And let’s face it, Dillon isn’t asking me there as his date. He has a sort-of-girlfriend (albeit one who cheats on him with huge naked Scandinavians). I’ll probably spend half the night trying to find him in a crowded sea of supermodels, before bankrupting myself with a taxi home and crying piteously into the doggy Chesterfield for the rest of the night.
I’m already reaching for my phone. I’ll be vague, but firm, and bow out of the invitation.
Really sorry, I text Dillon, can’t make this evening after all. Thanks anyway, would have been nice.
There. Vague, but firm. No spurious long-winded excuses or white lies.
It does sound a bit chilly, though.
PS, I add, if your middle names really are Seamus Finlan Patrick Eoghan Diarmuid Patrick (again) Malachy then you really don’t need my help Angela’s-Ashing yourself up for the US market.
Before I can change my mind, I press Send.
If Dillon texts immediately back, saying, Don’t be ridiculous, you’re coming out with me, and that’s final.
Well, then I’d reconsider, obviously.
He doesn’t text immediately back.
By the time I’ve nibbled a little bit of the jam tart and custard, put on my jacket, popped to the Ladies, come back and polished off the entire remaining bowl of jam tart and custard, he hasn’t texted back either.
My phone bleeps as I open the door to my flat, but it’s still not Dillon. It’s a text from Olly.
That’s a shame. So sorry you’re feeling ill. Anything I can do?
This is because I texted him, on the walk from the tube, to cancel our stew-eating plans for this evening.
I know. I shouldn’t be lying. Especially not to one of my best friends.
And I shouldn’t be cancelling, either, not now that I’m not going to the Depot party. I’ve only done it because I’m feeling so furious with myself for being such a pathetic scaredy-cat about Dillon that, masochistically, I want the punishment of not having a nice evening at all.
I feel even worse about it now that he’s texted so sweetly.
In fact, there goes another ping from my phone now – Olly again.
If is flu-like can bring chicken soap?
A third text comes through a few seconds later.
Obv that should have said soup.
And another one about ten seconds after that.
However will do best to track down novelty soap fashioned in shape of chicken if any chance would help?
He’s such a sweetheart.
I’m a fool to have rejected a nice cosy evening with him, for an evening alone instead.
Though I’ll only be alone, of course, if I don’t hallucinate myself a little bit more Audrey for the evening.
It won’t happen again, though. It was just a one-off. And, by the way, I don’t want it to happen again. When it happens just the once, you can put it down to stress. Twice … well, you’d be forgiven for starting to think that it might be something a bit more …
… sinister?
Neurologically, I mean.
So let’s really, really hope it doesn’t happen again. Tonight or any other night.
The thing is, though, that now that I’m back here on my own, I can’t help thinking that it might be quite nice to hallucinate Audrey Hepburn again.
Because it was sort of fun, last night, when all’s said and done. It might not have been Fifth Avenue or the Tuileries, but it was still Audrey. And if my overwrought synapses did conjure her up again this evening, I’d be able to tell her about my afternoon with Dillon. And she’d listen carefully and thoughtfully, the way she always did in my Audrey dreamworld, and then she’d say something perfectly incisive and understanding that would make me feel better, instantly, about being too much of a wimp to go to the party with him tonight.
But I suppose then we might be getting into scary territory, with those worrying neurological implications I can’t quite bring myself to dwell on. Like … well, like schizophrenia. Or a brain tumour.
Though I suppose I could …
No. That would be weird.
Well, I was just going to say, I suppose what I could do is get Audrey Hepburn up on screen, press pause and quickly run through the details of my extraordinary afternoon with her on my iPad.
That would be weird, wouldn’t it?
But it’s not like I’d actually think she was really there. Not like I’d really believe she could hear me, or anything. All I’d really be doing is popping on one of my favourite Audrey Hepburn films. Nothing weird about settling down to watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s, is there, after a long and frankly peculiar day in which I’ve been psychoanalysed by Mum, yelled at by a supermodel, seen parts of a stranger’s anatomy that I’d really have been absolutely fine not seeing …
Yes. I think I’ll fire up the iPad again, take off my trench-coat, settle down on the sofa, and see if I can go to my happy place.
Three minutes later, I know it’s been the right thing to do. I’m not bothered about the unpacking mess, about the doggy sofa I’m sitting on, or about the fact that I should be getting ready to go to a party with Dillon O’Hara right now. I start to relax the moment I see Audrey Hepburn amble down Fifth Avenue with her little cup of coffee and her Danish pastry. She’s just so exquisite, and her dress and jewellery so beautiful, and you can almost catch the faintest violet-and-jasmine hint of the L’Interdit perfume she was probably wearing when she filmed it …
‘You haven’t seen my sunglasses, have you?’
I let out an actual shriek.
‘Gosh, I’m awfully sorry, did I startle you?’
It’s her. It’s Audrey Hepburn. Again.
Sitting three inches away from me on the other half of the Chesterfield sofa.
But this time she’s not, actually, in black-dress-and-beehive Tiffany’s mode. Her hair is in her trademark elfin crop and she’s wearing the rose-embroidered ball gown she deploys to dazzle William Holden in Sabrina.
There are no words to describe how beautiful this dress is, up close.
Even if it does clash, a bit, with the apricot roses on the sofa.
The sofa she’s suddenly delving down between the cushions of, her brow furrowed.
‘I thought maybe they might have dropped down between the cushions … my sunglasses, I mean … I don’t suppose you’ve come across them, and put them somewhere safe? It’s just that they are rather a special pair …’
She glances back up at me, her eyes looking almost absurdly huge in that perfectly framed face. In fact, she looks even more beautiful than she did yesterday, although I’ve always preferred Sabrina Audrey to Tiffany’s Audrey. Her cropped hair highlights her perfect collarbones, her skin looks as if it’s been coated in a fine spray of crushed pearls, and the scent of L’Interdit is stronger now, so I wasn’t imagining it at all …
Except that I was, of course. Because I’m hallucinating this whole thing again, aren’t I?
‘Oh, shit.’
‘Libby!’
‘Sorry … it’s just …’ It’s a brain tumour, isn’t it? It has to be. ‘Or schizophrenia,’ I blurt out. ‘It could be schizophrenia.’
‘What could be schizophrenia, darling?’ But her attention is only half focused on me; she’s gazing at the iPad screen. ‘How terribly sweet!’
‘You mean – er – the Danish pastry?’
‘No, no, I meant your darling little television screen. Though that horrible Danish was sweet, actually. Cloyingly so. I can’t bear the things. I begged them to let me eat an ice cream in that scene instead, but no such luck … I can’t see an aerial.’
‘Er …?’
‘For your little television.’ She points a long, gloved finger at the iPad. ‘An aerial. Doesn’t it need one?’
‘It’s not a television. It’s an iPad.’ I rub my eyes, fiercely, but when I pull my hands away I can still see her. ‘I think I need a drink.’
‘Another difficult day, darling?’ Audrey Hepburn asks, as she picks up the iPa
d and studies it, admiringly. ‘Exquisite! What did you call it? A padlet?’
‘It’s an iPad. You use it for the internet, for email …’
She blinks at me as if I’m speaking a foreign language she’s never even heard before.
‘You know what?’ I say, ‘just have a play around with it while I get myself a drink. It’s easy. You’ll get the hang.’
‘Ooooh, thank you, darling!’ She takes me at my word and starts tapping and pressing at the iPad with her long, elegant fingertips. ‘Golly, it’s ever so clever,’ she marvels, as random stuff – the weather forecast; photos of me and Nora at her engagement party; the Net-a-Porter app I muck around with when I fancy a bit of lush designer window-shopping – pop up and down again. ‘Honestly, darling, you do own the most marvellous gadgets. Oh! That reminds me. Your lovely coffee machine! I’ve been talking about it to everyone I know!’
Great: now I’m not only imagining that I’m chatting to Audrey Hepburn, but that she’s chatting to other people as well. The mind boggles as to who it is she could be referring to: a spectral Marilyn? A phantasmagoric Cary Grant? A virtual Liz Taylor?
‘I wonder,’ she asks, clasping her hands in a girlish manner, ‘did you manage to find your pods yet?’
‘The coffee pods? Uh, actually, no …’
‘Well, I’m sure they’re in one of these boxes. Why don’t I take a look?’
Before I can reply, she springs off the Chesterfield and kneels down in front of the biggest heap of boxes, not seeming to care that she’s getting Olly’s van dust all over the hem of her ethereal ball gown.
‘This looks a good place to start.’ She’s opening the box at the top of the pile. ‘Oh, this could be useful, actually. It’s your cleaning rags.’
‘I don’t have a box of cleaning rags …’ I get up, too, and peer into the box she’s just opened. ‘That’s my clothes!’
‘Gosh, I’m so sorry, darling!’
I snatch the box away from her, wishing, more than ever, that I were actually able to afford the things I drool over on that Net-a-Porter app from time to time. ‘We can’t all own wardrobes full of exquisite designer ball gowns, you know.’
‘Well, of course, I simply thought … well, everything in there looked so very grey …’
I stamp off to my mini-fridge for that open bottle from last night.
‘If it helps at all,’ she says, in a contrite tone, ‘your hair looks absolutely marvellous.’
‘You really think?’
‘I do! And I told you all it needed was a good wash and blow-dry.’
‘Actually, this was done by a hairdresser,’ I say, pointedly, as I get the wine from the fridge and head back to the sofa. ‘It didn’t need a wash and blow-dry, it needed a trained professional with a proper pair of scissors.’
‘And didn’t I tell you’ – I think she’s ignoring me, because she’s turning back to the boxes and opening another – ‘that a little fringe would suit … oh! I think I’ve found them!’
She turns, brandishing a small wooden box with a Nespresso label.
‘Yes, that’s the pods.’
She lets out a little shriek of delight, gets to her feet and practically falls over the dusty hem of the ball gown trying to get round the Chesterfield and to the coffee machine on the counter.
‘Oooooooohhhhh,’ she breathes, a moment later, opening the box and gazing in awe at the little guide on the inside of the lid. ‘Ethiopian Sidamo …’
This is not what I was hoping for when I thought I might like to chat to Audrey about the events of today: me on the sofa mainlining wine from the bottle while she fires up the Nespresso machine. But it looks like even my own subconscious isn’t that interested in the details of my day.
‘Not even,’ I mutter at my subconscious, ‘when I got asked out on a proper date this evening.’
‘A date?’ Audrey Hepburn spins round, ball gown swishing, Ethiopian Sidamo forgotten. ‘Libby, that’s so exciting!’
OK, so my subconscious is forgiven. I even feel a bit embarrassed, now, about making a big deal of it.
‘It wasn’t really a date …’
‘Who is he? When is it?’
‘Well, sort of now.’
‘What do you mean, now?’
‘That’s when the date should be happening. Tonight.’
‘And you’re not going?’
I shake my head firmly and take a drink from the wine bottle.
‘Libby, why ever not?’ Audrey’s huge eyes are open even wider, in genuine dismay. ‘Don’t you like him? This gentleman that asked you out?’
‘No, no, that’s not it. I mean, I like him a lot … the gentleman, that is …’ Though the thought of Dillon-as-gentleman is distinctly amusing. (Not to mention the fact that not a single one of the things he’s been doing, in my head, ever since I first met him yesterday morning, has been in the least bit gentlemanly.) ‘I just decided against going. And it wasn’t really a date, anyway. Not in the true sense of the word.’
‘Did he ask you to dinner? Drinks?’
‘God, no, nothing like that. Though we did have lunch together today, as it happens …’
‘Libby!’ she gasps. ‘You had lunch and he asked you out the same night? He must be awfully keen on you!’
‘Er – honestly, it’s not like that. He has a girlfriend, for one thing. Well, sort of. Rhea Haverstock-Harley. Though I did catch her cheating on him today, with a very large Swede.’
‘The vegetable?’
‘The nationality.’
‘Oh, thank heavens,’ she says, rather faintly. ‘Though not terribly nice, either way, for your poor gentleman friend. And probably why he’d much rather take you out for the evening instead of her.’
‘But he’s not asking me out romantically. I think he just enjoys chatting to a normal person, for a change. He’s used to dating Victoria’s Secret models, you see … lingerie models,’ I clarify when her forehead furrows in confusion. ‘They’re all gorgeous and leggy and Amazonian and they strut up and down the catwalk in nothing but a bikini and a set of angel wings.’
‘That all sounds dreadfully vulgar. No wonder he prefers talking to you.’ She considers me for a moment. ‘Which is not to say you wouldn’t benefit from revealing a tiny bit more skin yourself when you go out with him this evening.’
‘But I’m not going out with him this evening.’
‘But you simply must.’
‘But I simply won’t.’
‘But. You. Simply. Will.’
I’m rather startled when, as she says this, she fixes me with a distinctly steely look. A distinctly un-doe-eyed, not-at-all Audrey look.
‘I’m not taking no for an answer on this, Libby,’ she goes on. ‘Because – and do correct me if I’m wrong – it’s not as if you’re beating off male admirers with a big stick, now, is it?’
‘There’s no need to put it quite like that,’ I mumble.
‘My point is, Libby,’ – she squeezes round the Chesterfield; it takes a few moments – ‘that you oughtn’t be sitting around here with me.’ She kneels down beside me, grabs both my hands and looks deep into my eyes. ‘You ought to be out! Having a wonderful evening! With a man who adores you!’
‘He really, really doesn’t adore me. Anyway, I can’t.’ My throat is going dry and feels a bit like it’s seizing up. ‘Honestly,’ I manage to say, after a sip of wine, ‘I just can’t. You haven’t seen the sort of girl he usually goes out with.’
‘I’ll bet my bottom dollar,’ Audrey cries, ‘they’re not a patch on you!’
I reach for the iPad, Google ‘Rhea Haverstock-Harley’ and shove the resulting images in her direction: Rhea draped seductively over a lucky rock by the sea in an itsy-bitsy bikini; Rhea striding along a catwalk wearing a diamanté bra, matching thong, and glittery angel wings; Rhea posing in nothing but a pair of high heels on a backwards-facing chair à la Christine Keeler …
‘Well!’ Audrey says, a little too brightly, after a long, silent
moment. ‘We’ll just have to find you something really, really lovely and flattering to wear tonight, won’t we?’
‘No, we won’t, because – as I think I’ve already said – I’m not going.’
‘Darling. Far be it from me to pull rank.’ She stands up, folds her skinny arms, and eyeballs me again. ‘But I am Audrey Hepburn, you know.’
Hallucination or otherwise, it’s just a little harder than it was, a moment ago, to disagree with her.
‘And do you know the one thing I’m most proud of?’ she goes on. ‘It’s that I don’t let anything scare me. I wasn’t qualified to act opposite Gregory Peck. I wasn’t good enough to dance with Fred Astaire. But I damn well got on with it and gave it my all, because that’s the only way a girl is going to find her place in this world.’
It’s stirring stuff, I have to admit.
And, quite suddenly, she’s less the elfin style queen I’ve always imagined myself being shopping buddies with. Standing here, right now, she’s a warrior princess. She’s a Givenchy-clad Boudicca, a kohl-rimmed Joan of Arc …
‘All right.’ I get to my feet, too. ‘I will go out this evening! After all, if you can dance with Fred Astaire, I can get on the tube and—’
‘My Nespresso!’ she suddenly shrieks, as the machine bleeps its readiness to make her coffee. She practically knocks me over as she squeezes round the sofa to get to the kitchen. ‘Now, where does the little pod go?’
‘Look, can we worry about that later? I need to get ready for this party before I change my mind.’
‘Yes, yes, you’re absolutely right.’ Audrey abandons the coffee machine a second time. ‘Now, we were going to find you something spectacular to wear, weren’t we?’
‘No, no, no,’ I say, hastily, as she heads, in a flurry of couture satin and taffeta, for the clothes box that she discarded earlier. ‘You said something lovely and flattering. Not spectacular. I don’t want spectacular. My sister’s going to be at the same party, and it’s a really big night for her. And she’s going to be pissed off enough that I’m even there in the first place. So I really want to wear something … well, perfectly nice but inoffensive.’
A Night In With Audrey Hepburn Page 12
