Lucy Holliday 2-Book Collection: A Night In with Audrey Hepburn and A Night In with Marilyn Monroe. Lucy Holliday
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but no such luck … I can’t see an aerial.’
‘Er …?’
‘For your little television.’ She points a long, gloved finger at the iPad. ‘An aerial. Doesn’t it need one?’
‘It’s not a television. It’s an iPad.’ I rub my eyes, fiercely, but when I pull my hands away I can still see her. ‘I think I need a drink.’
‘Another difficult day, darling?’ Audrey Hepburn asks, as she picks up the iPad and studies it, admiringly. ‘Exquisite! What did you call it? A padlet?’
‘It’s an iPad. You use it for the internet, for email …’
She blinks at me as if I’m speaking a foreign language she’s never even heard before.
‘You know what?’ I say, ‘just have a play around with it while I get myself a drink. It’s easy. You’ll get the hang.’
‘Ooooh, thank you, darling!’ She takes me at my word and starts tapping and pressing at the iPad with her long, elegant fingertips. ‘Golly, it’s ever so clever,’ she marvels, as random stuff – the weather forecast; photos of me and Nora at her engagement party; the Net-a-Porter app I muck around with when I fancy a bit of lush designer window-shopping – pop up and down again. ‘Honestly, darling, you do own the most marvellous gadgets. Oh! That reminds me. Your lovely coffee machine! I’ve been talking about it to everyone I know!’
Great: now I’m not only imagining that I’m chatting to Audrey Hepburn, but that she’s chatting to other people as well. The mind boggles as to who it is she could be referring to: a spectral Marilyn? A phantasmagoric Cary Grant? A virtual Liz Taylor?
‘I wonder,’ she asks, clasping her hands in a girlish manner, ‘did you manage to find your pods yet?’
‘The coffee pods? Uh, actually, no …’
‘Well, I’m sure they’re in one of these boxes. Why don’t I take a look?’
Before I can reply, she springs off the Chesterfield and kneels down in front of the biggest heap of boxes, not seeming to care that she’s getting Olly’s van dust all over the hem of her ethereal ball gown.
‘This looks a good place to start.’ She’s opening the box at the top of the pile. ‘Oh, this could be useful, actually. It’s your cleaning rags.’
‘I don’t have a box of cleaning rags …’ I get up, too, and peer into the box she’s just opened. ‘That’s my clothes!’
‘Gosh, I’m so sorry, darling!’
I snatch the box away from her, wishing, more than ever, that I were actually able to afford the things I drool over on that Net-a-Porter app from time to time. ‘We can’t all own wardrobes full of exquisite designer ball gowns, you know.’
‘Well, of course, I simply thought … well, everything in there looked so very grey …’
I stamp off to my mini-fridge for that open bottle from last night.
‘If it helps at all,’ she says, in a contrite tone, ‘your hair looks absolutely marvellous.’
‘You really think?’
‘I do! And I told you all it needed was a good wash and blow-dry.’
‘Actually, this was done by a hairdresser,’ I say, pointedly, as I get the wine from the fridge and head back to the sofa. ‘It didn’t need a wash and blow-dry, it needed a trained professional with a proper pair of scissors.’
‘And didn’t I tell you’ – I think she’s ignoring me, because she’s turning back to the boxes and opening another – ‘that a little fringe would suit … oh! I think I’ve found them!’
She turns, brandishing a small wooden box with a Nespresso label.
‘Yes, that’s the pods.’
She lets out a little shriek of delight, gets to her feet and practically falls over the dusty hem of the ball gown trying to get round the Chesterfield and to the coffee machine on the counter.
‘Oooooooohhhhh,’ she breathes, a moment later, opening the box and gazing in awe at the little guide on the inside of the lid. ‘Ethiopian Sidamo …’
This is not what I was hoping for when I thought I might like to chat to Audrey about the events of today: me on the sofa mainlining wine from the bottle while she fires up the Nespresso machine. But it looks like even my own subconscious isn’t that interested in the details of my day.
‘Not even,’ I mutter at my subconscious, ‘when I got asked out on a proper date this evening.’
‘A date?’ Audrey Hepburn spins round, ball gown swishing, Ethiopian Sidamo forgotten. ‘Libby, that’s so exciting!’
OK, so my subconscious is forgiven. I even feel a bit embarrassed, now, about making a big deal of it.
‘It wasn’t really a date …’
‘Who is he? When is it?’
‘Well, sort of now.’
‘What do you mean, now?’
‘That’s when the date should be happening. Tonight.’
‘And you’re not going?’
I shake my head firmly and take a drink from the wine bottle.
‘Libby, why ever not?’ Audrey’s huge eyes are open even wider, in genuine dismay. ‘Don’t you like him? This gentleman that asked you out?’
‘No, no, that’s not it. I mean, I like him a lot … the gentleman, that is …’ Though the thought of Dillon-as-gentleman is distinctly amusing. (Not to mention the fact that not a single one of the things he’s been doing, in my head, ever since I first met him yesterday morning, has been in the least bit gentlemanly.) ‘I just decided against going. And it wasn’t really a date, anyway. Not in the true sense of the word.’
‘Did he ask you to dinner? Drinks?’
‘God, no, nothing like that. Though we did have lunch together today, as it happens …’
‘Libby!’ she gasps. ‘You had lunch and he asked you out the same night? He must be awfully keen on you!’
‘Er – honestly, it’s not like that. He has a girlfriend, for one thing. Well, sort of. Rhea Haverstock-Harley. Though I did catch her cheating on him today, with a very large Swede.’
‘The vegetable?’
‘The nationality.’
‘Oh, thank heavens,’ she says, rather faintly. ‘Though not terribly nice, either way, for your poor gentleman friend. And probably why he’d much rather take you out for the evening instead of her.’
‘But he’s not asking me out romantically. I think he just enjoys chatting to a normal person, for a change. He’s used to dating Victoria’s Secret models, you see … lingerie models,’ I clarify when her forehead furrows in confusion. ‘They’re all gorgeous and leggy and Amazonian and they strut up and down the catwalk in nothing but a bikini and a set of angel wings.’
‘That all sounds dreadfully vulgar. No wonder he prefers talking to you.’ She considers me for a moment. ‘Which is not to say you wouldn’t benefit from revealing a tiny bit more skin yourself when you go out with him this evening.’
‘But I’m not going out with him this evening.’
‘But you simply must.’
‘But I simply won’t.’
‘But. You. Simply. Will.’
I’m rather startled when, as she says this, she fixes me with a distinctly steely look. A distinctly