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.’
A perfect eyebrow arches. She looks distinctly unimpressed. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘It isn’t a storeroom,’ I say, firmly. ‘You’re not in Monaco.’
Because this is what I vowed I’d do, the very next time this happened: cut to the chase and try to find out what the hell it is with this sofa. I never had the chance with Audrey – and, to be fair, I spent most of the times I saw her convinced I was talking to my very own brain tumour – and when I broached the subject with Marilyn Monroe she just thought I was telling her I was some kind of psychic … but now that it’s Grace Kelly I’m face to face with, my golden opportunity to dig deeper into this mystery has surely arrived. She’s cool, calm and collected, where Marilyn was daffy, breathless and – mostly – slightly squiffy. Admittedly Grace does seem a bit skittish beneath her ice-princess aura, probably down to the fact that, in her world at least, she’s about to become an actual princess tomorrow, marrying a man – in front of billions – that she doesn’t even know that well. But still. She’s Grace Kelly. She’s smart, astute, and Teflon-strong. If I don’t seize this chance, I know I’ll regret it.
She blinks. ‘I’m sorry … you did say you were English?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Well, because you’re just not making an awful lot of sense. But it can’t be a language barrier … I’ll tell you what: I’ll just try to make my own way back to my room, and call for someone else on the prince’s staff. Then they can find my prayer book, and I can leave you to get on with … well, whatever it is you do here.’ She takes a step towards the door, as if she’s actually going to be able to get out that way. ‘Very pleasant passing the time with you, Miss … I didn’t get your name?’
‘Lomax. Libby Lomax. Look, Gra …’ I stop myself, just in time. ‘Miss Kelly,’ I go on. ‘There’s something you need to understand. Or, more to the point, I suppose, there’s something I need to understand …’ I point a finger towards the Chesterfield. ‘OK, you see that sofa? It’s magical, all right? Now, I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but people – Hollywood stars, to be more accurate – appear out of it. Audrey Hepburn. Marilyn Monroe. And now you.’
Her blue eyes, the colour of the sky on a sunny midwinter day, rest on me. She doesn’t blink.
There’s a rather long silence.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Her crisp plosives are crisper than ever. ‘You are aware,’ she goes on, ‘of what you just said?’
‘I know it sounds … well, absolutely impossible. Crazy. But it isn’t. I promise you. Well, it isn’t impossible. It is pretty crazy. But the sofa is enchanted. I got it from Pinewood film studios, and—’
‘Pinewood?’ Her gaze softens, just for a moment. ‘Is this … some joke of Hitch’s?’
‘Hitch’s?’
‘Alfred Hitchcock. Are you playing out some joke of his? It’s just like him to concoct some bizarre pre-wedding jape, now I come to think of it …’
‘No, no! Nothing of the sort.’
‘… and besides, I know he’s against this marriage in principle. Thinks I’ll never come back to work in Hollywood, now I’m a princess of the realm. Which he’s quite mistaken about,’ she folds her gloved arms across her slender body, ‘by the way. And you can tell him, the next time you see him …’
‘I won’t see him. I don’t know him. Honestly. This isn’t a joke. Everything I’m telling you is real.’
Grace Kelly frowns at me, her smooth forehead creasing. ‘You honestly expect me to believe in an enchanted sofa in the attic?’
‘Again, it isn’t an attic. I live here.’
‘You live in an attic?’ She looks rather alarmed, all of a sudden; her steely composure momentarily fractured. ‘I’m sorry to be so blunt, but … you’re not … some sort of palace lunatic, are you?’
‘No! Of course I’m not.’
‘It’s only that, well, I don’t actually know the prince all that well yet … I mean, obviously we’re very much in love – I’d hardly have agreed to marry him if we weren’t, not even to keep my parents happy …’ She clears her throat before continuing. ‘But one never knows, until one actually starts living with someone, exactly what sort of skeletons they have in their closet. Or in this case, I guess, what sort of lunatics they have in their attic.’ Something else suddenly seems to occur to her, and her bright blue eyes narrow. ‘If you’re making all this up to throw me off the scent because you’re Rainier’s mistress …’
‘Christ, no!’
‘Well, there’s no need to sound so appalled, dear.’ Grace Kelly looks, suddenly, more human than I’ve seen her look thus far. Just for a moment, her shoulders drift from ramrod-straight, and that crease in her forehead deepens. ‘He’s an extremely attractive man! And a prince, of course. I wouldn’t be marrying him otherwise …’ Then she stops. ‘Not that I mean … I’m not marrying him because he’s a prince, of course. I’m marrying him because I love him.’
‘Of course, of course …’
‘It’s just as easy to fall in love with a prince,’ she goes on, somewhat defensively, ‘as it is to love a more ordinary man. Not to mention the fact that … well,
