‘We don’t. I swear, Libby, we never mention you. Ever.’ He says this very emphatically. ‘She was just concerned. Asked me – no, actually, told me – to look after you a bit more.’
‘Oh, God, so she told you all about the multiple personality disorder thing?’
‘Er – no.’ Olly’s eyebrows shoot upwards. ‘Libby, you don’t have … multiple personality disorder. Do you?’
‘No, I’m sure of that now. In fact, I wanted to ask you, Ol, whether or not you … well … do you believe in ghosts?’ I suddenly blurt.
He doesn’t say anything for a moment. He just stares at me.
‘Bloody hell, Olly, it’s only a question …’
‘All right, all right. Ghosts. OK. You mean things that float around in a white sheet, with holes for the eyes?’
‘That’s a Halloween costume. I mean proper ghosts. Spectral beings. Dead people seeming to come back to life to, you know, hang out in your living room and stuff.’
‘Right. I see.’
He doesn’t, in fact, see. This much is clear from his bewildered, still-uneasy tone. Which is why I wasn’t wild about telling him in the first place. Because if Olly, of all people, doesn’t ‘see’, then nobody else in my life is going to. I can be certain of that. Nobody is going to be Bruce Willis to my Haley Joel Osment. Well, until I talk about it with Audrey Hepburn herself, I suppose.
‘For what it’s worth, Lib, no, I don’t believe in ghosts. At all.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘Neither did I.’
‘Look, if you’re hearing noises in your flat, or something …’
‘I’m not. It’s fine. Everything’s fine. Well, as fine as it can be, when the entire world and its mother is gathering around a water-cooler right now to mock me.’
‘Libby, it’s not the entire world.’
‘Sorry, I keep forgetting about that tribe in Papua New Guinea.’
‘Not just them. Me.’
I manage a wobbly smile.
‘Besides, I hear Papua New Guinea is pretty spectacular. If you end up having to move there on a permanent basis, that is.’
I love him for trying to cheer me up, but if he tries any harder I’m going to cry.
‘I should get going,’ I say, ‘and let you go and get on with work. Aren’t you on location today?’
‘Yeah, but Jesse can handle it till I get there. If you want to hang on for a bit to speak to Uncle Brian about … what was it, exactly, you wanted to speak to him about?’
‘A historical matter,’ I say, reaching for my bag and slinging it over my shoulder. ‘I’ll do it another time.’
‘Well, can I give you a lift anywhere? I’m working all the way over in Wapping today, but I can drop you somewhere if it would help?’ He jerks his head towards his van which, I can now see, is parked out behind the warehouse, beside the corrugated-iron doors. ‘We can talk more about this … ghost stuff, if you like, on the way?’
‘I’d love a lift,’ I say, feeling wearier than ever, ‘please, Olly. But let’s not talk about ghosts. In fact,’ and there’s nobody else in the entire world, maybe not even Nora, I’d feel comfortable saying this to, ‘can we not talk about anything at all? I just feel like I need to switch everything off, right now.’
And Olly nods, and doesn’t say a word, but just slings a kindly arm around my shoulders as we walk towards his van together.
From the waft of L’Interdit that greets me the moment the moment I open my front door, I know that Audrey has come back.
She’s sitting on the Chesterfield – black cocktail dress and wide-brimmed hat, I note, another of her iconic looks from Breakfast at Tiffany’s – and she’s holding my iPad in one hand and an espresso cup in the other.
‘Oh, darling,’ she says, in a stricken tone, as soon as she sees me. ‘I’m so terribly, terribly sorry.’
I’m not exactly sure what it is she’s terribly, terribly sorry about until she swivels the iPad towards me and I see that she’s on Twitter.
‘But mostly I’m just so angry on your behalf!’ she adds, putting her espresso cup down, with a sharp clatter, on the floor beside the sofa. ‘This Rhea woman is quite obviously unhinged. Though, given her track record, you were lucky, darling, that she didn’t pelt you with soft fruit into the bargain!’
I drop, wearily, into the cushion beside hers, pick up her espresso cup and drain what’s left of the contents. All the questions I’ve had in my mind since yesterday, my plans to ask her if she really is a ghost, and if she really has – what? – manifested out of the ancient Chesterfield … I just don’t feel like asking them right now. Even the blissful silence Olly treated me to, in his van on the way to the station just now, wasn’t enough to re-energize me after the trials of the morning.
‘The sheer vulgarity of invading your privacy like that! And for what? Simply because a man has turned his attentions to you instead of her?’
‘Well, apparently the fact that she’s richer than me, thinner than me and prettier than me isn’t enough for her. She wants to destroy my life as well.’
‘This hasn’t destroyed your life.’
‘You’ve never seen what happens,’ I tell her, ‘when a video like this goes viral.’
‘Viral?’
‘All over the world. So that everybody sees it. So that people gather round someone’s computer in the office to laugh at it. Here, and in America, and in Australia, and in France, and Germany … I’ll be a laughing stock for the rest of my days.’
‘Darling, you won’t be a laughing stock for the rest of your days. These things blow over. Today’s gossip is tomorrow’s chip paper. And I’m doing everything I can to help, by the way,’ she adds. ‘Fighting your corner as hard as I’m jolly well able.’
‘Fighting my corner?’
‘On Twitter. Oh, Libby, if I thought Gmail was fun, it’s got nothing on Twitter! And so easy, once you get the hang of it. I’ve just created my own account – you see?’
Audrey pushes the iPad in my direction and points, excitedly, at the top of the Twitter page she’s on.
@LittleBlackDressAndPearls, I read.
‘That’s my user name,’ she explains, with a little wink. ‘Good, isn’t it?’
‘It is, actually.’
‘And I’ve got three hundred and fifty two followers already! In only two hours! Can you believe it? Unfortunately, several of them are rather unpleasant-sounding men who want to know if I’m wearing undergarments with my little black dress and pearls … but the majority of them seem awfully nice. And in complete agreement with my statements about you, by the way.’
‘What statements?’ I grab the iPad from her, a sense of by-now-familiar dread rising in my gullet.
But actually, as I read Audrey’s most recent tweets, they’re not that bad.
@LibbyLomax is a dear, dear friend of mine and I can confidently say she’s not at all overweight., she’s written, rather lengthily, in reply to a tweet written by someone called @RheaHaverstockHarleysSparklyBikini. (I don’t need to read the original tweet to work out that it probably wasn’t all that complimentary about my appearance.) In fact, sir, I suggest you refrain from cas
Here she ran out of characters, and carried on in a second tweet:
asting such ungallant aspersions on an utterly lovely person, such as I know @LibbyLomax to be. The world would be a much better place if it
A third tweet:
had more fundamentally good and decent (and, again, not overweight in the slightest) people like @LibbyLomax in it. If you haven’t anything
A fourth:
nice to say about her, please don’t say anything at all. Her friends would be enormously grateful. Yours truly, @LittleBlackDressAndPearls.
My eyes have filled with sudden tears.
‘That was really nice of you, Audrey.’
‘Darling.’ She squeezes my hand. ‘You’re welcome.’
‘But I don’t have a Twitter account, by the way. Called “At Libby Lomax” or anything else.’
‘Oh, but you do now! I started one for you!’
I gaze at her. ‘What on earth for?’
‘Libby. It’s the twenty-first century. Besides, you’re an actress, aren’t you? Don’t you think you ought to have some sort of public profile?’
‘Well, I’ve bloody got one now, haven’t I, whether I like it or not?’ I say, as much in reference to my brand-new unwanted Twitter account as to the fact that millions of people around the world are mocking me even as we speak. ‘Can’t you just close it straight back down again?’
‘But you were getting oodles of followers! Five or six hundred, the last time I looked.’
‘Yes, oodles of people like whatshisname … Rhea Haverstock-Harley’s Knickers, or whatever he called himself … being vile about the way I look! Please, Audrey. Shut it down. I can’t deal with any more of this right now.’
‘All right. If that’s what you prefer. I’ll sign back in as you and close it down.’ Audrey takes back my iPad. ‘Have you had a really dreadful morning, darling?’
‘Yes. Well, no. I don’t know. I mean, I saw Dillon again.’
Her eyebrows arch beneath the brim of the huge hat. ‘The modelizer?’
‘Mm. He only ditched me the other morning because he had an audition in New York – or so he claims – and now he’s saying he wants to see me tonight …’
‘Darling, you can’t possibly!’
‘I know, I know, he’s frighteningly untrustworthy, and, well, I suppose I can’t help suspecting he’s got a bit of a substance abuse problem …’
‘You don’t have a thing to wear! Not unless,’ she goes on, hopefully, ‘you saw sense and hung onto those lovely things from Net-a-Porter after all?’
Oh, Christ, that wretched order, that I still haven’t got round to returning. But I’m not going to mention that to Audrey.
‘You really think I should carry on seeing him?’ I ask.
‘Well, it wouldn’t hurt to go on a date or two, darling. With someone who thinks you’re spectacular. I mean, obviously I couldn’t, in all good conscience, advise you to get serious about a man like that, but that shouldn’t mean … gracious me!’
Her hand has frozen on the iPad screen and her perfect lips have fallen open.
‘What? Oh, God, I’m not getting Twitter death threats now, am I?’
‘No. You’re just … well, you seem to have rather more followers than you did when I last looked at your account an hour ago.’
‘How many more?’
‘Eleven thousand.’
‘Audrey! This is exactly why I wanted you to shut it down! I don’t need eleven thousand people being nasty about my bum!’
‘I know, I know, I’m awfully sorry, darling …’ She’s peering harder at the screen. ‘You know, I can’t see anyone saying nasty things about your bottom, in fact …’ Now she starts to scroll down it. ‘Everybody seems to be asking where you got your necklace.’
‘My necklace?’
For the second time since I sat down on the sofa beside her, she shoves the iPad in my direction.
Hi there @LibbyLomax, I read the first tweet my eyes land on, from someone calling themselves @MajorFashionista. Totes loving necklace yr wearing n that vid!!!!!!!!! Whr did u get it???????????????????????
‘If she’d not used all those question marks and exclamation points,’ Audrey observes, sounding faintly peeved, ‘she’d have been able to spell out her words properly instead of resorting to all those horrible abbreviations.’
Hey @LibbyLomax, says the tweet directly below, this time from someone called @EmilyTheVintagePrincess. Fab diamanté and pearls, sweetie. Please don’t tell me it’s a one-off vintage find – I NEED THAT NECKLACE! Xx
A quick scan over the dozen … two dozen … three dozen messages below this reveals requests in an identical vein: loving that necklace … want that necklace … can you tell us where you got that necklace?
‘You see?’ Audrey thumps a hand, surprisingly vehemently for a probable ghost, and for Audrey Hepburn’s one at that, on her seat cushion – so hard, in fact, that something drops out onto the floor from underneath it. ‘There’re my sunglasses!’ she cries, reaching down to pick up the Oliver Goldsmith tortoiseshell frames and sliding them on, even though we’re indoors. The effect is to make her even more fabulous-looking than ever. ‘I told you,’ she goes on, ‘that most people were being awfully nice. Complimenting you on your jewellery rather than being unpleasant about your figure.’
‘Yes … I’m just a bit surprised.’
‘Don’t be, darling! Just enjoy the attention.’ She raises a fingertip above the iPad screen, poised for action. ‘Now, we must send out a tweet telling people where the necklace is from. Somewhere called Nora’s, I remember you told me? Is that a boutique? A jewellery store?’
‘No, it isn’t from anywhere called Nora’s. It isn’t from anywhere at all. I made it.’
‘Goodness!’ Audrey tilts her sunglasses downwards and perches them on the tip of her nose for a moment, staring at me. ‘You are talented, Libby.’
‘I don’t know … I just muck around with stuff, really …’
‘Well, we aren’t going to tell your followers you just muck around with stuff. You need to own this, darling!’ She tap-tap-taps with her finger on the screen. ‘Made it … no, I think we’ll say designed, that sounds much better … designed it myself,’ she says, as she types.
‘Audrey, no, don’t send that, it makes me sound like …’
‘Thanks ever so much for all the lovely compliments. Yours sincerely, Libby Lomax. And … send …’
Now that I’m pretty sure she’s a ghost, and not a hallucination – not to mention the very real online order she managed to make on my behalf – I guess this tweet has actually gone out there. Sort of like the civilized, twenty-first-century version of some chain-clanking poltergeist writing words in their own blood on the wall of the house they’re currently haunting.
‘Audrey, come on, I still want to shut the account down. Responding to anything is just going to fuel the fire.’
‘Fire isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, I think you could do with a little more fire in your life.’
‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d ever set your head alight with a cigarette. Seriously, Audrey. Shut it down.’
‘Ooooh, look, darling!’ She turns the iPad back towards me. ‘Now people are asking who stocks you!’
‘Who stocks me?’
‘Your jewellery designs.’
@LibbyLomax, I read on the screen, where do you sell your stuff? … @LibbyLomax, can I get one exactly like that in one of your stores and how much is it? … @LibbyLomax do you have a website and does it use PayPal?
‘What shall we reply?’ Audrey asks, breathlessly. ‘Shall we say your website will be up and running soon?’
‘Why on earth would we say that?’ I’m actually starting to feel a bit sick here. The adrenalin, the shock of everything that’s happened over the last couple of hours, the sip of the dregs of Audrey’s strong espresso on an empty stomach … ‘I won’t have a website up and running soon. Ever, in fact.’
‘Well, we ought to say something, Libby. These tweets are coming through thick and fast … oh!’ She takes her sunglasses fully off, now, and peers down at the screen. ‘You’ve just had a private message … from someone called Emma Watson. Is she a friend of yours?’
The name is ringing a bell, but I can’t quite place it.
‘She’s asking if you might be able to give her stylist a quick call …’ Audrey is reading the message. ‘That she’d love to get hold of one of your necklaces as soon as possible … a lovely polite lady, she sounds, I must say. Properly written sentences; it’s simply a pleasure to read!’
‘Hang on …’ I’ve just realized where I recognize the name from. ‘Emma Watson? As in, the famous Harry Potter actress?’
‘Harry who?’
‘Let me see.’ My hands are slightly shaking as I grab the iPad and look at the m
essage myself.
Dear Libby, the direct message reads. (Actually, it’s a series of several direct messages, but I’m piecing them together.) I’m really sorry to message you out of the blue like this but I’ve just seen you tweet that you’re actually the designer of the necklace I’ve been coveting ever since I saw it on that viral video yesterday. If you have a moment, might you be able to give my stylist a quick call (details following) and let her know if you could get the necklace (or another one similar from your collection) sent out to us before I fly to LA tomorrow morning? Very many thanks indeed, Em x
There’s a phone number at the bottom of the last message.
I’m just about to declare the whole thing a cruel hoax when – just to be certain – I click on the @EmWatson link on the top of her messages.
OK, so she has over fifteen million followers.
This makes the probability that she is, in fact, the real Emma Watson quite a lot stronger, doesn’t it?
‘What an opportunity!’ Audrey is getting to her feet. ‘And this Emma is well known, you say?’
‘Quite well known, yes … what are you doing?’ I ask, as she stoops down to riffle in my handbag, by the front door. ‘No, hang on,’ I add, realizing that she’s taking out my mobile phone, ‘we can’t just call her!’
‘This stylist lady? But of course we can! We have her telephone number, don’t we?’
‘Yes, but I’ve no idea what to …’ I break off, because Audrey has suddenly handed me my phone, and it’s already dialling the number she must have just tapped into it. ‘For fuck’s sake! I can’t call this stylist without—’
‘Hello, Debbie Lederman speaking.’
I stare, mutely, at my iPhone, which has a pleasant-sounding Scots woman’s voice coming out of it.
‘Answer her!’ Audrey whispers. ‘Go on!’
‘Hello?’ the Scots voice says, again. ‘Is anyone there?’
‘Um, yes, sorry … Debbie? My name’s Libby, I don’t know if—’
‘Oh, Libby, hi! You’re the designer Emma’s just texted me about, right?’
‘I’m … er …’
‘Well, thanks for calling! I’ve only just had a chance to see this video that’s doing the rounds …’
A Night In With Audrey Hepburn Page 24
