A Night In With Marilyn Monroe

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‘If you say so.’

‘I am saying so.’

‘Well, you’d know better than me, obviously. It must just be a very, very good male friend of his I see leaving here early in the mornings, when I’m heading home from my run … what the hell, Lottie?’ he adds, as Lottie’s ballet pumps return our way again. ‘I suggested olive oil or butter, not half the contents of the store cupboard!’

‘Well, I don’t know what’s going to work, do I?’ Lottie is crouching back down to my level again, clutching an entire armful of assorted packets and bottles. ‘So, which do you think is most slippery? Groundnut oil? Grapeseed oil? Sesame oil? Argan oil … oooh, I’ve never heard of that one before.’

‘It’s often used in North African cooking,’ Posh James says. ‘You can use it to make fresh dips, drizzle it on couscous—’

‘Oh, was that the thing that made the couscous taste so amazing in Marrakech?’ Lottie asks.

‘I think it was the cinnamon, actually,’ her husband tells her. ‘I’ve started adding it when I make couscous at home, you know, but I don’t think the quality of the cinnamon here is as good as it was over there, because—’

‘I honestly think any of the oils will be fine,’ I say, starting to feel more desperate than ever now that – somehow – we all just seem to be sitting around here swapping recipe tips and reminiscing about couscous. ‘Can we just try one?’

‘Of course. Let’s start with the sesame oil!’

So we do. And when that has no effect whatsoever, we try groundnut oil. And when that has no effect whatsoever, we try sunflower oil. And when that has no effect whatsoever (apart from making me smell like some sort of giant Chinese takeaway, that is), Posh James announces, ‘Fuck this for a game of soldiers. I’d better call the fire brigade.’

‘No!’ I moan, gently, because if it’s mortifying enough being semi-naked and wedged between two iron bars on my hands and knees in front of Lottie and James Cadwalladr, I can’t even begin to imagine the horror of importing half a dozen firemen into this kitchen, too. ‘Please …’

‘Well, I don’t see that we have any other option,’ he says, irritably. ‘I don’t own a hacksaw. I suppose I could always go and see if any of the neighbours has a hacksaw—’

‘Bogdan!’ I suddenly gasp.

I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before.

‘My friend Bogdan – he’s a handyman … well, and a hairdresser, too, but …’ Not relevant, Libby! Stick to the important facts! ‘He’ll have a hacksaw, I’m absolutely sure of it. Look, can you just grab my phone from my bag,’ I say, feeling weak with relief, ‘and bring it over so I can call him?’

‘Absolutely!’ Lottie sounds pretty relieved as well, because although this might be the worst evening of my entire life, I don’t think it’s exactly been a night of unbounded pleasure for her and James, either. ‘James, get her phone. I’ll just see,’ she adds, scrambling to her feet as there’s a fresh volley of barking coming from the hallway, ‘what Fritz is going nuts about out there.’

I hear the kitchen door open, and then I hear Lottie say, in a startled voice, ‘Oh! Adam!’

So he really is back pretty early from his work dinner. Just not early enough, unfortunately, to have prevented me from ending up in my current predicament.

‘This probably all looks very strange to you,’ Lottie is going on, ‘but we have, well, a bit of a situation … I don’t suppose either of you happens to have a hacksaw on you, by any chance?’

Wait a second: either of you?

‘I don’t have a hacksaw,’ comes Adam’s voice, sounding bewildered and anxious – unlike him – in equal measure. ‘Ben, uh, I’m assuming you don’t have one either?’

‘No, I didn’t bring a hacksaw,’ comes another voice. Just like Adam’s voice, it’s American-accented.

And just like Adam’s voice, it’s male.

‘And I gotta tell you, Ads,’ the strange man’s voice goes on, with an abrasive chuckle, ‘I’m glad we’ve been dating this long before you asked me that question. I’d be out that door faster than a speeding bullet otherwise.’

I can’t move.

I mean, obviously I can’t move. None of us would be here right now if I could.

Well, Adam and Ben would probably still be here, for their own cosy night in. My boyfriend and … his boyfriend?

The bars of the safety gate may be gradually cutting off the blood supply to my brain, but even I can put two and two together on this one and make four.

There’s the faint squeak of Converse on marble, and then Posh James’s face appears in front of me again.

‘Here’s your phone,’ he says, matter-of-factly, as he hands it through the bars to me and folds my frozen fingers around it. And then he adds, equally matter-of-factly, ‘I told you he was gay.’

Then he gets to his feet and heads towards the hallway, perhaps to give me a moment of privacy.

With a strength of will I didn’t even know I had, I force my fingers to unfreeze so that I can call Bogdan.

He and his hacksaw can’t get here fast enough.

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The half-hour after Adam and his date got home turned into a bit of a blur, if I’m honest with you.

Thank God Lottie and James slipped quietly away, and then Adam came (sheepishly) into the kitchen to find me. He didn’t say a lot, and I said even less … I have a dim memory of being peered at, for a moment, by a very scowly man in a very smart suit, who I can only assume was Ben … and then, just as Adam suggested it might be a good idea for me to snack on some edamame beans and a coconut water, to keep my energy levels up, Bogdan arrived.

With Olly.

My second unexpected, unannounced and frankly unwanted visitor of the night.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m always happy to see Olly. It’s a truly rare situation where I don’t want his lovely, friendly face around. I’d hardly have dragged the poor guy up to Dad’s wedding this past weekend if I hadn’t thought it would make the whole thing better, just having him there.

Tonight, however, was precisely one of those rare situations.

‘Am decorating at restaurant,’ was Bogdan’s explanation, through the noise of the hacksaw, when I asked him, through gritted teeth, why he’d decided to announce my predicament to Olly before the pair of them set out in Olly’s van, like cape-less crusaders, to rescue me from Death By Humiliation in Shepherd’s Bush. ‘Olly is right there beside me when am answering phone. You are expecting me to be lying to him about reason for phone call? When he is currently being my boss? And also, am hoping not to be presuming too much, my friend?’

Well, no, I wasn’t expecting him to lie.

And given that he blurted, ‘Let me be getting this straight, Libby – you are trapped somewhere against your will and only wearing what I am guessing to be some sort of undergarment?’ a couple of moments after my terse explanation over the phone, I suppose it’s only to be expected that Olly would grab his car keys and hurtle to my assistance.

But it’s just one more layer of awkwardness to endure: Olly, who didn’t even know I was dating Adam to begin with, coming face to face with me in that terrible, semi-naked, head-wodged predicament.

Quite honestly, the discovery that my new boyfriend, who I really thought might be The One, is in fact gay … well, it’s almost the least bad thing about the last couple of hours.

I said almost.

Olly has insisted on driving me all the way home, which is nice of him, because I’m feeling a bit too bruised – physically and emotionally – for the rough-and-tumble of the tube just now.

The downside, though, is more of that terrible awkwardness.

Even though – obviously – I re-dressed myself as soon as I was free from the bars, the atmosphere between us is so uncomfortable that I might as well be still wearing nothing but the Ribbony Elasticky Thing and a slick of sesame oil. We’ve sat in embarrassed silence ever since Shepherd’s Bush, and we’re over the river and stuck in a bottleneck of traffic near Wandsworth Bridge when Olly finally breaks it.

‘So. Adam Rosenfeld.’

‘Yes.’ I swallow, hard. ‘Did you know he was gay?’

‘Libby, come on. I only work with the guy. And barely even that, really. He dropped into the restaurant this afternoon for the first time in a week. I mean, I don’t remember pondering, as we pored over some thrilling spreadsheets together, what his sexual orientation might be …’

‘Fair point.’

‘And it’s not like I was looking out for anything in particular, one way or the other.’ Olly changes gear as we finally move up a little way in the traffic. ‘I mean, I didn’t even know you were seeing him, Libby. You kept that one pretty close to your chest.’

I wince, inwardly, at Olly’s mere mention of my chest, given that he’s seen more of my chest this evening than I’d have liked him to do in a lifetime.

‘It was pretty recent,’ I mumble.

‘You could have mentioned something over the weekend.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to shout it from the rooftops in case … well, it didn’t work out. Which has turned out to be pretty prophetic of me, really.’

‘You’re not pathetic.’

‘Prophetic,’ I say.

‘Oh … well, you might be that.’

‘Yeah, except I thought the reasons we might not work out would be because we were both too busy with our jobs, or because we didn’t like each other’s families … I never stopped to think that it might be because he was using me as a beard to hide his true identity from his Orthodox Jewish parents.’

This is based on something that Adam muttered at me, by the way, a few minutes before Bogdan and Olly and the tool kit got there: I’m really sorry, Libby … my mum and dad … it’s an Orthodox thing … they wouldn’t approve …

Which, you know, I can sympathize with. I’ve endured the disapproval of my own mother for the majority of the last thirty years. But I still don’t think it’s reasonable to drag someone else into the middle of it. Someone unwitting. Someone ignorant.

‘I’m just such an idiot,’ I say, miserably, gazing out of the window as unidentifiable bits of southwest London slide by in the gathering midsummer dusk. ‘How did I not realize he was gay? He couldn’t have made any more excuses to avoid having sex with me!’

‘He made excuses?’

‘Dozens of them.’ I never usually talk about sex with Olly, but I feel we’ve crossed that barrier tonight. Actually, not so much crossed as smashed through it. With a ten-tonne truck. ‘He was busy with work. He was tired from the gym. He had a headache … I don’t know. There were a lot of different explanations. And I fell for each and every one of them.’

‘So the … er … dressing up in … er … sexy lingerie was—’

‘My embarrassingly misguided attempt to reverse the situation.’

Olly nods. ‘Got it.’

‘I mean, what’s wrong with me,’ I go on, ‘that I have such crappy awful judgement about the entire male species?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with you.’

‘All right, then, maybe there’s just something wrong with men.’

‘OK, well, that’s a bit of an unfair generalization—’

‘I don’t mean you, Ol,’ I say. ‘I just mean all the others.’

‘Come on, Lib, just because it’s all gone a bit pear-shaped with Adam, and just because you had a hellish experience with a total wanker like Dillon O’Hara—’

At this moment, there’s an angry grunt from the back of the car: it’s Bogdan who, I have to confess, I’d completely forgotten was sitting back there.

He looms forward now, to jab Olly in the shoulder with a large and paint-spattered finger.

‘Do not be saying the impolite things about Dillon,’ he tells Olly. ‘Libby is not having the hellish experience with him. Libby is having the heavenly experience with him. And not just in the bedroom.’

‘Bogdan!’ I turn round and glare at him. ‘That’s none of anyone’s business!’

‘Is being the business of mine,’ Bogdan mutters, darkly, ‘when am hearing the untrue things about the people I am liking.’

(Bogdan is being slightly disingenuous here. He didn’t so much like Dillon as nurse a colossal, simmering, unrequited passion for him, in a tragic, balalaika-accompanied, Moldovan sort of way. Many was the time, in the course of those few heady months with Dillon, that I half expected to open my suitcase in some glamorous hotel room only to find Bogdan stowed away amongst my shoes and my tops and my sexy underwear, all ready to clamber out and hang on Dillon’s every word for the duration of our dirty weekend. I got so paranoid that I even stopped taking the big suitcase, and started cramming everything I might need into the smaller of my two canvas holdalls instead.)

‘My mistake, Bogdan,’ Olly returns, his voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘There’s obviously nothing at all hellish about being abandoned in Miami the day before a major hurricane, with no passport and no credit cards.’

‘Being abandoned in the Miami the day before the major hurricane with no passport and no credit cards,’ Bogdan echoes, ‘by Dillon O’Hara.’

Olly actually takes his eyes off the road for a moment to turn round and stare at Bogdan.

‘I’m sorry … you’re saying that this is some sort of privilege?’

‘Am saying,’ Bogdan says, in the overly patient tone of one who’s decided he’s talking to a complete imbecile, ‘that Libby is being lucky to be involved with man as handsome and charming and funny and—’

‘And coke-addled,’ Olly interrupts, ‘and womanizing—’

‘OK, that’s enough!’ I hold up a hand. ‘Look, I’m incredibly grateful to you both for coming and getting me out of a tight spot – literally – but can we just stop talking about Dillon O’Hara for the rest of the journey?’

‘It would make me a happy man,’ Olly announces, ‘if I never had to so much as hear his name again for the rest of my livelong days.’

Which puts Bogdan into a right old grump, because he inflicts a wounded silence on us all until Olly drops him at the top of his road in Balham a few minutes later. And then thumps on Olly’s window just before we drive off and yells, ‘Dillon O’Hara!’, petulantly, through the glass.

‘Probably not a good idea,’ I say, a moment later, ‘to have made your painter and decorator quite so angry with you four days before your big restaurant opening.’

‘Oh, he’ll be all right. Besides, everything’s on track over there.’

‘Really? Because I feel really awful, Ol, about accidentally dragging him – and you – away from the place this evening …’

‘Honestly, Lib, don’t worry about it. Like I say, we’re right on schedule. And I know you’d do the same for me.’

‘If you got your head stuck in between some iron railings at your secretly lesbian girlfriend’s house while wearing skimpy undies and having cooking oils rubbed on you by a famous television actor?’

‘In that exact scenario,’ Olly says, solemnly, ‘I know you’d leg it across town with your sharpest hacksaw and your trustiest blowtorch.’

‘Well, that’s what friendship is all about,’ I say.

Olly falls silent for a moment, which is a pity as I’d thought we were well on the road to it All Being OK between us again, until he suddenly swerves on to the other side of the road, and into the drive-through McDonald’s on the other side of it.