‘Mum, I have to go now, actually,’ I say, and then I lower my voice. ‘But just to keep you completely in the loop, I’m not actually going to go out with Joel Perreira again.’
Mum lets out a little peal of laughter.
‘I’m serious,’ I say.
There’s a deathly silence at the other end of the phone.
‘Liberty Alexandra Lomax,’ she croaks, after a moment, ‘if you think that’s funny—’
‘My middle name isn’t Alexandra! For Christ’s sake!’ I’m too exasperated to carry on this conversation any more. ‘Look, I’ll call you tomorrow, Mum, OK?’
‘Libby, wait—’
But I do, actually, hang up on her.
It’s perfect timing, in fact. Because the doors of one of the lifts nearby have just opened, and Joel is heading out, towards the revolving doors.
He’s deep in conversation with a rather beautiful and serious-looking woman who’s taking notes on an iPad as she goes, so who – I assume – must be some sort of personal assistant. And he’s being followed by a tall, muscular man and the short, almost as muscular woman I recognize as Esti, who I thought was his Krav Maga coach but who, from the looks of this set-up, is in fact some sort of … bodyguard?
I get to my feet and – taking the probably insane gamble that I’m about to be Krav Maga’d to the ground by one of the bodyguards simply for stepping into Joel’s path – step into their path.
Joel stops.
So they all, obviously, stop.
There’s a brief, extremely tense moment where it looks as if I might actually be Krav Maga’d to the ground by one of the bodyguards.
And where Joel, gratifyingly, drains of all colour and looks as if he’s about to pass out on the spot.
And then he opens his mouth.
‘Libby.’
‘Joel,’ I say.
‘Can we … talk?’
‘Sure.’ I glance around the busy lobby. ‘Here? Or—’
‘Would you come up to my office?’
‘No. I don’t want to do that.’ Because I just have a feeling that, on his own turf, Joel is going to find a way to explain away everything.
‘All right. Here, then.’
He glances over his shoulder to the beautiful PA and the bodyguards.
‘Give me a few minutes, guys?’
‘But, Joel—’
‘I know, I know, I was going to call Palo Alto from the car. Just call ahead for me, Sav,’ he instructs the PA, ‘and tell them something important has come up and I’ll call them in a few minutes.’
‘Wow,’ I say, as the PA turns and heads back towards the lifts, already on her mobile, and the bodyguards … woah. They’ve just melted into the background in a way that’s as impressive as it is scary. ‘You have a whole few minutes for me. I’m flattered.’
Annoyingly, I can’t help but notice as he sits down on the white leather sofa, he looks good. Incredibly good. In fact, now that he’s not pretending to be a personal trainer, and is instead looking the very epitome of what you’d expect a tech billionaire in his late thirties to look, after a day in the office – gorgeous suit, white open-neck shirt – he looks better than ever.
He takes a deep breath. ‘So. You know.’
‘Yes. I know.’
We stare at each other for a moment.
Then he says, ‘I didn’t actually lie, you know.’
My jaw drops. ‘Are you kidding me?’
‘No. Nothing I told you was an untruth. I promise you, Libby. I might just have … been careful with my answers.’
I snort. ‘Did you take advice from your crack team of lawyers before we went out that night, or something?’
‘No.’ He shakes his head. ‘Not my crack team. Just the second-tier ones.’
‘Hilarious.’
‘I’m trying to lighten the mood.’
‘Joel, seriously. I didn’t come here for any more jokes and japes.’
‘It wasn’t a joke. None of this was a joke.’
‘You could have fooled me.’
He looks a bit desperate. ‘Look, will you come out to dinner like we planned and we can talk about this?’
‘I can’t.’ I stare at the ground, feeling more miserable than angry, all of a sudden. ‘My plan was to go out to dinner with a personal trainer named Joel. Not a tech billionaire named Joel Perreira.’
‘Libby … I’m the same person.’
‘You’re really, really not.’
The expression on his face is hard to read; in fact it strikes me that he’s probably an exceptionally talented poker player. But it looks like a mixture of despair, mild irritation and – somewhere in the mix – weary amusement.
‘I just have one question for you, Joel.’
‘Only one?’ he asks, looking more weary than ever.
‘Was it you who set up the meeting with Pressley/Waters?’
He hesitates, which is enough for me.
‘Right.’ My stomach wrenches. I get to my feet. ‘I see.’
‘No, no, Libby, you’re getting this all wrong! Look, OK, I did happen to mention you to Caroline Pressley when I spoke to her the other day …’
‘Why did you speak to her the other day?’
‘Because we’ve worked together for years. I was one of the first people to invest in her website.’
‘You’re her investor?’ This is worse than I thought. ‘Bloody hell, Joel! No wonder she agreed to meet me! No wonder they were all so nice to me!’
‘She was nice to you because she’s a nice person! And because she really likes your stuff. Look, all I did was ask her if she knew you, and—’
‘Just forget it.’ I start to walk towards the revolving door. ‘You’ve done enough.’
Joel gets up and follows. ‘Libby, please. Stop.’
He puts a hand on my shoulder, but evidently thinks twice when I wrench it away. After all, we’re in a busy place, a place full of his employees, and he obviously doesn’t want to look as if he’s assaulting a lone female, or anything. With this in mind – all the employees around, that is – I do actually stop and turn back to look at him, because I don’t want to embarrass him, or anything. Well, obviously I do want to embarrass him, because otherwise I wouldn’t have come here in the first place. But I don’t want an actual scene, with passers-by staring, and taking surreptitious footage on their iPhones and stuff. It’s enough for Joel to realize he’s behaved badly; I don’t need his entire staff to realize this as well.
‘It was like a fairy tale,’ he says.
‘What?’
‘Meeting you. You not knowing who – what – I am. It was like a fairy tale. You know … the kind where the prince disguises himself as a swineherd, and—’
‘Hold up, hold up.’ I lift a hand to stop him. ‘If you’re the prince disguised as the swineherd – in whatever bonkers scenario you seem to have playing in your head – then what does that make me? Some sort of unusually credulous peasant?’
‘No! Well, OK, I get that it looks like that, but—’
‘Thanks, Joel. Have a nice life.’
‘Libby, come on. Is your life really so full of enchantment and magic that you can afford to ignore the moments when Fate really does present you with something fantastical?’
I turn away again, because I can feel my resolve wavering.
‘Bye, Joel,’ I say. ‘I’ll let you make your call to Palo Alto now.’
‘Libby—’
‘Please don’t call me again.’ I step into the revolving door.
And then I misjudge the exit, and have to go all the way back round the wretched thing again, while Joel stands there staring at me.
I get it right the second time, thank God, and finally step out into the street.
He doesn’t try to follow.
*
I avoid going home for as long as I realistically can.
It just feels so miserable there, now that I’m starting to get things all packed up, and now that everything’s gone so
badly wrong, both with Ben and Elvira, and – after such hope – with Pressley/Waters.
And with Joel. Who, I realize now, I was probably far more keen on than I let myself admit.
Besides, I’m slightly avoiding going back there because I don’t particularly want to be confronted by the Chesterfield: I don’t want to have to acknowledge, for real, that it might not be working any more.
Especially when, of all the occasions where Grace Kelly’s opinion might be a bit suspect, the time you really might want her input – if you were able to stop her wittering on about herself long enough to get it – is the time when you learn the man you like is actually a billionaire.
I mean, to all intents and purposes, in this day and age, that pretty much makes him a prince, right? Forget the fact he doesn’t have an actual title. He has a charitable foundation, dispensing largesse, in the form of huge cash donations, to the poor and needy and natural-disaster-stricken. Forget the fact he doesn’t have a castle. He has homes all over the world, some of which (if I had the brass neck to search for this on Google; I’m assuming this is exactly the sort of thing my mother is doing even as I speak) are probably castle-sized.
Anyway, he said it himself. He was the prince disguised as the swineherd. Modern-day royalty, slumming it with a commoner.
I kill time by trailing round the Marks & Spencer’s food hall near Notting Hill tube, picking out a depressing pasta salad and an even more depressing single bread roll for me to eat for supper. Then I cave, just as I approach the check-outs, and go back to add a bottle of red wine, a packet of iced mini yum-yums and a bucket of chocolate cornflake crunchy things to my basket.
Slightly buoyed by these junk-food-and-booze purchases, I have the stomach (no pun intended) to head back down the side streets to my – to Elvira’s – flat.
Oh, dear God, there’s another shadowy figure lurking on my doorstep.
Has Dillon escaped from rehab as fast as all that? Or is it not him at all …?
‘Tash?’ I say, incredulously, as I get close enough to see who it actually is.
‘Libby, hi.’ She’s wearing a warm jacket, but it’s chilly for a June evening and she looks cold. ‘Thank goodness you’re finally home.’
‘Sorry … have you been waiting long?’
‘Only a few minutes. I didn’t know how long you’d be, though. I looked up your address on your website. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Oh, no … No, I don’t mind.’ Though it reminds me, I think, randomly, that I’d better update my website, as soon as possible, and take this address off it. ‘You must be freezing … um … do you want to come in?’
‘If that’s OK?’
‘It’s more than OK.’ I fumble in my pocket for my keys. ‘Sorry, Tash,’ I go on, as we head through the front door, ‘but was there something … particular? That you wanted to talk to me about, I mean?’
‘Not really. I just thought you might want some help packing, like I said yesterday.’
‘Right.’ I try not to look too astounded, and then blurt, ‘It is nine o’clock at night, Tash. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for the offer of help, but surely you have better places to be! You’re only in London for a few days – don’t you want to be with Olly?’
‘He’s at the restaurant until ten thirty. The perils of surprising a restaurateur with an unannounced visit, I guess.’
I lead the way up the stairs to my darkened living room and switch on a light …
… There’s no Grace Kelly. Which is actually a huge relief, under the circumstances, because I didn’t actually think about this possibility before I brought Tash up here.
‘And look,’ I say, ‘as you can see, I really don’t have very much to do. Packing-wise, that is. I mean, now that you’re here, you’re more than welcome to stay and have a glass of wine.’
I regret, more than ever, my M&S bagful of Single Saddo’s Night In food and drink, because no doubt when Tash is home alone up in Glasgow, she prepares herself edifying and health-giving meals from scratch, featuring green vegetables and quinoa. Fortunately, though, she doesn’t seem that interested in the contents of my bag, as I pop it down on the floor near the sofa.
‘I’m OK without wine, actually,’ she says. ‘I drank last night, and I try not to drink more than one night in the week. Have you ever tried that?’
‘No. Never.’ I answer the question at face-value, and only immediately afterwards wonder: was that a dig?
‘Oh, well, you should really try it too, Libby. Olly’s doing the same as me – avoiding alcohol six nights a week – so now that you’re going to be living with him—’
‘Staying with him!’
‘… it’ll be an opportunity for you to do the same. And it’ll just give you so much more energy, and shift that annoying half-stone you never seem to be able to shift.’
OK, that definitely sounded like a dig.
‘In fact,’ she goes on, before I can say anything, ‘I’d actually really appreciate it if you didn’t entice him into drinking while you’re living at his flat, Libby. I’m sure you understand where I’m coming from.’
I freeze, for a moment.
I mean, is that the reason she’s come over here tonight, with spurious explanations about helping me pack?
‘So, tell me,’ she adds – again before I can actually speak. She perches on the arm of the Chesterfield; she isn’t taking off her coat, or doing anything that might make the tension in this room any less palpable. ‘How did it go on your date tonight?’
‘My date?’
‘Yes. You said you were going out with this … Joel, is it?’
‘Oh, yes. It went …’ I don’t have the energy to lie. More to the point, I’m too uneasy to lie. Tash is staring right at me with the sort of searching expression that I imagine usually precedes a formal caution in a police station, followed by a few hours of aggressive questioning. ‘I’m home at nine p.m.,’ I say, ‘with a bottle of wine and a family-pack of iced yum-yums. How do you think it went?’
‘Oh. That’s a shame.’
‘Well, you know,’ I say, warily, ‘dating is difficult.’
‘God, yes, I know. But you shouldn’t give up that easily, Libby. I mean, maybe it hasn’t worked out with this Joel guy, but that doesn’t mean you should stop looking for … someone else.’
I know, without her having to make it explicit, that she isn’t saying I should find someone else that isn’t Joel.
She’s telling me I should stay away from Olly.
For all my attempts to disguise the way I still feel about him, she’s still managed to cotton on, hasn’t she?
‘In fact,’ Tash goes on, ‘if you’re going to be gadding about on dates, and stuff, perhaps you’d be more comfortable living in a flat on your own. And perhaps you should tell Olly you won’t go and live with him.’
‘I … er …’
‘I mean, I know he’s keen to ride to your aid on a white charger, and all that. But that’s just Olly. He likes to help people. Needy people. It doesn’t mean it’s always a good idea to take advantage of it.’
OK, this has gone far enough. I understand why she’s come here tonight – to give me a heads-up that she knows about my inadequately buried feelings for Olly – but now she’s calling me needy and saying I’m taking advantage of Olly, and I’m not going to have that. Not to mention the fact that if we’re going to have this conversation, I think we should Have This Conversation, and not skirt around the elephant in the room, poking it with a small, sharp stick in a threatening sort of manner.
‘Tash.’ I look her right in the eye. ‘If you don’t want me to go and stay with Olly, could you just say so?’
‘Did I say that?’
‘No. You very carefully didn’t.’ Which, presumably, is what all the over-the-top Julie Andrews jollity was about when Olly first suggested it. She doesn’t want him to know how she really feels. ‘Look, Tash, the last thing I want to do is piss you off …’
‘Oh,
Libby. I don’t get pissed off by little things like this!’ She smiles. ‘Really, this is for your own benefit far more than mine or Olly’s! I just think that if you’re so determined to stand on your own two feet, you should really go the whole hog. Even if it does mean you have to move out of London for a bit. It can be a good thing, sometimes, to have a total change of scene. Make some new friends. Start afresh.’
OK, now this is just getting a little bit scary. I’m suddenly hoping that the Willington-Joneses, next door, are pressing glasses up against the wall in an attempt to catch me out making any suspicious noises unworthy of our salubrious address. Because at least that way, if this nasty conversation with Tash escalates any further, there’ll be witnesses.
I try, just one last time, to acknowledge the elephant.
‘Tash, come on. You don’t have to worry, not for a single minute, that I’m ever going to act on—’
‘I’m not worried, Libby. Trust me. There’s nothing you could do or say that could possibly worry me.’
‘But you still don’t want me to move in,’ I say, pointedly. ‘Right.’
Her smile freezes, bringing the temperature in the room down by another few degrees as it does so.
‘Well, it was just friendly advice, Libby, that’s all. For you to take or leave.’
‘It’s OK. I’m taking it.’ I swallow, hard. ‘I’ll find somewhere else to stay for a bit.’
‘Oh, well, if there’s anything I can do to—’
‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘You’ve helped quite enough already, Tash. Thank you.’
She doesn’t say anything else. She just gets to her feet and heads down the stairs.
The front door clicks shut, a moment later, behind her.
Olly hasn’t answered his phone all morning.
Nor, more worryingly, has he responded to two messages or a text asking him to call me back.
A Night In With Grace Kelly Page 17
