A Night In With Marilyn Monroe Read online

  ‘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.

  ‘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.’