Lucy Holliday 2-Book Collection: A Night In with Audrey Hepburn and A Night In with Marilyn Monroe. Lucy Holliday
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point is, Libby,’ – she squeezes round the Chesterfield; it takes a few moments – ‘that you oughtn’t be sitting around here with me.’ She kneels down beside me, grabs both my hands and looks deep into my eyes. ‘You ought to be out! Having a wonderful evening! With a man who adores you!’
‘He really, really doesn’t adore me. Anyway, I can’t.’ My throat is going dry and feels a bit like it’s seizing up. ‘Honestly,’ I manage to say, after a sip of wine, ‘I just can’t. You haven’t seen the sort of girl he usually goes out with.’
‘I’ll bet my bottom dollar,’ Audrey cries, ‘they’re not a patch on you!’
I reach for the iPad, Google ‘Rhea Haverstock-Harley’ and shove the resulting images in her direction: Rhea draped seductively over a lucky rock by the sea in an itsy-bitsy bikini; Rhea striding along a catwalk wearing a diamanté bra, matching thong, and glittery angel wings; Rhea posing in nothing but a pair of high heels on a backwards-facing chair à la Christine Keeler …
‘Well!’ Audrey says, a little too brightly, after a long, silent moment. ‘We’ll just have to find you something really, really lovely and flattering to wear tonight, won’t we?’
‘No, we won’t, because – as I think I’ve already said – I’m not going.’
‘Darling. Far be it from me to pull rank.’ She stands up, folds her skinny arms, and eyeballs me again. ‘But I am Audrey Hepburn, you know.’
Hallucination or otherwise, it’s just a little harder than it was, a moment ago, to disagree with her.
‘And do you know the one thing I’m most proud of?’ she goes on. ‘It’s that I don’t let anything scare me. I wasn’t qualified to act opposite Gregory Peck. I wasn’t good enough to dance with Fred Astaire. But I damn well got on with it and gave it my all, because that’s the only way a girl is going to find her place in this world.’
It’s stirring stuff, I have to admit.
And, quite suddenly, she’s less the elfin style queen I’ve always imagined myself being shopping buddies with. Standing here, right now, she’s a warrior princess. She’s a Givenchy-clad Boudicca, a kohl-rimmed Joan of Arc …
‘All right.’ I get to my feet, too. ‘I will go out this evening! After all, if you can dance with Fred Astaire, I can get on the tube and—’
‘My Nespresso!’ she suddenly shrieks, as the machine bleeps its readiness to make her coffee. She practically knocks me over as she squeezes round the sofa to get to the kitchen. ‘Now, where does the little pod go?’
‘Look, can we worry about that later? I need to get ready for this party before I change my mind.’
‘Yes, yes, you’re absolutely right.’ Audrey abandons the coffee machine a second time. ‘Now, we were going to find you something spectacular to wear, weren’t we?’
‘No, no, no,’ I say, hastily, as she heads, in a flurry of couture satin and taffeta, for the clothes box that she discarded earlier. ‘You said something lovely and flattering. Not spectacular. I don’t want spectacular. My sister’s going to be at the same party, and it’s a really big night for her. And she’s going to be pissed off enough that I’m even there in the first place. So I really want to wear something … well, perfectly nice but inoffensive.’
‘A little black dress!’
‘Well, I suppose that would probably be all right …’
‘Darling, a little black dress is always all right.’ She’s already delving into the clothes in the box, shoving aside marl grey hoodie after marl grey hoodie. ‘Do you have one by Hubert, by any chance?’
‘Do I have a little black dress by Hubert de Givenchy? No. No, I don’t.’
‘Well, there’s no need to worry about that; I’m sure we’ll find something else lovely …’ Though her elegant bare shoulders sag, visibly, as she casts aside yet another (when did I buy all these?) grey hoodie. ‘You do own a dress, darling? One is all we need.’
‘Yes, I own a dress! Look, I obviously need a bit of a wardrobe update, OK?’ But fortunately I’ve just spotted a different sort of grey fabric in the heap of grey fabric, and I pull it out – it’s the Whistles slate-grey silky wrap dress I’ve worn on several Big Occasions over the past few years: my first date with Daniel; my last birthday drinks; the after-party when Cass was nominated (but didn’t win) for a National Reality Television Award for her appearance on Mary Berry’s Celebrity Cupcake-Off. ‘Ha! A dress!’ I declare, waving it at her in triumph.
Audrey Hepburn stares at the wrap dress. ‘Is it?’
‘Yes! It’s a wrap dress!’
‘But darling …’ She’s looking appalled. ‘It’s just a piece of material. It has no line. No structure.’
‘It doesn’t need to! It’s universally flattering! It skims over your curves. It creates a waist.’
I realize that I’m simply parroting everything I’ve ever read about wrap dresses, which is why I spent a small fortune on it in the first place. And now I come to remember it, this dress didn’t skim over my curves or create a waist; all it did was hang rather limply off my negligible chest and threaten to expose unflattering amounts of upper thigh every time I took more than three steps in succession. But it’s the most expensive dress I’ve ever owned, which is why I’ve hung onto it instead of consigning it to the charity bin.
From the expression on Audrey’s face right now, it really needs to be consigned to the charity bin. Or, more likely, the rubbish bin.
‘Fine,’ I say, putting the wrap dress down. ‘You win. I won’t wear this one.’
‘I think,’ she says kindly, ‘that would best.’
And then she practically disappears into the box, head down like a dabbling duck, leaving nothing much of herself visible except for the embroidered train of her ball gown. It’s a moment later when she pops back up again with a triumphant look on her face and a black dress in one hand.
‘Now, this looks much more the sort of thing!’
The dress she’s holding is a rather sober shift with a boat neckline and a tricky-to-pull-off hemline that sits, if I recall, at mid-calf. I bought it from Primark without bothering to try it on, in the futile hope – funnily enough – that it would make me look like Audrey Hepburn.
Needless to say, it didn’t, and, even more needless to say, it’s never seen the light of day since the depressing trying-on session when I got home and took it out of its carrier bag.
‘Are you sure?’ I look at the dress with a lot less enthusiasm than she’s displaying. ‘It’s just a cheapo thing from Primark.’
‘Well, I can’t say I’m familiar with Mr Primark’s work …’
‘No, no, it’s not a Mr, it’s just a—’
‘But I think this will do very nicely indeed!’ She holds the dress up against me. ‘All you need is that rather smart trench-coat of yours, slung over your shoulders, and a few well-chosen accessories. That neckline, for example, is simply crying out for a sweet little diamond pendant, or an elegant string of pearls.’
‘Right, well, I’ll call my bank in Zurich, then get them to crack open the largest of my safety deposit boxes and have a selection flown over to me by private jet.’
‘Unfortunately I don’t think there’s going to be time for that,’ she says, in deadly earnest. ‘But didn’t I see you with a pearl and diamond necklace when I first met you?’
‘I highly doubt that … oh, you mean Nora’s wedding pendant?’
‘All