A Night In With Marilyn Monroe

‘I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Grandmother …’ Because I really don’t want her bearding poor Olly in her den and demanding to know exactly why it is that we aren’t a couple. He didn’t sign up for the third degree when he agreed to be my ‘date’ today, after all. ‘Nobody else has started dancing yet … and maybe Dad and Phoebe want to have a dance before anyone else …’

‘Well, I wanted a son who wouldn’t put me to shame by neglecting his duties as a father,’ Grandmother says, sharply, which is the very closest she ever comes to referencing the Great Unmentionable that is Dad’s history with me. ‘But we can’t always get what we want, Libby, can we?’ She hands me her champagne glass and turns to Olly. ‘So, shall we dance?’

Olly looks part-amused, part-terrified, but either way he doesn’t say no. He puts his own champagne glass down on one of the nearby trestle tables that feature the cold buffet nibbles, shoots me an eyebrow-raise, then extends his arm in a gentlemanly fashion for Grandmother to take as they stroll to the dance floor.

I watch in frozen fascination as they start to put together some surprisingly impressive moves. Surprising because Grandmother is an octogenarian with two artificial knees, and because I literally had no idea Olly could dance ‘properly’. The last time I saw him dance at all must have been at his parents’ big ruby anniversary party a few years back, but he ended up pretty drunk that night and capable of little more than cheerful bursts of (what I hoped at the time was) Dad Dancing.

Well, look at him go right now, wheeling Grandmother around that dance floor like a cross between Fred Astaire and Patrick Swayze. And, thank God, they’re dancing too energetically, by old-age-pensioner standards, anyway, for Grandmother to strike up a conversation, so with any luck I might be able to cut in and insist on a dance with Olly myself before she starts any embarrassing lines of questioning …

‘Libby.’

A voice, right behind me, makes me turn round.

It’s Dad, with one arm around his new wife, Phoebe, and the other arm around the pretty dark-haired girl who acted as the bridesmaid in the ceremony just now: Rosie, Phoebe’s seventeen-year-old daughter.

The fact that Phoebe has a daughter was news to me last night. I mean, the first I’d even heard of Phoebe herself was when the wedding e-vite popped up in my inbox back in April. And I’ve only had the briefest of text-message exchanges with Dad about the wedding since, purely centred on whether or not he might be able to get me the family discount on the room rate at the hotel. (Turns out he could. Which is just about the most family-oriented thing Dad’s done for me at any point in the last thirty years.) Any details – how they met, how long they’ve been together – were a total mystery to me until yesterday. Just for the record, I learned last night that they met last September when Phoebe started teaching speech therapy at the university where Dad lectures in film studies. Which is also when I learned of the existence of Rosie, my – wince alert – brand new stepsister.

‘Dad,’ I say. ‘Phoebe. Congratulations!’

Then, because if I don’t do it, he certainly won’t, I lean forward and give him a quick hug, and then do the same to Phoebe.

‘Aw, thanks, Libby.’ Phoebe, a forty-year-old stunner in a wasp-waisted, extremely plunging wedding gown, returns the hug in a nice, if distracted way. ‘So good of you to come all this way, love.’

‘Oh, that’s OK! It was good of you to invite me.’

‘Glad you could make it,’ says Dad, with one of his rare and extremely fleeting smiles. ‘I know you’re really busy these days.’

‘Honestly, Dad, I wouldn’t have missed it.’

And then there’s a moment of silence.

This, exactly this, is the reason I didn’t bring Adam up here today instead of Olly. This sheer, tooth-clenching awkwardness. And this is better than usual, believe it or not. Up until last summer, it had been years since I’d even spoken to Dad. It took quite a leap of faith, and some gentle pushing from … well, from a new friend of mine … to break that ice at all last year.

‘You should meet your brand-new stepsister!’ Phoebe says.

I wince. Thank God, nobody notices.

‘Rosie, this is Libby. Libby, this is Rosie.’

‘Hi!’ I say.

‘Hi,’ says Rosie.

‘Rosie’s about to start her final year of college,’ Phoebe goes on, ‘and she’s just starting to think which uni courses she might apply for. And you, Libby … you work in a jewellery shop, is that right?’

‘Um, well, I sort of design my own jewellery, actually.’

‘So you’re artistic! That’s nice. Rosie’s very artistic, too. She’s thinking of applying for a fine art degree, or maybe something related to theatre design … oh! I’d better just go over and say hi to Jenny and Nick … no, no, Eddie, you stay here,’ she says, firmly, as Dad does his best to escape after her, ‘and catch up with Libby properly. Get the two girls chatting!’ she adds, making a sort of criss-cross gesture with her hands at Rosie and me. ‘Help them get to know each other!’

This is going to be tricky for Dad, given that he doesn’t even know me himself. So – after shooting a slightly panicked look of my own in the direction of the dance floor, where Olly (oh, God) is now being engaged in extremely intense conversation by Grandmother – I take pity on him and decide it’s best if I take charge of the conversation myself.

‘So! Rosie … you’re … er … about to apply to university!’

‘Yep.’ Rosie nods. Pretty in her pale green bridesmaid’s dress, she has a confident look about her that suggests she’s one of the popular crowd at school. I don’t think her lack of interest in me is anything personal so much as the fact that to her I’m just some boring older person who doesn’t know the ins and outs of her social life. ‘Just like Mum already told you.’

‘Right. So, theatre design, maybe?’

‘Not if I have my way,’ Dad says. ‘You know, this girl here is a contender for a top-notch media and communications course anywhere in the country. I’m trying to persuade her to apply to Kingston, because that’s one of the best places for a terrific all-round media education. And she can specialize in film history in her third year.’

‘Oh.’ I’m slightly startled that Dad is even interested in Rosie’s upcoming choice of tertiary education, let alone quite this invested in it. ‘So you’re a film fan, then, Rosie?’

‘God, yeah, I love movies. Especially all the classics. Eddie’s introduced me and Mum to so many of them. We do, like, these old movie nights on Sundays, and I invite my friends over and stuff—’

‘And I try not to be too much of an old bore and stop the film every five minutes to lecture them all on the things they should have noticed,’ Dad interrupts, with a chuckle.

Yes, that’s right: a chuckle.

A chuckle isn’t something I’ve ever heard Dad emit before.

‘Oh, you’re all right, Eddie,’ Rosie tells him, with a laugh of her own. ‘Anyway, if you do too much of that, we just send you out for more popcorn.’

‘So that’s what I’m reduced to, is it?’ Dad says, with another – another – chuckle. ‘A PhD, and all my years of experience, and author of a highly regarded book on the history of cinema, and you and your mates just want to send me out for popcorn!’

‘Oh, talking of your book,’ says Rosie, ‘my friend Jasper’s been reading it over the holidays, and he said it’s amazing. Like, he’s learned absolutely loads from it.’

‘Well, Jasper is obviously going places!’ Dad says. Only semi-jokingly.

But then Dad is always at his most pompous where His Book is concerned. Which I suppose is a good thing in some ways, because it was the writing of His Book that dominated his life and made him such a crappy, absent father to me for over twenty-five years.

Perhaps it’s the fact that the book finally came out last year that has enabled him to be (as he so clearly is) a pretty involved stepdad to Rosie.

Just at this moment, I feel a gentle touch to my elbow, and glance around to see that Olly has come over to join us.

I don’t actually throw myself on him like a drowning woman might throw herself on a passing lifeguard, but it’s a pretty close thing.

‘Hi,’ says Olly, extending a pleasant, if rather chilly, hand to my dad. ‘Congratulations, Mr Lomax.’

‘Oh, thanks … you’re … uh … Oscar, is it?’

‘Olly,’ I say.

‘Are you Libby’s boyfriend?’ Rosie asks, suddenly perking up and showing a bit more interest in me.

Or, to be more specific, in Olly.

At least, I assume this is what all the sudden pouty lips and hair-flicky action are about.

And Olly is looking nice today, in his smart suit, and with his sandy hair vaguely tidy for once, so I suppose I can’t blame Rosie for all the pouting and flicking, even if it does feel a bit … incestuous. Because she’s my (wince) new stepsister, and Olly is practically my brother.

‘No, no,’ I say, hastily, before Olly has to be the one to do so. ‘We’re just friends.’

‘Oh,’ says Rosie, meaningfully, as if Olly, being helpfully single, might suddenly decide that a seventeen-year-old is a suitable match for him, at thirty-three, and whisk her on to the dance floor for a bit of a smooch.

‘I just came over, Libby,’ Olly says, tactfully ignoring Rosie’s eager body language and turning to me instead, ‘to see if you wanted a dance. I think I might have worn your grandmother out, unfortunately, so I’m a partner down. I get the impression the jazz band are keen for some enthusiastic participants, though, so if you’re up for cutting a rug …?’

‘Delighted to,’ I say, with abject relief, as I clasp his outstretched hand. ‘I’ll catch you later, Dad. You probably need to circulate anyway, right?’

‘Absolutely,’ Dad says, looking pretty abjectly relieved, himself, to be rid of me.

‘And great to meet you, Rosie,’ I add, with what I hope is a suitably friendly-but-not-overly-intimate stepsisterly wave. ‘Maybe we can … er … keep in touch? I’m sure Dad can give you my email address if you’d like.’

Her eyes boggle at me as though I’ve just suggested writing each other letters with a quill pen and ink and sending them off by horse-drawn mail coach.

‘Anyway, congratulations again,’ Olly says, swiftly and smoothly, as he starts to lead me in the direction of the dance floor. ‘You’re shaking,’ he adds, to me, in a low voice. ‘Tricky conversation?’

‘Not for my dad and his brand-new stepdaughter, no,’ I say, but quietly, because I don’t want Grandmother to hear. She’s sitting on a chair in the shade of some nearby trees, where Olly must have chivalrously parked her, with a fresh glass of champagne in her hand. ‘They seem to be getting on like a house on fire. He’s taking an interest in her future … introducing her and her friends to all his favourite movies … supplying the popcorn …’

Olly gives a little wince of his own – amazingly, his first of the trip. ‘Sorry, Lib.’

‘It’s all right.’

It isn’t, really. Because although my dad not being bothered about me is something I’ve come to terms with, it’s quite different to see my dad taking such obvious pleasure in building a relationship with a daughter who’s come into his life through circumstance, and not biology.

Those cosy-sounding movie nights Rosie mentioned, for example. They were precisely the sort of thing I used to crave – I mean, really crave – when I was growing up. I had a few of them when I was eight or nine and still staying over at Dad’s for the occasional night (before plans for His Book properly took off, and he lost interest in me entirely). And I can still remember how exciting it was to be treated like a grown-up, and shown Dad’s favourite movies until way, way past my bedtime. Casablanca, and The African Queen, and Some Like It Hot … with hindsight, of course, not all of them exactly the sort of thing an eight-year-old enjoys. But I enjoyed them with Dad. Despite his stiff, rather formal method of showing them, with frequent breaks for him to point out Meaningful Scenes. A method he seems to have loosened up on where Rosie is concerned.

‘Do you want to go?’ Olly asks, lowering his voice still further. He has one hand on my waist and one on my shoulder as we dance (or rather, rock aimlessly from side to side; I evidently haven’t inherited Grandmother’s rug-cutting genes), and he uses the latter hand now to give my shoulder a gentle, comforting squeeze. ‘I’m happy to make the excuses if you want. I could say you’re feeling ill. Or I could say I’m feeling ill. Or I could say we’re both feeling ill – blame it all on those mushroom vol-au-vents I’ve seen doing the rounds, and cause a mass stampede for the exits …?’

I laugh. ‘Thanks, Olly, but I think I’d be even more unpopular around here if I put the kibosh on Dad and Phoebe’s big day.’

‘You’re not unpopular.’ He looks down at me. ‘Not with anyone who matters.’

We’re interrupted by the sound of his phone ringing, somewhere inside his suit jacket.

‘That’s Nora’s ringtone,’ I say, because we’ve both had her programmed in our phones, ever since she moved up to Glasgow a few years ago, with ‘Auld Lang Syne’. ‘We should answer. It might be something to do with her flights, or something.’

My mood is lifted, briefly, by this reminder of the fact that Nora is meeting us at Glasgow Airport later on this evening so that we can all fly back down to London together: she’s coming ‘home’ for the week so that she can help Olly with all the last-minute preparations for his restaurant opening, and come to his opening-night party on Friday evening.

‘No, I expect she’ll just be calling back to see if I’ve decided whether or not to take her up on her suggestion about Tash and the motorbike.’

I blink up at him. ‘Tash and what motorbike?’

‘Er … I was telling you about this in the bar last night, Libby.’ He looks surprised. ‘You weren’t that drunk, were you?’

No; I wasn’t very drunk at all. But there was a full five minutes, possibly even longer, when I got distracted by the sight of the single-malt whisky bottles lined up along the top of the bar. Single-malt whisky bottles make me think of Dillon. And when I think about Dillon, which I very rarely allow myself to do, entire swathes of time can get sucked into this sort of … vortex, I suppose you’d have to call it. So Olly could have been sitting in the bar buck-naked with a loaf of bread strapped to his head, talking about the time he was abducted by aliens, and it wouldn’t have even registered with me.

‘Tash,’ Olly re-explains, patiently (more patiently than he’d be doing if he knew it was thoughts of Dillon that had distracted me last night), ‘is going to come down to London to stay this week, too. Something about a conference, and apparently she’s a dab hand with a hammer and nails … she’s offering to help out at the restaurant in the evenings …’

Tash, one of Nora’s closest friends from the hospital they both work at in Glasgow, is almost certainly a dab hand with a hammer and nails. Tash is the sort of person who’s a dab hand with everything. A bit like Nora, in fact, capable and unflappable, which is probably why they’re such good friends.

I didn’t know she was going to be coming down to London with Nora this week.

Not, I should say, that I’ve got any kind of a problem with Tash, who’s seemed really nice every time I’ve met her.

It’s just that I’d been envisaging some lovely quality time spent with Nora over these next few days: helping Olly get the restaurant ready for the Friday opening; chatting late into the night over a bottle of wine; shopping for the last few bits and bobs she might need for her own wedding at the end of July, just over a month away …

I mean, obviously we can still do all those things with Tash around, too. From the times I’ve spent with her whenever I’ve visited Nora up in Scotland, I know Tash enjoys a drink and a gossip just as much as Nora and I do, and seeing as she’s a fellow bridesmaid, it would make perfect sense for her to come on a wedding-shopping expedition.

But still. It’s not quite the way I’d fondly imagined this week would go, that’s all.

‘Anyway,’ Olly goes on, ‘she’s planning on riding down on her motorbike, and Nora wondered if I wanted to hire a bike and go home that way, too.’

‘Instead of taking your flight?’

‘Yeah. We can do it in eight hours or so, with breaks. I mean, it’s not that I think Tash needs the company, or anything – she’s always seemed pretty self-sufficient whenever I’ve met her.’

I don’t know why the idea of Olly and Tash riding motorbikes all the way from Glasgow to London should make me feel as antsy as it does. After all, even if I did have a problem with Tash (which as I’ve already said, I absolutely don’t), Olly taking the long, uncomfortable route back home with Tash instead of a nice quick flight with me and Nora shouldn’t bother me in the slightest. It’s just because I’ve been a bit thrown by the idea that I might not get to spend this week hanging out with Nora in the way I’d envisaged, I decide. And maybe also by the fact that I hate him riding a motorbike, full stop. I watched a terrifying news segment once about a horrific accident caused by a bike skidding under an articulated lorry, and the memory has stayed with me.

‘So I was going to say no, but I’ve been thinking about it, and … well, a night-time bike ride …’ Olly looks wistful for a moment. ‘Nora suggested it because she thought I might like to clear my head a bit. What with this big week coming up, and all that, it should be pretty quiet on a Sunday night. And I haven’t ridden a bike in so long, I’ve almost forgotten how peaceful it is.’

‘Then you should definitely do it,’ I say. Reluctantly, but as enthusiastically as possible. Because I can tell from that wistful expression on his face that he really wants this.

‘Really?’

‘Absolutely! Just take it carefully, please, please, Olly, and obviously lay off any more champagne for the rest of the afternoon …’

‘You don’t need to worry about me,’ says Olly. ‘I’m here taking care of you today, remember?’

‘I know. And I’ll take care of you all next week, Ol, I promise. I mean, I may not be a dab hand with a hammer and nails, but I’ll bring coffee, and homemade food …’

‘There’s honestly no need for that,’ Olly says, hastily – as well he might, given that he’s a bona-fide foodie and I can’t cook for toffee. ‘Moral support will be fine.’

Which he thoroughly deserves, because he is, indeed, as Grandmother has pointed out, absolutely wonderful.

‘Oh, God … Grandmother,’ I suddenly say. ‘Did she go on and on at you about us, Olly? I’m so sorry, she just gets these crazy ideas into her head, and—’

‘It’s OK, Lib, honestly. I mean, yes, she did mention the concept of you and me a few times during our turn about the dance floor … you’d make an excellent wife, apparently …’

I wince. Not for the first time today and not, I expect, for the last. (I mean, there are still speeches to come, and everything. And if I can get through whatever sentimental mush Dad will have to say about his ready-made new family, I’m going to need a hell of a lot more champagne than I’ve drunk so far.) ‘Ugh, Olly, I’m sorry.’

‘… and she wants to live to see at least one successful marriage for a member of her family, and to see one bride walking down the aisle in her veil who doesn’t make her think the whole thing is doomed from the very start …’

It’s a fair point. Grandmother’s children haven’t exactly managed the most successful set of marriages between them, and if the photos of my own mother in the veil are anything to go by, the clock was running out for Mum and Dad pretty much from the very moment they half-heartedly said I do.

‘… and I remind her of her late husband, apparently. And you remind her of herself. And they were blissfully happy for forty-six years. So really,’ he finishes, with a strained-sounding laugh, ‘what more evidence does anybody need that you and I ought to be together?’

This is mortifying.

I mean, yes, people are always accidentally mistaking me and Olly for a couple: I think both of us are pretty used to that now. But to have it coming from as stern and proper a figure as Grandmother feels, somehow, too real for comfort. It’s a bit like the moment we shared our one and only kiss, in Paris – the Mistaken Thing we’ve never talked about since, after far too much wine and far too intense a conversation about love. I can’t quite look Olly in the eye, and I’m certain, from the strain in his voice, that he’s just as embarrassed as I am.

‘Again,’ I say, sounding pretty strained myself, ‘I’m really sorry. She’s unstoppable when she gets the bit between her teeth. I had no idea she was going to latch on to you like that …’

His phone is going: ‘Auld Lang Syne’ again.

‘You really should get that this time,’ I say, grateful for the diversion. ‘Tell Nora to let Tash know she’ll have a companion for the road ahead.’

‘All right,’ says Olly, taking the phone out of his pocket. ‘And then I’ll just need five minutes online to pre-order a bike. Promise you’ll come and grab me the minute anyone starts speechifying, Lib?’

‘I promise.’

I watch him wander away from the noise of the jazz band, putting his phone to his ear as he goes. And then I take a deep, deep breath, and head for the trees, to see if I can persuade Grandmother, politely, to put a sock in it for the rest of the wedding. After all, if I can stand around here on Dad’s big day and bottle up all the things I might quite like to blurt out, Grandmother – a fully paid-up member of the Blitz generation – can surely do it too.

Like I say, it’s only been eight weeks. But I really think I might actually be falling in love with Adam already.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that a) I’m an incurable romantic and b) my standards are embarrassingly low. I mean, if you’re the sort of girl who’s constantly being showered in dozens of red roses just because it’s Tuesday, or whisked away to five-star luxury in the Italian lakes before being proposed to on a gondola, in Venice, at sunset, then my reason for suddenly realizing that Adam might be The One is going to seem a bit … silly.

But then, they do say that it’s the little things that make a relationship go the distance. The offer to dash to the shop at eight a.m. on a drizzly Sunday morning to pick up milk for a cup of tea. The random text message in the middle of a stressful day that tells you how great you make someone feel. The surprise scrawl, at the bottom of the tedious weekly shopping list, that simply announces Thinking about you.

My new boyfriend turning up to meet me outside my Very Important Meeting, bringing a Pret espresso and a packet of yogurt-covered raisins, is exactly this sort of ‘little thing’.

So yes, it’s not red roses, and it’s a long way from Venice at sunset, but it’s thoughtful, and lovely, and it matters.

‘You really, really shouldn’t have,’ I tell Adam, wrapping my arms round him and giving him a kiss. ‘You’re so busy. And your flight only got in two hours ago.’

‘I slept loads on the plane. I’m fresh as a daisy.’ The expression, in his Brooklyn accent, sounds as incongruous as it sounds sweet.

He’s probably not fibbing about this: he works for a swanky investment fund, and today’s flight, back to London from New York, is bound to have been one of the business-class variety. Unlike my mere hour’s flight back from Glasgow last night which, though brief, was of the Ryanair variety: cramped, hectic and a bit like finding yourself in a thirty-five-thousand-feet-high tin of sardines. And Adam does, in fact, look fresh as a daisy: impeccably dressed as ever in his crisp blue shirt and rumple-free grey suit, not a single dark hair out of place. To look at him now, lean and tanned and bright-eyed, you’d think that instead of just stepping off a seven-hour flight, he’d stepped out of a salon.