‘You! You said you can’t think about anything else!’
‘It’s a figure of speech.’ But he’s frowning, and not meeting my eye any more. ‘And I don’t appreciate the amateur psychoanalysis.’
‘Fair enough. But I don’t appreciate being used as some sort of a crutch. If that’s what you’re doing.’
‘I’m not just using you for your crotch …’
‘Very funny.’
‘… and I don’t know how many times I have to tell you this, Libby. I want to give us another chance. Not because I’m using you to replace the drink or the drugs. Just because I prefer my life when you’re in it. Is that such a bizarre thing?’
‘It is, actually. I mean, you’re pretty much the only one who does.’
‘The only one who does what?’
‘Prefers their life with me in it.’ I laugh, to take the edge off what I’ve just said, but this is a mistake, because the laugh just comes out sounding a bit embittered. ‘Nobody else I know feels that way about me, Dillon, OK, so it’s just a little hard to believe that you might.’
‘You’re kidding me, right?’
‘No.’ I can feel a wave of self-pity wash over me. It’s not a feeling I care to indulge at any time, in any place, so it’s certainly a bad idea to give into it here, when there are so many better things I could be doing. So I’m really pissed off with myself when I hear myself blurting out, ‘I mean, obviously I’ve always been peripheral to my family, but I never thought I’d end up screwing up so much I’d be peripheral to my oldest friends, too.’
‘What on God’s green earth,’ Dillon asks, ‘are you talking about?’
‘Well, there’s Nora,’ I tell him, ‘who’s slowly but surely replacing me with a shinier, newer, better-all-round best friend … and then there’s …’ My voice catches in my throat. ‘Olly.’
‘Who’s finally put down the torch he’s been holding for you for the past decade and a half and settled for a replacement instead.’ Dillon makes a scoffing noise. ‘Come on, Libby. You can’t honestly claim you’ll ever be peripheral to Olly.’
I stare across the bed at him.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ he asks. ‘Are you about to claim you didn’t know he’s head over heels in love with you?’
I open my mouth. No sound comes out.
‘Oh, Jesus.’ Dillon half sits up, looking dismayed. ‘You didn’t know he’s head over heels in love with you.’
I’m immobile.
I mean, it’s possible that I’ve just turned into one of those iPhone emojis that are only capable of one facial expression at a time.
‘Shit,’ says Dillon. ‘I just thought … well, I thought you just didn’t like to openly talk about it. I didn’t think … I mean, I honestly didn’t think you wouldn’t know.’
‘I … but … Tash.’ I manage to utter three syllables. ‘He likes her.’
‘Yeah, I’m not really in a position to discuss anything else going on in Olly Walker’s life right now … but if he does like her, I’m pretty sure that’s only because he’s just got sick of waiting for you.’
Talking of sick … I have to hunch myself up into a sitting position at the side of the bed, doubled over, just in case the nausea welling inside me accidentally spills outside me instead.
Is this actually happening? Is Dillon even right about this? That all these years – closer to two decades, in fact, than one – Olly has been harbouring these … feelings for me?
My mind is racing, giddily, back to the Mistaken Thing that happened between us in Paris, many years ago, when we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a drunken kiss as we sat in a bar on the Left Bank. Olly had been telling me about some girl he was in love with, some girl I just assumed – and he didn’t correct me – was an old friend of his from college, and he was looking so vulnerable, and it was such an intense discussion that it felt only right and natural that I lean in as he leaned in—
‘Hey …’ Dillon jumps up and comes round to squat beside me. ‘Don’t throw up. Much as I’d like to think that someone hearing Olly Walker is in love with them is the sort of news worthy of vomit, I’ve got my posh bed linen to think about.’
He grins at me, his handsome face displaying kindness and frustration in equal measure. ‘I honestly,’ he says, softly, ‘didn’t know you didn’t know.’
‘But … do other people? Know about this, I mean?’
‘You mean, is everybody who knows you and Olly aware of the unrequited passion he’s nursed all these years? Well, I can’t speak for all of them, given that I don’t know that many of them …’
‘Nora,’ I say. ‘Nora must know.’
‘… but yes, I’d have to assume Nora knows. And Bogdan certainly knows. I mean, why do you think I even came to that party in the first place? Bogdan was the one who told me that Olly was planning on saying something to you tonight.’
‘Saying something?’
‘Yes. You were going to turn up to find the restaurant named after you and then he was going to take you off somewhere quiet and tell you he can’t live without you, or hire a fucking violin quartet to serenade you while he warbled “I Will Always Love You”, or dig William fucking Shakespeare up from his grave to write a sonnet about your eyes … I don’t know exactly what he was planning, the tosser, but tonight was going to be the night.’
‘Then what happened?’ I gaze at Dillon, but rather blindly. I think I might actually be seeing Olly’s face superimposed on his, for a moment or two. ‘All these years, and he just chucks in the towel at the eleventh hour?’
‘That’s Olly Walker for you. No balls.’ Then Dillon peers at me. ‘You don’t … mind, do you? I mean, the fact that he chucked in the towel – that bothers you?’
‘Well, of course it fucking bothers me!’
‘Because you like him.’
‘Yes, I like him, Dillon, he’s my oldest—’
‘You like him,’ Dillon repeats. It’s a statement, not a question. ‘Not in an oldest friend way. In the same way he likes you.’
‘How can I possibly know that?’ I say. ‘I’ve had precisely three minutes to get used to the information that he’s wildly in love with me. Not seventeen years. I don’t know if I like him or not! I mean, I actually really don’t like him very much just now, to be perfectly frank …’
‘Here,’ says Dillon, reaching behind me and grabbing the shirt he discarded when we first got up to the bedroom. He dabs my eyes with it, which is the first time I realize – though I couldn’t say why – I’m crying. ‘And keep going with that last bit,’ he goes on, ‘you know, about how you don’t like him. I was enjoying that part. More of that, please.’
I blink at him, making more tears spill out on to my cheeks as I do so. ‘Is that why he hates you so much?’ I sniff. ‘Not because he thinks you’re a bit of a toe-rag, but because of … me?’
‘Oh, I’m quite sure he thinks I’m a toe-rag, too.’ Dillon grins at me. ‘And it’s a tiny bit the reason I can’t stand the sight of him, either. It’s nothing personal to him, in one sense. I just really don’t like having competition.’
Despite everything I’m trying to process through my addled synapses at the moment, something is suddenly dawning on me.
‘Dillon. Be completely honest with me.’ I dab away what I hope is the last of the tears. ‘Actually, be completely honest with yourself. Are you only as obsessed with me as you currently claim you are because you know somebody else likes me too?’
‘Hey! Five minutes ago it was because I’m a hopeless addict.’
‘I’m not saying it’s not because of that, too.’
‘Well, you’re wrong. On both counts.’ He looks a bit sheepish, though. ‘I mean, I won’t deny I’m the jealous type. And obviously it’s a bit of a motivator when suddenly you have all these men dropping like flies at your feet, Libby … nobody could notice that and not want to step up their game …’
‘Oh, Dillon.’
‘But I’d still like you just as mu
ch as I do even if it weren’t for the Olly Walkers and the Jamie Cadwalladrs and the gooey-eyed waiters. They just pile on a bit of pressure, that’s all. Because I want to make sure I’m the one who …’ He stops himself.
‘Wins?’ I ask.
‘All right,’ he says. ‘Maybe.’
‘So maybe you’re not so much addicted to me as addicted to the chase.’
He doesn’t say anything for a moment.
This being Dillon, of course, who seems to have a ready quip for every occasion, his silence speaks volumes.
Then he says, ‘You know what I really want right now? More than anything?’
‘Oh, God, Dillon,’ I say, ‘I don’t think we should do that now.’
‘Well, I don’t know what you had in mind, but I was just going to suggest that I put the kettle on and we can have a nice cup of tea.’
‘Tea?’ His niceness is making me feel tearful again. ‘But … I thought you wanted to have sex.’
‘Libby. I may have done some depraved things in my time. But I’ve never had sex with a crying woman. Well,’ – he thinks about this for a moment – ‘not one who was crying because she was upset. I have had the occasional instance, halfway through the act, where women just break down and sob in sheer awe. A bit like when you see the Grand Canyon for the first time, or Victoria Falls.’
I laugh. It’s shaky, but it’s a laugh.
He gets to his feet and holds out a hand. ‘So, come on, darling. Let’s get that kettle on. If you’re really lucky, I might even be able to unearth a Jaffa cake or two. And we can have a bit of a chat.’
‘About what to do about Olly?’ I gulp.
‘Well, let’s not push it. But I’ll happily talk a load of crap to you all night to keep your mind off what to do about Olly …? And if you’ve a better offer than that tonight, sweetheart, I don’t know what it is.’
So I ended up spending the night at Dillon’s.
It was well after two in the morning by the time we’d finished our endless pots of tea and seen off more than one packet of Jaffa cakes, so it didn’t make sense to head home at that hour. And while we drank tea, and ate biscuits, he kept me expertly distracted with amusing anecdotes about rehab, and about his family … oh, and then we spent a good hour or two cosily settled in front of property websites on his iPad, at first trawling through to find a suitable new place for him to move to (a clean break from his old surroundings, as advised by his therapist), and then gorging ourselves on ever-more ludicrous fantasy houses, from twelve-bedroom townhouses in Knightsbridge to sprawling country piles where Dillon can cast himself as some sort of lord of the manor. By the end of the night, he’d ‘decided’ on a thousand-acre estate, complete with Palladian mansion, in rural Wiltshire, for the bargain price of sixteen million quid.
‘Well, if you won’t succumb to my advances, Libby,’ he said, ‘I may as well devote myself to the rural life. Breed horses. Shear sheep. Husband chickens. Or, if all that proves a bit too much like hard work, I could just drive around my land in a muddy Land Rover, making eyes at comely peasant girls and inviting them back to the nearest haystack for a good old-fashioned romp.’
Which made me ask if his impression of English country life had been entirely formed by sneaking glimpses of someone’s mum’s Mills and Boon collection during his impressionable years. Which led to a discussion of our respective teenage years, which led – somehow – to him bringing up the very thing he’d sworn he wasn’t going to bring up: Olly.
‘Look,’ Dillon said, as he put on the kettle for the final time, and dug deep into the packet of Jaffa cakes for the last two, ‘I know it’s weirded you out, finding out this thing about your oldest friend being in love with you since you were both in short trousers. Or whenever it was you first met. But all I’ll say on the subject, my dearest Fire Girl, is this: if you really are tired of feeling … what was the word you used earlier? Peripheral? Well, if you’re really tired of that, then you could probably do a hell of a lot worse than to think about giving Olly Walker what he’s always wanted. Because I don’t think you’ve ever been remotely peripheral to him. The wanker,’ he added, unable to prevent himself.
And about half an hour later, we went to sleep. Me in his big bed, and him downstairs on the sofa.
He was lovely.
He is lovely. Screwed-up, and unpredictable, and way more pleased with himself than anyone deserves to be, yes. But lovely.
If it weren’t for the fact that getting back into a relationship with him would be like a chicken (one of the one’s he’s planning on husbanding, perhaps) getting into a relationship with a particularly dangerous fox, I’d probably do it like a shot.
Oh, and then there’s the Olly thing, obviously.
Which, now that it’s a brand-new day, and the shock of it all has subsided, is starting to seem …
Who am I kidding? It’s not starting to seem any different at all. Not yet.
If anything, the brand-new day has just made the whole thing seem even more huge and impossible.
Because now that I’m out and about in the world again, jostling my way back home on the tube and inhaling the noxious fumes of Colliers Wood High Street, it’s actually feeling real.
And ever since I woke up this morning (to diabolical coffee and badly singed toast; Dillon may be adorable but he’s a shocking cook), I haven’t been able to stop playing everything over in my mind.
Re-playing it, more accurately: replaying moment after moment in Olly’s company these past seventeen years: the first time we met, in the inauspicious surroundings of the top tier at the New Wimbledon Theatre; the first time we went out for the evening, with Nora, when they both talked nineteen to the dozen about their plans for their futures and I sat there, revelling, for once, in finding people who seemed to really like me; the first time we went out for an evening without Nora, to see Bringing Up Baby (my choice) at the Prince Charles cinema in Leicester Square, followed by The Mummy Returns (his choice) at the Odeon around the corner; the time when I surprised him with a homemade cake the day he graduated from catering college, and then had to spend the next three days hanging out with him at his student digs because I’d accidentally used seriously out-of-date eggs in the cake and given him a nasty dose of food poisoning …
All these times, and he was harbouring this burning desire for me all along? While I teased him about his taste in films, and proffered toxic baking?
And then there are all the more recent times, after we’d left behind those easy teenage years, and made our way into adulthood. The dinners he’s cooked for me, while we sat around his kitchen table, putting the world to rights. The practical help he’s always been there to offer, from lugging my furniture up endless flights of stairs when I moved into my flat, to hanging on the end of the phone to the British Embassy in Washington for hours, trying to work out if it might be possible to fly me home (with a ticket he was going to pay for) from hurricane-hit Miami. Coming all the way up to Scotland with me, at a time when he’s been busier than he’s ever been in his life, to offer me moral support at Dad’s wedding.
I mean, here I was thinking he was doing all these things in the spirit of a big brother. It’s a total head-spin to realize he was doing them in the spirit of someone with distinctly un-brotherly thoughts instead.
Such a head-spin that I can’t even begin to work out how, in the light of all this brand-new knowledge, I feel about him.
Though there is one thing that keeps popping into my head. One more thing that I’m replaying even more obsessively than all the memories I’ve just told you about.
That kiss, in Paris. That lovely kiss, so comfortable and natural and – more surprisingly – heart-stoppingly erotic. Our Mistaken Thing, which we’ve never spoken about, never even alluded to, ever since.
Which might not, it appears, have been quite such a Mistaken Thing after all.
I stop in at the little coffee takeout place right outside the tube stop for a decent-ish coffee to clear my head, and I’
m just approaching my building when I see a by-now familiar-looking motorbike pulling up on the pavement outside.
It’s Tash, with the tiny figure of Nora riding pillion.
I’d forgotten that Nora said she was going to come over and pick up Grandmother’s veil before she heads to Gatwick.
While I’d actually like nothing more, right now, than to sit down and have the biggest heart-to-heart with Nora that I’ve ever had, it’s not going to be quite as easy with Tash present at the same time.
Especially not if Tash really is on the verge of something with Olly, the way it looked last night.
‘Nora!’ I say, trying to sound normal, as she gets off the back of the bike and pulls off her helmet. ‘Sorry, I was just … grabbing a coffee.’ I think this is enough of an explanation; I don’t need to add that the main reason I’m grabbing a coffee is because I was on my way back from the tube station, having just been served a spectacularly undrinkable one by Dillon, at his flat.
‘So, did you stay over at Dillon’s last night?’ Nora demands.
Which pretty much undoes my attempt to keep the whole staying-over-at-Dillon’s thing on the down-low.
‘Mmmm, coffee,’ says Tash, who’s just taken off her own helmet, and looks as if she wishes she’d left it on. She gets off the bike. ‘I might go and grab myself one of those,’ she adds, in her nice, helpful, spectacularly irritating oil-on-troubled-waters way. ‘Keep me fresh for the ride out to Gatwick. Anything for you, Nor?’
‘No. Actually, yes. I’ll have a black coffee.’
‘Decaf?’
‘No,’ Nora practically barks. ‘Regular.’
‘Right,’ Tash says. ‘It’s just that, strictly speaking, you have already had a coffee this morning, and from the point of view of a neo-natologist—’
‘Tash, please, just get me a bloody coffee.’ Nora looks a bit desperate. ‘I’ve only drunk one small coffee a day for weeks. I haven’t let so much as a millilitre of alcohol past my lips. I’m avoiding my usual lunch of Pret sushi like it’s radioactive waste. Can I just have a day where I drink a solitary extra coffee without feeling like I’m drip-feeding my unborn child nothing but McDonald’s chicken nuggets and crack cocaine?’
A Night In With Marilyn Monroe Page 25