‘I’m not talking to him, Mum,’ I say, trying to summon up a bit of that poised graceful loveliness that (almost) worked on her the last time she started to wind me up. ‘I’ll give you all the help I can – I’ll find you a lawyer, I’ll deal with the lawyer, I’ll even pay for the lawyer if you want me to.’ (Though, given that I’m virtually penniless, this would be an interesting conversation with the bank manager.) ‘But I’m not going to talk to Dad,’ I add, in a poised and graceful – but pretty bloody firm – manner. ‘It wouldn’t do the slightest bit of good, apart from anything else.’
‘Oh, Libby.’ Mum tries one of her favourite tactics for getting me to agree to something: scoffing. ‘You’re being silly. Overly dramatic. It’s the teeniest, tiniest little favour—’
‘Mum. I said no.’
She gazes at me, eyes widening, and I can sense that another of her favourite tactics is heading my way: the guilt-trip.
‘On my birthday …’
I may be looking poised and graceful (at least, I hope I am; the stupid giant shades don’t help much) but I can feel my heart starting to race. Confrontation isn’t my strong point, but this is something I am not about to budge on, not one single inch.
‘I’m sorry, Mum. I really am. But I don’t want to see him.’
Her eyes light up: she’s spotted a loophole. ‘Oh, but you don’t have to see him, Libby! You could just call him! Email, even! Or just a quick text. I mean, it’s one of the great benefits of living in the twenty-first century, isn’t it? All these wonderful ways to communicate with people you can’t be bothered to have a face-to-face conversation with?’
(I won’t dwell, too much, on the fact that Mum invariably contacts me by text message, but always prefers to chat with Cass in person, preferably over a lingering girlie lunch).
‘Mum, please. Listen to me. I’m not contacting Dad. Not by phone, or email, or text, or Facebook, or tweet. Or carrier pigeon. Or smoke signals.’
Which ought to have covered pretty much everything.
‘There’s always WhatsApp,’ Cass suggests.
I shoot her a Look. It’s neither poised nor graceful.
‘Well, I’m only saying, Libby … it is Mum’s birthday, after all. You don’t turn sixty every day.’
‘I’m fifty-six!’ Mum snaps.
‘Right, so basically sixty, then …’
‘Look, I think we can just end this whole discussion,’ I say, before Mum completely loses it, ‘by agreeing that Dad’s demands are completely unreasonable, and that we’re going to get a nice, understanding, good-value lawyer who’ll write a letter to Dad’s lawyers telling them where to get off. All right?’
Mum just sniffs, and doesn’t say anything.
‘I’ll take that as a yes, then,’ I say, getting to my feet. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to go and steam myself for the next twenty minutes. I’ll meet you both back here at the pool afterwards.’
‘Leave it, Mum,’ I hear Cass say behind me, as – presumably – Mum opens her mouth to call something after me. ‘Libby’s right. You need a lawyer. You don’t need to force her to talk to her stupid father.’
Which, far more than anything else Cass could ever do, is enough to make up for the cocktail shaker thrown in my face the other night.
But seriously: what the hell is Mum thinking, suggesting that I tackle my father?
And what the hell was she thinking, now we’re really getting down to it, not getting some proper advice about the marital finances when she divorced him twenty-five years ago?
And, most importantly of all, what the hell is Dad thinking? Why is he coming after Mum for his half of the house? When he’s just had the wretched book published, so is bound to have earned some money for it, finally? After three decades of bloody faffing?
Feeling less poised with each passing second, I stamp my way out of the pool area and back into the lavender-scented corridor, where I’m almost immediately accosted by a pretty red-headed spa therapist in a futuristic white uniform. The name BETSY is printed, in block letters, on her name badge.
‘Are you Libby?’ she asks, peering into my sunglasses. ‘The eleven o’clock “steam experience”?’
I imagine that adding the word ‘experience’ is simply a way of justifying the seventy-quid cost. But this isn’t Betsy’s fault, so I just say, politely, ‘Yes, I am.’
‘Lovely! Well, you’re going to really enjoy this treatment, Libby. It’s completely heavenly. Have you ever done anything like this before?’
‘I … er … don’t know exactly what it is, yet.’
‘Right. Well, it’s terribly simple.’ Betsy pushes open a nearby treatment room door; we’re both almost completely engulfed by a huge rush of swirling steam. ‘You go in here,’ she says, wafting the steam away, ‘get undressed – um, including the sunglasses, I’d suggest – and pop on the paper knickers I’ve left on the bench. Then you simply cover yourself in mud! There’s a big bowl of it next to the paper knickers.’
‘Mud?’ I’m a bit worried about this.
‘Well, it’s actually more like an algae, really, absolutely brilliant at smoothing out all your cellulite and fatty deposits. I mean, obviously it won’t turn you into a supermodel …’
‘Obviously.’
‘… but you’ll certainly feel much lighter and tighter afterwards! You just apply the algae to whichever parts you’re most concerned about, then lie back on one of the benches and relax for fifteen minutes. You can go and shower it all off right afterwards.’
So it is a DIY jobby, then. Seventy quid for fifteen minutes of slopping, steaming and showering. Still, I may as well do my best to enjoy the ‘experience’, now that I’m committed. And, in fairness, as Betsy waves goodbye and closes the treatment room door behind me, it is at least calm, peaceful, and a Mum-free zone. There are pretty twinkly fairy lights, and the steam – after that huge rush of it went out of the door – is gently swirling rather than smog-like, and it really does smell quite nice: lavender, I think, and a hint of eucalyptus. All a golden opportunity for a precious few minutes of that relaxation Nora was insisting upon.
I take off the Ray-Bans, hang my bag on a little peg on the door, take off my clothes and hang them beside it, locate the scratchy paper thong on one of the benches lining the wall, put it on, and then head for the large bucketful of Betsy’s algae to start applying it all over my …
Ugh.
This is not heavenly.
I mean, it smells to high heaven, but that’s another thing entirely.
I slop a large splodge of the rank, sludgy-brown stuff over my bum and thighs and another splodge on my tummy, then I plonk myself down on the little wooden bench, underneath the brightest section of twinkling fairy lights, and … well, what? What am I meant to do now?
Think slimming thoughts?
Am I supposed to be imagining that the revolting algae is melting away all my cellulite and fatty deposits (which I think was just Betsy’s polite way of saying flabby bits, by the way)? Or am I just meant to sit here in the gently swirling steam, ignore the overwhelming pong and try to relax?
Or …
No. I said I wasn’t going to read Dad’s article in InStyle, and I meant it.
So I’m not quite sure what it is that possesses me to get up, head towards my bag hanging on the peg, reach into it for the magazine, and open it to page 123.
But look, Dad won’t know that I’ve read it. He won’t become any more insufferably self-important and narcissistic just because I’ve taken a quick glance in the direction of his wretched article, in the total privacy of this steam room. It’s not as if I have to text him saying: Great piece in InStyle, Dad, and congrats on publication! Much love from your only daughter (that’s Libby, by the way) xxx
I’ll only speed-read it, anyway. Skim and get the general gist. Besides, I’ve got to be quick, as the steam is building up again in here and in a few more minutes I won’t be able to see my hand in front of my face.
I skip
over the magazine’s own bold-type intro, and plough straight into Dad’s still-familiar prose.
Icons; goddesses; legends of the silver screen: the leading ladies of 1950s Hollywood were all of these and more. What Kansas housewife didn’t shed a tear when Judy Garland yearned for home in The Wizard of Oz? What impressionable youth didn’t fall in love with Marilyn Monroe when she confessed her lust for saxophone players in Some Like It Hot? And was there a mousy schoolgirl in the entire world who didn’t dream of donning a Chanel suit, tucking a little dog under one arm and letting William Holden sweep them off their feet, the way Audrey Hepburn did in Sabrina?
OK, well this is absolutely bloody typical.
Not just the pompous style (is there anyone on the entire planet, I ask, who enjoys a rhetorical question more than my father?), or the patronizing cliché (Kansas housewife … mousy schoolgirl …), but the careless mistakes. It was a Givenchy suit, for fuck’s sake! Not Chanel! You don’t need to have spent the last few nights hanging out with an imaginary Audrey in order to know that.
But behind the glitz and glamour, the private lives of Hollywood’s élite were all too often messy at best, catastrophic at worst.
Right, so it looks as if Dad’s book is going to be a rip-roaring best-seller, then, attracting, as I’m sure it will, the attentions of the only person on the entire planet who doesn’t know about Judy Garland’s alcoholism, Marilyn Monroe’s overdose, or Audrey Hepburn’s failed marriages …
Wait a minute.
That picture.
It’s in the centre of a montage on the second page of the double-page spread, right in between a black-and-white shot of Marilyn Monroe in a headscarf, picnicking on a beach, and a colour pic of Jayne Mansfield between takes, lolling on a bed smoking a cigarette.
It’s Audrey Hepburn, sitting on my Chesterfield sofa.
Or at least, a sofa identical to my Chesterfield. The same apricot-coloured roses. The same overstuffed side cushions. The same … hang on, the steam is getting too thick to be absolutely certain, but for a moment there I’m fairly certain I saw a deep, doggy-claw scratch on the wooden part of the right-hand arm …
The caption – at least what I can read of it (the print is tiny and the steam is making it almost impossible) – says Audrey Hepburn something before her something test for Roman something at something Studios.
Pinewood.
Is that last word, obscured by the steam, Pinewood?
Because if it’s true – if I’m filling in the blanks correctly, and if Dad hasn’t made another fairly important factual error – then the caption is telling me that this is a photo of Audrey Hepburn before her screen test for Roman Holiday at Pinewood Studios.
Pinewood, where I got the Chesterfield sofa.
I don’t know what this means.
As I think I’ve already said, I don’t believe in ghosts. At least, I didn’t, until about fifteen seconds ago. And I’ve certainly never believed that furniture could be … haunted?
Right: I need to get another, proper look at this photograph, and I’m not going to be able to do it in this pea-souper. I’ll grab a towel and nip out into the corridor for a moment so I can do it out there, where it’s light and steam-free.
With shaking hands, I grab one of the white towels from the big pile by the door, wrap it around me, open the door – it takes a surprisingly hefty shove – and step out …
… Onto Baker Street.
I blink, very very hard, to clear my eyes of any steam-related wateriness – or specks of stinky algae? – that might be blurring my vision.
But when I open my eyes again, I’m still on Baker Street.
Standing on the pavement next to a traffic jam of double-decker buses, a set of temporary lights where some workmen are digging up the road, and a crocodile of extremely startled-looking tourists making their way up the street to visit the Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221b, three blocks north of here.
OK, I’m not quite sure how this has happened.
Though I suspect it may have something to do with the deafening ringing sound that has just struck up behind me. It’s FitLondon’s fire alarm going off, if I’m not very much mistaken, and must mean that there was a second door in the steam room. A fire-escape door, to be precise, leading out of the building onto the street.
The street on which I’m now standing in nothing more than a patchy layer of smelly algae, my scratchy paper thong, an incongruously glamorous pearl necklace and an extremely small towel.
OK, I need to get off the street, and back inside, before anybody other than the startled tourists notices me. Those workmen, for example, who aren’t likely to be anywhere near as polite.
I turn back towards the door I’ve just come out of … Shit. Of course. It’s a fire escape. It has slammed shut behind me.
All right, there’s no need to panic. I can just go in the main entrance, can’t I?
Well, no, as it happens, I can’t. Because the main entrance doors have just been flung open by none other than Pippa, the receptionist who took so violently against me the other morning.
She’s herding large numbers of FitLondon gym members out through the doors, like a bossy teacher herding six-year-olds.
‘This is not a fire drill!’ she’s shouting. ‘Please leave the building quickly and calmly, and do not return to fetch your personal possessions … I repeat, this is not a fire drill.’
Given that, as far as any of the gym-bods know, they’re fleeing for their lives from a terrifying inferno, you wouldn’t think they’d be wasting quite so much time staring at me. Which is, embarrassingly, exactly what they’re doing right now.
‘Hi,’ I say nonchalantly to a pair of gawping women as they pass me by, freshly dripping in sweat from their interrupted workouts. ‘Chilly this afternoon,’ I add, for want of anything better to say, and because it feels important, under the circumstances, to be British about this and talk about the weather.
They continue to stare at me.
I suppose it’s possible they’re only interested in me because I’ve got a nasty black eye …
Nope. It’s almost certainly the tiny-towel thing.
‘Though I suppose,’ I go on, ‘we’re lucky that it doesn’t look like rain.’
Neither of them says a word.
‘Still, they’re saying it’s due to get warmer again,’ I continue, a bit desperately, ‘at the beginning of next week. Spells of pleasant sunshine … feeling fresh in the breeze …’
‘Sorry, do you, like, present the weather, or something?’ one of them asks.
‘No, no, I just … take an interest …’
I’m interrupted by a tap on the shoulder from – I see when I turn round – Pippa the receptionist.
‘You,’ she says.
I clear my throat. ‘Is there some sort of problem?’
‘Is this you?’
‘Is what me?’
‘The alarm. Did you go out of one of the emergency exits, or something?’
‘No, no—’
‘Then why were you the first one out? These people,’ she gestures around at the sweaty hordes continuing to emerge from the doors, ‘were all in the spinning class closest to the main exit. Were you?’
Given that I’m neither a member nor wearing anything that could remotely be described as spinning-appropriate, I don’t think it’s worth fibbing any more.
‘In my defence,’ I begin, ‘it’s a really, really bad idea to put an emergency exit in a room that gets so steamy you can’t even see your—’
Pippa rolls her eyes. ‘Well, congratulations. You’ve just ruined a hundred and eighty-nine people’s morning workouts, and seventy-four people’s relaxing spa treatments.’
‘Look, I’m obviously really sorry, but now that you know there’s no actual fire, can’t you just get someone to turn off the fire alarm and then we can all go back inside? And – you know – put on a few more clothes?’
‘No, as a matter of fact, I can’t just get someone to turn off the fi
re alarm. The firemen will do that, when they get here.’
‘There’ll be firemen coming?’ I stare at her, appalled. ‘But surely they have real emergencies to attend to!’
‘Maybe you should have thought of that,’ she snaps, ‘before you played your hilarious little joke with the fire-escape door. I’m going to call my manager,’ she adds, snatching a phone from her trouser pocket, ‘and see what he can do.’
She’s only just walked away when I feel a tap on my shoulder.
When I turn round, it’s one of the two gawping women I was blithering at about the weather.
‘Uh, I don’t know if you realize,’ she says, in an abrupt though not unkind manner, ‘but your towel’s tucked into your thong.’
‘And you’re sort of dripping brown stuff all down your legs,’ her friend says. ‘It looks a bit … well, like you’ve had … an accident.’
‘And is that a friend of yours filming you on her camera-phone over there?’ the first woman goes on. ‘Because if it isn’t, you might want to ask her to stop.’
These are three brand-new pieces of information – that my bum is on display to the entirety of Baker Street; that slodgy brown algae is trickling from the direction of said bum; and that someone is filming the resulting sight on their camera-phone. I barely have time to digest them before Cass, a whirlwind of blonde hair extensions, seems to appear out of nowhere to fling a waffle robe around me.
‘And piss off, you!’ she yells in the direction of the person filming me with their camera-phone …
… who, I now see, in all her tiny yoga-wear finery, is none other than Rhea Haverstock-Harley.
‘Libby, isn’t it?’ Rhea asks, with an evilly-sweet smile, lowering the phone and giving me a little wave. ‘Very nice to see … well, so much of you.’
Cass is bundling me along the pavement, away from Rhea and all the crowds, before I can say anything in reply.
Not that I have the faintest clue what I’d have said in reply. Indeed, it’s perfectly possible that the shock has rendered me mute for all eternity.
A Night In With Audrey Hepburn Page 21