Something is starting to sound more than just a little fishy here.
‘Cass. Can you just tell me again why you checked yourself in here?’
‘Ooooh, absolutely. I’d love to!’
And suddenly, she’s putting on her Acting Face.
If you’ve ever seen Cass in anything – regional panto, one of her small roles in one of the soaps, her recent role as resident babe in Isara 364 – you’ll recognize her Acting Face: a middle-distance gaze, a half-pouted mouth, and a sucking-in of her cheekbones to make her face look a bit thinner. And she has an Acting Voice to go with it, a way of speaking that makes it sound as if every word she utters has a Capital Letter and is therefore Terribly, Terribly Important.
‘The Demon Drink, They Call It,’ she’s saying, as if she’s auditioning for the part of a downtrodden-but-honest gin-soaked prostitute in an especially twee Victorian murder mystery. ‘And It’s Certainly Brought Out The Demons In Me.’
‘Cass—’
‘It Started With The Occasional Vodka, At The End Of A Stressful Day. And Then, Before I Knew It, I Was Drinking An Entire Bottle. In One Gulp. And Then Immediately Opening The Next One. It’s Why The Time Has Come For Me To Be Honest With Everybody – My Family, My Friends And, Most Importantly Of All, The Great British Public – In The Hope That My Story Can Bring Solstice To Anyone Else In The Same Boat.’
I take a deep breath.
‘I think you mean solace.’
‘What?’
‘Solace. Not Solstice. Solstice is the longest night of the summer. Or winter.’
‘No it’s not.’ Cass shakes her head, irritably. ‘It’s an ice lollipop.’
I lean forward on the bench and place my head in my hands.
‘I mean, I did wonder why I was supposed to start talking about ice lollipops … like, why would my story be bringing a Solstice to anyone?’ Cass’s forehead wrinkles. ‘But then I thought maybe it’ll be a coupon for a free one with the newspaper on the day my story comes out, or something?’ She waves an airy hand. ‘Dave’ll handle all that side of it.’
I think I’m starting to see the bigger picture here, confusion over ice lollipops notwithstanding.
‘Cass. Please – please – don’t tell me you’re faking a serious addiction just to get a story about yourself in the newspapers.’
‘Of course I’m not!’
‘Oh, thank God, because that would be—’
‘Once the story’s come out in the newspapers, then the goal is to convince RealTime Media that they ought to contract me for Considering Cassidy after all.’
I take my head out of my hands and stare at her. ‘Cassidy Kennedy! You cannot pretend to have a drink problem to get yourself a TV show!’
‘So you think I should go with the drugs angle, too? Or the eating disorder?’
‘No! This isn’t an American university, for crying out loud! You can’t just go around switching your major! Besides, don’t you think the clinic is going to find it a bit suspicious that you came in here claiming a drink problem, and then the next day you suddenly say, Oh, actually, it’s turned into an eating disorder instead?’
‘Well, that could happen, couldn’t it? I mean, cut off from alcohol, it’s perfectly possible you might get so bored that you start obsessively counting calories and become an anorexic? There’s not much to do here, Libby. I mean, I’ve been here less than twenty-four hours, and I’m already bored stupid, trying to work out how to fill the time.’
‘Well, if you were actually an addict of some sort, Cass, I expect that working on kicking your horrible, life-destroying habit would take up a bit of the time …’ Too angry, now, to say any more, I get to my feet. ‘I’m going. Seriously, Cass, I’m not going to sit around and … enable this nonsense.’
‘Oh, my God, you’re using that word too! What the hell is this enabling crap, exactly? They were going on and on about it in my support group this morning, as if it’s, like, a bad thing. But it just means helping, right?’
‘No, it bloody doesn’t! It means you help people feed their habits, which isn’t the same thing. And remember, I know a little bit about all this horrible, real addiction stuff, because I was with Dillon O’Hara for three months! Or had you forgotten the miserable mess I got into, getting involved with—’
‘Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. He’s here.’
‘Who?’
‘Dillon. He’s here. At the clinic.’
I wouldn’t have thought it possible to have a bigger shock than encountering Marilyn Monroe in my flat last night.
But apparently it’s perfectly possible.
I actually have to sit back down on the bench again, because my legs have turned into trifle.
‘Dillon. Is. Here?’
Cass nods, not that interested. ‘I mean, I haven’t seen him or anything, but I had a little chat with that M&S lingerie model while we were eating breakfast this morning – well, I was eating breakfast; she was moving a single slice of kiwi fruit from one side of her plate to the other, obviously; God, I only wish I had that kind of discipline—’
‘Not important.’
‘Well, she was saying she’d seen loads of paparazzi gathering outside the gates this morning because apparently –’ Cass pulls a disgusted face – ‘he’s got some kind of discharge …’
Years of translating Cass’s mis-speaks make this one easy for me to get my head around.
‘Do you mean he’s being discharged?’
‘Oh, yeah.’ She nods, thoughtfully. ‘That might have been it. Though I think he’s been in here for his sex addiction, Lib, or at least partly, so it isn’t totally impossible that he’d have some kind of discharge …’
‘So he’s gone? Or he’s still here—?’
‘I don’t know, Libby! God, it’s like you don’t think I have anything better to do than to keep an eye on your scuzzy ex-boyfriend’s exact whereabouts! I’ve got a serious addiction to kick, all right? Now, just help me decide, once and for all, which one.’
‘No. I have to go. I don’t want to risk … I just don’t want to see him.’
‘OK, well, if he is still around, and if I run into him, I’ll say hi to him from you, shall I?’
‘No! Don’t say anything—’
‘Hey, I’ve had an amazing idea!’ Cass’s eyes are suddenly very wide and staring, as if she might in fact have a drugs problem after all. ‘Maybe I could just hang out with Dillon while we’re both in here! That way he’d be able to introduce me to all the really important people – good guest stars for me to line up for the show – and I wouldn’t even need to switch to a different support group after all!’
‘Cass. If you use my relationship with Dillon to claw your way to the top of the pile in here,’ I say, firmly (or as firmly as I can given that my entire being has now become the consistency of trifle), ‘I will never ever forgive you for it.’
‘Hey!’ Her eyes narrow. ‘Don’t you start telling me what I can and cannot do, Libby. You’re not the one suffering from a Soul-Destroying Alcohol Addiction …’
‘Neither are you!’ I snap, as I turn on my heel (well, the sole of my Converse) and stamp out of the garden and back towards the lobby, leaving my annoying sister and her fabricated drink problem behind me.
I really, really don’t want to see Dillon. Today, tomorrow – or, in fact, ever again.
Because I’m not a masochist, all right? I get all stressed out about even having to take off a plaster. I avoid bikini waxes until I’m in danger of being hunted down by torch-wielding villagers. Inflicting pain on myself, of either the physical or emotional kind, is not a thing that is pleasurable to me.
And it would be absolutely sod’s law, wouldn’t it, if I did happen to see him, that I’d do so when I’m unwashed and bed-headed, in boring black trousers and a hoodie with – I’ve only just noticed this; how have I only just noticed this? – a seriously dubious-looking light brown stain right down the front of it. Instead of, say, bumping into him at some miraculo
us point in the future when I’m two stone lighter, with a glowing summer tan and terrific hair, and while, most importantly of all, I’m sauntering down the street on the arm of, say, Daniel Craig. Or Eddie Redmayne. Or that really dishy one who plays Jon Snow in Game of Thrones. Gorgeous, and loved-up, and … sorted.
Anything, anything, rather than seeing him again right now.
Which is why I start to breathe a little easier the minute I’ve crossed the lobby (without any further pamphleteering from eerie Erin, thank God), opened the main lobby door, and made my way at speed across the driveway and towards the iron gates.
The photographers clustered on the other side of the gates all start dancing their paparazzi dance as soon as they see me, and yelling their paparazzi war-cry, and jostling for position, and lifting their Nikons up above their heads to snap pictures, because once again none of them has yet realized that I’m ‘nobody’. As soon as I get closer to the gate, they’re going to cotton on, and look pretty bloody silly about it.
But they’re not stopping. They’re just getting more and more agitated, the closer I get.
It’s almost as if someone actually famous is coming out of the clinic behind me.
I glance over one shoulder, just to see if there’s any way I could be right about this.
And yes, someone actually famous is coming out of the clinic behind me.
In battered grey jeans and a Run DMC T-shirt, rock-star sunglasses shielding his eyes, it’s Dillon O’Hara.
His mouth forms, just for a second, into a perfect ‘O’ of surprise when he sees me, stopped up ahead of him.
Then it melts into an all-too-familiar, all-too-wicked grin, and he carries on walking towards me.
‘Of all the rehab clinics,’ he says, as he reaches me, ‘in all the world …’
He puts one hand on my shoulder and leans down to kiss me, softly, on the cheek.
At which point, obviously, the photographers all go berserk.
And at which point, also, the gates start to swing open, and a sleek black Audi starts to pull through them. Or, rather, it tries to pull through them, but it’s not the easiest job for the driver to do without accidentally bringing the sleek black bumper into contact with some of the paparazzi.
‘Now, I’m fairly sure I asked the car company to send a driver who was OK with mowing photographers down,’ Dillon says, conversationally, as we watch the Audi edge forward, centimetre by centimetre. ‘But perhaps I needed to be more specific. Ask for someone who’s actually keen to do it.’
I’m still too stunned to say anything.
‘Ah, now we’re getting somewhere,’ he’s saying, as the Audi finally manages to get sufficiently far on to the driveway to leave the photographers – who are presumably worried about trespass charges – still snapping forlornly a few feet behind it. ‘Libby, my darling. Would you care to join me in my transport of delight?’
‘Actually, I was just going to walk to the train …’
‘Yeah … that can’t happen now. They’ll hound you every step of the way there. And I don’t know if you remember being hounded by tabloid scum while we were together at all, Libby, but it’s not the most joyous experience you’ll have had, I’ll bet you.’
Actually we weren’t hounded much while we were together (largely, I suspect, because I was nowhere near a titillating enough romantic interest for the tabloids to get invested in), but there was one incident, on our way through Gatwick Airport, that was sufficiently invasive and unpleasant for me, right now, to choose the lesser of two evils.
Dillon is holding one car door open for me.
I slide through it, then sit, facing rigidly forwards, as he gets into the car himself.
‘Onwards!’ he declares, dramatically, to the driver, who’s looking as if he wishes he’d never agreed to this job in the first place.
And anyway, saying ‘onwards’ doesn’t quite hit the spot, because obviously the Audi has to do a careful three-point turn in the driveway, and once that’s been accomplished, run the gamut of the photographers again, all crowding at the rear of the car to take pictures through the (thankfully tinted) passenger windows, and risking broken feet from the car’s wheels with every jostle they make.
‘I don’t know what your hourly rate is, mate,’ Dillon says, leaning forward to speak to the driver, ‘but I’ll tell you what: I’ll triple it, and add another tenner for luck, if you just put your foot down and get us the fuck away from these goons.’
This was all it needed – who knew? – because the driver does exactly as asked, puts his foot down with little-to-no regard for the feet of the paparazzi, and has us leaving the gates behind and out on the open road before Dillon can offer to ‘quadruple’ his hourly rate and stump up a fifty-quid bonus into the bargain.
It’s my turn to lean forward now. ‘Could you drop me,’ I ask the driver, ‘at Barnes mainline station?’
‘Libby. Come on.’ Dillon looks at me. ‘Let’s drop you home. It’s still Colliers Wood, right?’
‘I’d rather take public transport.’
‘And I’d rather stop off and have a pint at my favourite new local by the river in Barnes village. Colliers Wood, please, mate,’ he tells the driver, before turning back to me again. ‘But we can’t all have everything we want, Libby. If there’s one thing I’ve learned these past few weeks in rehab, it’s that.’
My plan, to sit primly facing forwards, making as little eye contact as possible and with my hands locked defensively around my knees, falls at literally the first hurdle, because at this comment, I can’t help but glance across the back seat at him.
‘You have to be kidding me. While you were in rehab, you tracked down a new local?’
‘You know me, Libby.’
‘Yes. I do know you. But I’d have thought the clinic might have slightly more stringent standards.’
Though why I’d have thought this, I don’t quite know, seeing as they’ve managed to let my sister check herself in despite displaying no signs of addiction at all.
‘Oh, no, no, Libby, they didn’t give me permission to go or anything.’ He lowers his voice. ‘There were a few of us, from my alcohol support group, who sort of banded together … I mean, we initially came from all these different backgrounds – lots of Brits, a couple of Americans, even an Aussie or two – and there wasn’t much holding us together. But then we started to dig this tunnel out from under one of the clinic rooms, in the direction of the Hand and Flowers in Barnes village … we hid the excavated dirt underneath our trouser legs, then we’d wander out to the organic herb garden and let the mud out from our trousers with these sort of pulley things …’ He lets out a long sigh. ‘One of the guys went blind, tragically, from all the work in the dark tunnel, but he thought it was worth it, for the chance of a sly pint or two; another bloke suddenly started suffering from the most terrible claustrophobia, but luckily he had a good buddy who rallied round to help him through …’
OK, so now I know he is, in fact, kidding me.
‘That’s the plot of The Great Escape.’
‘No!’ His brow furrows. ‘Are you sure about that, now, Libby? I mean, I don’t remember a nice local pub in The Great Escape. By the river or otherwise …’
‘You’re not funny.’
‘I’m a little bit funny.’ He sits back and grins at me. ‘Come on, Libby. Aren’t I allowed to joke about any of this? Of course I haven’t been to any fucking pub. I’m a changed man. Seriously. Do you think they’d be letting me out if they thought I was in any danger of hitting the booze again?’
‘How should I know? They let my sister in, and she’s …’ I pause. I don’t want to be the one to blow open the fraud behind Cass’s entry to the clinic. Appalled as I am by the whole endeavour, she’s still my sister. ‘Well, she’s not got that much of a problem with drink.’
‘Oh, so it was your sister you were there to visit?’
‘Yes. She checked herself in last night.’ I glance at him. ‘Did you think I was there to
see you, or something?’
‘Well, it was the most logical explanation when I first saw you, Libby McLibster. I mean, I didn’t know your sister had any kind of a problem with alcohol—’
‘Nor did I.’
‘And then there’s the fact that I’m, obviously, irresistible.’
‘Are you?’ I say, coldly.
‘Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, I’d have thought. I mean, I was an out-and-out bastard to you, Libby, and yet there you were, standing on the driveway as I left rehab, coming back for more.’
I don’t know which part of this statement to tackle first.
Obviously the most important thing to lay to rest is any suggestion whatsoever that I was coming back for more, but the first thing that pops out of my mouth deals with something else he said instead.
‘So you’ve finally realized that you were an out-and-out bastard, then?’
‘Libby. Be fair to me. I realized that I was an out-and-out bastard the moment I woke up in LA, surrounded by scantily clad strangers, and saw the messages from you on my phone. And my brand-new opinion on my character – or lack of it, to be honest with you – was confirmed when I was too much of a coward to even message you back.’
I’m a tiny bit astounded by the frankness of all this. Even from Dillon, who was never one for missing an opportunity to laugh at himself (which was, let’s face it, always one of the many extremely attractive things about him), it’s self-deprecation of the highest degree.
‘You did,’ I mumble, ‘in all fairness, message me back.’
He raises a faintly astonished eyebrow. ‘Did I?’
I nod. ‘So.’
‘Huh?’
‘So. That’s what you messaged me. I mean, obviously when you drink, you tend to get even more incredibly Irish, and use the word so every time you finish a sentence. But I gave you the benefit of the doubt and assumed you’d started typing the word sorry but then … well, I don’t know, Dillon. Maybe you passed out in yet another alcoholic stupor; maybe you found yourself unable to fight the need to snort another line of yummy cocaine from between the magnificent breasts of a naked Norwegian …’
A Night In With Marilyn Monroe Page 10
