I never went back for a third session.
Because Dr Burnett was wrong. For all his many degrees, and qualifications, and years of experience, he was, in this case, wrong.
I lean down, again, and hunt in the very back of that same drawer for the other thing I keep tucked away there: a folded-up piece of paper, torn from a copy of InStyle magazine, with a picture on it.
It’s a picture of Audrey Hepburn, at Pinewood Studios, sitting on my Chesterfield sofa.
What are the odds that Marilyn Monroe, while filming at Pinewood herself, encountered the Chesterfield too?
I mean, she did film whatsit, that film with (ha!) Laurence Olivier over here, didn’t she? The Prince and the Showgirl … I’m not my father’s daughter for nothing: some bits of movie history do sink in. That said, I’ll just grab my phone and Google it, to be absolutely sure …
And of course, the bloody thing starts ringing again, just as I slide out of bed, stagger to the sofa, and pick it out of my handbag.
It’s an Unknown number.
The only calls I ever get from an Unknown number are – were – Adam, calling from his office.
If it’s been him calling three times already this morning, then I guess I’d better get this call out of the way. Accept whatever apology he’s offering in a dignified, if chilly fashion, in an attempt to claw my dignity back from where I left it, on his kitchen floor.
Assuming that he is offering an apology, and not, I don’t know, calling to tell me I owe him for a new safety gate, or doggy post-traumatic-stress sessions for Fritz, or something.
Which reminds me that I do need to tell him about those earrings. I can’t have Fritz’s choking death on my conscience. Bad enough that I got the poor creature addicted to artery-clogging pâté.
‘Hi,’ I say, coolly, as I answer. ‘Adam?’
‘No, sorry,’ says a woman’s voice. ‘Is this Liberty Lomax?’
‘Er … yes …?’
‘My name is Erin,’ she goes on, in the sort of hushed, oddly reverential tone I’ve found is always used in spas, or beauty salons. ‘I’m calling from the Grove House clinic in west London.’
‘Grove House?’ The name rings a bell, for some reason, but I can’t put my finger on why. ‘Sorry, I don’t know why you’re …’ Then I remember why I know the name. ‘You mean the Grove House psychiatric clinic?’
But how can a psychiatric clinic possibly have known about last night … and Marilyn?
‘We prefer to think of ourselves as a treatment facility,’ Erin says, in that same hushed, beauty-salon tone of voice. ‘A rehabilitation centre, for anyone suffering from the symptoms of many common substance-abuse disorders.’
‘But this thing that happens to me,’ I croak, ‘it’s real. I mean, it’s not the symptom of a substance-abuse disorder. Famous people really, really do pop up out of my magic sofa.’
There’s a short silence at the other end of the phone.
‘I know, I know,’ I go on, ‘that sounds crazy … but maybe that’s just because I shouldn’t be using the term magic. It’s probably a bit off-putting. Would it make me sound any less unhinged if I used the word enchanted?’
I really like this, actually, now that I say it out loud: it gives the whole bizarre situation a pleasingly literary flavour, as if my Chesterfield is just part of a great enchanted-furniture heritage that also includes the wardrobe from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the bed from Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Which, OK, I know are both totally made up, but …
‘Miss Lomax, I think you might have misunderstood the purpose of my phone call.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’m not calling to discuss … sorry, did you say that famous people pop up out of your … magical sofa?’
‘Enchanted,’ I correct her, eagerly. ‘But yes, I did say that. You’re quite right.’
‘Ri-i-i-i-ght … uh, I’m actually calling to talk about your sister.’
‘My sister?’
‘Yes. Cassidy Kennedy. She was admitted to the clinic last night.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Cassidy checked herself in,’ Erin says, in a voice that’s more mellifluous than ever, ‘late last night. Seeking the clinic’s help to deal with her addiction issues.’
OK, now I really feel like I’m losing the plot.
‘But Cass doesn’t have any addiction issues. Unless … well, do you treat selfie-taking addiction at your clinic?’
‘I’m not really at liberty,’ she replies, in the sort of chilly tone that I’d have been using on Adam, if it had been him calling, ‘to discuss the precise details of your sister’s case. All I will say is that quite often we find that family members are the last ones to notice that there’s a problem.’
I’m torn between repeating, again, that Cass doesn’t have a problem, and allowing myself to give in to the anxiety that’s suddenly gnawing away at me.
I mean, Cass is my sister … my little sister … and now all of a sudden she’s taken herself off to a psychiatric clinic?
This whole cancelled TV deal must have hit her much worse than I’d thought.
‘Anyway, I’m just calling on Cassidy’s behalf, because there are no mobile phones allowed in here, to ask if you might be able to bring a few basic necessities over for her?’
I’m already mentally compiling a list of the things I think Cass might need over there: her childhood blankie that she still likes to snuggle with when she’s feeling poorly; her comfiest pair of pyjamas; even a few family photos, perhaps, to make her room feel more homely … or, at the very least, a few of the framed selfies that line her living-room walls …
‘Of course,’ I say, casting around my untidy flat for a pen and a piece of scrap paper. ‘Hang on a sec, I’m just looking for something to write with …’
‘Oh, that’s OK. Now that we’ve spoken, I’ll send you a text with the list. And I’ll let Cassidy know you’ll be over to visit her later in the day, shall I?’
‘Tell her I’m on my way. I mean, like, right now.’
I hang up, and start pulling on the nearest clothes to hand, which are the black trousers I wore yesterday, and the most beloved of all my grey hoodies that even Audrey Hepburn couldn’t persuade me to get rid of, and I’ve just twisted my hair up into a clip and stuck my feet into a pair of Converse when my phone pings with Erin’s text message.
It’s not … quite the sort of thing I was expecting.
No requests for Blankie, or pyjamas, or her framed selfies.
LARGE MAKEUP BOX FROM BEDROOM
MEDIUM MAKEUP BOX FROM BATHROOM
OK, so Cass wants her makeup … well, sure, I get that. Every woman knows the power of her favourite lipstick to lift her mood when things are tough.
CURLING TONGS
STRAIGHTENING IRONS
MINI STRAIGHTENING IRONS
Well, her hair has always been important to her … It’s just that I’m surprised that even Cass would have the energy to set about it with curling tongs/straightening irons when she’s so depressed about the demise of her TV reality show.
JBRAND SKINNIES
VICTORIA BECKHAM SUPER-SUPER SKINNIES
NEW TAN LOUBOUTIN KNEE-HIGH BOOTS
OLD TAN LOUBOUTIN KNEE-HIGH BOOTS
CHERRY-RED TOPSHOP MICRO-SHORTS
WHITE DENIM CUT-OFF MINI
OK: this Grove House Clinic … is it, by any chance, the world’s first rehab-facility-slash-nightclub?
Apart from anything else, I’m going to need a massive suitcase to get all this stuff over to Cass, in …
Oh, I’d better look up where Grove House is, exactly.
Barnes.
Great. So it’s all the way up to Cass’s flat in Maida Vale in northwest London, and then all the way back across town again to leafy, hard-to-access-by-public-transport Barnes in the south.
But, like I’ve already said, Cass is my only sister, and I’m not going to think twice about it.
Well, I’m not going to thi
nk a third time about it.
And, looking on the bright side, at least a schlep across London in the rush hour is going to give me a break from running the whole Marilyn situation through my head again.
*
Three hours, four tubes and a painfully slow bus journey later, and I’m finally approaching the Grove House clinic, a rambling red-brick Victorian mansion overlooking the north side of Barnes Common.
There are tall iron gates (I’ll be avoiding putting my head anywhere near those, thank you very much) and a large buzzer to press on the wall to the side of them, and … oh! A half-dozen or so photographers lurking, right by the wall, who suddenly leap into action as they see me approaching, their cameras at the ready.
There are a couple of bright flashes, dazzling me, until one of them announces, ‘She’s no one,’ and they all go back to lurking again.
Which is charming, isn’t it, because for all they know, especially given that I’m rocking up here with a large suitcase, I could be here to check into the clinic for serious depression and anxiety, characterized by feelings of low self-esteem and worthlessness.
I give them all a meaningful stare, then stop beside the wall and press the buzzer.
It’s not very impressive, given the presence of the paparazzi outside, that I’m buzzed through the gates without anyone so much as bothering to ask my name … but I try not to take against the place before I’ve even gone inside. I walk across a gravelled driveway – not easy, with a heavy suitcase to pull – and then reach another buzzer just to the left of the main front door. This time a woman’s voice – Erin’s? – states a smooth, ‘Yes?’ out of the speakerphone before I give my name, and am buzzed through here too.
My appointments with Dr Burnett were at his consulting rooms in Marylebone so, despite my own brush with psychiatric treatment, I’ve never set foot in a psychiatric clinic before. I don’t know what I was expecting, really, but if the Grove House clinic has just a touch of Victorian-asylum-chic on the outside, it’s not at all Victorian-asylum-chic once you’re through these doors. If anything, it looks a lot more like a smart new boutique hotel: polished marble floors, stunning floral arrangements and bold expressionist art on the walls.
I feel – in Yesterday’s Trousers and my chucked-on hoodie, with my eye makeup still unwashed after last night – way, way too grubby and unpolished for a place like this. And I can suddenly see why, after all, Cass might have wanted me to bring half the contents of her wardrobe and all her grooming equipment.
There’s a little reception area (leather Eames chairs; a table stocked with glass bottles of mineral water) just inside the main door so, in the absence of a human being to tell me where to go or what to do, I perch in one of the chairs and wait, anxiously, to be summoned.
And then I remember that I was just about to Google ‘Marilyn Monroe Pinewood Studios’ right before the call from Erin that turned my day into, well, this. So I reach for my phone, my Google finger at the ready, because I may as well at least accomplish something useful while I sit around here.
Yes. Oh, Lord, yes, I was right. If the Gods of Google (and the wise men of Wikipedia) are to be believed, then Marilyn did, indeed, film The Prince and the Showgirl at Pinewood, in 1956.
OK, so now I suppose what I’m looking for – if it even exists – is some sort of evidence that she, like Audrey Hepburn before her, came into contact with a battered old Chesterfield sofa during her long days at the studio. I mean, she must have had a dressing room there, right? Somewhere she famously holed up with that intense acting coach of hers to find her motivation for each scene …
My train of thought is disturbed by the arrival, on my phone screen, of a brand-new text message.
Hi. We met on Monday night. My boyfriend Adam’s house. Call me on this number asap, please? Rgds, Benjamin Milne
Oh, my God.
Ben.
And he wants me to call him?
This can’t be good news. I mean, he didn’t look much of a fluffy bunny of a man when he scowled round the side of the cooker at me. Even factoring in the obvious social awkwardness of arriving in your boyfriend’s kitchen to find his secret girlfriend apparently engaged in some sort of solitary bondage experiment there, he could hardly have been more irritable-looking.
And now he’s suggesting that I call him?
I’m not going to call him! Don’t I already have enough stress in my life without having to expose myself to the misplaced anger of my ex-boyfriend’s boyfriend? If there’s anyone he ought to be telling to call him asap so that, presumably, he can have a go at them, it’s bloody Adam. Not me.
Adam, I message him, furiously – and fast, because I can already see an ethereal-looking redheaded girl, who must be Erin, appearing as if out of nowhere and heading towards me – why the hell did you give Ben my number, and why the hell does he think it’s OK to use it to harass me???
I press send.
Then, just as Erin reaches me, I type a follow-up message.
Btw I think I left my earrings on your kitchen floor. Please send them back to me by registered post. Wouldn’t want Fritz to choke on them.
‘Hello,’ says Erin, in that same blandly mellifluous voice. ‘You must be Liberty Lomax? I’m Erin. We spoke on the phone earlier. You mentioned a magic sofa?’
I laugh, weakly. ‘Well, you did catch me only a few moments after waking up.’
‘Of course. Let me just give you this,’ she adds, smoothly, reaching forward to press a glossy brochure into my hands. ‘Just in case you should ever decide that a short stay with us might be beneficial to you, too.’
‘No, no, I’m really not—’
‘Cassidy,’ Erin interrupts, waving an ethereal hand towards some huge French windows at the back of the lobby, ‘is in the garden. Her midday yoga workshop should just about have come to an end. I can keep this –’ she nods towards Cass’s suitcase – ‘in the office. We check our clients’ bags when they come to stay with us, anyway. Not that I’m accusing you of bringing in any banned substances.’
Well, she pretty much is accusing me of bringing in banned substances, but I’m not about to point that out to her right now.
Because it’s not just Erin’s aura of preternatural calm and ever-so-slightly disturbing tranquillity that is sending my heart leaping into my mouth with nerves as I get up and head across the marble floor, and out on to a wide patio. This whole thing is starting to get scarily real, and I’m suddenly anxious about the sort of state I’m going to find Cass in.
In fact, I can see her now, breaking away from a group at the far end of the large, lush lawn to jog across towards me.
I open my arms, eager to sweep her up into a great big, older-sisterly hug, and tell her everything’s going to be all right—
‘Did you bring my black string bikini?’ she asks, the moment she reaches me.
‘Erin didn’t mention anything about a—’
‘No, I know Erin didn’t mention it, because I forgot to put it on the list I gave her, but I thought you’d be bound to realize it when you got to my apartment.’
‘Bound to realize that you needed a black string bikini? In a psychiatric clinic?’
‘Rehab centre,’ Cass corrects me. ‘And duh, Libby, of course I need my black string bikini. I want to sunbathe by the rooftop pool! I’m never going to keep up in here if I just have to sit up there in a pair of shorts and a borrowed bra-top, like I did this morning.’
There’s a rooftop pool? For sunbathing?
What kind of clinic is this, for crying out loud?
And more to the point—
‘Keep up with what?’ I ask.
‘The other patients, of course!’
Cass grabs my arm and leads me to a bench at the edge of the patio, from where we can look out over the entire garden. There are lots of abnormally attractive people hanging out on the lawn: some are busy with yoga, others are drinking coffee and puffing away at cigarettes, and there are several small gatherings of them sitting in
circles and engaged in deep-looking conversation. I may not be an expert, but I’d guess they were support groups.
‘I mean, you’ve absolutely no idea how difficult it is to get in with the A list here,’ Cass is continuing, as she slumps, exhaustedly, on to the bench.
‘There’s an A list?’
‘Of course there is! It’s a celebrity rehab clinic, Libby! I mean, look around … those two girls on that bench over there, with the coffee cups – one of them is in the new M&S lingerie ads, and the other one was on the cover of Vogue last November … and that guy doing the downward dog in my yoga group – see him? – he’s that stand-up comedian Mum likes, the one she went to see at Wembley for her birthday.’
‘Right. Well, hard to tell, obviously, from that particular view of him.’
‘And there’s a tonne of actors, and actresses, and loads of famous musicians that I’d probably know if, like, I gave a shit about music … It’s why I’m wondering, Lib, if it wasn’t the best decision for me to have an alcohol problem.’
‘Cass.’ I put a hand on top of hers. ‘Sweetheart. It’s never a good decision to develop a problem with alcohol. And I wish you’d told me. I had absolutely no idea you’ve been—’
‘No, no, God, no, I don’t mean that. I mean, maybe it would have been a better decision for me to come in here with a drugs problem. Or – oooh – an eating disorder! Do you think I could have an eating disorder?’
‘Er … do you think you could have an eating disorder?’
‘Libby!’ She rolls her eyes. ‘I’m just asking if you think I’m thin enough! Because obviously if I was going to say I had an eating disorder, I’d have to say it was anorexia … bulimia’s just too gross and totally unglamorous.’
‘Right. And anorexia is glitz and glamour personified.’
‘Well, I don’t know about that, Lib.’ She’s completely missed the sarcasm. ‘I mean, sure, you end up really thin and stuff, but if you take it too far your breath starts to smell, and your hair falls out … Anyway, I’m only asking because all the really hot models and actresses are either in the eating disorders support groups or the druggie ones, and it would be, like really good for me if I could make friends with a few of them before I check out.’
A Night In With Marilyn Monroe Page 9
