Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Harper 2017

Copyright © Angela Woolfe writing as Lucy Holliday 2017

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

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: 9780007583836

Ebook Edition © January 2017 ISBN: 9780007583843

Version: 2016-12-05

Contents

Cover

Title Page

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

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Lucy Holliday

About the Publisher

Minimalism. That’s the look I’ll have to say I was going for.

Clean lines, a sense of space, the total absence of clutter.

All of which are actually perfectly sensible ways to keep your living space, especially if, like me, you’re a designer by profession. It’s just that in my particular case, the sense of space and total absence of clutter in this, my brand-new flat, are less to do with any creative sensibility and more because of the fact that my last flat was roughly the size of a broom cupboard. So I barely own any furniture. The handful of furnishings I do own, which used to make the old place feel over-stuffed and faintly claustrophobic, barely even make a dent here in the new one.

And, to be honest, it’s not the worst thing in the world to pretend that all this empty space is a Design Statement rather than a mundane necessity. In half an hour’s time my investor, Ben, who’s just flown into London for a couple of days, is dropping round for a meeting. Bringing his BFF Elvira with him.

Elvira being Elvira Roberts-Hoare: ex-model, bohemian aristocrat, Ben’s chief talent scout and also, as of yesterday, my brand-new landlord.

I mean, her own flat, just a short distance away in South Kensington, is practically a museum to her incredible vintage fashion archive, with Ferragamo shoes displayed in a custom-made Perspex sideboard and Alexander McQueen scarves draped artfully over the soft furnishings. I know this not because I’ve ever been invited, obviously, but because I saw it in all its glory in a recent issue of Elle Decor magazine. My own attempts at turning this gorgeous flat into something worthy of Elle Decor are being seriously hampered by the fact that I don’t have an incredible vintage fashion archive to display like artwork. And, even if I did, it would be let down by my crappy and – as I’ve already said – paltry furnishings: a futon, an IKEA wardrobe, a glass coffee table and – last but absolutely not least – a huge and ancient Chesterfield sofa upholstered in apricot-coloured rose fabric and smelling of damp dog.

Actually, now that I look at it, the mere presence of the Chesterfield, in all its chintzy, overblown glory, is a bit of a strike against my claims that I’m deliberately styling this place in a minimalist fashion.

Though I’m also being hamstrung by the fact that my sister Cass showed up ten minutes ago and is somehow, in her own inimitable way, cluttering up the place. Handbag slung on the floor, tea sloshing out of her mug, and just generally sort of filling the room up with herself.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ she’s shrieking now, peering down at her phone, and splashing yet more tea on the floor beside her. ‘Zoltan’s ex has been speaking to the Mirror. It’s all over their website.’

This, by the way, is the latest in the long-running series of Massive Dramas that make up Cass’s lifehsq. A week ago, my little sister was outed for the three-month-long affair she’s been having with a Premiership footballer. A married Premiership footballer, to be more precise. And while I may be wearily familiar with her nasty little habit of getting involved with married men, this particular married man’s wife was not. The whole thing came as such a horrible shock to the poor woman, in fact, that she bodily threw her cheating scumbag of a husband out of their home and went on a rant on Mumsnet – a rant that was then picked up by the Daily Mail … The rest, as they say, is history.

It’s even made its sordid way into this week’s OK! magazine, a copy of which Cass brandished at me, with something disturbingly close to triumph, when she showed up at my door. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure that triumphantly brandishing a copy of OK! was the reason she showed up at my door in the first place. It certainly wasn’t to help me get my flat ready for my impending visitors.

‘I don’t know if it’s all that fair, Cass,’ I say, ‘for you to be the one talking about having no shame.’

Though frankly I don’t know why I bother continuing to express my disapproval over Cass’s extramarital shenanigans. It’s not like she’s paid the slightest bit of attention to me at any other time in the last three years. Her relationship with Zoltan – a Charlton Athletic defender and member of Bulgaria’s national team – is coming hot on the heels of her last married boyfriend, Vile Dave. (I called him Vile Dave, by the way, in my head; it wasn’t like that was actually his name, or anything.)

And, as I expected, she ignores me.

‘Isn’t there anyone I can complain to?’ she asks, dramatically. ‘Some sort of – I don’t know – union, or something?’

‘A union for women who’ve been sleeping with other women’s husbands?’

‘No!’ she says. ‘I meant someone to complain to about the constant press intrusion!’ Then she thinks about this for a moment. ‘Is there a union for women who’ve been sleeping with other women’s husbands, though? Because even if my situation is a bit unusual, me being a celebrity, and all that … if there was somewhere I could get some expert advice …?’

My sister (half-sister, if we’re being really specific, and on occasions like this, I have to say, I find myself emphasizing the half part) has her own reality TV show, Considering Cassidy. Hence her ‘celebrity’ status. Hence, I guess, the reason she’s made it into a quarter-page snippet in the OK! that’s now lying on my coffee table, with Prince Albert of Monaco and his lovely blonde wife Charlene smiling rather fixedly at me from the cover.

‘I honestly don’t think there’s a union for that, Cass,’ I say, firmly. ‘Now, look, if you don’t mind, lovely though it is for you to have dropped round to see my new flat …’

‘Oh, well done, Libby,’ she pouts, with a swish of her hair and another swill of her tea everywhere. ‘Nice way to drop your swanky new Notting Hill pad into the conversation.’

‘I wasn’t doing anything of the sort! Besides, it’s not my swanky new Notting Hill pad.’ I feel the need to point this out to Cass, partly because it all still feels a bit surreal to me myself. ‘I’m only living here because I’m renting the studio below.’

And because, despite the extremely hefty discount Elvira Roberts-Hoare is giving me on the rent of the ground-floor studio that Ben wanted me to start working out of – the posh address and upmarket surroundings making it ideal to use as a showroom – I still can’t afford to pay that and to rent somewhere else to actually live in as well.

But still, Cass is right about one thing. This side street, a little to the north of Notting Hill, is a hell of a lot swankier than anywhere else I’ve ever lived. And this flat is a hell of a lot swankier, too: a bit jumbled-up, with the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom crammed up on the top floor and this, the living room, here in the middle, but I’m never going to complain about that. I’m living here, in a particularly gorgeous bit of Zone One, pretty much for free. Sure, I have no security on the place, and Elvira can throw me out tomorrow if she decides to find a new, proper tenant, but it’s worth it for the sheer joy of living somewhere – anywhere – that doesn’t rumble every time a tube train passes underneath it and doesn’t have eye-wateringly pungent aromas wafting up from the takeaways below.

For the sheer joy of living and working somewhere this … fabulous.

‘You know, I had a personal trainer that worked in a private gym on this same road a couple of years ago, when I was getting in shape for Strictly. Or rather,’ Cass adds, bitterly, ‘when Mum led me to believe that I was in with a shot of getting Strictly.’ She’s perched her perfectly plump posterior on the arm of my Chesterfield. ‘I should probably go and start training there again and get in amazing shape, if I’m going to end up splashed all over the tabloids every five minutes.’

‘I’m sure they’ll lose interest soon,’ I say.

‘God, I hope so,’ she says, unconvincingly. ‘I mean, sure, in the olden days, I’ve never minded press intrusion. But this is different. My priorities are different now. I’m a mother.’

‘Cass. You’re not a mother.’

‘I am! I mean, Zoltan has two children, you know! Daughters! And if I end up marrying him …’

‘You’ve only been with him three months!’

‘… I’ll be their brand-new stepmother. Which, obviously, is going to be amazing. I mean, I’ve wanted to be a mother for, like, soooo long …’

I stop trying to arrange the sinfully expensive flowers I bought from a posh shop up the road, and stare at her. ‘Really?’

‘… but this way, I get to do the fun part without having to go through all the really shit stuff, too. You know, getting fat, and all that.’

‘Pregnant, Cass. Not fat. Pregnant.’

‘Well, you say that, Libby, but when I saw those christening photos of Nora, she looked absolutely massive! And that was, like, at least two months after she’d had the baby, right?’

‘It was four months,’ I say, defensively, because the Nora of whom Cass is speaking is my best friend of almost twenty years. I was the chief bridesmaid at her wedding last summer. I’m godmother to her eight-month-old daughter, Clara, for Christ’s sake. ‘And she didn’t look fat, she looked amazing.’

‘Yeah, well, either way, I’m not going to take the risk. Anyway, it’s not just the getting-fat thing. Little children cry, and they make a mess of stuff, and you’re really tired at night so you only get to have sex, like, three times a week and stuff … But then they get to, like, six, or nine or … well, whatever age Zoltan’s kids are … well, they’re just super-easy by then! You just hang out, and do really cute mother-daughter stuff like … talk about whatever boy bands they fancy, and …’ Inspiration clearly runs dry for a moment. ‘I don’t know … go for spa days?’

‘I don’t think nine year olds are really into spa days, to be honest with you.’

‘Well, I was. I had a lovely spa weekend with Mum for my ninth birthday!’

‘When I was thirteen …? I don’t remember us going to a spa with Mum that young.’

‘Oh, it was probably a weekend when you were at your dad’s, or something … Hey, I remember now! I think we told you she was taking me to an audition for Doctor Who.’

‘I remember that!’ Especially as I was no longer a regular weekend guest at my dad’s by then, which still didn’t stop him leaving me home alone with a box-set of Humphrey Bogart videos so that he could go out with some new girlfriend all afternoon on Saturday and most of Sunday. I made cheese sandwiches (partly because that was all I knew how to make and partly because cheese and bread was all there was in the flat) and fell asleep on the floor in front of the TV because there was a creepy old walk-in closet in the spare room and I was too scared to sleep there in case someone was hiding in it and crept out of it in the middle of the night. ‘Anyway, look, Cass, can we talk about all this – your, er, new role as a stepmother – another time, please?’

‘Why? You’re not busy, are you?’

‘Yes!’ Has she completely missed everything I’ve been doing while she’s been wittering on? ‘I’ve told you! Ben and Elvira are getting here for a meeting any minute now!’

‘Oh, yeah, right. Though you do know, don’t you, that there’s nothing you can really do, right now, to make the place look decent enough to impress Elvira Thingy-Doodah?’ Cass casts a disparaging glance around the room, then wrinkles her nose as she peers down at the sofa. ‘God, Libby, are you still so hard up that you can’t afford something a bit better than this? You could get one for literally a hundred and fifty quid at IKEA!’

‘I know. I like this one.’

She pulls a face. ‘Then I can’t help you. Anyway, you’re the one who has to convince this Elvira woman that you’re not about to infest her entire apartment with bedbugs, or whatever the hell is lurking in here.’

‘Nothing’s lurking in there,’ I say. ‘Bedbugs or … anyone else.’

‘Anything.’

‘Right. Yes. Of course. But seriously, Cass, I do need to get ready …’

‘Fine. I’ll go.’ She gets to her feet, tottering a bit on the five-inch heels that she considers mandatory for an average day out and about. ‘I’ve got to get to the hospital to see Mum.’

Early this morning, Mum had her gallstones out at a private hospital near Harley Street. No, scratch that: she had minor cosmetic surgery. Or rather, this is what she’s insisting on telling people, because gallstones are far too unglamorous a condition for my mother. She’d rather everyone thought she was having a face-lift or a nose job, evidently, than that they knew she had ugly old gallstones rattling around inside her.

As far as I knew, she’d banned me and Cass from visiting until tomorrow, when she’d be feeling sufficiently recovered to drape a bed jacket over her shoulders and hold court. But apparently Cass is exempt from this condition.

‘You’re seeing her today?’ I ask.

‘Yeah, she asked me to pop along if I was free. Why? Are you not going to make it today at all?’

‘No! I thought she didn’t want us there.’

‘Oh. Well, maybe it was just you she didn’t want there. Or,’ Cass goes on, generously trying to find a way to make this sound less harsh, ‘maybe it was just that she does want me rather than not wanting you, if you see what I mean.’

‘Well, tell her I’ll come along to visit tomorrow, as summonsed,’ I say, pointedly. ‘If she can find the time in her packed schedule to fit me in, that is.’

But Cass isn’t paying that much attention. She’s peering into the mirror by the door and getting her makeup bag out of her handbag to perfect her appearance – a few trowel-loads of blusher, an ocean of lipgloss and a small tidal wave of mascara – just in case she’s papped en route to the hospital, I guess. Then she’s off, with the briefest of waves in my direction, giving me a grand total of ten minutes to put my own makeup on, get into my chosen outfit, and head downstairs to the studio/showroom to assemble the pieces I want to show Ben and Elvira at our meeting.

I mean, it really does have to go well today. It has to.

The thing is that when Ben helicoptered in, this time last year, and put forty grand of his venture-capital firm’s money into my jewellery business, Libby Goes To Hollywood, I couldn’t believe my luck. His money, not to mention his bulging contacts book and business expertise, has turned LGTH from a teeny-tiny, financially strapped entity, with a handful of customers, into a proper little business with a glossy website, all kinds of terrific press, and – sorry, but this still excites me probably most of all – gorgeous swanky packaging, with eau-de-nil and dove-grey boxes stamped with silver lettering and filled with silver tissue paper. These days I can’t keep up with demand for the cheaper pieces I sell on the website, so I’ve outsourced the manufacture of those to a fantastic little artisanal factory in Croatia instead, while I try to concentrate on the design side, and on the manufacture of some of my more intricate pieces. Six months ago I even ended up doing a brief collaboration with the jewellery department at Liberty (the glamorous department store after which, though she’ll claim otherwise, I’m still pretty sure Mum named me) as part of a New Designers’ showcase. Recently there was an entire feature about me in Brides magazine, focusing on the vintage-style bespoke tiaras I’ve made for a few clients. I mean, I’m still small, but I’m growing, and none of it would ever have happened without Ben.

The flip-side of it all, however, is that it can occasionally be … well, a little bit of a fight to retain a hundred per cent of what I guess you might call ‘creative control’. Or, more specifically, the direction the business is heading in. Twelve months ago, I might not have had a crystal-clear plan for it all. I just wanted to make quirky, Old-Hollywood-inspired costume jewellery, at an affordable price – but at least I was still happily meandering in that general direction. Ben, I’m slowly beginning to realize, has slightly different ideas and, in every conversation we’ve had over the last couple of months, he has been pushing me towards scaling back the cheaper end and concentrating on expensive, bespoke orders. Admittedly the margins are higher on these, but I have a suspicion that his reasoning is also motivated by the fact that he has other designers making more mass-market jewellery and accessories in his little ‘stable’ of companies, and – most of all – by the fact that Elvira Roberts-Hoare, his close advisor, is advising him to stick to the luxury end of the market where I’m concerned. I don’t have all that much contact with her, but I know she’s not all that sold on the Hollywood-inspired angle, for one thing –‘at the end of the day, darling, they’re just dead celebrities. It’s all a bit too Sunset Boulevard’– and, more to the point, she’s even less sold on the whole ‘affordable price’ thing. Her vision for Libby Goes To Hollywood is, as far as I can tell, that I custom-make heinously expensive one-off pieces for a double-barrelled clientele – brides, mostly – who pop up on the society pages of Tatler.

I can only assume that this is because these things – double-barrelled clients, and the society pages of Tatler – are her particular area of expertise. And, I suspect, more to the point, because she’s cheesed off that Ben was the one who brought me under his umbrella in the first place, without her being the one to scout me, as is their usual arrangement. And that she wants to stamp her authority and opinions on Libby Goes To Hollywood as a way of asserting her position.

But I can’t complain. I mean that in its truest sense. I can’t complain. Ben owns sixty-five per cent of my company, and has put tens of thousands of pounds into it. And Elvira is his right-hand woman, so he’s always going to take her opinion over mine.

I’m just hoping that maybe, just maybe, today’s meeting might swing things a little more in my favour. I’ve been working really hard on the designs for a new collection of chunky bronze cuffs, studded with semi-precious birthstones, a few of which I’ve got to show Ben and Elvira today. I’m also armed with promising sales figures from the most recent collection that the factory in Croatia made for me, and …

I can hear that the front door is opening, and that Elvira and Ben are on their way in. Seeing as this means Elvira must have used her own door key, I’ll have to have a little word with her about privacy as soon as … actually, let’s be honest, I won’t have a word with her about privacy at all. This is her place – well, her father’s, but who’s splitting hairs? – and I’m staying here as close to rent-free as makes no difference. She could tap-dance in unannounced, in the middle of the night, with a marching band playing loud oom-pah-pahs right behind her, and I’d still keep my mouth shut.

‘Libby? You here?’

‘I’m right here, Ben!’ I reply, heading out of the back room and into the as-yet-empty showroom space at the front. ‘Hi! Great to see you both.’

Ben, who I go up to kiss on both cheeks, is looking as immaculate as I’ve ever seen him: sharp suit, open-neck shirt, and a hot pink silk pocket square, just to give the nod to the fact he’s the kind of multimillionaire venture capitalist who invests in fashion businesses rather than anything mundane like steel production or microchip technology. But Elvira … well, she looks positively extraordinary. She’s rocking a tiny paisley kaftan that only just covers her practically non-existent buttocks, Grecian sandals that lace up as far as her equally nonexistent thighs, a Hermès Birkin bag in the crook of one emaciated arm; her silver-blonde hair, in milkmaid plaits, is pushed back from her face with a colossal pair of sunglasses.

‘Elvira!’ I contemplate giving her a kiss too, but her forbidding aura of haughtiness puts me off. ‘Thanks so much, again, for all this.’ I wave a hand around the showroom. ‘Obviously I haven’t really had a chance to think about how I’m going to fit it out, yet, but it’s such a great space, I’m sure it’s going to be—’

‘I need water,’ she says, abruptly, cutting me off and starting to head up the stairs without waiting for an invitation. ‘Do you have flat mineral in the kitchen?’

‘Mineral water? Er … no, only tap. I can pop up the road to the shop, if it would—’

‘No time for that,’ she throws over her shoulder, clearly a woman in the midst of a dehydration emergency. ‘Tap will have to do.’

‘So, Libby, good to see you settled here,’ Ben says. His tone, as ever, is brusque, but I’m used to this by now and know that he (almost always) means kindly enough. ‘It’s a little fancier than … sorry, what’s the name of the place you were living before?’

‘Colliers Wood.’

‘A little fancier than Colliers Wood, huh?’

‘Yes, it’s lovely.’ I pick up my stack of bronze cuffs and the paperwork for my sales figures, and start to follow him up the stairs towards the living room. ‘Thanks, Ben, for getting Elvira to let me have the place.’

‘It’s nothing. Besides, El’s been talking about the idea of you working out of a showroom for months now, right?’

‘Yes, she has. In fact, that was one thing I was really hoping we could speak about today, Ben.’ We reach the living room; Elvira has gone on up to the next floor to source her urgent water from the kitchen. ‘I mean, I love having the showroom too, obviously, and it’s going to be fantastic for meetings with my bespoke clients and stuff … but I suppose what I’m still really hoping for, one day soon, is to actually start up my own shop premises. And I guess I’d really just like to be sure that that’s something you’d be supportive of, as well as the whole showroom thing, when the time—’

‘I thought you’d moved in.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I thought you’d moved in.’ Ben gestures around the living room. ‘Where’s all your stuff?’

‘Oh, right! This is all my stuff!’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘No, no, I like to live with … er … a very minimalist aesthetic …’

‘You’re kidding,’ Ben repeats. He nods in the direction of the Chesterfield. ‘I mean, is that old thing part of your minimalist aesthetic?’

‘Well, no, but I like to mix minimalism with … vintage quirkiness.’

‘That’s vintage quirk, all right.’ Ben wanders over and peers, gingerly, at the sofa. ‘It doesn’t have mice, or anything, does it?’

I’m offended, on behalf of the Chesterfield, that this is the second time today someone has implied there are things living in it.

Or, more accurately, offended that it’s the second time someone has implied there are creepy-crawly, rodenty things living in it.

As opposed to the actual things living in it. Which are – and I’ll keep this ever so brief, because it makes me sound nuts, no matter how I put it – Hollywood screen legends.

And, to be honest, I don’t really think they live in the sofa, as such. It’s more just that they appear from it. Because the sofa itself is … magical? I mean, this is the best – in fact, pretty much the only – explanation I’ve been able to come up with myself.

I said I’d sound nuts, OK? But there’s honestly no other way for me to explain it.

‘No, it doesn’t have mice! Anyway, Ben, as I was saying, I’m really glad we’ve got this opportunity to have a bit of a chat about things, because—’

‘What’s going on down here?’ Elvira demands, as she reappears at the bottom of the stairs, having come down from the kitchen. ‘What are you two talking about?’

‘Well, I was just saying—’

‘I was asking Libby if she has mice in this old couch,’ Ben says. ‘I mean, did you ever see anything like it?’

‘I didn’t.’ Elvira gazes at the Chesterfield. ‘God, I kind of love it.’

I’m astonished by this. ‘Really? Everybody else I know hates it.’

‘Oh, well, nobody knows anything about vintage furniture, darling. Not unless they have an eye for this sort of thing.’

Her tone suggests that she herself does have an eye which, to be fair, she does, if that extraordinary feature in Elle Decor was anything to go by.

‘It’s an old film-set prop, actually,’ I say, relieved to have found something to bond with Elvira over, after months of our uncomfortable alliance. ‘From Pinewood Studios.’

‘No.’ Her eyebrows shoot upwards. ‘How did you get hold of something like that?’

‘I used to be an actress,’ I say, before adding, swiftly, ‘well, just an extra, really. But I was working on a show at Pinewood a couple of years ago when I first moved into my old flat, and a – uh – friend of mine who worked there too had an arrangement with the guy who ran the props warehouse. Anything they didn’t really want any more was fair game to take away.’

‘And nobody else wanted this?’ Elvira puts her Birkin down on one of the sofa’s cushions and runs a hand over the blowsy apricot-coloured fabric. ‘God, people are such idiots. This is a stunning piece!’

‘El, honey, you can’t be serious.’ Ben lets out a short bark of laughter. ‘This old heap of junk?’

‘Don’t be such a philistine. This must have so much history, I’m sure, if it was at Pinewood all those years.’

I can feel myself redden. We may be getting along the best we’ve ever managed, me and Elvira – practically besties ourselves, now, in comparison to our usual strained relations – but I don’t think we’re anywhere close to a situation where I might confide in her the full extent of my Chesterfield’s ‘history’.

‘Well,’ I say, ‘I don’t know about that.’

‘You know, darling, if you’d like to get it refurbished, I have some amazing furniture restorers on my speed-dial—’

‘God, no!’ I practically yelp. Because – and I’m very far from an expert here, trust me – even though I may not have seen a Hollywood legend appear from the sofa since Marilyn Monroe, almost exactly a year ago last June, I have a gut feeling that it’ll only ever work again if it stays exactly like this. So yes, it’s a bit grubby, and yes, that smell of moist dog still never quite fades, no matter how many times I open a window and fan fresh air in its direction with a tea-towel. But for all I know, even the merest squirt of Febreze is going to take away its remarkable powers for ever. I’m not going to risk it. ‘Thanks so much for the offer, Elvira,’ I continue, ‘but I kind of like it the way it is.’

‘Oh! Well, that’s up to you, I suppose.’ But she’s looking at me with a little more respect than usual. ‘I can understand you don’t want to take away from the soul of the piece.’

‘That’s exactly it.’ I beam at her. ‘And in fact,’ I go on, hoping to use this unexpected moment of positivity between us as a springboard to more important things, ‘talking of souls, I’d really love to have a conversation about the next phase of plans for Libby Goes To Hollywood.’

‘That’s exactly why we’re here,’ Elvira says. ‘I mean, now that you’ve got the new studio, obviously it’s time to start moving things forward.’

‘Great!’

I feel a rush of relief at how well this is all going for a change. Our previous meetings have all been so awkward and stilted. I’ve been intimidated by her gawky beauty, her ineffable style and her screaming poshness, and she’s probably been … well, not intimidated by a single thing about me. Visibly irritated, you’d probably have to say, by my all-too-apparent lack of screaming poshness. And now here we are, conversation (comparatively) flowing.

I take a deep breath, and begin the little pitch I’ve been practising in my head. ‘Well, I’ve been looking at the sales figures from the website, and they’re really on their way up over the last three months. So I’ve been thinking I’d like to—’

‘Oh, yeah, that’s what we wanted to speak about, too.’ Ben sits down on the Chesterfield, either forgetting or ignoring his concern about rodent inhabitants. ‘El and I were talking in the cab over here, and we both think it’s really time to wind up that side of the business, and focus your energies more on the bespoke commissions.’

‘Yeah,’ says Elvira although, because she’s so screamingly posh, this comes out as a yah. ‘Specifically the bridal commissions. After all, I think we can all agree that’s where your greatest talents lie, Libby.’

‘What? No. I mean … I don’t think we can agree that’s where my greatest talents lie.’ I stare at them both. ‘That might be where my biggest margins have come from these last few months, but if you have a look at the website sales, the charm bracelets and opal rings have been doing really, really well. And,’ I go on, remembering that I’m still holding a couple of my new bronze cuffs, ‘I’m really hoping this sort of thing is going to be a big seller, too, when I launch them on the website.’

Elvira glances at the cuff I’m holding out for her to inspect. ‘Pretty,’ she says, with a dismissive shrug, not even bothering to look properly at it. ‘But that’s not really the direction we see the business heading in, is it, Ben, darling?’

‘Nope, not really,’ Ben says. He’s taken out his phone, and is tapping away on the screen. ‘Listen to El, Libby. She knows what she’s talking about.’

‘Right, I’m sure, but I know what I’m talking about, too.’ I can’t quite believe I’m actually saying this to the pair of them – the de facto owner of my business, and someone as scary as Elvira – but needs must. Besides, after our moment of bonding over the sofa, I think she’ll respect me more if I stand my ground. ‘Look, it’s not that I don’t enjoy bridal commissions—’

‘Well, I’m glad to hear it.’ Elvira bestows me with a rare smile. ‘That piece in Brides has led to hundreds of enquiries, no? And – so far – dozens and dozens of actual orders.’

‘Sure, and like I say, it’s not that I don’t enjoy it.’ I take another deep breath. ‘It’s just that … well, the brides who’ve come to me after that article pretty much all want exactly the same thing.’

‘You mean the vintage-style tiara they featured in the magazine article Elvira arranged for you?’ Ben glances up from his phone. ‘The one,’ he adds, in a meaningful sort of way, ‘with the three hundred per cent margin?’

‘Yes, OK, I get that it’s good for profit.’ I stare, rather desperately, in Elvira’s direction, wanting to appeal to her sense of creativity. ‘I just really wanted to have a bit more say in the design process. Rather than just replicating the same thing over and over again.’

She looks back at me. ‘Well, I do get that,’ she says.

‘I knew you would!’ I can see a tiny little chink of light here, I really can. ‘Look, Elvira, perhaps if you could have a closer look at some of the pieces I’m working on at the moment, not just the cuffs, but also OH MY GOD, IT’S A RAT!’

I wasn’t planning on finishing the sentence this way, but then I wasn’t expecting to see an actual rodent, just the sort that Ben has been suspicious about, scurrying out from the Chesterfield’s squashy cushions.

I act, I think, with commendable speed under the circumstances – after all, it’s my sofa, so therefore my rat, and I want to be clear I’m taking full responsibility for the horror – by pulling back my right arm and hurling both bronze cuffs towards the rat’s head.

I mean, I’m an animal lover, so I’m not actually trying to kill the thing, just scare it off, or, I don’t know, knock it out.

But Elvira, the moment she sees the cuffs go loose, screams as if I’m about to accidentally injure a newborn infant.

‘Don’t hurt my baby!’ she screeches, diving into the cuffs’ trajectory, but too late. One of them has actually made contact with the rat – its tail end, I think, and not its head – and it has let out a little squeal.

I’m confused, for a moment, as to why a rat would make a noise like that, and – much more importantly – why on earth Elvira is calling it her baby.

But then Ben is on his feet too, hurrying over to help Elvira tend to the creature.

‘Is he all right?’ he demands. ‘Did it hit him?’

‘I think so! Oh, my poor baby!’ Elvira is actually gathering the rat up, into her arms, and raining kisses down on its head. ‘I think it got him on the leg! At the very least,’ she adds, turning to me with a look of murderous fury in her eyes, ‘he’s totally fucking traumatized!’

‘I don’t … sorry, but I honestly don’t think rats can feel trauma, can they?’

‘He’s not a rat! He’s a dog! My dog!’

My mouth falls open. ‘Oh, God, Elvira, I didn’t—’

‘He’s a Xoloitzcuintli,’ Ben says, gruffly.

I blink at him.

‘A miniature Mexican hairless!’ Elvira spits. ‘The Aztecs considered them sacred!’

All I can honestly think to this is: more fool the Aztecs. Because, seriously, this dog is a peculiar-looking beast. Well, obviously, given that I have just mistaken him for a large rat.

‘He’s only eight weeks old,’ Elvira is going on, continuing to examine and kiss the dog/rat in equal proportion. ‘He’s just a puppy! How could you attack him like that, Libby?’

‘Elvira, again, I’m so sorry. I didn’t attack him … well, OK, I threw the cuffs, but only because I thought he was … er … well, you know … and Ben had been saying he thought there might be mice or something in the sofa …’

‘He was in my bag!’ Elvira points a shaking hand at her Birkin bag, still on the Chesterfield, that the dog must have just crept out of. ‘And really, Libby, what did you think I wanted water for, when we got here?’

‘I’m sorry, I just assumed … is he OK?’ I add, taking a step closer, albeit a little bit gingerly, but Elvira jumps back as if I’m brandishing an entire arsenal of dog-injuring weaponry.

‘You’ve done enough,’ she snarls. ‘Ben, darling, can you get a cab? I want to get Tino straight to the vet.’

‘Of course, hon.’ Ben shoots a rather weary look in my direction as he heads back to the sofa to pick up his phone. ‘Jeez, Libby,’ he says. ‘What is it with you and other people’s dogs?’

This is a rather unfair reference to the first time he met me – a time that, until now, both of us have chosen never to reference again – when I accidentally got myself stuck in a dog safety gate in my underwear.

‘Honestly,’ I say, as Elvira shoots me another evil look to end all evil looks, ‘I’m an animal lover! I just thought—’

‘Yes, we know. You thought he was a rat,’ she spits. ‘You’ve made that perfectly clear already, thank you, Libby.’

‘But honestly, he looks OK,’ I go on, looking at Tino in a manner that I hope appears concerned rather than (I have to be honest) ever-so-slightly revolted. And this is true, because his little rodenty face looks relaxed enough, and there are no visible injuries on his equally rodenty body. If anything, he’s looking eager to leap out of Elvira’s tight embrace, and head for … well, he’s looking extremely longingly at the sofa, actually. He must be getting all those lovely doggy whiffs of canines past coming off it.

‘Oh, what the fuck would you know? You’re not a vet!’

‘Cab here in three minutes, El,’ Ben says, slipping his phone back into his pocket. ‘We’ll have to carry on this conversation another time, Libby, OK?’

‘What? No! I mean,’ I go on, trying to sound more calm and collected than I feel, ‘I’ve been really looking forward to this meeting. There’s so much to discuss, and we don’t often get the opportunity to—’

‘Come on. It’s hardly the time.’

‘It’s certainly not.’ Elvira is stalking over to the Chesterfield to pick up her Birkin, all ready to place Tino tenderly inside it. But he’s evidently got other ideas, because he slips out of her grasp, and lurches down towards the sofa itself, where he starts to sort of … well, I don’t know what the technical term would be, but it does look very much as if he’s trying to pleasure himself against the chintzy, apricot-coloured fabric.

‘Huh,’ observes Ben, as we all gaze at Tino in a rather shocked silence for a moment. ‘Guess there must be the scent of quite a few old mutts on this thing, right?’

But I don’t think it’s that. I don’t think it’s that at all. Yes, the Chesterfield does have an aroma of dog – always has – but from the transfixed expression on Tino’s face, I think he’s picking up on something more than mere waft of long-gone Labrador, or past poodle.

I mean, animals have sixth senses, don’t they? Especially so, probably, if they’re the kind of animals that the Aztecs considered sacred.

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Elvira, puce in the face now with embarrassment as well as anger, grabs Tino mid-rut and holds him firmly under her arm as she heads for the stairs. ‘We’ll discuss this incident another time, Libby,’ she tells me. ‘But suffice it to say I am Not Happy. Not Happy At All.’

Which is, to be fair, pretty much the impression I’ve got every other time I’ve met her. That she’s Not Happy about anything I have to offer. It’s just that there were those few minutes where we seemed to bond, ever so slightly, over the vintage sofa. And now it’s all gone backwards again. Actually, worse than backwards, because even if she has not been that impressed with me before now, at least I’d never tried, in her eyes, to assassinate her precious Mexican hairless dog.

‘Yeah,’ says Ben, already back on his phone again, as he follows her down the stairs towards their taxi. ‘We’ll be in touch, Libby. I’ll try to set something up, the next time I’m over.’

‘But Ben, I really—’

‘Bye, Libby,’ he says, with a wave of the hand, not even glancing back at me. ‘Oh, and try to keep up the orders for that vintage tiara, yeah? That thing’s your bread and butter. Your books are never gonna add up without it.’

The front door bangs shut behind them a couple of moments later, leaving me and my Chesterfield alone, together, in our accidentally minimalist new flat.

It’s truly excellent news, from the point of view of my morale, that I’m due to have dinner with my friend Olly tonight. After the disaster of a business meeting with Ben and Elvira (actually, even calling it a ‘business meeting’ is being generous, given the amount of time we spent discussing anything business-related), I might otherwise be tempted to retreat into my pyjamas and eat the contents of my biscuit stash in self-pity. But I’ve promised Olly that I’ll meet him over at the restaurant, and we see each other so rarely these days that I don’t want to go back on my promise.

The restaurant, by the way, being his own restaurant, over in Clapham.

Nibbles.

That’s what the restaurant is called.

It’s a bit unfortunate.

Not the name Nibbles itself, as such – although I still think it’s a name better suited to a twee seaside tearoom, rather than a tapas-style restaurant successful enough to have been nominated for all kinds of Best Newcomer awards recently – but more what the choice of name represents. I mean, it was a pretty last-minute decision to call it that, and—

Talking of last-minute decisions, a text has just popped up on my phone from Olly, literally as I approach the restaurant’s front door, asking if I can meet him two doors down in the little French bistro instead. We’ve ended up needing all the tables tonight, his text informs me, and anyway it’s been a knackering day and I just want to get out of the place!!! Will get bottle of red. See you there. O xxx

Which actually suits me pretty well, too, because the slight issue of having a meal with Olly at Nibbles is, no matter how hard he tries to avoid it, the constant interruptions. Even on a night when he’s not officially working, he’s always working: there’s an issue that needs to be sorted out in the kitchen, or two of the waiting staff are threatening to kill each other, or a customer can’t live another moment without finding out the origin of his recipe for pea and mint arancini.

Peace and quiet and privacy over red wine at the bistro sound just about perfect right now. Especially since I can’t actually remember the last time I had a quiet evening and a chat with Olly. Two months ago? Closer to three? Despite the fact we’ve been close friends ever since I was thirteen, and he was Nora’s worldly wise fifteen-year-old brother; despite the fact we used to get together to set the world to rights over a bite to eat and more than a sip to drink at least twice a week, we’ve drifted a bit of late. Probably something to do with the fact that he’s busy running his restaurant, and I’m busy running my business.

Oh, and probably quite a lot, too, to do with the fact that I’m a little bit in love with him.

Actually, I’ll rephrase that, because a little bit in love sounds like I have some girlish crush, or something.

It’s not a crush. I am passionately, desperately, fervently, and worst of all secretly in love with Olly. Who – worse even than that – just so happened to be secretly in love with me, too, for almost the entirety of our friendship, until a year ago when (not unreasonably, let’s be honest) he finally gave up on me and started going out with Tash, his now-girlfriend, who works with Nora up at Glasgow Royal Infirmary.

I mean, he’d planned to name the restaurant after me, and everything. Libby’s, it was meant to be called, not Nibbles. That was the last-minute decision I just told you about. I guess he’d always had this idea that he’d open a restaurant named after me one day, and that this would be the big declaration of love that he couldn’t bring himself to say out loud, and that I’d finally realize the way he felt about me. But then I was messing around thinking I was in love with my ex, Dillon O’Hara, and Olly just got tired of waiting.

It was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life. The biggest mistake I’ve ever made without knowing I was even making it.

It’s why I end up avoiding him so much these days. (While still – illogically – at the same time, desperately wanting to find ways to spend time with him.) For one thing, it often just feels too painful to have to sit there and stare down the barrel of What Should Have Been. And, for another, I’m usually scared that I might not be able to disguise my own feelings. Might end up, horror to end all horrors, jumping the table and doing to him pretty much what Tino the Mexican hairless did to my Chesterfield earlier this afternoon.

Because just look at me now, coming to a wobbly-kneed standstill as soon as I enter the bistro and see him at a corner table. He’s just so incredibly, heart-breakingly gorgeous, with his hair all mussed up from his habit of rubbing his hands through it when he’s stressed, and his big brown eyes, so open and honest, and—

‘Lib!’

Those big brown eyes have alighted on me now, and he’s getting to his feet, a huge smile on his handsome face.

‘You’re a sight for sore eyes,’ he says, coming over to put his arms around me in a huge bear hug. (I inhale, as surreptitiously as I can, his scent: the familiar, warm, kitcheny smell I’ve known inside out for the last couple of decades, coupled with something spicier and more masculine that I never used to notice, but must have always been there.) ‘Come and sit down and have some wine with me. Well, actually, I decided on a bottle of champagne. Your favourite kind. I mean, we’re celebrating your moving into the new flat, right?’

‘Oh, Olly. That’s … so nice of you.’

‘Don’t be silly. It’s a big moment. You deserve to celebrate it!’

‘Well, I don’t know about that. I mean, I feel like I’ve already screwed things up with my new landlord.’

‘You mean the scary fashion woman who keeps trying to tell you what to do with your own business?’

‘I mean the scary fashion woman who keeps trying to tell me what to do with my own business.’ I smile up at him. ‘Wow. That was well remembered, Ol. I only told you about her in passing when I last saw you.’

‘I always remember the important stuff.’ He ushers me towards the table. ‘Now, I’ve ordered us a plate of charcuterie and a plate of cheese, but if there’s anything else you’d prefer, I can get them to give us a menu …’

‘No, no, I’m fine. I mean, that sounds perfect.’ I slide into the seat opposite him, and do my best to slow down my hammering heart. ‘Hi,’ I add, with a nervous laugh, that I immediately try to turn into a cough. ‘God, Olly, it’s been ages.’

‘Way too long. Here.’ He pours champagne into my glass. Quite a lot of champagne, and then the same sort of amount for himself. His hand is a bit shaky – exhaustion, I should think, given the hours he works – which is probably why it slips a bit and why he’s poured such big glasses. ‘You look like you need this. What happened with the scary fashion woman?’

‘Oh, you know, the usual … I mistook her beloved puppy for a rat and threw a large piece of solid metal at its head—’

‘Ah. Of course. The usual.’ He grins at me and lifts his glass. ‘Cheers, Lib. And congratulations. On the exciting new move, that is. Not the puppy-maiming. I need to be absolutely clear that, despite our long and happy friendship together, I can in no way condone that.’

‘And I’d never expect you to.’

I chink my glass against his and grin back.

After a moment, it feels like a rather rictus grin and, to be perfectly honest, he looks pretty frozen too – probably wondering what the hell I’m still grinning about myself – so I take a long drink.

He does the same.

‘So!’ I say, brightly, when we both put our glasses down. ‘That’s honestly quite enough about me—’

‘Oh, come on, Lib, I want to hear all about the new place!’

‘Well, then you’ll have to come over some time. With Tash!’ I add, just in case he thinks I’m suggesting some cosy soirée, just the two of us. ‘But until then, there’s really not much to tell, Olly, honestly.’

I mean, in the past, I’d have bored his pants off, wittering on about my hopes and fears for the business, getting him to join me in over-analysing every word spoken by Elvira and Ben. But now that I fancy him so much – now that I can think of other, far less noble things I’d like to do to get his pants off, quite frankly – I’m suddenly a lot less keen to bore him. Not to mention the fact that there’s the permanent wedge of Tash between us. It just feels wrong to seek that type of support from a man who’s – very much – spoken for.

‘Anyway,’ I go on, ‘you look like you’ve had a tough day, too.’

‘I do?’

‘Well, you look tired,’ I say, after studying him for a moment without quite meeting his eye.

‘Oh, that’s just life in the restaurant business,’ he says. He looks even wearier, for a moment. ‘Things are always so busy, and I just never seem to have enough time. I mean, when was the last time you and I actually managed to do this, Lib?’

‘This?’

‘Yes, sit with a bottle of wine and catch up. It feels like for ever.’

‘Well, no, I mean, it is a long time,’ I say, not wanting to remind him that I’ve cancelled two of our most recent planned meet-ups at short notice (just couldn’t face going through with it) and that he’s cancelled three himself (last-minute restaurant emergencies). ‘But you’re right, life is busy. And, of course, you have Tash to prioritize, too.’ I take another large gulp from my glass. ‘How is she, by the way?’

‘Tash? Oh, she’s great. She’s always great.’ He picks up his own glass. ‘I mean, obviously, there’s always the issue of—’

He stops because, almost as if it’s been eavesdropping on us or something (I mean, it couldn’t have, could it?), his phone starts to ring.

‘Oh!’ he says. ‘It’s Tash! Sorry, Lib, would you mind if I …?’

‘Not at all!’

‘I mean, I usually call her around this time every evening, when she gets off her shift at the hospital …’

‘Olly, I don’t mind! Honestly! Answer it.’

‘Thank, Libs.’ He picks up the ringing phone. ‘Hey,’ he murmurs into it. ‘You OK?’

That murmur – low, intimate, the tone of voice you only ever use with your Significant Other – makes me want to cry.

But, thank God, it’s right at this moment that a waiter appears bearing two large platters of food, which he places on the table in front of me. I mean very specifically in front of me, in fact, with a somewhat lascivious smile and an assurance that if there’s anything, anything at all, that I’d like his help with, I only need to—

‘Yeah, thanks, Didier,’ Olly says, breaking off his phone call for a moment to speak, rather sharply, to the waiter. ‘I’m sure she can manage to find her way round a plate of cheese on her own … Sorry, Tash,’ he adds, into the phone again, ‘just fending off an ardent Frenchman … no, no, not for me! I’m having a bite with Libby …’ There’s a short pause. ‘Tash says hi,’ he tells me.

Of course she does, because Tash – annoyingly – is nice and friendly and downright perfect.

‘Hi, Tash!’ I trill back, waving a hand, pointlessly, because it’s not like they’re on a FaceTime call or anything.

And then I make a gesture at Olly, which is supposed to indicate that he should just carry on with the phone call, that I’m perfectly fine – delighted in fact – to be sitting here tucking into plates of delicious cold meat and cheese, and that everything is just so fine and dandy in the world that I’m only inches away from leaping up on to the table and kicking off a rousing chorus of ‘Oh Happy Day’.

Because I think I might need to go way over the top just to avoid giving the slightest hint that I’d actually rather crawl under the table and miserably hiccup my way through ‘Where Do Broken Hearts Go?’

This is why I should never have come this evening; why I should just have made up some spurious excuse and cancelled again.

The thing is, it’s not like I’m not well used to sitting across a table from someone I’m in love with who isn’t in love with me back. Dillon O’Hara, for example, whom I remained convinced I was in love with despite the fact that our relationship was a car crash, with him in the driving seat. And not even just Dillon: as an incurable romantic, especially one who spent most of my life convinced I was an unattractive frump compared to my stunning little sister, I’ve enjoyed a long and fruitless history of falling in love with men who wouldn’t have noticed me if I’d been standing in front of them stark naked with a sign hanging around my neck reading Available and Desperate: Please Apply Within.

The difference – the colossal, heart-shattering difference – this time, with Olly, is the knowledge that this isn’t how it should have been. That thanks to a disastrous combination of cruel fate and my own stupidity, he and I have passed each other by like ships in the night.

In fact, it hurts so much to dwell, even for a moment, on the role played by my own stupidity that I think I need to shift as much of the blame as possible on to the Cruel Fate part. Because otherwise it’s just too sickening to endure. Like Juliet would have felt if she’d woken up beside a lifeless Romeo in the tomb and realized that she’d absent-mindedly put a poison bottle next to the orange juice in the fridge. Bad enough her soulmate is doomed to be lost to her for ever; soul-destroying to confront the fact she just should have been paying more attention.

‘No, of course,’ Olly is saying, into the phone. ‘And I meant to … well, what time will you be home? … no, I imagine I’ll head straight back after I’m finished here … OK, I’ll Skype you then … no, of course … of course … of course … OK, bye,’ he adds, finishing up with a swift, ever-so-slightly guilty-sounding, ‘Love you,’ before putting the phone down. His gaze remains fixed on the tabletop for a moment, almost as if he’s avoiding making eye contact.

I swallow, hard. ‘Everything OK?’

‘No, of course,’ he says, echoing exactly what he’s just said repeatedly to Tash. (It’s an odd phrase, actually, now I come to think of it. I mean, isn’t yes the more usual companion to an of course? Still, it’s not for me to analyse it. It’s between them.) ‘Tash is just … well, she’s a little bit fed up with us never seeing each other, that’s all.’

‘Oh, Olly, I’m really sorry. Look, you should go home right now and Skype her—’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he says, rather sharply. Then he inhales, as if to reset himself, and picks up his champagne glass again, gripping the stem. ‘Sorry, Lib. I just mean that me going home and Skyping her isn’t really going to address the issue. It’s much more about the fact that we live three hundred and fifty miles away from each other and we both work all the hours God sends.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘Of course.’

‘I mean, she’s worked weekends the last three weeks in a row, and obviously I’m always busy too …’

‘Sorry, Ol. Long-distance is hard, I know.’

‘It is. But it shouldn’t feel this …’ He thinks about this for a moment, sadness passing over his face. ‘Impossible.’

He looks so wretched that, even though the cause of it is his missing Tash, I shunt my own pain to the side for a moment.

‘I think you probably just need to find a way to make more time, Ol, to be honest with you. I mean, I know how busy you are, but is there any way you can take a Saturday night off and go up to Glasgow? If you left straight after the lunch service, you’d only miss dinner, and then you’re closed on Monday night and Tuesday lunchtime, so you wouldn’t even have to come back until early afternoon on Tuesday—’

‘Woah.’ Olly holds up a hand, looking slightly surprised. ‘Have you been thinking about this already, or something?’

‘No, it just seems kind of obvious, doesn’t it?’

‘Not really. It’s not just that I need to be at the restaurant for actual service, Lib. There’s quite a lot more to it than that! I have the accounts to keep on top of, and all the staff paperwork, and you know I always prefer to supervise the deep clean after Saturday dinner, and then I have all my supplier meetings, and visits from the wine merchants … and all that’s even without adding in the fact that I do like to actually come up with new menu items occasionally!’

‘OK, well, you’ll have to persuade Tash to come down here more often.’

‘She’s a junior hospital doctor, Libby. It’s not really that simple.’

‘Then the two of you have to make it that simple.’ I feel a bit like a bulldozer on full power, but now that I’ve gone down this route, I can’t seem to stop. The only good news, I guess, is that maybe the effort I’ve been putting in to disguise my desire to cover every inch of Olly’s body in kisses is actually paying off. I’ve faked it and now, apparently, I’ve made it. And hopefully he won’t actually notice how massively I’m overcompensating for something. ‘I mean,’ I go on, heartily, ‘you love her and she loves you, right?’

Olly has reached for the champagne bottle and is topping up both glasses, which is why he takes a moment to reply.

‘No, of course.’

That bizarre (and bizarrely infectious) phrase again.

‘So put yourself on the line. Tell her how much you want to see her. Ask her if there’s any way she can get a couple of days off work. Or, I don’t know, meet halfway. That might actually be really romantic. You could book a lovely hotel, somewhere you can have drinks at the bar beside a roaring fire, and amazing room service so you don’t even have to get dressed to go for dinner, and—’

‘Libby.’

Olly, thank heavens, has stopped me before I can divulge any more of this detailed hotel-trip fantasy that’s really one I’ve often played out in my head for the two of us, on the long nights this past year when the alternative has been crying into my pillow.

‘Sorry, sorry, that was probably a bit too specific—’

‘Is that the mystery cheese?’

This is why he’s stopped me. He’s staring at the cheese plate that’s been sitting between us for the last few minutes.

‘That one, right there,’ he’s going on. He points at the plate. ‘I think it is. I honestly think it might be.’

If this sounds a slightly intense tone to take about cheese, I should probably just fill you in on exactly why this is.

Years ago – when I was eighteen and Olly was turning twenty-one – he and I took a trip over to Paris on the Eurostar for a hedonistic day of drinking, eating, and (this being Olly, a foodie to end all foodies) trudging round various destinations in search of highly specific types of Mirabelle jam, or spiced sausage, or premier cru chocolate. And cheese. So much cheese, in fact, that we ended up digging into it on the Eurostar home, whereupon we discovered that one particular cheese – a creamy white goat’s cheese, rolled in ash, and tart and lemony to the taste – was in fact the exact definition of ambrosia. (This might have had something to do with the amount of vin we’d imbibed on the day’s trek; also, possibly, something to do with the fact that we were deliberately trying to divert attention from the unexpected snog we’d found ourselves having in a bar on the Left Bank at some point in the afternoon, and waxing absurdly lyrical about a cheese seemed, at the time, as good a way as any of achieving this.) We didn’t know the name and – despite many years of searching, or more to the point, Keeping An Eye Out – neither of us ever found that Mystery Cheese again.

‘Well, you’ll have to taste it,’ I say, in an equally intense tone. ‘We won’t know until you try.’

‘We have to taste it,’ he corrects me, picking up his knife and dividing the portion of white, ash-flecked cheese into two with a chef’s deft movement. ‘Come on, Libby. Close your eyes. This could be the moment.’

We both fall into a reverential hush as we each take a half of the cheese, close our eyes, and put it in our mouths.

‘What do you think?’ Olly asks, in a hushed voice, after a moment.

‘I don’t know …’

‘First impressions?’

‘First impression was that it’s definitely not the one … but second impression … I’m not sure. It might be?’

‘The texture doesn’t seem quite right.’

‘I agree. But the taste was pretty much bang-on.’

‘Do you think? I thought the Mystery Cheese had a bit more pepper to it.’

‘Wasn’t it ash?’

‘No, no, I don’t mean pepper in the actual cheese, I mean a peppery taste.’

‘Oh. Right. No, I think you’re right. I mean, you’re the expert.’

‘I’m not the expert!’ He looks faintly annoyed. ‘We were both there!’

‘Yes, OK, but you’re the one who takes this kind of thing that seriously.’

He looks, for a moment, wounded to the core. ‘I thought you took the Mystery Cheese seriously, too.’

‘I do!’

‘I mean, I know it’s only a silly thing, obviously. I’m not that stupid! It was always just … our thing. Wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ My voice has got stuck in my throat. I reach for my champagne glass. ‘I’m not saying I never took it seriously, Ol,’ I say, after a long drink. ‘I’m saying you’re the cheffy, experty, foodie person. You’re the one who remembers the precise taste of a Sangiovese wine you drank in Italy three years ago versus a Sangiovese wine you drank at your parents’ house three weekends ago. I could barely tell you, most days, if I was eating a tuna mayo sandwich for lunch or a chicken mayo sandwich.’

‘Then you need to start buying your lunchtime sandwiches elsewhere,’ Olly says, faintly irritable. ‘There’s absolutely no excuse for tuna to ever taste anything like chicken.’

‘It’s not a big deal. It’s only a sandwich.’

‘And the Mystery Cheese was only a cheese. I get it. It doesn’t matter.’

‘Olly, no, it does matter! Come on.’ I reach across the table, surprising myself even as I do so, and put my hand on his.

I’m seriously hoping he can’t feel the faint throb of my pulse, quickening as my skin meets his skin.

But I don’t think he can, because if he did, he’d react in some way, wouldn’t he? Pull his hand back, or give me a funny look, or ask me if I was about to expire, or something? And he doesn’t do any of those things. He just leaves his own hand exactly where it is, under mine, and says absolutely nothing for a moment.

Then he says, ‘I really don’t think it’s the cheese, anyway.’

‘No. Neither do I.’ I move my hand back to my side of the table. ‘But that’s a good thing, I guess. Because we can keep looking.’

‘Yeah. That’s true. I mean, it’s always been a source of comfort to me,’ he adds, meeting my eyes again and pulling a cheeky grin, ‘knowing that it’s out there.’

We’re piss-taking again. This is a good thing.

‘Just waiting for us to happen upon it,’ I say.

‘Biding its time.’

‘Hiding its light under a bushel.’

‘Waiting in the wings.’

‘And I’m not even sure,’ I say, ‘that I even liked this one that much anyway.’

‘Me neither.’ Olly peers at the cheese plate, his handsome face looking more noble than ever in the bistro’s candlelight. ‘That Comté looks good, though. You have a bit of that, and I’ll try some of the Camembert.’

We fall into a companionable silence as we find our way around the cheese platter together for the next few minutes.

Well, as companionable a silence as it’s ever going to be between us any more, given that I can’t even look at him without feeling lust and misery wash over me in equal measure.

Then, breaking the silence, he says, ‘You’re probably right about Tash, though, Lib. We do need to make more effort to spend time together. I mean, that’s what grown-up relationships are about, right? Compromising. Going the extra mile.’

I’m about to quip that I wouldn’t know, having never been in a grown-up relationship.

But, somehow, my heart isn’t in it.

So I just nod, as enthusiastically as I know how, and reach out a hand to cut myself a sliver of Roquefort.

*

It’s almost midnight by the time I get home.

Actually, make that ‘home’.

Because grotty and minuscule though it undeniably was, my flat back in Colliers Wood was home. This new place, in posher-than-posh Notting Hill, doesn’t feel like home to me yet. And if my relations with Elvira Roberts-Hoare get any frostier, I don’t imagine I’ll start to really relax here any time soon.

But perhaps it’s just all that champagne making me a bit maudlin and self-pitying. All that champagne in the company of my lost soulmate. We ended up drinking two bottles before we parted ways, Olly back home to Skype Tash, and me back here to …

… well, what is my current plan? A pint of water, take my makeup off and get into bed for a restorative night’s sleep?

Or, instead, how about I crack open the bottle of white wine that I know is nestling in the upstairs fridge, accompany it with the large bag of Frazzles stashed in one of the kitchenette cupboards, slump on the Chesterfield with the remote control and flick through late-night rubbish on the TV to distract myself from dwelling on my evening out with Olly?

Yes. The latter, I think. Temporary painkilling that’s only going to make me feel even worse in the morning. A sensible decision, as ever.

I haul my weary body up the stairs to the kitchen, grab the wine and the Frazzles, and head back down the stairs again to locate the remote control.

‘Excusez-moi?’ says a voice from the Chesterfield sofa.

Oh, my dear God almighty.

It’s Grace Kelly.

And not just any old Grace Kelly: Grace Kelly in full wedding attire. The iconic dress, with its 125-year-old lace bodice and its full silk skirt. The veil, with what must be a hundred yards of tulle suddenly taking up most of the available floor-space in my new living room. The beaded Juliet cap framing, perfectly, her serene face.

Except that she isn’t looking that serene at the moment, it has to be said. Not that I can possibly comment, because I’m probably staring at her like a goldfish who’s just been slapped in the face with a wet kipper. But she’s looking, if it were possible, even more startled to see me than I am to see her.

There’s silence for a moment.

‘Je suis desolée,’ she goes on, in a rather more wobbly voice than I’m used to hearing in her films, though the cut-glass diction remains largely in place. She gets to her feet; she’s taller than I imagined she’d be, or perhaps this is just because she holds herself so well, her broad shoulders pulled back and her neck nothing short of swan-like. ‘Mais je suis un peu … je ne sais pas le mot en français … uh … Parlez-vous anglais?’

‘I AM anglaise,’ I croak.

‘Oh!’ Her elegant eyebrows lift upwards. ‘I’m sorry. I had absolutely no idea there was anyone English working here.’

‘Here …?’

‘The palace. You’ll forgive me, I hope,’ she goes on, her voice more perfectly clipped, now that she’s recovered herself, ‘if I haven’t the faintest idea who you are or what it is you do. It’s been the most impossibly hectic few days since I first arrived, and obviously with the wedding tomorrow morning …’

‘Right,’ I say, faintly. ‘The wedding.’

I mean, you’d think I might be somewhat inured to this by now. You’d think I might even be a bit blasé about what is starting, frankly, to look like an infestation of Hollywood legends, popping out of my magical sofa.

But this is Grace Kelly. Quite literally, Hollywood royalty.

I mean, if it was … I don’t know, Ava Gardner, or Betty Grable, or even Lauren Bacall, I think I’d be a bit more able to take it in my stride.

I can’t take Grace Kelly in my stride.

Yes, Audrey Hepburn was exquisite, and yes, Marilyn Monroe was a knockout. But Grace Kelly, if it were possible, knocks the pair of them into a cocked hat.

Her serene beauty, as she stands here five feet away from me in her wedding dress, is astonishing. She might literally have the most perfect face I’ve ever seen. Which obviously I already knew – it’s not like I haven’t watched and rewatched her movies throughout my life – but seeing it here, in the (sort-of) flesh, it’s … astounding. Not that she looks as if she is made of flesh, to be honest. Her peachy-pale skin is so flawless that it looks as if it might actually be made of pearl nacre and slivers of Grade-A diamond. It’s the same glow that Audrey and Marilyn both seemed to have, in fact, and one that probably owes more to the fact that they’re magical manifestations from down the back of an enchanted Chesterfield rather than a one hundred per cent real deal. Her hair, swept back with its rather touching widow’s peak, is baby-blonde, and her eyes as piercingly blue as they’ve ever been when I’ve seen them on screen. And, just like Audrey and Marilyn, she’s wafting a very real-smelling scent of perfume – something sumptuously floral, in her case, that smells of violets and roses and irises. Fleurissimo by Creed, I suddenly remember, in the way random facts suddenly appear, popping up into your head when you didn’t even know they were there in the first place. The scent made especially for Grace Kelly to wear on her wedding day.

‘Are you one of the girls they assigned to unpack my things?’

‘Huh?’

‘Are you one of the girls,’ she repeats, with that unmistakable New England inflection, all over-emphasized vowels and crisp plosives, ‘they assigned to unpack my things?’ Her manner, now that she’s got over the surprise at seeing me, is polite, but distinctly distant. ‘I don’t know if you’re all maids, or secretaries … really, there are so many staff here, it’s a little overwhelming at present.’

‘I’m … I’m not … staff.’

‘Anyway, I wondered if, by any chance, you’d happened to unpack a prayer book?’ She’s ignored what I’ve just said, and is casting her penetrating gaze around the flat, before it alights on one of my as-yet-unpacked boxes. She glides towards it, the train of her dress swishing across the wooden floor, to peer inside. ‘It’s particularly important to me, you see, and … well, obviously the religious ceremony is in the morning. This is my trial run in the dress, if you like. I never do anything without a proper dress rehearsal!’

‘No. I’m quite sure you don’t.’

She looks up, this time fixing that penetrating gaze on to me. ‘Perhaps it would be better if you looked, rather than me? I don’t want to risk damaging the dress.’

‘God, no … I mean, it’s priceless. Iconic.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Just that,’ I swallow, hard, ‘generations of women use it as a kind of Holy Grail of wedding dresses. The acme. The zenith. The … er …’

‘Well, I haven’t even worn it out in public yet!’ She gives a brisk but rather nervous laugh. ‘I know there’s been all kinds of fevered speculation, but I rather think all those generations of women had better reserve judgement until they actually set eyes on it. Don’t you?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Golly,’ she goes on, with a little shiver, ‘it’s chilly up here! I shouldn’t have come in here at all, really, but I just wanted to know what it feels like to move around in the dress, and the palace is so huge, I took at least two wrong turns … I didn’t exactly plan to end up in an attic storeroom, I can tell you that. But while I’m here, I’d very much like to find that prayer book.’

‘But this isn’t … it’s not an attic storeroom. And it’s not the, er, palace in Monaco, either.’

A perfect eyebrow arches. She looks distinctly unimpressed. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘It isn’t a storeroom,’ I say, firmly. ‘You’re not in Monaco.’

Because this is what I vowed I’d do, the very next time this happened: cut to the chase and try to find out what the hell it is with this sofa. I never had the chance with Audrey – and, to be fair, I spent most of the times I saw her convinced I was talking to my very own brain tumour – and when I broached the subject with Marilyn Monroe she just thought I was telling her I was some kind of psychic … but now that it’s Grace Kelly I’m face to face with, my golden opportunity to dig deeper into this mystery has surely arrived. She’s cool, calm and collected, where Marilyn was daffy, breathless and – mostly – slightly squiffy. Admittedly Grace does seem a bit skittish beneath her ice-princess aura, probably down to the fact that, in her world at least, she’s about to become an actual princess tomorrow, marrying a man – in front of billions – that she doesn’t even know that well. But still. She’s Grace Kelly. She’s smart, astute, and Teflon-strong. If I don’t seize this chance, I know I’ll regret it.

She blinks. ‘I’m sorry … you did say you were English?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Well, because you’re just not making an awful lot of sense. But it can’t be a language barrier … I’ll tell you what: I’ll just try to make my own way back to my room, and call for someone else on the prince’s staff. Then they can find my prayer book, and I can leave you to get on with … well, whatever it is you do here.’ She takes a step towards the door, as if she’s actually going to be able to get out that way. ‘Very pleasant passing the time with you, Miss … I didn’t get your name?’

‘Lomax. Libby Lomax. Look, Gra …’ I stop myself, just in time. ‘Miss Kelly,’ I go on. ‘There’s something you need to understand. Or, more to the point, I suppose, there’s something I need to understand …’ I point a finger towards the Chesterfield. ‘OK, you see that sofa? It’s magical, all right? Now, I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but people – Hollywood stars, to be more accurate – appear out of it. Audrey Hepburn. Marilyn Monroe. And now you.’

Her blue eyes, the colour of the sky on a sunny midwinter day, rest on me. She doesn’t blink.

There’s a rather long silence.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Her crisp plosives are crisper than ever. ‘You are aware,’ she goes on, ‘of what you just said?’

‘I know it sounds … well, absolutely impossible. Crazy. But it isn’t. I promise you. Well, it isn’t impossible. It is pretty crazy. But the sofa is enchanted. I got it from Pinewood film studios, and—’

‘Pinewood?’ Her gaze softens, just for a moment. ‘Is this … some joke of Hitch’s?’

‘Hitch’s?’

‘Alfred Hitchcock. Are you playing out some joke of his? It’s just like him to concoct some bizarre pre-wedding jape, now I come to think of it …’

‘No, no! Nothing of the sort.’

‘… and besides, I know he’s against this marriage in principle. Thinks I’ll never come back to work in Hollywood, now I’m a princess of the realm. Which he’s quite mistaken about,’ she folds her gloved arms across her slender body, ‘by the way. And you can tell him, the next time you see him …’

‘I won’t see him. I don’t know him. Honestly. This isn’t a joke. Everything I’m telling you is real.’

Grace Kelly frowns at me, her smooth forehead creasing. ‘You honestly expect me to believe in an enchanted sofa in the attic?’

‘Again, it isn’t an attic. I live here.’

‘You live in an attic?’ She looks rather alarmed, all of a sudden; her steely composure momentarily fractured. ‘I’m sorry to be so blunt, but … you’re not … some sort of palace lunatic, are you?’

‘No! Of course I’m not.’

‘It’s only that, well, I don’t actually know the prince all that well yet … I mean, obviously we’re very much in love – I’d hardly have agreed to marry him if we weren’t, not even to keep my parents happy …’ She clears her throat before continuing. ‘But one never knows, until one actually starts living with someone, exactly what sort of skeletons they have in their closet. Or in this case, I guess, what sort of lunatics they have in their attic.’ Something else suddenly seems to occur to her, and her bright blue eyes narrow. ‘If you’re making all this up to throw me off the scent because you’re Rainier’s mistress …’

‘Christ, no!’

‘Well, there’s no need to sound so appalled, dear.’ Grace Kelly looks, suddenly, more human than I’ve seen her look thus far. Just for a moment, her shoulders drift from ramrod-straight, and that crease in her forehead deepens. ‘He’s an extremely attractive man! And a prince, of course. I wouldn’t be marrying him otherwise …’ Then she stops. ‘Not that I mean … I’m not marrying him because he’s a prince, of course. I’m marrying him because I love him.’

‘Of course, of course …’

‘It’s just as easy to fall in love with a prince,’ she goes on, somewhat defensively, ‘as it is to love a more ordinary man. Not to mention the fact that … well, it’s all very well everyone thinking I have men falling at my feet, but what use is that when all the good ones are already married?’

‘Yes, it’s OK, you don’t have to explain anything to me. I mean, I’ve never been in love with a prince, and the guy I’m in love with is just an ordinary man … but that’s all getting off the subject.’ I take a deep breath and step closer to where she’s standing, slightly less regally than before, in her princess-perfect dress. ‘Look, I can prove it to you, OK? I can prove that what I’m saying is true. You think you’re in the palace in Monaco, right? The pink palace, up on a cliff, overlooking the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean Sea …’

‘Overlooking the marina, actually,’ she says, sharply, ‘and I don’t see what the view has to do with—’

I take one step closer to the window and pull up the blind.

‘Look out there,’ I say. ‘Look out of the window and tell me what you see.’

She opens her mouth – I can tell – to object to my instruction.

‘Just one glance,’ I plead. ‘Look out there and tell me if you can see a marina, filled with bobbing yachts, the moonlight dancing on the water. Or –’ I peek out of the window for a moment myself –‘tell me if what you can actually see is an ordinary street, a load of parked cars, the rubbish bins all put out for the bin-men tomorrow morning and … oh, I think that’s a fox rifling through one of the bins over there.’ The streetlight is bright enough for me to see the scrawny, bushy-tailed animal wrestling with what looks, at least from this distance, like a Domino’s pizza box and a Tropicana juice carton. ‘Please, Miss Kelly,’ I say. ‘Just look.’

For a moment, I think she’s not going to move.

Then, with a well-disguised air of curiosity, she takes one step closer to the window so she can peep out.

Her eyebrows shoot immediately upwards, in absolute astonishment.

‘I don’t understand!’ She glances over her shoulder to look at me. ‘Where has the marina gone?’

‘Exactly! That’s what I’m saying!’ I perch on the window-ledge and look right at her. This close up, the scent of her perfume is stronger than ever, and I can see the faintest lines around her eyes that make her – oddly enough – seem more real, somehow. Well, if not real, then more down-to-earth. More vulnerable, perhaps. ‘You’re magical!’ I continue. ‘Not just Hollywood magic, but real magic. You pop up out of the sofa and into my world and then … well, actually I have absolutely no idea where you go when you go back into the sofa.’ I think about this for a moment. ‘I mean, I have no idea whether you go back into your own world, or whether you just cease to exist for a bit … the only thing I am certain of – at least, I think I’m certain of it – is that it’s not a two-way thing. I don’t get to go into your world, as far as I know. This is more like … Alice in Wonderland, I suppose …’

‘I see. I see.’ Her voice is low, and she’s talking to herself more than to me. ‘I … I think I get it.’

‘Oh, thank God! OK, so as far as I can tell, from what’s happened before …’

‘It’s a dream. That explains it. It’s not a joke. It’s a dream. A very vivid dream, but only a dream.’

‘What? No, no, that’s not it at all!’

‘Don’t be absurd, dear.’ She stares down at me, with a thrilling return to her regal froideur. ‘Quite apart from the fact that what you’re saying cannot possibly be true – I mean, a magical sofa? – it simply cannot be the case that I’m the one who’s come into your real-life existence.’ She lifts her rather strong chin. ‘I’m Grace Kelly. Magic may happen around me – movie stardom, an Oscar win, marrying a prince and becoming a princess – but I am real.’

‘Yes, OK, I can see why you think that, but—’

‘I don’t think that. I know that. I am not some bit-player in your life! Some magical being in a world where you’re the real one …? No. It’s simply not possible. Things happen to me, after all. I do not happen to other people.’

I blink at her. ‘So … you’re telling me I’m the magical one?’

She lets out a rather delighted, excitable tinkle of laughter. It sounds like musical notes on a scale, and would probably be enchanting if she weren’t trying to tell me I don’t exist.

‘Oh, no, no, I’m not telling you you’re magical! Isn’t it obvious? You’re in my dream!’

‘No, I—’

‘It’s perfectly apparent to me, now.’ She paces, in a very dynamic way for someone wearing yards and yards of lace, over to the Chesterfield, and sits down. She seems to be thinking aloud. ‘I’ve been under a good deal of stress, the last few days have been frankly exhausting … I’m sleeping in a strange place, and I really shouldn’t have tried that rather pungent French cheese at supper this evening … so although I’ll admit this does all seem remarkably vivid, it’s obviously a dream. Now, if I were in psychoanalysis, the way everyone else I know is – in fact, I probably should have been in psychoanalysis, back home, but Mother and Father have always made it so clear they think it’s nothing but snake oil and codswallop – well, then I’d probably be able to glean all sorts of things from this dream that might help me in my real life.’ She looks up at me, fixing me with that penetrating, blue-eyed gaze for a moment. ‘Perhaps you’re supposed to represent some other version of me? Ooooh,’ she suddenly breathes, ‘are you my alter ego? The person I’d be if I didn’t look the way I do? If I hadn’t made it in the movies and met the prince? After all, you do look so terribly downtrodden and, well, ordinary.’

‘Hey! I’ve just had a bad night, that’s all.’ I give her a pretty penetrating gaze of my own. ‘You try looking anything other than downtrodden when the man you love doesn’t love you back.’

‘Aha!’ She seems to seize on this, actually clapping her hands together as if to capture the thought before it dares to sidle away again. ‘This is the second time you’ve mentioned this man you’re in love with! What message are you trying to convey? What inner truth are you trying to wheedle out of my subconscious?’

‘No message! No inner truth!’

‘Because obviously, I’ve had my share of love affairs …’ Quite suddenly, she lowers that cut-glass New England voice, worried that somebody in the ‘palace’ might overhear her, I suppose. ‘What I mean to say,’ she goes on, ‘is that perhaps I might, in the past, have fallen in love with a man who didn’t feel the same way as I did. And obviously, the night of one’s wedding, one’s thoughts start to turn to all that sort of thing … I won’t say I was deliberately thinking about Clark earlier today, when I was getting ready for the civil ceremony, but I certainly did find him popping into my mind—’

‘Clark Gable?’ I can’t help blurting. ‘You were in love with Clark Gable?’

Her pearlescent skin colours, ever so slightly. ‘Well! If you’re the manifestation of my subconscious, I’d think you ought to know about something like that!’

‘But I’m not the manifestation of—’

‘Anyhow, I don’t know if I was any more in love with him than I’ve ever been with a man. He was just the one that kept popping into my head earlier. And I suppose Rainier does look a little like him, with his moustache … I say: this fellow you’re talking about, the one you say you’re in love with, does he have a moustache? Because it would make a lot of sense if you said he did.’

‘No. He doesn’t have a moustache.’ I feel giddy with frustration though, to be fair, that could also be down to a combination of the lateness of the hour and the quantity of champagne I’ve drunk this evening. ‘Look,’ I try one more time, rather desperately, ‘I don’t know if you ever met Audrey Hepburn or Marilyn Monroe …’

‘Well, of course I have. They’re sweet girls … Oh!’ Grace gasps. ‘Is this another message? Because they do say that the prince was interested in meeting Marilyn Monroe, as a prospective bride, before he met me. Not that anything of that sort would have stood a chance of success, of course. Nothing against Marilyn, but I don’t think the people of Monaco would have stood for that.’

And then, quite abruptly, she stops talking.

She’s staring down at my coffee table.

More accurately, she’s staring down at the OK! magazine that Cass dumped on my coffee table when she was round earlier this afternoon. The one with Prince Albert of Monaco, his wife Charlene and their children on the cover.

‘Who is that woman?’ Grace asks, pointing a rather shaky finger at the magazine’s cover. ‘And why is she wearing my earrings?’

A terrible feeling of dread pulses through me.

I can’t tell Grace Kelly – even a magical Grace Kelly – that this is her adult son, a son who, as far as she’s concerned, hasn’t even been conceived yet. Can I? Even if she believes I’m a dream, some harbinger of her future, it’s just too close to her tragic reality, too uncomfortable for me to voice …

‘And who,’ she asks, in a much smaller, fainter voice, all trace of regal grandiosity completely disappeared, ‘is that man she’s with?’

I open my mouth to tell her … what?

I mean, really, what? Because it says, quite plainly, in the magazine’s block-lettered headline, that this is ALBERT OF MONACO AND HIS BEAUTIFUL FAMILY ON THE EVE OF PUBLICATION OF NEW OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY OF HIS BELOVED MOTHER, PRINCESS GRACE.

‘Miss Kelly,’ I begin. I take a very deep breath. ‘Grace …’

But she’s gone. Disappeared. Vanished.

Where she was sitting, just three seconds ago, is now nothing but thin air.

Thin air wafting, of course, with the rose- and violet-tinged scent of her Fleurissimo perfume.

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.

Being a dutiful daughter, I’m obviously still planning to stick to the agreement to go and see Mum at the hospital this evening, even though (as Bogdan has helpfully pointed out) I could really, really use the time to get ready for my evening out with Joel the personal trainer.

Because, despite Bogdan’s hovering around with a pair of scissors and a hopeful expression most of the afternoon, I didn’t end up agreeing to a full makeover (plus fringe sculpt). In amongst all this craziness – Grace Kelly showing up, handsome strangers appearing out of nowhere – I do still have a business to run. This afternoon I spent two solid hours catching up on (mostly bridal) emails before popping up the road again to Starbucks to meet a new (bridal) client face to face to discuss the eight matching pendants she wants to give to her small army of bridesmaids to wear on her wedding day and, of course, the vintage-style bridal tiara she’s really hoping I can make for her in time for her wedding next month.

Oh, and then just as I was hoping I might get the chance to jump in the shower, shave all the relevant bits that I prefer to shave before I go out for the evening with a man as gorgeous as Joel, then pick out something über-flattering to wear and trowel on a shedload of subtle, natural-looking makeup, Elvira called.

So obviously I had to answer.

It wasn’t great, incidentally. Any progress I thought we might have made on the getting-along front yesterday has, obviously, been shattered into pieces. I got a blow-by-blow update on Tino’s appointment at the vet’s (no broken bones or internal damage, apparently, but this hasn’t stopped the vet charging her two hundred quid for the appointment, nor did it stop her announcing that she’ll be sending me the bill) and then she finished up the call with what she called an Official Warning. I must have been feeling emboldened by something, or imbued with some of Grace Kelly’s Teflon exterior, perhaps, because I did ask if it was actually fair to give me an ‘official warning’ when I’m still – nominally, if nothing else – working for myself, in charge of my own company. Which didn’t go down well with Elvira, obviously, and simply led to another ten minutes of her ranting on about how I need to be careful about biting the hand that feeds me, and The Importance Of Trust, and Taking Responsibility for my mistakes.

So although I did get to shower, thank heavens, it was a hasty jobbie, and there was no time to linger in front of my wardrobe and pick out something heart-stoppingly fabulous, and there was certainly no time to apply quite as much makeup as I’d have liked. But still, despite the fact I’ve played it a bit safe in skinny jeans, vest top and blazer, and ended up doing most of my makeup at the back of the bus on the way to Harley Street to visit Mum, I feel – possibly mistakenly – as if I’ll pass muster.

Not because I’m expecting anything to come of the evening. But still, it’s a night out with an extremely handsome man, so I don’t want to turn up looking like something the cat dragged in.

Talking of something the cat dragged in, though … I’ve just made my way to Mum’s room, up on the third floor of the hospital, and a truly astonishing sight greets my eyes.

Not Mum, prone from her surgery. Mum, in fact, is nowhere to be seen. I mean, her bed is actually empty.

It’s Cass.

At least, I think it’s Cass.

She – the possible-Cass – is sitting next to an open window, smoking a cigarette and blowing the smoke out into the street below. Her hair is scraped into a ratty ponytail and she’s wearing – bloody hell – not a single scrap of makeup. I mean, not even concealer. Not even eyebrow pencil. She’s wearing leggings, and a baggy jumper, and the sort of papery flip-flops you sometimes get given after a posh pedicure.

She looks so different from the usual Cass – Cass of the five-inch heels, and the tight skirts, and the bouncy blow-dry; the Cass that I just saw the day before yesterday, in fact – that my heart skips a beat.

‘Oh, my God, Cass … is it Mum? Has something happened to her?’

‘What?’ she snaps. ‘No! She’s in the bathroom –’ she indicates the closed door on the opposite wall, from which I can now hear a shower running –‘getting herself freshened up.’

‘Then what … Cass, what’s wrong with you?’

‘I’ll tell you what’s wrong! Zoltan’s fucking kids, that’s what’s wrong!’

Ah.

So the whole stepmothering thing isn’t going quite as well as she imagined.

‘Cass.’ I go over to the window, take her cigarette from her hand, and stub it out in a tea mug beside Mum’s bed before the smoke sets off any alarms and we get thrown out of the hospital. ‘What’s happened?’

‘They’ve only bloody come to live with us, the little fuckers!’

‘OK, you can’t call a six year old and a nine year old little fuckers …’

‘You can,’ she says, savagely, ‘if they are little fuckers.’

‘… but what on earth do you mean, they’ve come to live with you?’

‘It’s her. The ex-wife. Her revenge on me. She drove them round last night, just when Zoltan and I were about to go to bed with a bottle of champagne. Dumped them on the doorstep and said she’s going away to stay with a friend in New York for a few weeks, and they can stay with their father. Thanks to that, I’ve not had a single minute of Me Time all day! I haven’t so much as had a shower, or done my makeup, or my hair … and they went into my room, without asking, and started playing Shoe Shops with all my shoes! Sticky fingers all over my Louboutins! And snot – actual snot, Libby! – on my new Kurt Geiger sandals! I mean, they said it was an accident, but I don’t believe that for a minute, the horrible little vandals …’

‘OK, Cass, calm down. They’re just children. And come on, they’ve only been living with you for one day!’

‘Yeah, and it’s one day too fucking many, I’ll tell you that … anyway, what would you know? Little Miss Footloose and Fancy-Free.’ She scowls at me. ‘Why are you so glammed up this evening?’

‘I’m going out.’

‘Huh! Must be nice.’

‘Well, you know, Cass,’ I say, ‘if you hadn’t got involved with a married man with kids …’

She sulks, but doesn’t say anything.

“Look, can’t you and Zoltan have a proper talk? See if there’s a dignified way out of this mess?’

Cass crumples up her pretty, unpowdered nose for a moment, as she thinks about this.

‘You mean, tell him we need a full-time nanny?’

‘No!’

‘Two full-time nannies?’

‘Cass …’

‘Or are you thinking boarding school?’

I stare at her. ‘For a six and a nine year old?’

‘Yeah. You can get boarding schools for kids that age, can’t you?’

‘I’m sure you can. But why not just send them to the workhouse and be done with it?’

‘Ooooh, I haven’t heard of the workhouse,’ Cass says, leaning forward, eagerly. ‘Is it far away? Do they let them out for half-term?’

My reply to this – which contains more swearing than I’m normally comfortable with – will have to wait, because the bathroom door is opening and Mum is on her way out.

She doesn’t look too bad for a woman in her early sixties who’s just had her gallstones out – sorry, sorry, minor cosmetic surgery. In fact, in her silk kimono and what look an awful lot like cashmere slippers, she’s actually terribly glamorous. For a moment, and it’s a rare moment, I feel rather proud of her. There’s a certain kind of chutzpah, a certain kind of bloody-minded grit, behind the ability to look fabulous only forty-eight hours after invasive surgery, and Mum has it in spades.

‘Oh,’ she says, puncturing the moment with the sheer amount of dissatisfaction she can pack into one single syllable. ‘Libby. You’re here.’

It’s not that my own mother dislikes me, or anything – though it does occasionally feel that way. It’s more that she and I have literally nothing in common. And that Mum isn’t very good at feigning interest in people she has nothing in common with. Mum isn’t very good at feigning interest in people she does have things in common with. There are two things that matter to Mum: herself, and Cass. All right, maybe I’m being unfair: three things. Herself, Cass, and Michael Ball’s performance as Marius in the original London production of Les Mis in 1985.

There are then approximately two hundred things that intermittently matter to her a very little bit – depending on what else is going on with the three really significant things in her life – before you scrape right down to the bottom-ish of the barrel and find her elder daughter. Me.

‘How are you feeling, Mum?’ I ask.

‘Oh, well, you know, I’m a fighter,’ she says, in her best Bravery In The Face Of Adversity voice. ‘It’ll take more than being cut open on the surgeon’s table to get the better of me!’

‘Well, that’s good, then. You look really well,’ I add, in my best You Can’t Have It Both Ways voice. ‘Really glamorous and zingy, for someone who’s just had an op.’

She glares at me. ‘I’m trying to keep on keeping on for your sister’s sake, actually. Do you have any idea what a terrible time she’s been having? Stalked by paparazzi. Hounded by a vicious ex-wife. And now terrorized by these little horrors!’

‘Actually, Libby’s come up with a really good suggestion,’ Cass says, reaching for the contraband cigarettes on the windowsill beside her. ‘Have you ever heard of somewhere called The Workhouse, Mum?’

‘That wasn’t what I was trying to suggest, actually, Cass,’ I say, as Mum’s eyebrows shoot upwards. ‘I’m really trying to suggest that maybe it would be best for you to call it quits with Zoltan. I mean, it’s all very complicated, and it hardly seems fair to—’

‘Oh, well, I’m not sure that would be very sensible,’ Mum says, in the sort of disapproving tone most mothers reserve for stuff like going outside in the winter with damp hair, or forgetting to take a good multivitamin in the middle of cough and cold season. ‘Are you aware, Libby, that he’s a footballer?’

‘I am aware, Mum, yes. Does that mean there’s some sort of law that says she can’t break up with him?’

‘Of course there isn’t. But it would be plain silly to give up on him this early!’

‘Oh, come on. So Cass is meant to stay with this guy, with all the obvious problems, purely because he’s a footballer?’

Cass shakes her head, her ratty ponytail wobbling as she does so. ‘It’s got nothing to do with the fact he’s a footballer!’

‘Exactly,’ Mum agrees. ‘Well said, Cassidy, darling!’

‘I mean,’ Cass goes on, ‘why on earth would I want to be with someone just because they’re good at kicking a ball around on a field? The main thing is that because of the fact he’s good at kicking a ball around a field, he’s really loaded.’

Even Mum has the grace to look a bit sheepish.

‘And,’ Cass goes on, ‘being with Zoltan makes me an actual WAG! Which is all I’ve ever wanted,’ she breathes, ‘since I was, like, thirteen years old. I mean, I’ve never forgotten the image of the original WAGS walking around Boden-Boden …’

‘I think you mean Baden-Baden,’ I say.

‘… their clothes, their shoes, their hair …’ Cass clasps a hand to her chest. ‘That’s the kind of thing that stays with you.’

‘The main thing,’ Mum says, hastily, ‘is that Zoltan seems like such a wonderful young man.’

‘You’ve never met him,’ I point out.

‘I can tell he seems like such a wonderful young man.’ Mum glares at me. ‘I’ve been reading a lot about him these past couple of days, in the magazines. He does all sorts of wonderful charity work – hospital visits for sick children, that kind of thing …’

‘Wow,’ I say. ‘That’s great. Though, I mean, it might not be a bad idea for him to think about his own children, when he has a minute …’

‘… and he’s obviously a great family man, because he has the most wonderful house in Surrey,’ Mum goes on. ‘Doesn’t he, darling? I saw it in Hello!’

‘Yeah,’ Cass grumbles, ‘but the ex-wife will get that in the divorce.’

‘Not if he plays hardball. After all, if you have the children living with you even some of the week, darling, you’re going to have to move somewhere bigger and better yourselves. And in Surrey, obviously, because those poor wee mites can’t be uprooted from their schools and their friends.’

Only three minutes ago, they were little horrors. But that was before they’d become quite useful pawns for Mum to justify why Cass needs a WAG-tastic mansion in Surrey.

‘In fact, while I’ve been resting today, I’ve been looking on Rightmove, darling,’ Mum goes on, pottering over to the bedside table and picking up her iPad. ‘There are some lovely places up for sale at the moment in the Cobham area … look,’ she goes on, getting out her phone. ‘This one even has stables!’

‘Oooooh, I’ve always wanted to get back to horse-riding,’ breathes Cass, peering into Mum’s iPad with a fraction of her old get-up-and-go. ‘This one’s gorgeous. Is it anywhere near that workhouse place Libby was telling me about?’

I think this is my cue to leave them to it.

‘OK, well, if you’re OK, Mum, and if you’re all set here for the night, I’ll head off.’

‘Libby’s got a date,’ Cass sighs, bitterly.

‘Oh! With Dillon?’

This perks Mum up slightly; me going out with Dillon O’Hara was the Best Thing I Ever Did, in her eyes, and she can’t really forgive me for the fact I don’t seem to have any intention of doing it again.

‘No, Mum. Not with Dillon.’

‘Who, then?’

‘No one. Just a guy I met in the street.’

‘Oh, Libby. I know you’re almost thirty-five—’

‘I’m thirty!’

‘… but I still think you ought to be setting your sights a little bit higher than some random man from the streets.’

‘He’s not from the streets! I met him on the street, right near my flat. He’s a personal trainer, actually, and he’s absolutely gorgeous.’

‘Ooooooh, is he one of the trainers from FitRox?’ Cass breathes. ‘You jammy cow! They were all massively hot. Is it Nathan? Or Kyan? Or Sabrina?’

‘Sabrina’s a girl’s name.’

‘Yeah but, seriously, she was so hot, I’d have done her, too. God. Why does Libby get to go out with a gorgeous personal trainer while I’m stuck at home being Mum to my stupid boyfriend’s kids?’

‘I know. I know. It’s very insensitive of her to point it out,’ Mum says, soothingly. ‘But look, darling: if you talk Zoltan into this place, near Walton-on-Thames, you could even think about putting the kids in the annexe …’

I leave them poring over the iPad, and head out of the room, somehow managing to refrain from banging the door behind me as I go.

*

I reach my flat at eight twenty-seven exactly, let myself in the front door, and just have time to hurtle upstairs to zhuzz my hair and bung on a coat of lipstick before, on the dot of eight-thirty, there’s a knock.

Joel is waiting politely outside when I answer it, and is holding a bunch of extremely lovely dusty-pink roses.

‘If those are apology flowers …’ I begin.

‘Nothing of the sort,’ he says, with a grin. ‘For an apology, you’re really looking at a hyacinth, an iris, or a nice calla lily. These are Looking Forward To A Nice Evening Out flowers. I’d have thought that was obvious.’

‘You’re quite right. I don’t know what I was thinking.’ I smile at him. ‘They’re really gorgeous, Joel, thank you. Oh!’ I add, as I take them from him and notice the branded tissue paper they’re wrapped in, inside the layer of cellophane. ‘And you got them from that place up past the tube! For God’s sake, they must have cost you an arm and a leg up there! You honestly shouldn’t have.’

‘It was worth it. Besides, I’d never have been able to drop the words hyacinth, iris or calla lily so expertly into the conversation if it hadn’t been for the woman who sold them to me. Were you impressed?’

‘Ever so. I’ll just dash up and put these in some water, and then we can get going.’

I should probably, for politeness’s sake, if nothing else, invite Joel up while I bung the gorgeous roses in a sink-full of water, but we’re not quite on that level of intimacy yet, I don’t think. Besides, after Marilyn Monroe, I’m once bitten, twice shy. Even though there’s been no further sighting of Grace Kelly since last night, I’m wary of the worst-case scenario, which is that she’s materialized up there right now and is stretched out on the sofa in full wedding dress, still going on about me being her alter ego, or whatever the hell it was she had me pegged as.

She’s not, as I can see pretty quickly as soon as I get up there. But still. Better to be safe than sorry. I’m pretty inexperienced at this whole dating thing at the best of times; no need to add to my awkwardness by introducing my magical sofa before we’ve even cracked open the first bottle of Pinot Grigio.

‘Shall we start out at that nice pub on the corner of the next street,’ Joel asks, as I re-emerge and lock up the front door behind me, ‘and then we can negotiate what sort of thing we’d like, eating-wise?’

‘Perfect.’

I try not to make it too obvious, as we set off, that I’m looking at him. But he does look good. He’s only wearing jeans, a plain white shirt and dark-brown desert boots, but the combination of these, plus his wonderfully fit body and that chiselled, handsome face … well, it’s a winner, let’s leave it at that.

‘So, what do you like?’ he asks, glancing down at me.

‘Sorry?’

‘To eat. Just so we can get some irons in the fire, dinner-wise.’

‘Oh, right … I’m easy. About food, that is!’

‘That’s good. So you’re not one of those gluten-intolerant, raw-food, permanent health-kick types?’

‘No. But – er – aren’t you one of those?’

‘Should I be?’ He sounds faintly astonished.

‘Well, I just thought, with you being a personal trainer, you might be into the latest health fads and stuff.’

‘Oh … well, up to a point, I eat pretty healthily, I guess. But I’m not one for … sorry, what did you call them? The latest health fads?’

‘That might not be the technical term,’ I say, feeling a bit silly. ‘I’m a bit clueless about all that kind of thing, sorry. And just so I can get this out of the way at the start of the evening, before you make me feel a bit crap about the number of miles you run a week, or anything, I should probably just let you know that I’ve not set foot in a gym in about five years!’

‘I would never make you feel crap about anything,’ he says, in a slightly dismayed tone, as if I’m wildly underestimating him. ‘Least of all your record at the gym. Besides, it doesn’t show. You look, if I may say so, amazing.’

This is generous, because although I’ve done my best, and I think I’ve scrubbed up reasonably well this evening, I think amazing is pushing it.

But fortunately, we’ve just reached the pub, and he’s holding open the door for me, and we’re heading in, which brings to an end this slightly awkward line of conversation.

We find a table, a surprisingly nice corner one given that it’s already pretty packed in here, and then I hang on to it while he goes and gets a bottle of wine from the bar.

‘Red?’ he asks, a couple of minutes later, as he reappears with a bottle and two large glasses. ‘I realized when I got there that I hadn’t actually asked you what you prefer. It’s just a Merlot. Is that OK?’

‘Joel, honestly, it’s fine. Please don’t worry! I’m not fussy.’

Though it has to make you wonder a little bit about the sort of woman he’s used to dating, I suppose: the precise punctuality, the flowers, the checking about my happiness and preferences at every turn. Not that I’m complaining, because obviously his manners are pretty much as exquisite as that flawless skin of his. I just hope he relaxes a little as the evening goes on.

I’m not used to being the chilled-out one, that’s for sure.

‘Good.’ He sits down opposite me and pours us each a well-judged glass: not so big that it looks as if he’s trying to get me drunk, but not so small that it looks miserly. ‘Cheers. And I know I said I wouldn’t apologize again—’

‘Then don’t,’ I say, firmly, ‘because I’m absolutely fine. I mean, I’m pretty well padded.’

The image of me and my well-padded body linger, mortifyingly, in the air for a moment.

Then he chinks his glass to mine again. ‘Bottoms up, I suppose?’

The ice, thank God, has been broken.

I laugh, he smiles, and then he takes a drink from his glass and starts looking – thankfully – a little more relaxed.

‘So,’ he says, ‘tell me a bit more about yourself. I mean, all I have so far is that your name is Libby, and you’re a jewellery designer. A well-padded jewellery designer.’

‘Well, for starters, I don’t think anyone wants to know more about my well-padded body.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure about that,’ he says lightly, and softly, into his wine glass.

I won’t deny, this gives me a bit of a thrill.

I mean, I got so accustomed to Dillon’s barrage of seductive charm – full-on, no-holds-barred, innuendo-laden verbal foreplay – that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to indulge in some proper, grown-up flirting. No, scratch that: I’ve never actually known what it’s like to indulge in proper, grown-up flirting. Everything I know about proper grown-up flirting, I’ve gleaned from the movies. Gregory Peck, Cary Grant, Fred Astaire. To name just three of the men I’d have given my eye-teeth to be dating rather than the sorry assembly that makes up my past. I’ve never been wined and dined. I’ve never been wined or dined, come to think of it. All my past relationships have taken a direct path from 1) Drunken Snog At Party through 2) Vaguely Ending Up Sleeping Together to 3) Saying We’re Going Out With Each Other Just To Avoid The Embarrassment Of Actually Having To Address The Fact We Only Have (Unsatisfactory) Sex Because We Don’t Have Anything To Say To One Another. Followed by 4) Hasty (but never quite hasty enough) Break-Up.

Seriously, my ‘love life’ has pretty much looked like the icky, embarrassing bits Taylor Swift has never wanted to chronicle in one of her hits.

All of which makes it even more ironic that during all those years of relationship failure, I could – should – have been settled in blissful harmony with Olly.

And dammit, there I go.

I’m not thinking about Olly tonight. I’m not. In fact, I’m putting a total ban on it. A total ban I’m going to have to tighten up pretty quick-smart if I want to enjoy the evening.

‘Libby?’ Joel is looking at me across the table, and looking mildly concerned about the fact I’m (probably) gazing into space like an idiot and not giving him an answer to his perfectly polite question. ‘Everything OK?’

‘Yes! More than OK! Gosh,’ I say, in a super-enthusiastic, jolly-hockey-sticks sort of style, to make up for drifting off, ‘well, yes! What can I tell you about me? Er … well, I’ve been running my jewellery company for almost two years now. It only started out as a hobby, really – I mean, I was an actress before that, and a pretty unsuccessful one – but it’s really taken off, way more than I ever dreamed it would, really. I’m working with some … um … really great people.’ Best not to sit here and whinge about Elvira’s Official Warning, I think; it might lend a bum note to the evening. ‘And I’m just concentrating on building the brand at the moment,’ I say, which I’m rather pleased with, as an off-the-top-of-my-head statement, because it makes me sound purposeful and dynamic, both of which are things I suspect Joel is impressed by.

‘Amazing.’ He nods. ‘What’s the name?’

‘Libby Goes To Hollywood. I’m a huge fan of old movies, and my stuff is sort of inspired by Old Hollywood glamour … you know, Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner … er … Grace Kelly …’

‘Oh, well, now you’re talking …’ He puts a hand to his chest. ‘Grace Kelly was my first love. Not that she knew it, unfortunately. But still … what I wouldn’t have given to have met her in her prime.’

‘Yes. I, um, imagine that would have been something.’ I take a large drink from my glass. ‘Truly.’

‘Hey, if you love the movies, we should go to the cinema for our next date. I mean, always assuming there is a next date,’ he adds. ‘You might decide against it.’

‘You might decide against it.’

‘I can safely say,’ he says, ‘on the basis of everything I’ve experienced so far this evening, Libby, that no, I won’t be deciding against it.’

I smile at him. He smiles back. And we just sit there, for a couple of moments, beaming at each other like a couple of idiots.

‘Anyway!’ I say, breaking the spell, ‘that’s quite enough about me. Tell me about yourself. I mean, a surname would be nice!’

‘Perreira,’ he says. He turns ever so slightly pink. ‘Sorry,’ he blurts, inexplicably.

‘Why on earth would you be sorry about your surname?’

‘Just because … well, I know it’s a bit of an odd one. Brazilian, as it happens.’

‘Oh, you’re Brazilian.’

‘Half. My dad. My mum was born in Slovakia.’

‘Wow, so you’re … Brazilian-Slovakian.’ His vanilla-fudge skin and mysterious accent are making a bit more sense. ‘That’s quite a mixture.’

‘Yeah, I’m just an old mongrel,’ he says, with a short laugh. ‘Well, maybe not that old, thirty-nine next birthday. And you’re … what? Twenty-eight? Twenty-nine?’

‘Nice try,’ I say, wryly. ‘I’m thirty.’

‘Never!’

‘Again, nice try,’ I say. ‘But yes. Thirty.’

He grins back. ‘Thirty is good. In fact, thirty is terrific. You know, I accomplished more from the age of thirty onwards than at any other time in my life.’

‘Good to hear.’ I sip my wine. ‘So. You’re thirty-eight. And you’re a personal trainer. Do you enjoy it?’

‘Yes, I do enjoy my work.’ He sounds oddly stilted, but after another sip of wine, he goes on, a little less awkwardly, ‘I mean, I have some really great clients. And some good people working for me.’

‘Oh, wow, so you actually own FitRox, then? I thought you were just one of the trainers who worked there.’

‘No, no, I’m not one of the trainers.’

‘That’s amazing. Running the place, I mean. But is it ever difficult, owning your own business like that? Because I suppose I always thought it would be the most incredible fun – and it is, don’t get me wrong – but are there ever times when you feel like it’s not turning out quite how you wanted it to?’

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