Lucy Holliday 2-Book Collection: A Night In with Audrey Hepburn and A Night In with Marilyn Monroe. Lucy Holliday
I’ll be vague, but firm, and bow out of the invitation.
Really sorry, I text Dillon, can’t make this evening after all. Thanks anyway, would have been nice.
There. Vague, but firm. No spurious long-winded excuses or white lies.
It does sound a bit chilly, though.
PS, I add, if your middle names really are Seamus Finlan Patrick Eoghan Diarmuid Patrick (again) Malachy then you really don’t need my help Angela’s-Ashing yourself up for the US market.
Before I can change my mind, I press Send.
If Dillon texts immediately back, saying, Don’t be ridiculous, you’re coming out with me, and that’s final.
Well, then I’d reconsider, obviously.
He doesn’t text immediately back.
By the time I’ve nibbled a little bit of the jam tart and custard, put on my jacket, popped to the Ladies, come back and polished off the entire remaining bowl of jam tart and custard, he hasn’t texted back either.
My phone bleeps as I open the door to my flat, but it’s still not Dillon. It’s a text from Olly.
That’s a shame. So sorry you’re feeling ill. Anything I can do?
This is because I texted him, on the walk from the tube, to cancel our stew-eating plans for this evening.
I know. I shouldn’t be lying. Especially not to one of my best friends.
And I shouldn’t be cancelling, either, not now that I’m not going to the Depot party. I’ve only done it because I’m feeling so furious with myself for being such a pathetic scaredy-cat about Dillon that, masochistically, I want the punishment of not having a nice evening at all.
I feel even worse about it now that he’s texted so sweetly.
In fact, there goes another ping from my phone now – Olly again.
If is flu-like can bring chicken soap?
A third text comes through a few seconds later.
Obv that should have said soup.
And another one about ten seconds after that.
However will do best to track down novelty soap fashioned in shape of chicken if any chance would help?
He’s such a sweetheart.
I’m a fool to have rejected a nice cosy evening with him, for an evening alone instead.
Though I’ll only be alone, of course, if I don’t hallucinate myself a little bit more Audrey for the evening.
It won’t happen again, though. It was just a one-off. And, by the way, I don’t want it to happen again. When it happens just the once, you can put it down to stress. Twice … well, you’d be forgiven for starting to think that it might be something a bit more …
… sinister?
Neurologically, I mean.
So let’s really, really hope it doesn’t happen again. Tonight or any other night.
The thing is, though, that now that I’m back here on my own, I can’t help thinking that it might be quite nice to hallucinate Audrey Hepburn again.
Because it was sort of fun, last night, when all’s said and done. It might not have been Fifth Avenue or the Tuileries, but it was still Audrey. And if my overwrought synapses did conjure her up again this evening, I’d be able to tell her about my afternoon with Dillon. And she’d listen carefully and thoughtfully, the way she always did in my Audrey dreamworld, and then she’d say something perfectly incisive and understanding that would make me feel better, instantly, about being too much of a wimp to go to the party with him tonight.
But I suppose then we might be getting into scary territory, with those worrying neurological implications I can’t quite bring myself to dwell on. Like … well, like schizophrenia. Or a brain tumour.
Though I suppose I could …
No. That would be weird.
Well, I was just going to say, I suppose what I could do is get Audrey Hepburn up on screen, press pause and quickly run through the details of my extraordinary afternoon with her on my iPad.
That would be weird, wouldn’t it?
But it’s not like I’d actually think she was really there. Not like I’d really believe she could hear me, or anything. All I’d really be doing is popping on one of my favourite Audrey Hepburn films. Nothing weird about settling down to watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s, is there, after a long and frankly peculiar day in which I’ve been psychoanalysed by Mum, yelled at by a supermodel, seen parts of a stranger’s anatomy that I’d really have been absolutely fine not seeing …
Yes. I think I’ll fire up the iPad again, take off my trench-coat, settle down on the sofa, and see if I can go to my happy place.
Three minutes later, I know it’s been the right thing to do. I’m not bothered about the unpacking mess, about the doggy sofa I’m sitting on, or about the fact that I should be getting ready to go to a party with Dillon O’Hara right now. I start to relax the moment I see Audrey Hepburn amble down Fifth Avenue with her little cup of coffee and her Danish pastry. She’s just so exquisite, and her dress and jewellery so beautiful, and you can almost catch the faintest violet-and-jasmine hint of the L’Interdit perfume she was probably wearing when she filmed it …
‘You haven’t seen my sunglasses, have you?’
I let out an actual shriek.
‘Gosh, I’m awfully sorry, did I startle you?’
It’s her. It’s Audrey Hepburn. Again.
Sitting three inches away from me on the other half of the Chesterfield sofa.
But this time she’s not, actually, in black-dress-and-beehive Tiffany’s mode. Her hair is in her trademark elfin crop and she’s wearing the rose-embroidered ball gown she deploys to dazzle William Holden in Sabrina.
There are no words to describe how beautiful this dress is, up close.
Even if it does clash, a bit, with the apricot roses on the sofa.
The sofa she’s suddenly delving down between the cushions of, her brow furrowed.
‘I thought maybe they might have dropped down between the cushions … my sunglasses, I mean … I don’t suppose you’ve come across them, and put them somewhere safe? It’s just that they are rather a special pair …’
She glances back up at me, her eyes looking almost absurdly huge in that perfectly framed face. In fact, she looks even more beautiful than she did yesterday, although I’ve always preferred Sabrina Audrey to Tiffany’s Audrey. Her cropped hair highlights her perfect collarbones, her skin looks as if it’s been coated in a fine spray of crushed pearls, and the scent of L’Interdit is stronger now, so I wasn’t imagining it at all …
Except that I was, of course. Because I’m hallucinating this whole thing again, aren’t I?
‘Oh, shit.’
‘Libby!’
‘Sorry … it’s just …’ It’s a brain tumour, isn’t it? It has to be. ‘Or schizophrenia,’ I blurt out. ‘It could be schizophrenia.’
‘What could be schizophrenia, darling?’ But her attention is only half