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This isn’t the sort of tap you get water from; it’s the sort of tap that hordes of star-struck eleven-year-old girls do with their feet. After working as Cass’s manager for years (mine too, to be fair; it’s just that my own acting career didn’t provide her with quite as much work as Cass’s did), Mum now owns her own weekend stage-school franchise in Kensal Rise. She’s in Cardiff with a posse of those very star-struck eleven-year-old girls now, at the tap festival, and it’s heart-warming to hear that she’s offered to come back early for Cass’s sake. Though it could also be a sign that the reality of spending all day surrounded by star-struck eleven-year-olds, in tap shoes, is starting to get on her nerves.
‘That’s nice of her.’
‘Yeah, but I told her no. She’s working over there. I thought you’d cheer me up instead. So, Dave’s booked a table for me at Roka tonight, and I’ll need you to come with me. I’m going to wear my new cherry-red hot-pants, and Dave’s going to let the 3AM Girls know where I’ll be … I think they might remember you from that time they wrote about you and Dillon.’ Cass gives me a quick once-over. ‘You’ll have to head back to yours and change, obviously …’
I can’t decide whether to feel truly depressed that Cass is so obviously trying to use me for publicity purposes, to increase the chance of the production company revisiting the idea of her show again, or slightly envious of her ability to pick herself up off the floor and get right back on the horse after a tumble.
Either way, my answer is going to have to be the same.
‘Cass, I can’t come out with you tonight. I’m … busy.’
‘Doing what?’
This is an excellent question.
To which the most accurate answer would be, ‘With any luck, having mind-blowing sex with my new boyfriend until the small hours of the morning.’
Because having mind-blowing sex with Adam was, in fact, my endgame for this evening. It’s an endgame that’s been buggered around slightly by him forgetting about our plans to have a cosy night in at his place, and scheduling in that work dinner of his instead, but it’s an endgame that I still fully intend to pursue.
And if that makes me sound like some sort of nymphomaniac, let me just add that while I was being truthful when I stated earlier that we have a mature, adult relationship, and while I may, let’s face it, have fallen in love with him this morning over the whole espresso and yogurt-covered-raisins thing, in eight weeks of dating we still haven’t progressed any further than a good old snog on the sofa.
Yes. Eight weeks.
Given that neither of us is Amish, or anything, and given that – as far as it’s been possible to tell – we’re both in possession of all the necessary working body parts, I can’t help but wonder if this is some sort of a record.
There are several perfectly decent explanations. We’re both extremely busy. He travels a lot. Fritz needs walking a lot. We have such a good time together that quite often hours of just chatting pass by without either of us noticing that we haven’t jumped on each other and started frantically humping.
But still. Eight weeks of snogging on the sofa has left me, at the very least, feeling pretty frustrated. I mean, I fancy the pants off him, and he claims to fancy the pants off me, so I think it’s about time we acted on those urges and, well, got our actual pants off.
Hence the sex, sex, and more sex plan that I’d formulated in my head for tonight. And which no inconvenient work dinner is going to prevent. It doesn’t need to happen after a candlelit supper of red snapper and super-healthy kale. It just needs to happen.
But I’m not going to tell Cass about the (hopefully) mind-blowing sex thing, because that’s not the sort of relationship we have. (Or, let’s put it this way: if I open the door to frank discussions about sex with Adam, I’m very, very scared that she’ll start telling me about sex with Dave. And I value an undisturbed night’s sleep. Which I don’t think I’d ever have again if I had to think about horrible, cheaty Dave having extramarital relations with my sister.)
So I just say, ‘I’m seeing Adam.’
‘Adam? Who’s Adam?’
‘He’s … well, he’s my new boyfriend.’
Cass stares at me.
‘You have a new boyfriend?’
‘I do. Yes.’
‘And you’re choosing him? This new boyfriend? Over me?’
The nail technician lets out a little wince. It’s eerily reminiscent of me at Dad’s wedding yesterday.
‘No, Cass, I’m not choosing him over you. It’s just that, like I said, I have plans with him tonight, and—’
‘What plans?’ Cass demands, in the tone of voice that implies that any answer other than sitting by his side in the hospital as he recovers from major neurological surgery isn’t going to be anywhere near reason enough.
‘You know … plans. Things people make with their boyfriends.’
‘Right. I get it,’ says Cass, with the sort of swoosh of her blonde hair that would say, Et tu, Brute, if hair-swooshes could actually talk. ‘You’re going to swan off and spend all night shagging this so-called Adam—’
‘He’s not so-called Adam. He’s actually called Adam.’
‘… while your only sister sits at home alone, contemplating the end of her career at the bottom of a brandy bottle.’
‘You don’t drink brandy,’ I point out. ‘And anyway, come to think of it, isn’t Monday usually a Dave night?’
‘Not today,’ Cass scowls. ‘His wife’s kicking up some sort of fuss about him staying home tonight. For her birthday, or something.’
‘How unreasonable of her.’
‘Exactly. But only what I’ve come to expect,’ she sniffs, ‘from yet another of the people I love in my life. That when the crisps are down …’
‘The chips.’
‘… you can’t really rely on anyone.’
‘Cass.’ I allow myself, regretting it the moment I do so, to succumb to the twinge of guilt that’s nibbling away at me. ‘Look. I’ve got some time tomorrow, OK? Well, I haven’t, really, but I’ll make some time tomorrow.’ All that moral support I promised Olly is going to have to take a temporary second place, until the day after. Still, I’ll just redouble my efforts as soon as I can. ‘We’ll … we’ll go out for lunch, and then we can go shopping, and I’ll even treat you to a …’ I’m about to say the word ‘massage’ when I remember that all the places Cass likes to go for a massage charge well over a hundred quid for the privilege. ‘… blow-dry, or something,’ I finish, hating the fact I can’t be more generous. But if no bank is going to lend me a penny, I’m going to have to use more of my own meagre savings to put into the business. I can’t afford to splash out any more than absolutely necessary.
‘I don’t need a blow-dry.’ She muses on my offer for a moment. ‘Though I suppose I could do with some eyebrow threading … oooh, or a nice collagen facial …’
‘Threading it is!’ I say, gaily, trying to inject the task with a lot more merriment than it’s actually going to entail. ‘Come on, Cass. It’ll be lovely. And you can get a nice early night tonight, and don’t even think about any of this production company stuff, and then we can discuss it all in a much more positive frame of mind tomorrow. Over that nice dinner out, if you still want to.’
‘We-e-ell … I suppose so. I mean, just for the record,’ she says, never one to end on a peaceable solution where there is drama to be mined, ‘I’d never leave you alone if you were seriously depressed, Libby. I was There For You right after all that mess with stupid Dillon, wasn’t I?’
It’s true: she was ‘There For Me’ right after all that mess with stupid Dillon. Just in her style, which meant hurrying round with a huge carton of homemade (by Harvey Nichols’ Food Hall) soup, snuggling up with me on my sofa to tell me what a shit she’d always thought he was, and then getting involved in a FaceTime row with vile Dave and sobbing on my shoulder (and guzzling all the soup) until three o’clock in the morning.
‘I brought you,’ she says, meaningfully, ‘homemade soup!’
‘I know, Cass, and it was lovely of you. And I promise I’ll be at your beck and call all day tomorrow, OK?’
‘All right,’ she sniffs. ‘I’ll just call Stella for the evening, then, and get her to come over for a quiet night in instead. My roots could do with a retouch, anyway.’
I can’t fail to feel a fleeting stab of sadness that Cass – partly because she’s always accusing other women of being jealous of her, and partly because of her ridiculous habit of sleeping with married men – doesn’t really have any good female friends to call upon in her time of crisis. Stella, although a lovely girl who’s known Cass ever since they were at stage school together, is less her friend and more her hairdresser.
‘OK, good. You do that, and I’ll give you a call first thing in the morning to arrange where and when to meet.’ I lean across the nail technician, apologizing as I do so, and give Cass a hug. ‘But I really do have to go now.’
‘To see this Adam?’
‘Yes. But I’ve got a meeting with a client in Shepherd’s Bush first.’
‘Oh, right.’ She’s lost interest. ‘See you tomorrow then.’
‘Sure,’ I tell her. ‘Love you, Cass.’
‘Hmph,’ she says, which – and I’m translating again here – is her way of saying she loves me too.
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Lack of sex aside, things are going sufficiently well with Adam that he’s let me know the code for his key safe, which is hidden under an artfully disguised fake rock in his tiny front garden. He’s told me to let myself into his house on a few occasions since we’ve been dating, mostly when he was running late and wanted me to go in and tell Fritz he loved him, and missed him, and hadn’t forgotten about him. So I’m just sort of hoping he doesn’t mind that I’m going to use the key to let myself in this evening, this time without his explicit say-so, to lie in wait for him in absurdly sexy lingerie and give him a wild night of sex that he’ll never forget.
Or, that if he does mind that I’ve let myself in without his explicit say-so, that the absurdly sexy lingerie and the wild night of sex will go quite a long way to making him not mind any more.
After a great meeting with a new client (a freelance stylist who’s keen to use a few of my pieces in an upcoming shoot with a Sunday supplement; how about that, Jonathan Hedley, Barclays Business Development manager, Clapham branch?) I’ve reached Adam’s house, a stunning Edwardian terrace in the middle of a street of stunning Edwardian terraces in Shepherd’s Bush. I’ve just let myself in through the gate, when I hear the front door of the neighbouring house open.
And then I don’t hear anything else at all, because there’s such a thunderstorm of barking that a small bomb could go off nearby and I don’t think I’d notice.
It’s Fritz, Adam’s German shepherd puppy, who’s just on his way out of the house with James Cadwalladr, Adam’s next-door neighbour.
I’ve never actually met James Cadwalladr in person before, and this moment – as Fritz leaps the fence and starts inserting his nose gleefully into my groin – isn’t the ideal one for it to happen.
I mean, I’m fairly accustomed to coming face-to-face with very, very handsome actors – I woke up next to Dillon O’Hara several mornings a week for the few short months of our relationship, didn’t I? – but James Cadwalladr has that whole arrogant Old Etonian thing going on, which is a lot more intimidating. He’s staring at me over the fence now, looking even more icy-cool and unimpressed than he does when you see him as that toff, cricket-loving detective on TV.
‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘but who are you?’
‘I’m Libby,’ I say, breathlessly, trying to shove Fritz’s nose out of my groin and, when that doesn’t work, squatting down to meet him at doggy eye-level, in the hope that he’ll nuzzle into my neck instead. He doesn’t. He just goes lower and tries desperately to reach my groin again. (I can only hope his owner is equally determined, when he gets home for his surprise sex-fest later.) ‘I’m Adam’s girlfriend.’
‘You’re not.’
‘I am.’
‘You can’t be.’
‘I … er … am?’
‘You’re serious?’ He rakes back his posh-boy floppy hair and stares at me some more. ‘I didn’t know he’d got himself a girlfriend.’
‘Well, he has!’ I give up fighting Fritz and get back up again, whereupon he instantly loses interest in my groin (hurray!) and starts sniffing round the other side of me – to be precise, my bottom – instead. ‘I, um, know your wife, actually.’
Posh James doesn’t look that much more interested in this. ‘Oh, yeah?’
‘Yes. She stocks some of my jewellery in her store.’
I have Adam to thank for this, after he very nicely introduced me to Lottie Cadwalladr when she stopped to make a fuss of Fritz in the street one warm evening. She owns Ariel, an amazing and very hip independent boutique with a branch in Westbourne Grove and a branch in Spitalfields. We got to chatting, and she admired the bracelet I was wearing, and for the past couple of weeks, Ariel has stocked a small selection of my bracelets and earrings in the Westbourne Grove branch. It was a huge coup for me because, even though the orders through my website are nice and steady, it really helps to have a real-life stockist, too. Not to mention that seeing my jewellery in those glass display cases, actually being admired by shoppers the day I went to visit, has given me all sorts of dreams about maybe even managing to open a tiny store of my own one day …
‘Right.’ Posh James slaps his thigh; I’m not quite sure why he’s doing that for a moment (pantomime rehearsal?), until I realize he’s trying to call Fritz. ‘Here, boy! Over here!’ He looks irritated when Fritz ignores him. ‘He likes you,’ he says, in an accusing tone of voice, ‘doesn’t he?’
‘Oh, that’s only because I stupidly sneak him tastes of stuff when Adam and I eat together. You know, I don’t think he looks at me and sees a human woman. I think he looks at me and sees a walking, talking wodge of chicken liver pâté.’
Posh James doesn’t laugh.
‘Here, boy!’ he adds, more commandingly this time, and follows it up with a whistle, which finally persuades Fritz to stop nuzzling my private areas and to jump the fence to join him again. ‘Are you going into the house, or something? I thought Adam was still away. I’m not quite sure why Lottie’s saddled us with this fur-ball for another night otherwise.’
‘Adam’s not back until later tonight. I’m just … er … dropping something off,’ I say, because I don’t want a complete stranger to realize I’m going into my boyfriend’s house to lie in wait for him in my undies. ‘I know he’s really grateful to you for looking after Fritz.’
‘The kids love him,’ Posh James says, with a shrug, as he grasps Fritz’s collar and clips on a lead. ‘Well. Good to meet you, anyway,’ he adds, in a voice that implies it wasn’t so much good as deadly dull and totally tiresome. ‘And good luck.’
Which is an odd thing to say.
But I won’t ask why he’s said it, partly because I don’t want to bore him any more than I already have, and partly because Fritz has started barking again, rendering any attempt at further conversation impossible.
They set off along the street for their evening walk, and I crouch down to tap in the code for the key safe, then let myself into Adam’s house.
As ever, it’s an oasis of tranquillity.
An oasis of ever-so-slightly sterile, obsessive-compulsive neat-freak tranquillity, perhaps, but an oasis nevertheless.
I mean, if I ever ended up living here with Adam, there’s so much I’d do to make the place a bit … well, a bit less like an absolutely stunning show home, and a bit more like a place to really live in. I’d funk up the cream-and-grey colour scheme for starters, put up a few pictures on the walls in the hallway in place of all the space-enhancing mirrors, make the chrome and grey marble kitchen, where I’m just heading now, a warm and welcoming place to hang out in with our friends, rather than like a photo in a glossy interiors magazine. I’d replace the steel kitchen table with a nice big wooden one, like the one Olly has in his kitchen, and I’d replace the Perspex chairs with mismatched painted chairs, again just like Olly’s chairs, and I’d redo the smart, slightly soulless patio area you can see out of the bifold doors at the back; turn it into a proper garden, with grass and flowerbeds and a barbecue … The cosiest part of the whole kitchen is Fritz’s den, in a little nook on the far side of the range cooker (for maximum warmth), and even this is still stylish enough to feature in a doggy version of World of Interiors, with its custom-made safety gate to close him off from any hot-fat-spitting danger when Adam is cooking, and its selection of Kelly Hoppen cushions for him to rest his weary rump on.
But it’s not the time to stand here mentally remodelling Adam’s beautiful home (not to mention that we’re not yet anywhere near the moving-in stage), because I’ve no idea what sort of time he’ll be getting back, and I want to make sure I’m all ready in my sexy lingerie for when he does.
Or rather, my downright slutty lingerie.
Because I’m pulling out all the stops tonight, I’ll be honest. I’ve already ramped up the raunch factor on the lingerie I’ve been wearing for most of our snogging-on-the-sofa nights, in the hope that something – the lacy, plunge-front bra; the tactile silken camisole; the wispy, semi-transparent knickers – might get Adam going enough to override all the perfectly good reasons why we haven’t done the deed. But none of it has worked, so tonight I’m breaking out the Ribbony Elasticky Thing.
I get it out from the bottom of my bag, now, where it’s nestled since I left my flat earlier today.
You know, I’m still none the wiser as to what kind of garment it actually is.
I bought it half-price in the Myla sale at the very height of my relationship with Dillon, and though it provided for several extremely pleasant evenings, its precise definition remains a mystery. It’s not a basque. It’s not a corset. I suppose the most accurate description would be ‘playsuit’, but I’m not at all sure it contains enough material even to fall into that category. It’s just a collection of very, very small pieces of black lacy fabric, held together with strings of black satin ribbon, or lengths of wide black elastic. It requires either a degree in mechanical engineering or nerves of steel and the patience of a saint to get the thing on – though funnily enough Dillon never had the slightest difficulty in getting it off – and tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I shall be hoisting myself into it along with my highest heels, a cheeky smile … and absolutely nothing else.
Oh, well, obviously the ‘Marilyn collection’ earrings Adam admired so much earlier. Just in case all the black lace and general sauciness doesn’t get him going, my fabulous accessories, with any luck, will do the job.
The only trouble is, as I find when I start to hoick myself into it now, that the last time I wore the Ribbony Elasticky Thing, I was a good half-stone lighter (it’s not that Dillon pressured me into losing weight, or anything – in fact, he was always superlatively appreciative of my distinctly non-model-worthy curves – but you try sharing a bathroom mirror with a man as impressively fit as Dillon for more than a couple of occasions, and see if you can resist the temptation to cut out pudding. And bread. And chips. And lunch). The Ribbony Elasticky Thing goes up reasonably smoothly over my thighs, requires a bit of jiggling to get it up over my hips, but when I get to the bit that (barely) covers my stomach, which is where the majority of my regained weight has generously portioned itself, it starts to become a bit of a struggle.
In the war of Libby Lomax versus Ribbony Elasticky Thing, Ribbony Elasticky Thing is definitely winning this particular battle when my phone rings.
When I reach down to grab my phone from my bag, I can see that it’s Nora calling.
Well, at least it’s a call that’s actually worth the temporary defeat to a piece of lingerie.
A regular call, not FaceTime, thank God, because long-time best friends as we are, there’s no way I’d subject Nora to the sight of me half in, half out of my sluttiest underwear. I know she probably sees more disturbing sights on an average shift in her work as an emergency medicine registrar, but I wouldn’t actually put money on it, or anything.
‘Hi, Nor,’ I say, as I answer the phone. ‘Everything OK?’
‘Is everything OK with you?’ she replies. ‘You’re not … exercising, are you?’
It speaks volumes about my affection for physical exertion that Nora sounds so astonished as she asks this.
‘Christ, no. I’m just putting on some … er … clothes.’
‘Full-body armour? A HazMat suit? Because it sounds as if you’re getting out of puff there, Lib.’
