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. He
r 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 iP
ad 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.
A Night In With Grace Kelly Page 7
