A Night In With Marilyn Monroe

‘Anyway, it’s right around the corner from my office,’ he goes on.

‘Your office is in Mayfair. This –’ I gesture around at the slightly unlovely street we’re standing on – ‘is Clapham. Now, I know distance is nothing to you Americans, but I wouldn’t say this was just around the corner.’

‘So I’ll drop in on Olly while I’m over here. See how everything’s going at the restaurant.’

Even though Olly is very definitely the proprietor of his brand-new restaurant, most of the money is being supplied by Adam’s investment company. It’s how I met Adam, in fact. He was at Olly’s brand-new premises, the day after the builders started a little over two months ago, and I dropped in with a bottle of champagne. We got to chatting, and then he walked me to the tube … and, eight weeks later, here we are. Proud owners of a fully functioning, mature, adult relationship.

‘Anyway,’ Adam goes on now, fondly pushing a stray lock of hair behind my ear. (At least, I think it’s fond. I can’t help harbouring the suspicion that my hair, the opposite of his own neat, never-a-strand-out-of-place locks, drives him slightly nuts.) ‘I know what a big deal this meeting is for you, Libby. I just wanted you to realize that I’m cheering you on.’

‘You’re lovely. Thank you.’

‘Not to mention that I expect you were up until the small hours polishing up your business plan …’

He’s half right. I did stay up late after I got home last night after the wedding, but that wasn’t so much because I was polishing my business plan as panicking about it.

I mean, this is the first time I’ve ever done what I’m about to do – go into a meeting with a bank manager and ask him for a small business loan – and I’ve no idea if what I’ve produced is even remotely good enough. Professional enough.

But then, perhaps that’s the downside of ending up turning a hobby you love into a career you need to make a go of. I started my jewellery design business, Libby Goes To Hollywood, almost a year ago, but I still can’t quite shake the sense that it’s just a bit, well, rude to be walking into a meeting with a perfect stranger and announcing that you’d quite like him to stump up eight thousand pounds – ten if he’s feeling really generous – so that you can carry on living your dream of being a jewellery designer, just with a bit more all-important dosh around so that you can buy better equipment, and maybe even employ an intern to come and work for you so that you can keep up with all the orders.

‘I was up late,’ I tell Adam, lifting a hand to waggle the espresso and yogurt-covered raisins at him. ‘So these are absolutely perfect.’

Which, of course, they are.

I mean, it’s not Adam’s fault that he thinks I drink espresso, or that I’m a person for whom yogurt-covered raisins are the very acme of pre-meeting treats. I might accidentally have implied, on our second or third date, that I was a go-getting, gym-hitting, green-juice-quaffing sort of girl. Just, you know, to keep up with his own go-getting, gym-hitting, green-juice-quaffing ways.

Obviously in an ideal world, it wouldn’t be an espresso, it’d be a cappuccino. And they might be chocolate-covered raisins instead.

OK: in a really, really ideal world, the snack Adam had so thoughtfully brought me wouldn’t have the faintest whiff of raisin about it at all. It’d be those big, chocolate-coated honeycomb bites I’ve recently developed a slightly worrying addiction to, or a good old Yorkie bar, or – seeing as he’s just got off a plane – a massive great Toblerone.

‘Well, I know you’ll sock it to ’em,’ he says, leaning in to give me another big, encouraging squeeze. ‘And I can’t wait to hear absolutely everything about it – oh, and about your dad’s wedding, of course – tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Dinner?’ he says. ‘Tuesday – that Thai place you like?’

‘Er … sure … but I thought we were seeing each other tonight. Weren’t we?’

‘I don’t think so, Libby.’ Adam shakes his head. ‘It’s certainly not down in my schedule.’

‘Oh. It must be my mistake, then. I just thought we were going to meet at your place, and … um … you’d said you were going to cook red snapper and kale.’

‘That does sound oddly specific …’ He frowns. ‘But I have a work dinner this evening, Lib. And I’ve asked the Cadwalladrs to keep Fritz for another evening, which you know I’d never have done if I’d planned to be home at a normal time. I mean, I’ve missed him so much … Lottie’s been sweet, and sent photo messages a few times a day while I’ve been away, but it’s not the same as really being with him. Holding him. Smelling him …’

Fritz, I should probably explain, is Adam’s dog.

A very, very cute dog. And I’m a dog person, through and through, always have been. But still. At the end of the day, just a dog.

It’s just about the only thing I’d change about Adam right now, to be honest. This tendency towards ever-so-slight nuttiness about Fritz the German shepherd puppy.

‘Though, now I think about it, he’s probably missed me horribly … I guess I could blow off the work dinner, head home early for some Fritz time … And red snapper with you, too, Libby, of course.’

‘No, no, don’t worry about it. You should go to your dinner. Better not to unsettle Fritz at, er, his bedtime.’

‘You’re right. He hates that. When I picked him up late from the Cadwalladrs one time after I got back late from Chicago, he was so excited, he didn’t sleep all night, and then of course he was grouchy all the next day, and—’

‘And you and I can have a nice meal tomorrow evening, like you thought we were doing,’ I interrupt, before he can go off on one of his Fritz monologues. Fritz-ologues, I suppose you could call them. ‘I can fill you in on all the details of my meeting and my weekend then.’ Except, of course, I’m not going to fill him in on all that many of the details of Dad’s wedding, because even though we’ve reached the Possible Love stage, I still think we’re a fair way away from me opening up to him about the myriad issues within my family. ‘And talking of my meeting …’

‘You should go, you should go.’ He leans in to kiss me on the forehead. ‘Go get ’em!’

‘Thank you … do I look OK?’

‘You look fabulous. Very chic.’ He casts an admiring glance down at my all-black outfit (cigarette pants, silk top and nipped-in jacket) before reaching up a hand to brush my earrings. ‘And I love these. Hey, are these brand new? From that little-known but amazing online jewellery store, Libby Goes To Hollywood?’

‘They are,’ I say, with a little bow. ‘From the new Marilyn collection.’

He frowns. ‘Named for your mom?’

‘Named for Marilyn Monroe!’

‘Oh. Yeah, that makes a lot more sense.’

The jewellery that I make is Old Hollywood-inspired, you see: a costume version of the sort of thing you might have seen, say, Ava Gardner sporting to the Oscars, or Lauren Bacall wearing in a shoot for Harper’s Bazaar. It’s a Lomax thing, I reluctantly have to admit, this obsession with the movies, whether it’s Grandmother with her Grace Kelly wedding or Dad with His Book and his entire university career. My obsession with the movies comes out, these days, in my jewellery line, and since I started Libby Goes To Hollywood, my flat is piled high with endless, and expensive, coffee-table books featuring beautiful posed on-and off-screen photographs of all my favourite stars. These earrings, which as I just said are from my new ‘Marilyn collection’, were inspired by the glittering chandelier-style ones she wears in that iconic dance scene from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: it’s just that in the Libby Goes To Hollywood version they’re made from silver and vintage Swarovski crystals, and not the Harry Winston diamonds that Marilyn is singing about.

‘I thought I’d better show the bank manager what his money would be going towards,’ I go on. ‘Which will be a huge mistake if he hates them …’

‘He won’t hate them. They’re gorgeous. You’re gorgeous. And you have to remember, Libby: it’s not his money, it’s the bank’s money. And they’re not giving it to you as a form of charity, they’ll be giving it to you as an investment. You don’t need to go into this meeting to get him to like you. Just show him your stuff, show him what you’ve done and what you know you can do, and you won’t have a thing to worry about.’

‘Thanks, Adam. I …’ Can’t say I love him, because we haven’t said that yet. ‘… really, really like that you came here today.’

‘And I really, really like that you liked it.’ He kisses me, swiftly. ‘Good luck, sweetheart … wait. It’s not bad luck to say that, is it? Should I be saying “break a leg”, or something?’

‘That’s only bad luck for actors. And thank God I’m not one of those any more.’

Seriously, thank God. Because if I were still an actress (as I was, shockingly unsuccessfully, until almost a year ago), I wouldn’t now be about to walk up these steps and into a meeting with a bank manager to ask for great wodges of cash – sorry, an investment – to plough into my very own small business.

It’s a big moment.

I watch Adam for a moment or two after he turns away and starts to head towards Olly’s new premises, partly for the simple pleasure of watching such a fine figure of a man stroll away from me, and partly to see if he’s going to ogle the even finer figure of a hot blonde in a tiny skirt who’s just crossed the road to walk ahead of him.

But he doesn’t.

Because, as I need to get to grips with remembering, he’s Adam. Not Dillon. And I’m not with Dillon any more.

Then I turn away myself and head up these steps, trying to feel as go-getting as Adam thinks I am.

I mean, all his American positivity, it’s bound to be rubbing off on me in some way, isn’t it? If I just believe that the meeting will be a rip-roaring success, then it will be.

*

It wasn’t.

A rip-roaring success, that is.

On a sliding scale, with rip-roaring success at one end to abject failure at the other … well, that meeting with Jonathan Hedley, Barclays Business Development Manager, Clapham branch, was quite a lot closer to the latter end of the scale than the former.

All right, so he didn’t actually tell me I wasn’t going to get the small business loan I was applying for. But then he didn’t actually say, out loud, that there was more chance of his bank investing in a factory that makes inflatable dartboards and chocolate teapots.

It doesn’t mean he wasn’t thinking it.

I don’t know if it was an issue with my business plan, or if he didn’t like the Marilyn-inspired earrings, or if he just didn’t like me, but I certainly didn’t walk away from our half-hour meeting with the sense that the eight grand I urgently need will be forthcoming.

And there isn’t any time for me to properly take stock (or even to endlessly replay the meeting over and over in my head, torturing myself with the things I must have said and done wrong), because I came out of the meeting to a series of texts from my sister Cass.

Libby where are you?

Libby I need to talk to you

Libby why are you ignoring me?

Libby this is really unfair, call yourself my big sister, what a joke, I’m always there for you when you need me and now when I really need you for like once in my life you can’t even be bothered to pick up the phone and call me back

Which did press my guilt button quite a bit because, to be entirely fair to Cass, she did send me a couple of really nice supportive text messages while I was on my way to Dad’s wedding (he’s not her dad; we have different fathers).

So of course I picked up the phone and called her back, only to be directed, through a barrage of incoherent sobs, to come straight to her flat in Maida Vale, ‘because everything’s completely shit, Libby, I can’t do this any more!’

I’m not too worried about all the tears and hysterics. Cass has a tendency to overdramatize things. The last time I was summoned to hurtle to her flat, after a nerve-chilling six a.m. phone call, it turned out to be because she’d stubbed her big toe getting out of bed, wasn’t going to be able to make it to her early morning spinning class, and could, apparently, literally feel the fat blobbing itself on to her thighs. There’s no way of knowing what this afternoon’s crisis has been caused by, but it’s not worth ignoring it in the hope that it goes away. It never does. I have a couple of hours before I need to get to my client appointment in Shepherd’s Bush, so I may as well use it profitably by ensuring that my client appointment in Shepherd’s Bush isn’t constantly interrupted by the pinging of my phone, with increasingly furious messages from Cass.

There’s another message pinging through now, as I emerge from the tube at Warwick Avenue.

Popped to nail salon. Meet me there?

Oh, and another one, a moment after this.

Bring coffee?

When I stamp into the nail bar around the corner from her flat ten minutes later, with a frappuccino for her and the cappuccino for me that I would have really liked from Adam instead of that espresso, she waves me over, imperiously, from where she’s sitting towards the back. Her feet are soaking in one of the foot basins, and a weary-looking Filipina woman is tending to her hands with a cuticle stick.

‘Thank God you’re here,’ Cass announces, which is her way of being grateful, and, ‘Thank fuck for this,’ as she grabs the frappuccino from me, which is her way of saying thank you. ‘You won’t believe what’s happened, Libby. You literally won’t believe it.’

‘Tell me.’

‘It’s all off! The whole thing!’

For a fleeting, thrilled moment, I think she’s talking about her relationship with her boyfriend (and manager) Dave. Which, given that he’s married to another woman, is about bloody time, too.

‘Oh, Cass. Well, I’m really sorry you’re upset. But, you know, it was always a terrible idea, and too many people risked being hurt—’

‘Who was going to get hurt? Nobody was going to get hurt! It wasn’t supposed to be a bloody stunt show! It wasn’t Dancing On Ice!’

I’m confused, until I remember the other thing that could be ‘off’.

Her reality TV show, Considering Cassidy.

‘RealTime Media called Dave this morning and they’re pulling the plug,’ Cass sniffs. ‘Not enough interest from advertisers, apparently.’

‘Oh, Cass.’

This is genuinely upsetting news for her. Considering Cassidy was going to be her very own, eight-part ‘scripted reality’ show, on the Bravo channel, documenting – according to Dave’s pitch – ‘the crazy, behind-the-scenes dramas of one of the most famous actresses working in Britain today … from pampering to premieres, from dating to mating; follow much-loved TV It-Girl Cassidy Kennedy as she dishes the dirt on Slebsville, her way!’

(And yes, I was a bit surprised they got as far as they did in talks with the production company, RealTime Media, on the basis of that pitch – but, nevertheless, a deal was about to be struck. No matter that Cass isn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, ‘one of the most famous actresses working in Britain today’ … nor that, thanks to her relationship with Dave, any ‘dating and mating’ the programme intended to depict was going to have to be far more on the ‘scripted’ side than the ‘reality’ side. It was going to be her very own show, her step up from her usual soaps, or her small, regular role in sci-fi drama Isara 364. Her springboard, at least the way Cass was looking at it, to Kardashian levels of fame and glory.)

‘I’m really sorry,’ I begin, only for her to interrupt me.

‘I mean, not enough interest from advertisers? Are they kidding me? I can be used to sell anything, if the angle’s right. I mean, your friend Olly wouldn’t have invited me to that opening-night party of his this week, would he, if he weren’t just using me to get more customers through his doors?’

I’m pretty sure that Olly’s invited Cass to his opening-night party because he needs someone there to whom his youngest sister Kitty will deign to talk; she’s an MTV presenter now, and a competitor of Cass’s from their child-star days, and I very much doubt she’d make a hole in her busy schedule for Olly’s big night if it weren’t for the opportunity to score points off an old frenemy.

‘No, Libby,’ Cass is going on, ‘it’s absolutely nothing to do with the advertisers. It’s Tanya, from RealTime. She hated me, right from the word go.’

‘Um, I’m sure she didn’t hate you, whoever she is …’

‘She’s Ned’s producing partner. And she did hate me. I mean, not that I give a shit. If I had a tenner for every girl who’s ever been jealous of me, I’d have …’ Her eyes, slightly smudged from all the crying she’s been doing, widen as she tries to work out this calculation. ‘Well, enough money to start my own production company, and produce my own show. And win, like, every single Emmy and Golden Globe I possibly could. And then Tanya could fuck off.’

It’s not worth pointing out that scripted reality shows on the Bravo channel aren’t all that likely to be in the running for Emmys or Golden Globes. If Cass wants to imagine herself swanning along some red carpet, holding armfuls of awards in one hand and making rude gestures at this Tanya with the other, then it’s no skin off my nose.

‘Well, look, maybe something good will come out of all this,’ I say, as Cass starts to peruse the selection of polish colours the weary nail technician is holding out to her, wrinkling her pretty nose at too-red reds and not-pink-enough pinks. ‘After all, you’re an actress, Cass. Reality TV would be a bit of a diversion.’

‘Yeah. An amazing diversion. I mean, we had it all mapped out, Dave and I. Considering Cassidy was going to lead to an offer from Celebrity Masterchef, and that would lead to an offer from Strictly, and then I’d be able to call all the shots with one of the really big TV channels, like E!, for an even bigger, better reality show … and now I’m going to have to go back to boring old acting. And learning lines. And, like, pretending to care about character development so the writers don’t give all the good storylines to somebody else.’

‘I know. It’s a tough business,’ I say, in the sort of soothing tone that Mum is good at deploying with Cass whenever she’s having a meltdown. Which reminds me … ‘Have you spoken to Mum about it yet?’

‘Yeah, and she offered to come back early from the tap festival to come round to mine tonight to cheer me up.’

This isn’t the sort of tap you get water from; it’s the sort of tap that hordes of star-struck eleven-year-old girls do with their feet. After working as Cass’s manager for years (mine too, to be fair; it’s just that my own acting career didn’t provide her with quite as much work as Cass’s did), Mum now owns her own weekend stage-school franchise in Kensal Rise. She’s in Cardiff with a posse of those very star-struck eleven-year-old girls now, at the tap festival, and it’s heart-warming to hear that she’s offered to come back early for Cass’s sake. Though it could also be a sign that the reality of spending all day surrounded by star-struck eleven-year-olds, in tap shoes, is starting to get on her nerves.

‘That’s nice of her.’

‘Yeah, but I told her no. She’s working over there. I thought you’d cheer me up instead. So, Dave’s booked a table for me at Roka tonight, and I’ll need you to come with me. I’m going to wear my new cherry-red hot-pants, and Dave’s going to let the 3AM Girls know where I’ll be … I think they might remember you from that time they wrote about you and Dillon.’ Cass gives me a quick once-over. ‘You’ll have to head back to yours and change, obviously …’

I can’t decide whether to feel truly depressed that Cass is so obviously trying to use me for publicity purposes, to increase the chance of the production company revisiting the idea of her show again, or slightly envious of her ability to pick herself up off the floor and get right back on the horse after a tumble.

Either way, my answer is going to have to be the same.

‘Cass, I can’t come out with you tonight. I’m … busy.’

‘Doing what?’

This is an excellent question.

To which the most accurate answer would be, ‘With any luck, having mind-blowing sex with my new boyfriend until the small hours of the morning.’

Because having mind-blowing sex with Adam was, in fact, my endgame for this evening. It’s an endgame that’s been buggered around slightly by him forgetting about our plans to have a cosy night in at his place, and scheduling in that work dinner of his instead, but it’s an endgame that I still fully intend to pursue.

And if that makes me sound like some sort of nymphomaniac, let me just add that while I was being truthful when I stated earlier that we have a mature, adult relationship, and while I may, let’s face it, have fallen in love with him this morning over the whole espresso and yogurt-covered-raisins thing, in eight weeks of dating we still haven’t progressed any further than a good old snog on the sofa.

Yes. Eight weeks.

Given that neither of us is Amish, or anything, and given that – as far as it’s been possible to tell – we’re both in possession of all the necessary working body parts, I can’t help but wonder if this is some sort of a record.

There are several perfectly decent explanations. We’re both extremely busy. He travels a lot. Fritz needs walking a lot. We have such a good time together that quite often hours of just chatting pass by without either of us noticing that we haven’t jumped on each other and started frantically humping.

But still. Eight weeks of snogging on the sofa has left me, at the very least, feeling pretty frustrated. I mean, I fancy the pants off him, and he claims to fancy the pants off me, so I think it’s about time we acted on those urges and, well, got our actual pants off.

Hence the sex, sex, and more sex plan that I’d formulated in my head for tonight. And which no inconvenient work dinner is going to prevent. It doesn’t need to happen after a candlelit supper of red snapper and super-healthy kale. It just needs to happen.

But I’m not going to tell Cass about the (hopefully) mind-blowing sex thing, because that’s not the sort of relationship we have. (Or, let’s put it this way: if I open the door to frank discussions about sex with Adam, I’m very, very scared that she’ll start telling me about sex with Dave. And I value an undisturbed night’s sleep. Which I don’t think I’d ever have again if I had to think about horrible, cheaty Dave having extramarital relations with my sister.)

So I just say, ‘I’m seeing Adam.’

‘Adam? Who’s Adam?’

‘He’s … well, he’s my new boyfriend.’

Cass stares at me.

‘You have a new boyfriend?’

‘I do. Yes.’

‘And you’re choosing him? This new boyfriend? Over me?’

The nail technician lets out a little wince. It’s eerily reminiscent of me at Dad’s wedding yesterday.

‘No, Cass, I’m not choosing him over you. It’s just that, like I said, I have plans with him tonight, and—’

‘What plans?’ Cass demands, in the tone of voice that implies that any answer other than sitting by his side in the hospital as he recovers from major neurological surgery isn’t going to be anywhere near reason enough.

‘You know … plans. Things people make with their boyfriends.’

‘Right. I get it,’ says Cass, with the sort of swoosh of her blonde hair that would say, Et tu, Brute, if hair-swooshes could actually talk. ‘You’re going to swan off and spend all night shagging this so-called Adam—’

‘He’s not so-called Adam. He’s actually called Adam.’