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I chink my glass against his and grin back.
After a moment, it feels like a rather rictus grin and, to be perfectly honest, he looks pretty frozen too – probably wondering what the hell I’m still grinning about myself – so I take a long drink.
He does the same.
‘So!’ I say, brightly, when we both put our glasses down. ‘That’s honestly quite enough about me—’
‘Oh, come on, Lib, I want to hear all about the new place!’
‘Well, then you’ll have to come over some time. With Tash!’ I add, just in case he thinks I’m suggesting some cosy soirée, just the two of us. ‘But until then, there’s really not much to tell, Olly, honestly.’
I mean, in the past, I’d have bored his pants off, wittering on about my hopes and fears for the business, getting him to join me in over-analysing every word spoken by Elvira and Ben. But now that I fancy him so much – now that I can think of other, far less noble things I’d like to do to get his pants off, quite frankly – I’m suddenly a lot less keen to bore him. Not to mention the fact that there’s the permanent wedge of Tash between us. It just feels wrong to seek that type of support from a man who’s – very much – spoken for.
‘Anyway,’ I go on, ‘you look like you’ve had a tough day, too.’
‘I do?’
‘Well, you look tired,’ I say, after studying him for a moment without quite meeting his eye.
‘Oh, that’s just life in the restaurant business,’ he says. He looks even wearier, for a moment. ‘Things are always so busy, and I just never seem to have enough time. I mean, when was the last time you and I actually managed to do this, Lib?’
‘This?’
‘Yes, sit with a bottle of wine and catch up. It feels like for ever.’
‘Well, no, I mean, it is a long time,’ I say, not wanting to remind him that I’ve cancelled two of our most recent planned meet-ups at short notice (just couldn’t face going through with it) and that he’s cancelled three himself (last-minute restaurant emergencies). ‘But you’re right, life is busy. And, of course, you have Tash to prioritize, too.’ I take another large gulp from my glass. ‘How is she, by the way?’
‘Tash? Oh, she’s great. She’s always great.’ He picks up his own glass. ‘I mean, obviously, there’s always the issue of—’
He stops because, almost as if it’s been eavesdropping on us or something (I mean, it couldn’t have, could it?), his phone starts to ring.
‘Oh!’ he says. ‘It’s Tash! Sorry, Lib, would you mind if I …?’
‘Not at all!’
‘I mean, I usually call her around this time every evening, when she gets off her shift at the hospital …’
‘Olly, I don’t mind! Honestly! Answer it.’
‘Thank, Libs.’ He picks up the ringing phone. ‘Hey,’ he murmurs into it. ‘You OK?’
That murmur – low, intimate, the tone of voice you only ever use with your Significant Other – makes me want to cry.
But, thank God, it’s right at this moment that a waiter appears bearing two large platters of food, which he places on the table in front of me. I mean very specifically in front of me, in fact, with a somewhat lascivious smile and an assurance that if there’s anything, anything at all, that I’d like his help with, I only need to—
‘Yeah, thanks, Didier,’ Olly says, breaking off his phone call for a moment to speak, rather sharply, to the waiter. ‘I’m sure she can manage to find her way round a plate of cheese on her own … Sorry, Tash,’ he adds, into the phone again, ‘just fending off an ardent Frenchman … no, no, not for me! I’m having a bite with Libby …’ There’s a short pause. ‘Tash says hi,’ he tells me.
Of course she does, because Tash – annoyingly – is nice and friendly and downright perfect.
‘Hi, Tash!’ I trill back, waving a hand, pointlessly, because it’s not like they’re on a FaceTime call or anything.
And then I make a gesture at Olly, which is supposed to indicate that he should just carry on with the phone call, that I’m perfectly fine – delighted in fact – to be sitting here tucking into plates of delicious cold meat and cheese, and that everything is just so fine and dandy in the world that I’m only inches away from leaping up on to the table and kicking off a rousing chorus of ‘Oh Happy Day’.
Because I think I might need to go way over the top just to avoid giving the slightest hint that I’d actually rather crawl under the table and miserably hiccup my way through ‘Where Do Broken Hearts Go?’
This is why I should never have come this evening; why I should just have made up some spurious excuse and cancelled again.
The thing is, it’s not like I’m not well used to sitting across a table from someone I’m in love with who isn’t in love with me back. Dillon O’Hara, for example, whom I remained convinced I was in love with despite the fact that our relationship was a car crash, with him in the driving seat. And not even just Dillon: as an incurable romantic, especially one who spent most of my life convinced I was an unattractive frump compared to my stunning little sister, I’ve enjoyed a long and fruitless history of falling in love with men who wouldn’t have noticed me if I’d been standing in front of them stark naked with a sign hanging around my neck reading Available and Desperate: Please Apply Within.
The difference – the colossal, heart-shattering difference – this time, with Olly, is the knowledge that this isn’t how it should have been. That thanks to a disastrous combination of cruel fate and my own stupidity, he and I have passed each other by like ships in the night.
In fact, it hurts so much to dwell, even for a moment, on the role played by my own stupidity that I think I need to shift as much of the blame as possible on to the Cruel Fate part. Because otherwise it’s just too sickening to endure. Like Juliet would have felt if she’d woken up beside a lifeless Romeo in the tomb and realized that she’d absent-mindedly put a poison bottle next to the orange juice in the fridge. Bad enough her soulmate is doomed to be lost to her for ever; soul-destroying to confront the fact she just should have been paying more attention.
‘No, of course,’ Olly is saying, into the phone. ‘And I meant to … well, what time will you be home? … no, I imagine I’ll head straight back after I’m finished here … OK, I’ll Skype you then … no, of course … of course … of course … OK, bye,’ he adds, finishing up with a swift, ever-so-slightly guilty-sounding, ‘Love you,’ before putting the phone down. His gaze remains fixed on the tabletop for a moment, almost as if he’s avoiding making eye contact.
I swallow, hard. ‘Everything OK?’
‘No, of course,’ he says, echoing exactly what he’s just said repeatedly to Tash. (It’s an odd phrase, actually, now I come to think of it. I mean, isn’t yes the more usual companion to an of course? Still, it’s not for me to analyse it. It’s between them.) ‘Tash is just … well, she’s a little bit fed up with us never seeing each other, that’s all.’
‘Oh, Olly, I’m really sorry. Look, you should go home right now and Skype her—’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he says, rather sharply. Then he inhales, as if to reset himself, and picks up his champagne glass again, gripping the stem. ‘Sorry, Lib. I just mean that me going home and Skyping her isn’t really going to address the issue. It’s much more about the fact that we live three hundred and fifty miles away from each other and we both work all the hours God sends.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘Of course.’
‘I mean, she’s worked weekends the last three weeks in a row, and obviously I’m always busy too …’
‘Sorry, Ol. Long-distance is hard, I know.’
‘It is. But it shouldn’t feel this …’ He thinks about this for a moment, sadness passing over his face. ‘Impossible.’
He looks so wretched that, even though the cause of it is his missing Tash, I shunt my own pain to the side for a moment.
‘I think you probably just need to find a way to make more time, Ol, to be honest with you. I mean, I know how busy you are, but is there any way you can take a Saturday night off and go up to Glasgow? If you left straight after the lunch service, you’d only miss dinner, and then you’re closed on Monday night and Tuesday lunchtime, so you wouldn’t even have to come back until early afternoon on Tuesday—’
‘Woah.’ Olly holds up a hand, looking slightly surprised. ‘Have you been thinking about this already, or something?’
‘No, it just seems kind of obvious, doesn’t it?’
‘Not really. It’s not just that I need to be at the restaurant for actual service, Lib. There’s quite a lot more to it than that! I have the accounts to keep on top of, and all the staff paperwork, and you know I always prefer to supervise the deep clean after Saturday dinner, and then I have all my supplier meetings, and visits from the wine merchants … and all that’s even without adding in the fact that I do like to actually come up with new menu items occasionally!’
‘OK, well, you’ll have to persuade Tash to come down here more often.’
‘She’s a junior hospital doctor, Libby. It’s not really that simple.’
‘Then the two of you have to make it that simple.’ I feel a bit like a bulldozer on full power, but now that I’ve gone down this route, I can’t seem to stop. The only good news, I guess, is that maybe the effort I’ve been putting in to disguise my desire to cover every inch of Olly’s body in kisses is actually paying off. I’ve faked it and now, apparently, I’ve made it. And hopefully he won’t actually notice how massively I’m overcompensating for something. ‘I mean,’ I go on, heartily, ‘you love her and she loves you, right?’
Olly has reached for the champagne bottle and is topping up both glasses, which is why he takes a moment to reply.
‘No, of course.’
That bizarre (and bizarrely infectious) phrase again.
‘So put yourself on the line. Tell her how much you want to see her. Ask her if there’s any way she can get a couple of days off work. Or, I don’t know, meet halfway. That might actually be really romantic. You could book a lovely hotel, somewhere you can have drinks at the bar beside a roaring fire, and amazing room service so you don’t even have to get dressed to go for dinner, and—’
‘Libby.’
Olly, thank heavens, has stopped me before I can divulge any more of this detailed hotel-trip fantasy that’s really one I’ve often played out in my head for the two of us, on the long nights this past year when the alternative has been crying into my pillow.
‘Sorry, sorry, that was probably a bit too specific—’
‘Is that the mystery cheese?’
This is why he’s stopped me. He’s staring at the cheese plate that’s been sitting between us for the last few minutes.
‘That one, right there,’ he’s going on. He points at the plate. ‘I think it is. I honestly think it might be.’
If this sounds a slightly intense tone to take about cheese, I should probably just fill you in on exactly why this is.
Years ago – when I was eighteen and Olly was turning twenty-one – he and I took a trip over to Paris on the Eurostar for a hedonistic day of drinking, eating, and (this being Olly, a foodie to end all foodies) trudging round various destinations in search of highly specific types of Mirabelle jam, or spiced sausage, or premier cru chocolate. And cheese. So much cheese, in fact, that we ended up digging into it on the Eurostar home, whereupon we discovered that one particular cheese – a creamy white goat’s cheese, rolled in ash, and tart and lemony to the taste – was in fact the exact definition of ambrosia. (This might have had something to do with the amount of vin we’d imbibed on the day’s trek; also, possibly, something to do with the fact that we were deliberately trying to divert attention from the unexpected snog we’d found ourselves having in a bar on the Left Bank at some point in the afternoon, and waxing absurdly lyrical about a cheese seemed, at the time, as good a way as any of achieving this.) We didn’t know the name and – despite many years of searching, or more to the point, Keeping An Eye Out – neither of us ever found that Mystery Cheese again.
‘Well, you’ll have to taste it,’ I say, in an equally intense tone. ‘We won’t know until you try.’
‘We have to taste it,’ he corrects me, picking up his knife and dividing the portion of white, ash-flecked cheese into two with a chef’s deft movement. ‘Come on, Libby. Close your eyes. This could be the moment.’
We both fall into a reverential hush as we each take a half of the cheese, close our eyes, and put it in our mouths.
‘What do you think?’ Olly asks, in a hushed voice, after a moment.
‘I don’t know …’
‘First impressions?’
‘First impression was that it’s definitely not the one … but second impression … I’m not sure. It might be?’
‘The texture doesn’t seem quite right.’
‘I agree. But the taste was pretty much bang-on.’
‘Do you think? I thought the Mystery Cheese had a bit more pepper to it.’
‘Wasn’t it ash?’
‘No, no, I don’t mean pepper in the actual cheese, I mean a peppery taste.’
‘Oh. Right. No, I think you’re right. I mean, you’re the expert.’
‘I’m not the expert!’ He looks faintly annoyed. ‘We were both there!’
‘Yes, OK, but you’re the one who takes this kind of thing that seriously.’
He looks, for a moment, wounded to the core. ‘I thought you took the Mystery Cheese seriously, too.’
‘I do!’
‘I mean, I know it’s only a silly thing, obviously. I’m not that stupid! It was always just … our thing. Wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ My voice has got stuck in my throat. I reach for my champagne glass. ‘I’m not saying I never took it seriously, Ol,’ I say, after a long drink. ‘I’m saying you’re the cheffy, experty, foodie person. You’re the one who remembers the precise taste of a Sangiovese wine you drank in Italy three years ago versus a Sangiovese wine you drank at your parents’ house three weekends ago. I could barely tell you, most days, if I was eating a tuna mayo sandwich for lunch or a chicken mayo sandwich.’
‘Then you need to start buying your lunchtime sandwiches elsewhere,’ Olly says, faintly irritable. ‘There’s absolutely no excuse for tuna to ever taste anything like chicken.’
‘It’s not a big deal. It’s only a sandwich.’
‘And the Mystery Cheese was only a cheese. I get it. It doesn’t matter.’
‘Olly, no, it does matter! Come on.’ I reach across the table, surprising myself even as I do so, and put my hand on his.
I’m seriously hoping he can’t feel the faint throb of my pulse, quickening as my skin meets his skin.
But I don’t think he can, because if he did, he’d react in some way, wouldn’t he? Pull his hand back, or give me a funny look, or ask me if I was about to expire, or something? And he doesn’t do any of those things. He just leaves his own hand exactly where it is, under mine, and says absolutely nothing for a moment.
Then he says, ‘I really don’t think it’s the cheese, anyway.’
‘No. Neither do I.’ I move my hand back to my side of the table. ‘But that’s a good thing, I guess. Because we can keep looking.’
‘Yeah. That’s true. I mean, it’s always been a source of comfort to me,’ he adds, meeting my eyes again and pulling a cheeky grin, ‘knowing that it’s out there.’
We’re piss-taking again. This is a good thing.
‘Just waiting for us to happen upon it,’ I say.
‘Biding its time.’
‘Hiding its light under a bushel.’
‘Waiting in the wings.’
‘And I’m not even sure,’ I say, ‘that I even liked this one that much anyway.’
‘Me neither.’ Olly peers at the cheese plate, his handsome face looking more noble than ever in the bistro’s candlelight. ‘That Comté looks good, though. You have a bit of that, and I’ll try some of the Camembert.’
We fall into a companionable silence as we find our way around the cheese platter together for the next few minutes.
Well, as companionable a silence as it’s ever going to be between us any more, given that I can’t even look at him without feeling lust and misery wash over me in equal measure.
Then, breaking the silence, he says, ‘You’re probably right about Tash, though, Lib. We do need to make more effort to spend time together. I mean, that’s what grown-up relationships are about, right? Compromising. Going the extra mile.’
I’m about to quip that I wouldn’t know, having never been in a grown-up relationship.
But, somehow, my heart isn’t in it.
So I just nod, as enthusiastically as I know how, and reach out a hand to cut myself a sliver of Roquefort.
*
It’s almost midnight by the time I get home.
Actually, make that ‘home’.
Because grotty and minuscule though it undeniably was, my flat back in Colliers Wood was home. This new place, in posher-than-posh Notting Hill, doesn’t feel like home to me yet. And if my relations with Elvira Roberts-Hoare get any frostier, I don’t imagine I’ll start to really relax here any time soon.
But perhaps it’s just all that champagne making me a bit maudlin and self-pitying. All that champagne in the company of my lost soulmate. We ended up drinking two bottles before we parted ways, Olly back home to Skype Tash, and me back here to …
… well, what is my current plan? A pint of water, take my makeup off and get into bed for a restorative night’s sleep?
Or, instead, how about I crack open the bottle of white wine that I know is nestling in the upstairs fridge, accompany it with the large bag of Frazzles stashed in one of the kitchenette cupboards, slump on the Chesterfield with the remote control and flick through late-night rubbish on the TV to distract myself from dwelling on my evening out with Olly?
Yes. The latter, I think. Temporary painkilling that’s only going to make me feel even worse in the morning. A sensible decision, as ever.
I haul my weary body up the stairs to the kitchen, grab the wine and the Frazzles, and head back down the stairs again to locate the remote control.
‘Excusez-moi?’ says a voice from the Chesterfield sofa.
Oh, my dear God almighty.
It’s Grace Kelly.
And not just any old Grace Kelly: Grace Kelly in full wedding attire. The iconic dress, with its 125-year-old lace bodice and its full silk skirt. The veil, with what must be a hundred yards of tulle suddenly taking up most of the available floor-space in my new living room. The beaded Juliet cap framing, perfectly, her serene face.
Except that she isn’t looking that serene at the moment, it has to be said. Not that I can possibly comment, because I’m probably staring at her like a goldfish who’s just been slapped in the face with a wet kipper. But she’s looking, if it were possible, even more startled to see me than I am to see her.
There’s silence for a moment.
‘Je suis desolée,’ she goes on, in a rather more wobbly voice than I’m used to hearing in her films, though the cut-glass diction remains largely in place. She gets to her feet; she’s taller than I imagined she’d be, or perhaps this is just because she holds herself so well, her broad shoulders pulled back and her neck nothing short of swan-like. ‘Mais je suis un peu … je ne sais pas le mot en français … uh … Parlez-vous anglais?’
‘I AM anglaise,’ I croak.
‘Oh!’ Her elegant eyebrows lift upwards. ‘I’m sorry. I had absolutely no idea there was anyone English working here.’
‘Here …?’
‘The palace. You’ll forgive me, I hope,’ she goes on, her voice more perfectly clipped, now that she’s recovered herself, ‘if I haven’t the faintest idea who you are or what it is you do. It’s been the most impossibly hectic few days since I first arrived, and obviously with the wedding tomorrow morning …’
‘Right,’ I say, faintly. ‘The wedding.’
I mean, you’d think I might be somewhat inured to this by now. You’d think I might even be a bit blasé about what is starting, frankly, to look like an infestation of Hollywood legends, popping out of my magical sofa.
But this is Grace Kelly. Quite literally, Hollywood royalty.
I mean, if it was … I don’t know, Ava Gardner, or Betty Grable, or even Lauren Bacall, I think I’d be a bit more able to take it in my stride.
I can’t take Grace Kelly in my stride.
Yes, Audrey Hepburn was exquisite, and yes, Marilyn Monroe was a knockout. But Grace Kelly, if it were possible, knocks the pair of them into a cocked hat.
Her serene beauty, as she stands here five feet away from me in her wedding dress, is astonishing. She might literally have the most perfect face I’ve ever seen. Which obviously I already knew – it’s not like I haven’t watched and rewatched her movies throughout my life – but seeing it here, in the (sort-of) flesh, it’s … astounding. Not that she looks as if she is made of flesh, to be honest. Her peachy-pale skin is so flawless that it looks as if it might actually be made of pearl nacre and slivers of Grade-A diamond. It’s the same glow that Audrey and Marilyn both seemed to have, in fact, and one that probably owes more to the fact that they’re magical manifestations from down the back of an enchanted Chesterfield rather than a one hundred per cent real deal. Her hair, swept back with its rather touching widow’s peak, is baby-blonde, and her eyes as piercingly blue as they’ve ever been when I’ve seen them on screen. And, just like Audrey and Marilyn, she’s wafting a very real-smelling scent of perfume – something sumptuously floral, in her case, that smells of violets and roses and irises. Fleurissimo by Creed, I suddenly remember, in the way random facts suddenly appear, popping up into your head when you didn’t even know they were there in the first place. The scent made especially for Grace Kelly to wear on her wedding day.
‘Are you one of the girls they assigned to unpack my things?’
‘Huh?’
‘Are you one of the girls,’ she repeats, with that unmistakable New England inflection, all over-emphasized vowels and crisp plosives, ‘they assigned to unpack my things?’ Her manner, now that she’s got over the surprise at seeing me, is polite, but distinctly distant. ‘I don’t know if you’re all maids, or secretaries … really, there are so many staff here, it’s a little overwhelming at present.’
‘I’m … I’m not … staff.’
‘Anyway, I wondered if, by any chance, you’d happened to unpack a prayer book?’ She’s ignored what I’ve just said, and is casting her penetrating gaze around the flat, before it alights on one of my as-yet-unpacked boxes. She glides towards it, the train of her dress swishing across the wooden floor, to peer inside. ‘It’s particularly important to me, you see, and … well, obviously the religious ceremony is in the morning. This is my trial run in the dress, if you like. I never do anything without a proper dress rehearsal!’
‘No. I’m quite sure you don’t.’
She looks up, this time fixing that penetrating gaze on to me. ‘Perhaps it would be better if you looked, rather than me? I don’t want to risk damaging the dress.’
‘God, no … I mean, it’s priceless. Iconic.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Just that,’ I swallow, hard, ‘generations of women use it as a kind of Holy Grail of wedding dresses. The acme. The zenith. The … er …’
‘Well, I haven’t even worn it out in public yet!’ She gives a brisk but rather nervous laugh. ‘I know there’s been all kinds of fevered speculation, but I rather think all those generations of women had better reserve judgement until they actually set eyes on it. Don’t you?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Golly,’ she goes on, with a little shiver, ‘it’s chilly up here! I shouldn’t have come in here at all, really, but I just wanted to know what it feels like to move around in the dress, and the palace is so huge, I took at least two wrong turns … I didn’t exactly plan to end up in an attic storeroom, I can tell you that. But while I’m here, I’d very much like to find that prayer book.’
‘But this isn’t … it’s not an attic storeroom. And it’s not the, er, palace in Monaco, either.’