‘Is no problem. Am glad to be doing this. And am glad that am able to be improving look of your hair. If nothing else,’ he adds, tweaking a couple of strands of my fringe in the manner that he’s been doing every two minutes since he got on the tube with me, ‘at least you are knowing that you are going into this make-break interview looking your most best.’
This is reassuring to hear, especially from Bogdan, who doesn’t stint with his criticisms. Clothes-wise, I’ve gone for as simple a look as possible – just skinny black trousers, a pale grey top and a black blazer – so as to keep the focus on the jewellery I’m modelling for the purposes of the meeting. I’ve pulled out all the stops and gone for my favourite pieces I’ve made over the last few months: a monochrome necklace of onyx and opal beads, some rather extravagant onyx-and-silver chandelier earrings, and a simple silver bangle with a single grey cultured pearl dangling off it as a charm. Not a vintage-style bridal tiara in sight.
‘Thank you, Bogdan,’ I say. ‘You’re looking pretty good today too, actually. The moustache works on you.’
His reply is to stroke, in a gratified manner, the moustache he’s still sporting, which has grown even more luxuriant since I last saw him.
‘Now, look, keep my phone in case Cass calls, so you can tell her exactly where you are. But if I were you, I’d head for that Starbucks over there,’ I point to the little Starbucks right next to the canal. ‘And I’ll come and meet you both in there straight after my meeting, OK?’
‘This is OK.’ Bogdan takes my phone. ‘Oh, and before I am forgetting, Libby, Aunt Vanya is calling me last night to ask where she should be sending invoice. Am able to be giving her the address of Olly?’
‘Invoice?’ I stare at him. ‘So she is actually charging me?’
‘Yes. But good news, Libby. As kind gesture, and in recognition of any pain and suffering, she is offering you the half price.’
‘I’m not paying her half of anything!’
‘Is generous discount.’
‘Bogdan, she got me kicked out of my flat! And, more to the point, she might have broken my magic sofa!’
A smartly dressed woman, passing by with her dog, gives me an extremely funny look, so I lower my voice as I go on.
‘What I mean is that there was absolutely no sign of Grace Kelly last night, so for all I know right now, whatever weird exorcizing crap she did to my sofa might mean nothing ever appears out of it any more.’
It’s Bogdan’s turn to stare at me in just the same appalled fashion as I’ve been staring at him. ‘So you are saying am never able to be seeing Miss Kelly again?’
‘I don’t know! Perhaps she’s just drenched in holy water, wherever the hell she is, and she’ll be back when she’s dried out. Or perhaps not. I’m not sure that having half an exorcism has done the Chesterfield much good, either way.’
His brow darkens. ‘Then am thinking you should definitely not be paying Aunt Vanya. No discount is worth this disastrous outcome.’
‘Well, can you tell her that, please? Anyway, I have to go into my meeting now.’
He performs one last fringe-tweak, then lumbers off in the direction of Starbucks while I take a deep breath and go in through the large plate-glass doors that lead into Pressley/Waters’ office building.
A chirpy security man directs me towards the lift, with instructions to take it to the fourth floor where, as the lift doors open, a pretty blonde girl steps forward.
‘Hi, Libby?’ She extends a hand. ‘I’m Celeste. We spoke on the phone.’
‘Hi! Great to meet you.’
‘You too.’ She peers at me. ‘Ooooh, I really like your earrings.’
‘You do?’ I touch them, anxiously. ‘I wasn’t sure what to wear.’
‘Oh, you don’t need to worry about Caroline and Annika. They’re lovely, honestly. Come this way, and I’ll take you straight to Caroline’s office.’
Lovely or otherwise, my heart is still hammering as I follow her through the big, open-plan office towards a set of glass doors at the far end. Now that I’m actually here, in this hive of activity, I feel like a total imposter. And my carefully picked-out jewellery doesn’t even feel that special any more, despite Celeste’s kind compliment, because every single person in this office is wearing absolutely stunning accessories, from armfuls of bangles to huge hoop earrings, and a particularly stunning gold torque necklace on the woman who’s just coming out of the glass doors to greet us …
‘Hello,’ she says. ‘You must be Libby. I’m Annika.’
I have an enormous girl-crush on Annika Waters two seconds after meeting her, I have to admit. She has terrific hair (Bogdan would weep at the perfection of that pixie cut), a stunning, slightly wonky smile, and she’s wearing precisely the kind of outfit I’ve tried to emulate myself this morning, except that her own skinny trousers, plain tee and blazer all look, somehow, a hundred per cent more chic.
‘It’s great to meet you,’ she goes on. ‘Will you come on through to meet Caroline, and we can all have a coffee?’
‘I’ll bring a fresh cafetière,’ Celeste says.
‘Thanks, Celeste. Oh, and could you bring the press clippings folder when you come back? Caroline wants to file everything we’ve just been reviewing from this month. It’s actually one of our favourite jobs,’ Annika adds, to me, as she leads me through the door, ‘going through all the press we’ve received in the past month. It’s always pretty gratifying to read what people are saying about us! So long as it’s nice, of course! But you’ve had some good press yourself, since starting out, right?’
‘Oh, um, yes, I’ve had a bit. I mean, I’ve been really lucky.’
‘Luck has nothing to do with it! I was just glancing over a nice piece about you in Vogue yesterday.’
‘Well, that only came about because …’
I stop myself just in time. Because I’m not going to screw up this – whatever it is – by doing myself down. The time for all that has passed. If ever I needed a bit of Grace Kelly self-belief, now is the time.
‘Yes,’ I say, instead, in a voice that I hope is imbued with some Kelly confidence. ‘It was a great piece in Vogue. I was really pleased with it.’
‘Caroline!’ Annika says, as a slightly older woman, sitting on a sofa in the corner of the office, gets to her feet. ‘This is Libby Lomax, of course. Celeste is bringing coffee.’
Caroline Pressley, auburn-haired and wearing a pencil skirt and cashmere combo that makes her look uncannily like Joan from Mad Men, shakes my hand and smiles.
‘Thanks so much for coming in. Come and have a seat …’ She leans down and starts to tidy the magazine print-outs that are spread all over the glass coffee table into a neater pile. ‘Sorry. We’re always in chaos here. Too much work and not enough time to do it in.’
‘It doesn’t look like chaos,’ I say, honestly. ‘And thanks so much for having me. I know you’re busy.’
‘No, thank you for coming to meet us!’ Caroline sits back down on the low leather sofa, and I sit next to her, while Annika flops down in the armchair opposite. ‘We’re both massive fans of your work. Your charm necklaces, your birthstone earrings … wasn’t Emilia Clarke wearing those earrings promoting Game of Thrones at Comic-Con?’
‘She was!’ I beam at them. ‘That was a bit of a coup. I think her stylist must have just ordered them through my website, though, because I didn’t know until someone told me. If she’d asked, I’d have given her them for free! I mean, who says no to Daenerys Stormborn, right?’
For a horrible moment, I think I’ve blurted out too much and sounded like a complete idiot. But – thank God – Caroline and Annika are both beaming back at me.
‘Well, it’s why we asked you here,’ Caroline says. ‘For a discussion about how we might be able to help you get that sort of exposure on a more consistent basis. About what we can do for each other, in fact. I mean, I don’t know how you see your career developing, and I don’t know if you’re absolutely wedded to going it alone, but we
have a terrific history of collaborating with talented young designers.’
‘Oh, no, I’m not absolutely wedded to going it alone! Far from it …’ This might sound a little bit too much like I’m clinging to their life-raft here, so I add, ‘I mean, it’s definitely something I’m keen to talk about.’
‘Well, we could talk about a one-off collection, exclusive to Pressley/Waters … or if you wanted to keep your work entirely on your own site, we might be able to discuss you coming to work with us a couple of days a week on a consultancy basis, bringing some fresh ideas to our in-house brand.’
‘Wow. That’s …’
‘Annika, tell her about the recent hires we’ve just made,’ Caroline adds, ‘so Libby can get a feel for the different ways we make things work around here.’
‘Well, for example, we’ve just brought in a terrific young designer to work full time on the Pressley/Waters own-brand collection,’ Annika says. ‘She’s been building up her own business for the last few years, but then she had twins a year ago and she’s decided she needs something more structured while her children are small. So she’s put her own brand on hold for a while to come and work with us.’
‘And that’s the kind of thing we’re very supportive of, by the way,’ Caroline interrupts. ‘Working women with young families. We like to be very flexible when it comes to attracting the best talent.’
‘Or,’ Annika goes on, ‘as Caroline said, if you were wedded to the idea of continuing your own business, we could discuss the possibility of some consultancy work. I can put you in touch with a couple of lovely women who do exactly that for us … I don’t know if you’ve come across Jess Fredricks, or Polly McAuliffe, but … ah, Celeste, perfect timing.’
It is indeed perfect timing for Celeste to appear with a large cafetière and three mugs on a tray, because it gives me a moment to gather myself and not – as I think I am doing, at the moment – continue to sit here staring dumbly at Annika and Caroline with my mouth wide open.
Because this is just … nuts.
Are they really offering me the chance to work with them in whatever capacity I deem fit for my – according to them – staggering talents? I mean, I know I’m doing my best to channel Grace’s self-assurance, and obviously I don’t think I’m just a total dud when it comes to creative jewellery design (I wouldn’t be so desperate to branch out of vintage-look bridal tiaras if I did), but the best, the very best I was seriously hoping for this morning was that they might offer me a job on their own-brand label. But now they’re bandying around words like consultancy and exclusive collection …
I’m going to have to really get with the programme here, and fast, otherwise they might change their minds about me and back away. After all, confidence inspires confidence, right?
‘I guess,’ I say, sitting forward on the sofa, ‘that my gut reaction is that I’d really like to look at the possibility of some sort of collaboration with you. I mean, I’ve worked so hard on building up my own brand that – even if I’m having one or two issues with it – I don’t think I could bring myself to wind it up. And I still feel like I have a lot more I can do with Libby Goes To Hollywood. Actually, if you guys really like the stuff I was doing until quite recently – the charm necklaces and the Emilia Clarke earrings – it might even help me convince my backers that I don’t need to keep re-making the same vintage bridal tiara for the rest of my career.’
‘Ah. Tell us more about these backers. Thanks, Celeste,’ Caroline adds, reaching for the cafetière as Celeste puts it down in front of her. ‘And you’ve brought the press clippings file,’ she goes on, ‘thank you. Can you just pop this little lot into there and file it with last month’s?’
She passes the sheaf of magazine print-outs towards Celeste and, because Celeste is still holding the tray with coffee mugs on it, I helpfully take the papers for a second, until she’s popped the tray down on the coffee table.
It’s a bit of a shock, on the top sheet of paper, to see Joel’s face smiling out at me.
He’s standing in between Caroline and Annika, in fact, with another couple of women I don’t recognize. He’s wearing a smart tuxedo, and all the women are in gorgeous long gowns, and it looks like … is it an awards do, or a fund-raiser of some sort? There’s a big round table in the background right behind them, with a big floral arrangement and champagne glasses …
I don’t have time to notice anything else before Celeste takes the sheaf of print-outs from my hand, slides them into her file and, coffee safely delivered, heads out of the office.
‘Libby?’
‘Huh?’
‘Black or white?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Coffee. Black or with milk?’ Caroline is poised with the cafetière.
‘Oh, right …’ Having tried to channel Grace Kelly for the duration of this meeting so far, I’m pretty sure I’m now doing an exact impression of her when she clocked that magazine picture herself, on my coffee table. Except I don’t feel I can ask Caroline or Annika what on earth the picture is all about, because I don’t want to seem … paranoid?
‘Oh! Right. Um …’ All my carefully collected poise is gone. ‘Just black, please.’
‘Sure.’ Caroline pours the coffee, and then hands me a mug. ‘Now, obviously you might want to take time to think about the sort of working arrangement you’re most keen on. I mean, if it’s some kind of collaboration – a Libby Goes To Hollywood capsule collection, perhaps – that would be fantastic. But why don’t you come back to the office again, perhaps for a day or two, to get a feel for us, and what we’re about?’
‘That would be great,’ I say, instead of what I really want to say, which is: Excuse me, but was that a photo of Joel Perreira? And how do you know him?
And is this meeting, and all the incredibly generous options you’re offering, anything to do with that?
I mean, I’ll sound totally weird. And the last thing I want, in this all-important meeting, is to sound weird.
‘Terrific! So look, why don’t you take a few days to mull it all over, and get back to Celeste as soon as you know when you’d like to come back in? We’re pretty chock-full for the next week or so, aren’t we, Annika, but we’d love to see you again as soon as possible after that.’
‘Absolutely,’ says Annika. ‘And if you’ve got a few minutes now, I can take you for a quick chat with Jules – she’s the mum of twins I was just telling you about – and she can give you a quick run-down of how it all works for her.’
‘Right,’ I say. ‘Jules. I’d like that.’
‘Fab! Let’s have a little wander with our coffee, then,’ Annika suggests, getting up from her armchair, ‘and see if she’s free for a few minutes.’
‘But don’t you want to see any of my new stuff?’ I ask. ‘I mean, I brought in sketches of all the latest things I’m working on, and—’
‘We love what we’ve already seen,’ Caroline says, getting up, too. ‘And really, Libby, it’s mostly about us all trying to find the right fit. We work with people we really like. That’s just as important to us as anything else.’
Which does absolutely nothing to reassure me that this whole meeting is a hundred per cent genuine.
‘Come and meet Jules,’ says Annika, leading me out through the glass doors into the open-plan office, ‘and you can ask her any questions that you might have. Anything at all!’
But the only question I want to ask this Jules is: Do you know Joel Perreira as well and, if so, do you have any kind of sneaking suspicion that this is what got you an interview with the exalted Caroline Pressley and Annika Waters in the first place? And obviously I’m not going to be able to ask anything of the sort.
I’m just going to have to keep a lid on my unease, aren’t I, until I can head out of here and speak to Joel in person? And, I guess, try to enjoy some of this extremely unusual experience of being quite so fêted and fawned-over while it lasts.
*
Immensely frustratingly, going down in the lift a
t Pressley/Waters knocks the signal out of my phone, and I don’t get so much as a single bar until I’m on my way through the doors of the small Starbucks, where I can see that Bogdan and Cass have occupied a corner booth.
Cass is still in full-on Put-Upon Stepmother mode, I can also see, with her hair scraped into another ponytail and wearing deliberately downtrodden leggings and a hoodie again, although she has managed at least half a face of her usual full makeup, and she’s sporting distinctly WAG-like diamond stud earrings that I’ve never seen before.
‘How is big make-break meeting going?’ Bogdan is the first to ask, shuffling up to make (not much) space beside him in the booth.
‘Oh, it was good … great, in fact.’
‘Nice to see you, too, Libby,’ Cass says, sarcastically, because it’s taken me too long to acknowledge her. ‘Aren’t you even going to ask me how I’m doing? Why I look this shit?’
‘You are not looking shit,’ Bogdan croons, pushing her cup of tea in her direction. ‘You are looking tired. You are looking in need of good break.’
‘Exactly. But when am I going to get one?’ She glares at me. ‘Libby, for fuck’s sake, can’t you put your phone down for a single fucking minute? I mean, we all know you’re the hotshot businesswoman nowadays, but you don’t have to literally ignore us.’
‘Sorry, I’m just … ah. Got it.’ My signal is back up to an acceptable number of bars, so I should be able to drop Joel a quick message and ask him … what? How he knows Caroline and Annika? If this had anything to do with the astonishingly positive tone of the meeting I’ve just attended?
It’s the uncertainty of exactly what to write that leads me, while I hesitate, to try a second option.
I type Joel Perreira into Google, just to see if anything comes up.
And something does come up.
Eighteen million, four hundred and thirty thousand somethings, actually.
Joel Perreira to donate $20m to disaster relief for Bangladesh, declares the first Google headline, updated thirty-six minutes ago on Reuters.
A Night In With Grace Kelly Page 15
