pull my phone out of my pocket as I go, so I can take the opportunity to FaceTime Nora back. She’s heading down to London later this week – a rare enough occurrence, unfortunately – to drop her daughter Clara off with her parents so that she and Mark can have a weekend away for their first wedding anniversary. We need to speak, even if only briefly (which, what with work and baby-feeding and what seems like endless hours trying to convince Clara that she actually wants to go to sleep, our calls always are, anyway) to arrange how and where we’re going to meet each other for the couple of hours that she’s here. A hasty coffee, a cheeky glass of wine …

‘Nora!’ I say, already feeling approximately six thousand per cent more cheerful as her face pops up on my phone. ‘I’ve caught you!’

‘Hi!’ she says – or rather, mouths at me. Her eyes are rather wide and she’s looking slightly terrified. ‘Hang on a sec …’ she adds, still mouthing, before vanishing from the screen for a moment. Everything goes rather wobbly, and then black, before she reappears a couple of moments later, still looking faintly terrified but talking normally. Well, in a loud whisper. ‘Sorry! I’ve literally only just got her down for a nap! In five minutes’ time a bomb could go off in her room and it wouldn’t wake her, but right now a pin might drop in the street outside and she’ll bloody wake up again. I’m just going,’ she adds, ‘up to the top-floor bathroom. It’s the opposite side of the house, so if I lean out of the skylight there, she won’t hear me talking.’

‘Lean out of the skylight?’ I’m slightly alarmed; I’ve only been to Nora’s new house up in Glasgow once, but it’s a four-storey townhouse with a paving-slab patio for a garden. ‘You’ll be careful, won’t you?’

‘Oh, yes, yes, I do it all the time! And frankly, Lib, I’d rather risk plummeting to my death on the patio below than risk waking her up!’ Nora adds, cheerfully. ‘How’s everything down there?’ she asks. ‘I gather you had an evening out with Olly last night?’

‘Yes. Um, did he tell you that, or did—’

And suddenly, I’m taking off.

Literally, I mean: into the air. My feet are leaving the pavement, and I fly up, up, sideways and up … before landing – ow – on my backside on another bit of the pavement about five feet away.

I sprawl there for a moment, too dazed to really understand what’s happened, until I see a man’s face hovering over me.

‘Oh, my God! Are you all right?’

‘Hnh?’

‘Can you move? Can you talk? Do you think anything’s broken? Did you hit your head?’

I don’t know how to respond to any of these questions. So I just say, again, gormlessly, ‘Hnh?’

‘Oh, God, you can’t talk … I’m calling an ambulance … Esti, call an ambulance!’ he says, over his shoulder, to whoever it is who’s with him.

‘No, no, don’t do that!’ I sit bolt upright, and it’s only thanks to his sharp reactions that we don’t end up cracking our foreheads together.

He is, I notice the moment I sit up, incredibly handsome.

I mean, incredibly.

He’s dark-haired, blue-eyed and long-lashed, with skin the colour of vanilla fudge. It’s quite an astonishing combination.

I’m interrupted, though, in my reverie by the sudden appearance of the Esti he just called out to.

‘Everything OK here?’ she asks, sticking her head over the man’s shoulder. ‘What can I do?’

‘Don’t call an ambulance. I can talk! Fine I am. I mean,’ I say, correcting myself from talking like Yoda, or one of the characters from a Dr Seuss book, ‘really, I’m absolutely fine.’

‘But you went right over.’

His accent, like his delicious skin colour, is also hard to place. It’s a little bit American, a little bit British, a little bit … Dutch? Scandinavian? As he starts to help me to my feet, I can feel some impressive muscles in his arms and back. Which makes sense, because he’s wearing running gear and a jacket that says FitRox Training. He must be one of the trainers from the gym just along the road, the one Cass mentioned she’d trained at. And this Esti woman is, presumably, one of his clients – or, more likely, even another trainer, because she’s super-fit-looking, too, with Madonna-esque arms and Ninja Turtle abs visible under the edge of her cropped running top.

‘And you look a bit … pale.’ The personal trainer guy looks worried. ‘I think you should have a hot drink, something with sugar in …’

‘Oh, that’s OK, I was actually just on my way to get milk for tea.’

‘I’ll get you a cup of tea.’

‘That’s all right, honestly.’

‘Don’t be silly. I’m buying you a cup of tea. It’s the least I can do.’ He turns to point up to the main road. ‘Starbucks OK?’

‘Yes, sure, but really—’

‘Esti, maybe you could pop up and get some tea?’ he suggests, to super-fit Esti, who is still jogging, slightly annoyingly, on the spot. ‘I’ll wait here with … sorry, I didn’t even get your name before I knocked you into next Tuesday.’

‘Libby.’

‘I’ll wait here with Libby,’ he adds, ‘so she can have a bit of a sit-down for a moment. Here,’ he suggests, guiding me to a low wall outside one of the houses on the street. ‘We’ll just sit here for a moment, and my very kind – er – friend Esti will go and get you something to drink.’

‘Sure,’ says Esti.

Although, come to think of it, it was probably more of a sure? As in are you sure? Because the personal trainer guy gives a little nod of the head, and it’s only then that she jogs off in the direction of Starbucks.

I’m still a bit dazed, as I watch her pert, Lycra-clad buttocks round the corner and disappear.

‘Can we chat a little bit?’ the personal trainer asks. ‘Just so I can reassure myself you don’t have a terrible concussion, or anything equally alarming.’

‘Oh, yes, right.’ I glance at him. Wow. He’s even better-looking, now that I’m upright and a bit more sentient, than I realized. Once you can see past those incredibly bright-blue eyes and that vanilla-fudge skin, you get to see that he’s also got a handsome jawline, and full, soft lips, and … bloody hell, even his ears are attractive. ‘Are you supposed to ask me who the prime minister is, and stuff?’

‘Yeah, that’s the sort of thing. Days of the week might do, too.’

‘Ah. Trouble is, I’m never that good on days of the week even under normal circumstances. I had a head injury about a year ago, and even then I was never sure if I couldn’t name the day of the week because I was concussed, or because I honestly for the life of me can never remember if it’s a Tuesday or a Thursday.’

‘Oh, God, you’ve already had a recent head injury?’ He looks appalled. ‘Are you sure we shouldn’t be getting a cab to the hospital?’

‘I’m honestly fine. Besides, it was a year ago. And it’s Wednesday today. See?’

‘Impressive.’ He smiles at me, looking a little bit less stressed.

I smile back. ‘So, you work on this street, right?’

‘Sorry?’

‘The jacket. You’re a personal trainer, obviously. At FitRox.’

He glances down at his jacket and touches the logo for a moment. ‘That’s … well-spotted.’

‘My sister trained there a while ago, when she thought she might get a spot on Strictly Come Dancing.’

‘How … er … extraordinary.’

‘That she thought she might get a spot on Strictly Come Dancing? Well, in a way, yes, because she can’t really dance for toffee. But she is reasonably well known, so it wasn’t a total shot in the dark, I guess. I mean, she wasn’t just some random fan of the show, thinking she might get given a chance to go on it, or something …’ I’m blithering, I know. It’s the effect very handsome men have on me. ‘So, what’s your name?’ I add, because if I can get him talking, that ought to stop me.

‘Joel. My name’s Joel. I …’ He stops. He’s staring at me. ‘You know, Libby,’ he says, after a moment, ‘I’d really appreciate it if you’d do one thing for me.’

‘Sure. Anything.’

Though I’m not a hundred per cent certain that promising a strange man, even one as apparently nice as this one, that you’ll do anything is necessarily the most sensible idea I’ve ever had.

‘I mean, within reason, of course,’ I add, hastily.

‘God, yes, yes, of course.’ He fixes his blue eyes on to mine; they’re incredibly earnest and seem to be looking deep into me. ‘The question is, do you think it would be within reason for you to come out to dinner with me tonight?’

This is absolutely not what I was expecting.

‘I mean, you may not be free …’ he adds. ‘In fact, you may not even be single …?’

‘Oh, I’m single. And I’m free,’ I go on. ‘This evening. But … look, there’s really no need to take me out to dinner to apologize again.’

‘Then I won’t apologize again. For the entirety of our dinner, not a single word of regret or remorse shall pass my lips.’

I smile. ‘I’ll hold you to that.’

‘Good. It’s settled, then. What works for you? I could come and pick you up from … sorry, do you live around here, or something?’

‘Yes, I live on this street. I’ve just moved in. Well, I’m living above my new studio, really – I’m a jewellery designer – and I don’t own it, or anything, it’s just …’ I stop myself blithering again. ‘Yes, you could pick me up here. I guess it’ll be convenient for you, too, after you’ve finished work?’

‘Yes, it will. So … eight-thirty?’

‘Yes. That would be lovely.’

‘Terrific. Shall we go for a drink first and then we can decide what we fancy. To eat, I mean,’ he adds, quickly. ‘Sound good?’

‘Sounds great.’

‘Great. Ah, here comes Esti, with the tea …’

And here, too, at the same moment, comes Bogdan, who must have glanced out of the window and seen me sitting on the wall over the road.

And who, I’ll wager, also spotted the incredibly handsome man sitting next to me.

‘Libby?’ He breaks into a little jog himself as he crosses the road. ‘What is surpassing?’

‘Nothing. Just a very small accident. This is a friend of mine,’ I say, hastily, to Joel, just in case he hasn’t noticed the rainbow trousers and the Harry Styles T-shirt, and thinks Bogdan is my boyfriend, or something. ‘And I should really let you get on with your run.’

‘I just got you an English Breakfast,’ Esti is saying, in a pretty indefinable accent of her own, as she reaches us. She hands over a large Starbucks cup. ‘Is that all right?’

‘It’s great, thank you, it’s really kind of you.’

‘OK, well, if you’re sure you’re OK,’ Joel says, getting to his feet, ‘we’ll leave you in the capable hands of … er …’

‘Bogdan,’ Bogdan intones, gazing at Joel with a similar expression on his face to the one he had when he was mooning about Grace Kelly earlier. ‘Am extra-delighted to be making the acquainting of you.’

‘Please,’ I say, rather desperately, ‘continue your run. I’ll see you this evening.’

‘Eight-thirty,’ Joel reconfirms. ‘Looking forward to it. See you later, Libby.

Bogdan and I stand and watch as Joel and Esti jog away in the general direction of the park.

‘Am never knowing,’ Bogdan says, in a marvelling whisper, ‘how you are doing it.’

‘How I’m doing what?’

‘Having the super-hot men fall before you like the dead moths in the flame.’

‘He didn’t fall before me. He’s invited me out to dinner because he felt bad about knocking me over.’

Bogdan snorts. ‘This is your biggest problem, Libby. That you are naïve. That you are not seeing the thing that is staring in your face.’

‘Hang on, I thought my biggest problem was that I won’t let you give me a proper fringe.’

‘You are having,’ he clarifies, ‘many problems. But biggest problem of all is that you are never paying attention to the Destiny. Are you not just saying that you are waiting for dark, handsome stranger to sweep you off the feet?’

Oh.

I suppose I did say that.

But … you know. In jest.

I wasn’t actually expecting a dark, handsome stranger to … well, quite literally sweep me off my feet.

Before I can think about this too long or hard, my phone starts to ring. It’s ringing, in fact, from somewhere in the nearby gutter, where it must have been knocked when I went flying.

‘It’s Nora,’ I tell Bogdan. ‘I’d better get it. She’ll be wondering why I vanished so suddenly.’

‘All right. But do not be taking too long. Will be finishing the flat-pack furniture in half-hour and then we can be sorting out hair before tonight’s hot date.’

I answer the phone to Nora’s worried face, and begin the explanation about where I suddenly disappeared to as I follow Bogdan, feeling rather sore as I do so, back towards my front door.