style="font-size:15px;"> But you can’t, you absolutely cannot, fake the way your eyes look at people. You can’t fake the light in them, the life in them. Nobody could fake that expression she’s fixing on me right now, the expression with which Audrey Hepburn has stared out at me from the screen the countless times I’ve watched her movies.
So really, there are only two explanations, as far as I can see it.
Either this is the ghost of Audrey Hepburn, paying me a visit like something out of a Charles Dickens novel; or I’m the one suffering, for some worrying reason, from borderline-psychotic delusions, and this whole encounter is nothing more than a vivid product of my own imagination.
Thing is, I don’t believe in ghosts.
‘I suppose … I mean, I have had a very stressful day …’
‘Have you, darling?’ She pats me kindly on the shoulder, although her full attention is still being held by the Nespresso machine. ‘Ooooh, I tell you what – we could make ourselves a delicious coffee and you could tell me all about it!’
‘A coffee … actually, that’s a good idea.’
In fact, it occurs to me now that – seeing as I haven’t eaten or drunk anything (except those swigs of wine) since this morning – a hot, sugary cup of coffee would actually be a very good idea. I never did get that cup of tea Dillon was going on about.
So this is probably all just delayed shock! Combined, possibly, with some seriously low blood sugar. As soon as I’ve got something into my system, I’ll be as right as rain! This (admittedly incredibly vivid) hallucination will fade away, and I can go back to watching a celluloid Audrey on my iPad again. Instead of watching this real-looking Audrey, standing in my flat, surreally oohing and aahing over a Nespresso machine.
‘I’ll just find the pods.’ I head for the box she’s just been rootling in and start to look for the complimentary box of coffee pods that came with the machine.
‘Pods?’
‘Yes, the machine needs pods. They should be in here somewhere … a whole box of them …’
But they’re not. There are lots of other things – three boxes of energy-saving light bulbs: what on earth am I doing with those?; an old leather-covered Roberts radio that I’m fairly sure has been broken since my horrible ex-boyfriend Daniel spilled red wine all over it whilst lecturing me on post-structuralist philosophy; a few random espresso cups and saucers that aren’t going to be much use to us unless we can actually make any espressos, and a pair of (what I think must be Mum’s) orange kitchen scissors – but no coffee pods.
‘I don’t understand it. I must have packed them when I packed the machine!’
‘Diana, really, it’s quite all right, we can just—’
‘My name’s not Diana,’ I say, tersely, pulling another box towards me, ripping off the masking tape, and delving in. ‘I know I already said I wasn’t a princess, but my name’s not Diana either. It’s Libby. Libby Lomax.’
‘I see,’ Audrey Hepburn says, though in a rather confused voice, as if she doesn’t see at all. ‘Well … Libby – let’s not trouble ourselves with coffee after all, shall we? It does seem to be … upsetting you rather.’
‘It’s not upsetting me!’ Though as I say this I realize, to my surprise, that I’ve got warm tears spilling out of my eyes and down my cheeks. ‘Sorry,’ I sniffle, wiping my nose with the back of my hand, which drags a long line of damp snot, attractively, from my nostrils to my jawline. This, you see, is why I haven’t cried in front of anyone for the past sixteen years. ‘This is all just a bit overwhelming.’
‘Oh, but of course it is!’ she cries. ‘Unpacking is awfully stressful at the best of times, especially when one can’t find the … what did you call them? Coffee pods?’
‘That’s not what I meant. It’s you. Chatting with you like this … It’s exactly the sort of thing I’ve always dreamed about, and now that it’s actually happening – even if it isn’t, really, not outside my own head, I mean – it’s all going wrong.’
Audrey Hepburn doesn’t say anything; she simply takes me by one elbow, pulls me gently to my feet, and helps me over to the Chesterfield. Then she settles me down amongst the voluminous cushions, plumping them around me rather expertly, and managing only the merest wrinkle of the nose when the doggy smell hits her full in her beautiful face.
‘There!’ she says, as delightfully as ever. ‘Now, isn’t that already a bit better?’
‘Of course it fucking isn’t!’
OK, I didn’t mean to actually yell. Or swear. You don’t shout obscenities at Audrey Hepburn, for Christ’s sake. Not even one you’ve accidentally hallucinated.
But I don’t seem to be able to stop myself, now that the floodgates have opened.
‘How can anything possibly be a bit better, sitting on this joke of a sofa? In this joke of a flat? After my joke of a day?’ I stop myself before I can add in the middle of my joke of a life, because that feels way, way too close to the bone, and will almost certainly result in me starting to sob uncontrollably, quite possibly whilst also rocking back and forth and hugging my knees. ‘And now even my subconscious is playing jokes on me!’
‘Your subconscious?’
‘You and I were supposed to window-shop on Fifth Avenue! We were supposed to drink champagne in Paris! But oh, no – we’re here in my horrible little flat, sitting on a sofa that smells like a mouldering Alsatian, and with nothing to sustain us but a Nespresso machine. Unless we pop down the stairs to one of Bogdan’s takeaways, that is, for some chicken and ribs and deep-pan pizza.’
Audrey Hepburn turns rather pale. ‘Actually, darling, I’m perfectly happy without anything to eat.’
‘It’s just that nothing is going anything like it was supposed to.’
‘Oh, darling. Nothing ever goes how it was supposed to go.’ She sits down on the cushion next to mine and – seemingly from nowhere – produces a lit cigarette. She pops it into her cigarette holder and takes an extremely elegant little draw on it before continuing. ‘You know, the first time I met Cary Grant, I spilled an entire bottle of wine all over him.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘I did. Red wine. And he was wearing a cream suit.’
Even though I’m fairly convinced that she – that my subconscious, I mean – is making this up in order to make me feel better, I still think I can top this one. I point at her cigarette.
‘I set fire to my own hair with one of those today. While I was talking to the best-looking man on the planet. Who, by the way, is probably making wild, passionate, gravity-defying love to my sister right at this very moment.’
Audrey Hepburn almost drops her cigarette. Her feline eyes widen in horror. ‘Your sister is in bed with Gregory Peck?’
‘What? No, no! Jesus, no! The best-looking man I’ve ever met in real life, I mean.’
‘Oh,
