Despite this, I can’t actually bring myself to interrupt them. After all, there’s pitifully little-enough romance in the world, so why should I begrudge either of them this rather sweet, admittedly peculiar flirtation.
So I leave Bogdan to Grace’s charm offensive, and I leave Grace to Bogdan’s … well, weirdly detailed descriptions of the massacre of the Romanovs. They’re obviously making a connection, unfettered by the fact that she’s not real and that he’s not usually heterosexual. I, of all people, am never going to lay down laws about this sort of thing.
I turn, as silently as I can, and head back up to the top floor to put the kettle on for Dillon.
So, last night ended up being the weirdest sleepover that’s ever happened in the entire history of the planet.
Dillon passed out in my bed next to his undrunk cup of tea, wearing nothing but his underpants and one of the baggier of my trusty grey hoodies as a not-that-flattering crop top. Bogdan and Grace Kelly stayed chatting (thank God, just chatting) on the Chesterfield until the wee-est of wee small hours, when she suddenly pulled that familiar vanishing trick, leaving Bogdan to fall asleep (with a dreamy smile beneath his ever-sprouting moustache) on the sofa. And I, with neither a bed nor a sofa to sleep on, eventually curled up beneath a blanket on the bedroom floor, as far out of Dillon’s vomiting reach as possible, to get a few hours of shut-eye before my phone rang a little after six a.m.: a call-back from Grove House, Dillon’s old rehab clinic, where I left a voicemail very late last night asking them to call first thing in the morning.
I should have realized that for a clinic that offers sunrise yoga and Reiki at dawn, first thing in the morning really does mean first thing in the morning.
Anyway, once I’d recovered from the horror of speaking with one of the Grove House’s abnormally perky receptionists at that hour of the morning, it was probably a good thing that the day started so early. Because it took a good hour to properly rouse Dillon, then another couple of hours for me and Bogdan to persuade him that last night’s bender wasn’t a mere ‘stumble’ on the ‘road to sobriety’ (he really does talk shit at times) and that he really, really needs to get back into rehab as fast as you can say Jack Daniels. By the time he and Bogdan set off for Barnes, where the Grove House clinic is located, it was already close to ten a.m., when I was due for a Skype call with one of my only non-bridal clients, a very nice fashion PR who often gets me to make bits and bobs to send out to stylists on magazine shoots.
She wanted the call, in fact, to tell me that she’s just got engaged, and that she’d love me to make her a vintage-style tiara, just like the one she saw in the piece about me in Brides magazine, to go with her original 1930s dress for her wedding.
I’ve just finished the call, in fact, and I’m just about to call Bogdan to find out how things are going with depositing a reluctant Dillon at rehab, when I notice that a new email has just popped up at the top of my inbox.
It’s from someone called Celeste Browne, and the subject is Trying to schedule a meeting?
It’s probably just yet another bride-to-be, wanting me to create a replica of the vintage-style tiara in Brides magazine, but I need to keep on top of my emails (or they tend to get on top of me), so I give it a quick click before I give Bogdan that call.
Dear Libby, says the email, Could you possibly let me know when might be a suitable time to come into our offices for a meeting with Caroline and Annika? They’re big fans of your work and would really like to speak with you about the possibility of a Pressley/Waters collaboration with your brand. Please email me back with your availability, or give me a call when you have the chance. Kind regards, Celeste.
It takes me a moment or two of rather stunned staring to get to grips with precisely what this email is about.
This is Pressley/Waters the vastly successful jewellery website, right?
And Caroline (Pressley) and Annika (Waters) want to meet me for a chat about … working together?
This sort of fashion-hotshots set-up has to have come through Elvira, right?
But why on earth would Elvira, who has wanted me to go smaller, more expensive and more ‘niche’ ever since we’ve started working together, want me to have this kind of conversation with a mass-market (albeit high-end) online jewellery boutique? And shouldn’t she have mentioned it to me before I got the out-of-the-blue email, if she did?
It’s too strange – not to mention enticing – a situation to simply email this Celeste back and arrange a far-off date. So I scroll down to find her direct line, then press on the screen to dial it.
‘Pressley/Waters, Celeste speaking, how may I help you?’
‘Oh, hi! Celeste … um … my name’s Libby Lomax. You’ve literally just emailed me …’
‘Libby, hi!’ She sounds young, and very friendly. ‘Thanks for calling me back so quickly. I should have said, actually, in my email, that Caroline and Annika are both travelling a lot as of the middle of next week. So if you did happen to have any time available before then – even just a half-hour – I know they’d try to make that work if they could.’
‘Er … yes. Yes, I have time available. I mean, I’ll make time, obviously! This is … sorry, did you get my details from Elvira?’
‘Elvira?’
‘Elvira Roberts-Hoare.’
‘Oh … I have no idea about that, Libby, sorry. Caroline just asked me to contact you when she came into the office this morning. I mean … I doubt it was anything to do with Elvira Roberts-Hoare, though. You’re talking about the model, right?’
‘Yes, that’s the one.’
‘Oh, no, then I highly doubt it would be anything to do with her. She and Caroline don’t get along. At all.’
This is, if I needed it, another huge plus in favour of Caroline Pressley.
The other one being, of course, that she’s the brains behind the most successful jewellery website in the country: the net-à-porter of bling. I love almost everything on the site – and it’s a pretty extensive, though carefully curated, collection – from totally affordable friendship bracelets to drool-worthy £10k pearl earrings. They sell rhinestone cocktail rings just as enthusiastically as they do great hunks of real diamond, and though I expect they sell far more silver initial pendants than they do rose-gold and pink-sapphire chokers, it’s just as gratifying, as a customer, to order the former as it is the latter. I sent Nora, in fact, a lovely simple necklace with N (Nora), M (Mark) and C silver charms on it when Clara was born, partly because I don’t make initial pendants myself, and partly just because I know the arrival of a gorgeous Pressley/Waters package, Special Delivery and all boxed up in covetable black and gold packaging, is just the thing you might appreciate after you’ve been through a two-day labour and an emergency C-section.
‘So, might you be able to come in a couple of days from now? They do have a little bit of time on Thursday morning, if there’s any way you could make it?’
‘Yes. Yes, I can make it.’
‘Great! Can we say ten thirty? At our offices in Paddington?’
‘Ten thirty is perfect. I’ll be there. Thank you, Celeste.’
‘Oh, you’re really welcome, Libby. I’ll ping you through a confirmation by text, OK?’
‘Thanks, that’s great.’
As I put the phone down, I allow myself a little celebratory whoop.
I mean, this may all come to nothing, but even just getting the opportunity to meet Caroline Pressley and Annika Waters is so exciting.
Especially at a time when I’m feeling so thoroughly sick to the back teeth of my job, to be honest. Knowing that these particular two women have spotted my stuff, and like it enough to want to meet for a chat – it’s a huge fillip.
Of course, there exists the perfectly real possibility that they’re thinking of establishing their very own vintage-inspired bridal line. Which would obviously be a teeny-tiny bit of a disappointment, creatively speaking …
But what am I saying? If Caroline Pressley and Annika Waters wanted any
work from me at all, I’d do it like a shot. I’d agree to make nothing but vintage-inspired bridal tiaras for the rest of my entire career … Well, OK, I might baulk at that when it actually came to it, but still, I’d be honoured to be asked. And it would be pretty impossible to turn it down.
Anyway, I’ll cross all those kinds of bridges if I’m lucky enough to get to them.
For now, the main thing to focus on, I guess, is putting together an up-to-date portfolio of my stuff, and working out – vitally important, obviously – what to wear for the meeting on Thursday, and—
There’s a brisk knocking at the front door, which I go to open.
Seeing Joel outside is enough, after the exciting call I’ve just had, to knock me down with a feather.
‘Joel!’
He’s in his workout gear, obviously, and looks, in the bright sunlight, even more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed than he did last night. Though perhaps that’s just because the last two men I’ve seen this morning were Dillon and Bogdan: the former bleary-eyed and painfully hung-over, the latter sleep-deprived from his late-night fawning all over Grace Kelly, and – after so many hours without shaving – almost completely covered in a thick foliage of facial hair.
‘Libby. Hey.’
‘Hey.’
My first thought is that he must have dropped something when he shot out of here like a bat out of hell last night.
‘Sorry, did you forget something yesterday?’
‘Yeah. My manners.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I know you said you wanted privacy, Libby, but I shouldn’t have just left like that. It was wrong of me. Did you manage OK?’
‘With Dillon? Yes, Joel, it was fine. I mean,’ I add, suddenly noticing Dillon’s vomit on the street behind him (I must dig out a bucket and sluice that down), ‘it was manageable. I won’t say it was the most fun night I’ve ever had. But there’s absolutely no reason for you to feel bad about that. It was much better that you left.’
‘Even so. I thought about it all the way home – I thought about you all the way home.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘I wish you’d just told me you were getting married, Libby. Then I wouldn’t have let myself enjoy the evening as much as I did.’
‘I’m … I’m not …’
‘And what I came here to say this morning was … well, I know all too well how these things can end up taking on a life of their own, but if you are having doubts about going through with it – and you must be having doubts, surely, if you were out on a date with me – then my advice would be to just hold off. I know it seems impossible, when the dress has been bought and, I don’t know, the cake has been ordered. But—’
‘Joel. Listen to me. I’m not getting married.’ I put a hand on his arm. ‘I’m really, really not. That dress was … it belongs to a friend.’
‘Oh!’
‘I’m just looking after it for her. I mean, I design wedding jewellery,’ I go on, which isn’t fibbing, at least, ‘and often I have to take into account the design of a dress when I’m working on the accessories … honestly, if you’d looked more closely, you’d have seen that I’d never fit into a dress that size! You need a twenty-two-inch waist to get into something like that. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I certainly don’t have a twenty-two-inch waist measurement. I barely have a twenty-two-inch thigh measurement,’ I add, so desperate am I to convince him that I’m not the owner of the dress he saw last night.
‘Right. Well, in that case, I’m really sorry.’ Joel is turning slightly – attractively – pink. ‘I just thought, after you were a bit detached over dinner … the wedding dress actually made a lot of sense, to be honest with you.’
‘Trust me, the wedding dress doesn’t make any sense.’
‘Well, OK, then. If there’s really no murkiness your end about secret weddings, or problematic ex-boyfriends …’
‘There’s really no murkiness about weddings or problematic ex-boyfriends.’
‘… then will you still go out with me again?’
‘I’d love to,’ I say, trying not to sound too astonished that he’s asked. ‘I really would, Joel.’
‘Great! I’m … I’m really chuffed about that, Libby.’
Really chuffed, in his oddly accented English, sounds heart-meltingly attractive, I have to say.
‘I’m away for work later today and tomorrow, but if you’re free Thursday night …?’
‘Yes, I’m free.’ This is perfect, because it gives me the whole of today and tomorrow to focus on preparation for the meeting with Pressley/Waters, and then I can relax and enjoy myself that evening with Joel. ‘And I promise, there’ll be no drunken exes turning up and ruining it this time. On my side, at least.’
‘Hey, he didn’t ruin it.’
‘He didn’t improve it.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Having a hostile ex-boyfriend show up in the middle of a date is something I’ve never actually experienced before … I won’t say it warrants inclusion in any of those Fifty Things To Do Before You Die lists, but it’s always nice to try something new. Besides, it gave me the chance to try out one of my much-practised Krav Maga moves, at least.’
‘Oh, that’s what that was. I thought it was judo.’
‘Oh, no, no, it’s far more impressive than judo.’ He grins. ‘Esti was pretty proud of me when I told her, actually. She’s normally the one chucking me to the floor. Gratifying though it always is, obviously, to get your arse handed to you by a girl, it was nice to be the one handing out the arses for a change. If that makes any sense.’
‘Oh, so Esti is … your trainer?’ Now I’m confused. ‘I thought you were training her.’
‘Er, no,’ he says. ‘She … um … she’s not my trainer, but she does teach me Krav Maga. I think she learnt it in the Israeli army. Either way, she’s lethal … Anyway,’ he goes on, ‘it’s the sort of skill I always hoped might come in handy some day. I just hope Dillon doesn’t feel as sore as I always do afterwards. From the Krav Maga, that is. I expect there was nothing he could do about feeling sore for other reasons.’
‘Yes, true. He has …’ I stop, because it’s not fair to out Dillon as a lapsed addict to someone who doesn’t know him. ‘… he just can’t handle his drink, that’s all.’
‘Hey, don’t worry about that. I’ve had a couple of friends with … that kind of problem as well.’ He puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s never easy.’
Dear God, he really is the perfect man, isn’t he? Discreet, understanding, devastatingly sexy …
… and leaning down, as I look up into his eyes, to place a soft kiss on my lips.
It’s heavenly.
And it goes on.
And on.
And on a bit longer.
OK, quite a lot longer.
When we both eventually pull away to catch our breath, he smiles down at me, his eyes crinkling at the sides.
‘I’m so glad I met you, Libby.’
‘Me too.’
‘You’re a breath of fresh air, you know? I mean, it’s so nice to meet someone I can talk to. Someone who’s not just … out for whatever they can get.’
Which is a strange thing to say.
Except it isn’t, I guess, because I can well imagine that there are lots of women who are attracted to Joel merely by the pretty package on the outside. Those eyes. That skin. The sexy accent. The body …
I mean, obviously never having been in the (ever-so-slightly enviable) position of people fancying me for nothing but my looks, I can’t imagine how that must feel. But it could make it hard, I do understand, for him to trust that he’s met someone who likes him for more than that.
‘So, shall we do something different on Thursday evening? A movie, perhaps? I haven’t been to the cinema in ages, and I know you said you like it …’
‘A movie would be wonderful, Joel,’ I say, pathetically hoping he suggests something I’m not all that bothered about seeing so we can justifiably spend most of the time snoggin
g on the back row like a pair of randy teenagers. ‘I look forward to it.’
‘Me too. I’ll drop you a text tomorrow, shall I, to arrange a time?’
‘That would be great, but don’t stress about it if you’re busy … where are you going, anyway? For work, I mean.’
‘Barbados.’
‘Wow, that doesn’t sound … er … like work.’
‘Oh, yeah.’ He looks embarrassed. ‘It is, though. I mean, I have a client who is based out of there, so … yeah. I go there if I’m needed.’
‘That sounds amazing! I need more clients like that!’
‘Well, you know … Barbados isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’
‘You should!’ He glances down at his watch. ‘Anyway, I really should get going now, but I’ll see you on Thursday, OK?’
‘OK. Looking forward to it!’
‘Me too.’ He blows a little kiss with the tips of his fingers as he turns away and starts to jog along the street towards FitRox’s studios. ‘Have a great day, Libby. And take care.’
I’ve barely had time to turn back into the house before I hear my name called from the other direction.
‘Libby?’
It’s Elvira, marching down the pavement towards me in cobalt-blue over-the-knee boots, a fringed suede mini-skirt and, of all things, a rather incongruous navy-blue sou’wester. Throw in her customary Hermès Birkin bag and the Alexander McQueen skull-print scarf slung round her neck, and it’s certainly an unusual look, though one – I have to admit – she somehow manages to pull off in the way that only a bohemian aristocratic ex-model can.
From the sound of her heels stomping along the pavement, she’s not happy about something. I mean, not happy about something specific; obviously by now I’m quite accustomed to Elvira’s general air of irritation and misery.
‘Hi! Tino’s looking really well,’ I begin, as she reaches me, Tino clutched as usual under her non-Birkin-carrying arm. ‘Can I get him a—’
‘Can I just ask,’ she interrupts, in a tone that suggests she’s not actually asking anything at all, ‘why I’ve been getting calls this morning from the Willington-Joneses asking why there was fighting and vomiting going on in the street outside last night?’
A Night In With Grace Kelly Page 11
