I smile, and start to text back:
Am willing to be guided by you on all matters pertaining to pies. Always enjoy that banof—
Before I can finish typing fee, I bump into a woman hurrying towards the doors. Literally bump into her, I mean: our arms tangle and we’d probably have bumped noses if it weren’t for the fact that she’s about a foot taller than me.
‘Sorry!’ I say.
‘For fuck’s sake, stop texting and watch where you’re bloody going!’ she barks.
This is slightly unfair – not to mention rude – because her head was down and she’s wearing a baseball cap pulled right over her eyes, which themselves are shaded in huge crystal-encrusted sunglasses, so I’d be surprised if she could see where she was going either. But I don’t expect much else from an A-list model, which I’m assuming she is. A-list because of the baseball cap and shades; model because she’s practically six foot tall in her gym shoes, with perfect melons of breasts jutting out of her skimpy cropped top. Familiar-looking breasts, if it doesn’t sound too weird to say that … I’ve seen them somewhere before – and recently, at that. She pushes past me to the FitLondon entrance, jabs a few times at the entry pad, and then strides through the sliding doors as they open.
It’s her rear view that clinches my suspicions. Her bum is pert, perfect, clad in tiny hot-pink yoga shorts and belongs, I’m pretty certain, to the girl I recently saw in the pages of Grazia, coming out of a nightclub with Dillon O’Hara: Rhea Haverstock-Harley, Victoria’s Secret model and assaulter of hairdressers.
And a moment later I’m absolutely certain, because about ten leather-jacketed paparazzi seem to appear out of nowhere, flashing their cameras in the direction of the doors and yelling, ‘Rhea! Rhea!’ after her as she vanishes inside and the doors close behind her.
Which is pretty definitive, let’s face it.
‘Stuck-up bitch,’ one of them mutters, charmingly, as they give up taking dozens of photos of a blank set of sliding glass doors and mooch back, en masse, to wherever it was they came from. One of the coffee bars in the piazza, I expect, because there’s no entry pad there, and nobody can stop them going in.
My phone pings, again, from inside my jeans pocket.
This time it’s not Olly – to whom I must send the pie reply, now I think of it – but Mum.
Tell spa to put nail polish on my account. Also u need entry code for FitLondon entrance. Is Cass’s birthday.
Of course it is. Mum’s code for pretty much everything is Cass’s birthday.
And it’s nothing to do with the fact that Cass’s birthday is the first of January, and so therefore a memorable date. My birthday is 14 February, as it happens, which is a pretty memorable date, too; but, as far as I know, Mum has never used that for anything.
Well, 0101 it is, then.
I turn back to the FitLondon entrance and key this in on the entry pad that Rhea Haverstock-Harley has just used. The doors slide open and I step through.
‘Sorry, sorry … coming through!’
This is from a short, rather podgy man, hurrying through the doors behind me. Extremely podgy, actually, given that he’s wearing a tracksuit and trainers and carrying a squash racket: isn’t squash meant to burn about a zillion calories each time you play? And are you even allowed to be this podgy (borderline obese, in fact) if you’re a member of a celeb gym, frequented by Victoria’s Secret models in bright pink hot pants? I feel scruffy enough as it is – and unwelcome, too, given the hatchet-faced receptionist bearing down on me as I take a few steps further into FitLondon’s hallowed halls.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ she yells – actually yells – at me.
‘I’m just here to get some nail polish,’ I say, completely astonished and – I have to say – already composing the complaint email to the FitLondon customer services team in my mind. ‘My mum’s a member here, so …’
‘Where did he go?’
‘Who?’
‘The man who came in with you!’ She glances, frantically, in all directions, before practically sprinting back along the hallway, an impressive feat in four-inch heels. Reaching a glass reception desk at the far end, she grabs a phone, dials a number, and then says into the receiver: ‘This is Pippa, on reception. Can you send one of the personal trainers out here, please? Some idiot member of the public let a paparazzo in!’
It takes me a moment to realize that the paparazzo must have been the plump man with the squash racket.
And that the idiot member of the public must be me.
‘Send Willi, if he’s around,’ Pippa the receptionist is going on. ‘I need one of the bigger guys like him, in case things get … well, where is Willi?’ There’s a short silence, while she listens to the reply on the other end and continues to glower at me. ‘Teaching a private yoga class? But I don’t see anyone booked in for private yoga on the system …’
Suddenly, a flicker of understanding passes across her face, and she turns rather pale beneath her perfectly sprayed-on tan.
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘That sort of private class.’
Then she bangs the phone down and heads for a door, right next to where I’m still standing, marked YOGA STUDIO 1.
‘Willi?’ she calls, knocking hard on the door. ‘Just to warn you and your – er – client … we’ve had a security breach, so just be …’
Before she can add careful, the door is flung wide open and the squash-racket-holding paparazzo is literally carried out, WWF-style, by a very tall, very wide blond man who looks as if he’s been hewn out of marble and who’s wearing nothing – and I mean nothing – except a tubular bandage on one knee.
Behind them, her crop top askew, and hoiking her pink hot pants back up from mid-thigh, is a purple-faced and livid-looking Rhea Haverstock-Harley.
‘The camera, Willi!’ she’s yelling at the large naked blond man. (Willi, evidently. Which, as it happens, is exactly where I’m trying not to look.) ‘Don’t throw him out until you’ve got his camera!’
‘You can’t take that!’ the paparazzo wheezes, as Willi grabs the Nikon strap around his neck – that was why he looked clinically obese; the huge camera hidden under his hoodie – and pulls it off. ‘That’s my property!’
‘And this is private property,’ Pippa the receptionist barks, scurrying to the sliding doors to press the Exit button. ‘You’re trespassing!’
‘She let me in!’ the paparazzo says, jabbing a finger in my direction. ‘If a member invites you in, it’s not trespassing!’
‘She’s not a member,’ Rhea Haverstock-Harley says. (Actually, more like asks. In an incredulous tone of voice. As in, ‘She’s not a member?’)
‘No, she’s not,’ Pippa confirms, crisply, as Willi finally wrests the Nikon from the paparazzo’s grasp, bends down and dumps him on the paving slabs outside the door.
I have time to feel a brief stab of sympathy for the prone paparazzo – not because of his unceremonious exit, but because nobody deserves that view of Willi (so to speak) – before I feel a sharp tap on my shoulder. It’s Rhea, towering over me like a semi-clad, platinum-blonde Gorgon.
‘What the fuck did you let him in for?’ she screams. ‘Who do you work for? The Sun? The Mail? Popbitch?’
I’m tempted, for one insane moment, to reply, ‘MI5, actually’, but decide against it. This is, after all, a woman with previous form for assault. Christ only knows what it was that the poor hairdresser did to deserve being smacked in the chops with a flying smartphone, but it couldn’t possibly have been as bad as accidentally outing her as a cheating strumpet.
‘No one,’ I say. ‘I don’t work for anyone. Though, actually, I did work with your boyfriend – Dillon, I mean – ever so briefly …’
‘He’s behind this?’ she spits. ‘I swear to God, if you tell him what you saw here today … well, you didn’t see anything, OK?’
‘Just a private yoga lesson?’ Willi suggests, his voice much more polite – and Swedish-sounding – than I was expecting.
‘A naked yo
ga lesson?’ I can’t help saying.
‘Nobody’s naked,’ Pippa says, soothingly, grabbing a towel from the stack on her desk and – thank God – handing one to Willi.
He folds it neatly in two and hangs it around his neck.
‘For fuck’s sake, Willi!’ Rhea yells, as Pippa grabs another towel and actually puts this one around his waist herself. ‘I’m serious,’ she adds, fixing her ocean-green eyes on me again with much the same expression as a Tyrannosaurus Rex probably used on whatever unfortunate herbivore crossed its path at lunchtime. ‘You didn’t see anything. So there’s nothing to report back to Dillon. Got it?’
‘Look, I don’t really know him, even. And I’m certainly not—’
She’s already spun round, and with a brisk, ‘Willi!’ over her shoulder, is marching back in the direction of Yoga Studio 1. To do whatever it is they were up to when the photographer caught them. Whatever it is that has Willi scampering after her like an eager bloodhound.
‘Naked yoga,’ I mutter, as the door closes behind them.
‘Yes.’ Pippa folds her arms and stares me down. ‘Naked. Yoga.’
‘Fine. Whatever.’ Because really, it’s no skin off my nose if Rhea Haverstock-Harley is getting naked with anyone, for yoga purposes or otherwise, beyond the fact that I think she’s certifiably insane for cheating on Dillon O’Hara with Big Blond Willi. ‘Can I go to the spa and buy some nail polish now, please?’
‘I’m sorry, this isn’t the entrance to the spa.’
‘Oh. Could you tell me how to get to the spa entrance, then?’
‘The spa is closed.’
It’s clear from her tone of voice that she means the spa is closed to me.
I’m not about to stand around and argue. Cass’s toenails aren’t worth the indignity.
‘OK, well, thanks anyway.’ I press the Exit button, relieved to feel the cool, unscented air on my cheeks, and almost equally relieved to see that the paparazzo has got up, dusted himself down and is walking back across the piazza, presumably to moan about his confiscated Nikon to his comrades.
And I need to go back to Mum’s and tell Cass she’ll have to send Stella out for her nail polish instead.
I’m halfway across the piazza when I see Dillon O’Hara walking towards me.
He’s talking into his iPhone.
‘… fourth message I’ve left for you this morning,’ he’s saying, tersely, into it. ‘I thought you might have gone to your yoga class, so I’m heading to your stupid bloody gym now. We need to talk about this, Rhea. Call me when you get this message …’
There’s a flicker of recognition in his eyes when he glances up from his phone, a moment later, and sees me a few feet away from him. He’s about to pass me by, I think, with the merest of polite smiles. Which would be fine by me, because I’m not sure I can look him in the eye after hearing him leave that message, and having just seen what Rhea is doing in her ‘yoga class’.
But the flicker of recognition has turned into – no pun intended – more of a spark.
‘Do I …’ He stops. ‘Sorry, do I know you from somewhere?’
‘Yes. From yesterday.’
‘Sorry, love, but I can barely remember what I had for breakfast this morning.’ He does look a bit rough, it’s true: unshaven and slightly bleary-eyed (albeit still simmeringly gorgeous). ‘You’ll have to remind me.’
‘I’m Libby. From The Time Guardians. Remember, with the, er, unfortunate cigarette incident?’
‘Oh, yeah! Of course! Fire Girl!’
Which is a much better nickname than I thought anyone would come up with. Quite charming, in fact. Makes me sound a bit dangerous, a bit sexy.
‘Did you do something different,’ he goes on, ‘to your hair?’
‘You mean apart from burning half of it off yesterday?’
He grins. ‘Apart from that, yeah.’
‘Well, I had to go bit shorter,’ I say, putting a hand to it, suddenly self-conscious. ‘You know, to even it out.’
He puts his own (perfect) head on one side and looks at me, hard, for a long, long moment.
‘It suits you.’
I’m unable to reply anything other than a mumbled, ‘Really?’
‘Absolutely. I’m liking the little …’ He wafts a hand near the top of my face. ‘This bit. The fringey thing.’
And then his phone bleeps.
While he reads the text that’s just come through on his phone, I digest (no, I savour) the last nine words he’s just said.
When he looks up again, his face is frozen.
He doesn’t say anything at all for a moment.
Then he says, ‘You know, I don’t know why more girls don’t get their hair cut really short. I mean, it makes a bit of a change, doesn’t it? You know, from all those long, swooshy manes.’
Rhea. He’s talking about Rhea.
Or, I suppose, any one of the fifteen bazillion other leggy Amazonian models he’s dated.
But, most likely, given the text message and the icy look on his face when he read it, Rhea.
I get this sudden twist, deep in my gut, on Dillon’s behalf. It’s sort of horrible to be standing right here with him knowing exactly what I’ve just seen Rhea doing with Big Blond Willi, and knowing that Dillon doesn’t have a clue.
He shoves his phone back into his jacket pocket. ‘So!’ he says, in a dangerously light-hearted tone of voice. ‘Looks like I’ve got a spare hour or two on my hands.’
‘Oh?’
‘Well, I thought I might be able to meet my sort-of girlfriend here – you know, that one you’ve been doing all that reading about in the gossip magazines, during your once-every-five-years trip to the dentist – but that’s not happening. Needs a massage. Pulled something in her yoga class.’
You have to give Rhea credit. Pulled something in my yoga class isn’t, technically, lying.
‘So I can get stuffed, apparently. Even if I blew off a big meeting with my agent to find her this morning.’
‘I’m really, really sorry, Dillon.’
He gives me a distinctly funny look. ‘Jesus, there’s no need to sound so devastated. My agent will forgive me.’
‘Of course. I just … feel bad. That you went to all the trouble. Cancelled your plans, and all that.’
The funny look softens. ‘That’s really sweet of you, darling.’
Darlin’.
I actually feel my heart jump up into my throat. And then stay there, so that I’m incapable of saying anything in reply.
‘Tell you what, Fire Girl. Why don’t you come and say more nice things to me while I eat my lunch?’
‘Hhnh?’
‘I’ve got a couple of hours on my hands, didn’t you hear?’
‘Yes, but …’
‘So I need someone to come with me while I eat my lunch. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m terribly, terribly famous. If I eat lunch alone, I’ll get pestered the entire time by people wanting their picture taken, wanting me to sign their bras, women shoving their phone numbers into my pocket …’
‘How awful for you.’
‘I know. It’s a burden.’ He glances over his shoulder at the coffee bars in the piazza and lets out a little shudder, though whether because he knows they’re full of paparazzi or because he just thinks they look a bit snooty and pretentious, I couldn’t say. ‘I know a great little sandwich bar not too far away from here. What say I treat you to a tuna baguette. Throw in a packet of Wotsits, too, if you like.’
The trouble with all this charming banter is that I don’t know if he’s serious, or joking.
And, let’s face it, the most embarrassing thing in the world right now would be for me to assume he’s being serious, stride out towards this sandwich bar with a spring in my step and a song in my heart, only for him to call out after me that he was just kidding. The best strategy, probably, is just to banter back.
‘Well, if you’re really serious about those Wotsits …’
‘Oh, I am. Dea
dly serious. Though, I warn you, you’ll have to spring for a can of Fanta out of your own pocket.’
‘That’s only reasonable.’
‘I’m glad you think so.’ He sticks an arm out into the road to hail a black cab that’s just trundling by, opens the door and jerks his head for me to climb in. ‘Hop in, then, Fire Girl. Your tuna baguette awaits.’
We haven’t come to a sandwich bar, and we aren’t eating tuna baguettes. Or Wotsits, for that matter. And there’s not a can of Fanta in sight.
We’re in a posh hamburger joint in Clerkenwell, in the cosiest, most private booth available, eating huge and absurdly delicious hamburgers with perfect crunchy fries, and drinking – as you do with hamburgers, apparently, in Dillon World – a bottle of perfectly chilled Sauvignon.
And the best bit of all is that Dillon is flirting with me.
Of course, this sounds slightly more exciting than the reality, because in actual fact, he seems incapable of not flirting. He’s flirted with every single female we’ve encountered since we got out of the taxi: a pretty blonde walking her tiny dog past us on the street; the gorgeous redhead who greeted us as we entered the diner; the curvy Brazilian waitress who keeps finding excuses to come to our table and refill Dillon’s water glass, or offer more condiments, or find out if the burgers/fries/side salads/blobs of coleslaw have been prepared to our satisfaction.
And he’s only flirting in a ponytail-pulling sort of way. I’m not imagining that I’m about to become his One True Love, or anything. Or even one of his Many True Lusts, nice though this would be.
‘You see?’ he’s saying now, reaching over and swiping the largest and crunchiest-looking of the fries off my plate. ‘I told you I needed your protection from the slavering hordes so I could eat my lunch in peace. And look,’ he waves a chip-holding hand around the almost-empty restaurant, ‘nobody has bothered us.’
‘That’s because it’s gone three o’clock and everyone has finished their lunch already and gone home.’
‘Don’t underestimate yourself, Fire Girl.’ He swipes another chip, and waggles it at me before popping it into his mouth. ‘I’ve been in empty restaurants in the past and, before you know it, word gets out, there’s a Twitter alert and people come running. But something about you is clearly keeping the peace.’ He sits back, folds his arms, and studies me intently for a moment. ‘You’ve got a sort of … air about you.’
A Night In With Audrey Hepburn Page 10