Lucy Holliday 2-Book Collection: A Night In with Audrey Hepburn and A Night In with Marilyn Monroe. Lucy Holliday
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denim cut-offs, or a sassy towelling micro-skirt.
(We’re half-sisters, by the way. Different dads. Even though the irony is that actually, my dad is the better looking out of the two: her dad, Michael, is a nice-but-nerdy geologist while my dad is as handsome as he is an utter waste of good oxygen. Anyway, Cass is quite definitively the better-looking out of us two: blonde, blue-eyed and curvy while my hair and eyes are from an uninspired palette of browns, my bosom is very nearly non-existent, and the only reason you’d ever call me ‘curvy’ is because I have a sturdy bottom half that’s seemingly impervious to all forms of exercise.)
‘Yes, it’s my costume,’ I tell Cass, with as much dignity as I can scrape together under the circumstances. ‘It’s a technical work of art, as a matter of fact.’
But Cass has already lost interest. ‘So, do I look OK? Do I look better than Melody? Do you think he’s going to notice me?’
Melody is the lead actress on our (sci-fi, if you hadn’t already guessed) TV show, The Time Guardians.
The he that Cass is referring to is Dillon O’Hara, our brand-new star. Whose first day on set it is today and who – in case you were starting to wonder – is the reason that everybody has turned up to work this morning in their Saturday Night Best.
‘I’m sure he’ll notice you, Cass. You look very eye-catching.’
‘You’re sure? Because you do know, don’t you, the kind of girls Dillon normally goes out with?’ To back up her point, Cass rifles in her bag for this week’s copy of Grazia magazine, puts it down on the table next to the script I was given this morning, and jabs a manicured finger at the front cover. ‘That’s the competition.’
It’s a paparazzi shot of a blonde Victoria’s Secret model – I can’t remember her name, but she’s platinum blonde and buxom, with legs roughly a mile high – exiting a nightclub with Mr O’Hara.
I hate myself for thinking it, given that the wretched man is keeping an entire cast and crew waiting for him on location this morning while he decides if he can be bothered to show up or not. But he’s annoyingly gorgeous. If you happen to be a fan, that is, of ripped torsos, muscular shoulders and angelic cheekbones. His hair is sooty black, his eyes almost match, and he’s stocky and well muscled in a way that implies not so much a life spent pumping iron while gazing into a gym mirror, but long teenage summers spent working on building sites. Shirtless, probably. Getting an all-over tan on that ripped torso …
‘Rhea Haverstock-Harley,’ Cass spits, gazing at the Victoria’s Secret model with loathing. ‘You know she won Hottest Woman in the Stratosphere again in Made Man magazine’s Hundred Hottest list this year?’
Oh, well, now Cass has reminded me of the name, I do, vaguely, know this. And I also recall that, in a (deliberate? publicity-seeking?) echo of the whole Naomi-Campbell-throwing episode, this double-barrelled Rhea girl got in pretty big trouble a few years ago for hitting her hairdresser with her phone. Which, now that I’ve remembered it, has sort of put me off Dillon O’Hara a bit, even though I don’t think he was going out with her at the time.
‘Oh, Made Man,’ I scoff, with a practised air. (Cass didn’t make the top 100 in the most recent poll. I’ve not quite recovered, yet, from the sobbing 3 a.m. phone calls I received from her last week, four nights in a row.) ‘What do they know? And anyway, there’s more to life than just being leered at in your bra by a bunch of drooling pervs, you know.’
‘You’re so right, Lib. I’m going to show them all tomorrow night, by the way.’
(Tomorrow night is the Made Man party celebrating their pathetic poll, and Cass is attending. She may not be Top 100 material, but she’s pert and blonde and on TV, which is evidently quite enough for an invite.)
‘That’s the spirit, Cass!’ I undo one of my Warty Alien gloves, reach across the table and pat her on the hand. ‘You show them all!’
‘That’s why I bought the dress I’m going to wear. It’s got a massively plunging neckline, and it’s totally sheer down the back, so you can sort of see my bum – but through the lace, so it’s really classy.’
‘Cass, no, that isn’t what I meant by show them all …’
‘And I’ll need you to alter that ruby pendant thingy. It’ll look amazing with the dress, but remember I said I’d prefer it longer, so the ruby bit dangles right down into the top of my cleavage.’
That ruby pendant thingy is actually a garnet necklace I made for Cass’s twenty-fifth birthday; painstakingly crafted, to be more accurate, from a gorgeous garnet cabochon (garnet being her birthstone) and a vintage Swarovski-crystal teardrop charm, both hanging from a gold-plated chain that I customized with teeny-tiny garnet-coloured crystals at intervals along the length. Pendant-making may only be a hobby, but I did put a fair amount of work into this particular one, and the chain was so expensive that I could only afford to make it an eighteen-inch pendant (sitting elegantly against Cass’s collarbones) rather than a twenty-four-inch one (nestling brassily between her breasts).
‘I can’t make it any longer,’ I tell her. ‘I don’t have a replacement chain.’
‘Well, bung the ruby bit on the end of a bit of ribbon, or something,’ Cass says, airily unconcerned about compromising the artistic integrity of my creation. ‘I just need it to draw maximum attention to my boobs.’
‘I don’t think you’ll need a necklace to do that.’
‘No, Libby.’ She looks very serious. ‘I really have to pull out all the stops if I’m going to stand a chance up against Rhea Haverstock-Harley.’
‘Surely,’ I say, feeling a bit like whatshisname standing in the sea, telling the tide to go back, ‘you shouldn’t really be in hot pursuit of Dillon O’Hara anyway, Cass. If he has a girlfriend, that is. Not to mention the fact that you have a boyfriend of your own.’
His name is David, apparently. I say ‘apparently’ because Cass hasn’t introduced him to either me or Mum yet. All I know about him is that he’s a ‘talent manager’ for a big showbiz agency, so it’s perfectly possible that he’s covered from head to toe in huge warts, just like my costume, but oozing real pus – and Cass would still be perfectly happy dating him.
‘David isn’t my boyfriend. We’re just seeing each other.’ She emits a sigh of exasperation, as she always does when I don’t just happily spout whatever it is she wants to hear. ‘You’re no use, Cass. I’m going to text a selfie to Mum, see if she thinks I should change into something a bit sexier.’
‘Christ, no, don’t do that!’
I’m not yelping this because I fear that the only thing ‘a bit sexier’ than Cass’s plunging top and micro-shorts is a thong bikini, and I’m trying, as her big sister, to protect her remaining modesty.
I’m yelping this because if Cass texts Mum, Mum will call right back. And after lengthy discussion of Cass’s outfit options, she’ll finally ask to speak to me. And then she’ll ask exactly what part I’ve been given and what my costume is like.
You see, my lack of enthusiasm for the Warty Alien costume isn’t down to the fact that I was secretly thinking I might be the one to catch Dillon O’Hara’s eye if he ever makes it to the shoot this morning. I mean, even if I wasn’t perspiring in puke-coloured latex, I don’t think for a minute that he’s going to stop dead in his tracks, grab the nearest passing crew member and whisper, ‘By God, tell me the name of that flat-chested brunette with the pear-shaped bottom, for until I have bedded her I shall go mad with lust! Mad, I tell you.’
The reason, in fact, is my mother.
The thing is that she’s not only my mother, but also my agent, and the one responsible for badgering The Time Guardians’ casting director until the poor woman eventually cracked and agreed to promote me – against my will, I might add –