that the factory in Croatia made for me, and …
I can hear that the front door is opening, and that Elvira and Ben are on their way in. Seeing as this means Elvira must have used her own door key, I’ll have to have a little word with her about privacy as soon as … actually, let’s be honest, I won’t have a word with her about privacy at all. This is her place – well, her father’s, but who’s splitting hairs? – and I’m staying here as close to rent-free as makes no difference. She could tap-dance in unannounced, in the middle of the night, with a marching band playing loud oom-pah-pahs right behind her, and I’d still keep my mouth shut.
‘Libby? You here?’
‘I’m right here, Ben!’ I reply, heading out of the back room and into the as-yet-empty showroom space at the front. ‘Hi! Great to see you both.’
Ben, who I go up to kiss on both cheeks, is looking as immaculate as I’ve ever seen him: sharp suit, open-neck shirt, and a hot pink silk pocket square, just to give the nod to the fact he’s the kind of multimillionaire venture capitalist who invests in fashion businesses rather than anything mundane like steel production or microchip technology. But Elvira … well, she looks positively extraordinary. She’s rocking a tiny paisley kaftan that only just covers her practically non-existent buttocks, Grecian sandals that lace up as far as her equally nonexistent thighs, a Hermès Birkin bag in the crook of one emaciated arm; her silver-blonde hair, in milkmaid plaits, is pushed back from her face with a colossal pair of sunglasses.
‘Elvira!’ I contemplate giving her a kiss too, but her forbidding aura of haughtiness puts me off. ‘Thanks so much, again, for all this.’ I wave a hand around the showroom. ‘Obviously I haven’t really had a chance to think about how I’m going to fit it out, yet, but it’s such a great space, I’m sure it’s going to be—’
‘I need water,’ she says, abruptly, cutting me off and starting to head up the stairs without waiting for an invitation. ‘Do you have flat mineral in the kitchen?’
‘Mineral water? Er … no, only tap. I can pop up the road to the shop, if it would—’
‘No time for that,’ she throws over her shoulder, clearly a woman in the midst of a dehydration emergency. ‘Tap will have to do.’
‘So, Libby, good to see you settled here,’ Ben says. His tone, as ever, is brusque, but I’m used to this by now and know that he (almost always) means kindly enough. ‘It’s a little fancier than … sorry, what’s the name of the place you were living before?’
‘Colliers Wood.’
‘A little fancier than Colliers Wood, huh?’
‘Yes, it’s lovely.’ I pick up my stack of bronze cuffs and the paperwork for my sales figures, and start to follow him up the stairs towards the living room. ‘Thanks, Ben, for getting Elvira to let me have the place.’
‘It’s nothing. Besides, El’s been talking about the idea of you working out of a showroom for months now, right?’
‘Yes, she has. In fact, that was one thing I was really hoping we could speak about today, Ben.’ We reach the living room; Elvira has gone on up to the next floor to source her urgent water from the kitchen. ‘I mean, I love having the showroom too, obviously, and it’s going to be fantastic for meetings with my bespoke clients and stuff … but I suppose what I’m still really hoping for, one day soon, is to actually start up my own shop premises. And I guess I’d really just like to be sure that that’s something you’d be supportive of, as well as the whole showroom thing, when the time—’
‘I thought you’d moved in.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I thought you’d moved in.’ Ben gestures around the living room. ‘Where’s all your stuff?’
‘Oh, right! This is all my stuff!’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘No, no, I like to live with … er … a very minimalist aesthetic …’
‘You’re kidding,’ Ben repeats. He nods in the direction of the Chesterfield. ‘I mean, is that old thing part of your minimalist aesthetic?’
‘Well, no, but I like to mix minimalism with … vintage quirkiness.’
‘That’s vintage quirk, all right.’ Ben wanders over and peers, gingerly, at the sofa. ‘It doesn’t have mice, or anything, does it?’
I’m offended, on behalf of the Chesterfield, that this is the second time today someone has implied there are things living in it.
Or, more accurately, offended that it’s the second time someone has implied there are creepy-crawly, rodenty things living in it.
As opposed to the actual things living in it. Which are – and I’ll keep this ever so brief, because it makes me sound nuts, no matter how I put it – Hollywood screen legends.
And, to be honest, I don’t really think they live in the sofa, as such. It’s more just that they appear from it. Because the sofa itself is … magical? I mean, this is the best – in fact, pretty much the only – explanation I’ve been able to come up with myself.
I said I’d sound nuts, OK? But there’s honestly no other way for me to explain it.
‘No, it doesn’t have mice! Anyway, Ben, as I was saying, I’m really glad we’ve got this opportunity to have a bit of a chat about things, because—’
‘What’s going on down here?’ Elvira demands, as she reappears at the bottom of the stairs, having come down from the kitchen. ‘What are you two talking about?’
‘Well, I was just saying—’
‘I was asking Libby if she has mice in this old couch,’ Ben says. ‘I mean, did you ever see anything like it?’
‘I didn’t.’ Elvira gazes at the Chesterfield. ‘God, I kind of love it.’
I’m astonished by this. ‘Really? Everybody else I know hates it.’
‘Oh, well, nobody knows anything about vintage furniture, darling. Not unless they have an eye for this sort of thing.’
Her tone suggests that she herself does have an eye which, to be fair, she does, if that extraordinary feature in Elle Decor was anything to go by.
‘It’s an old film-set prop, actually,’ I say, relieved to have found something to bond with Elvira over, after months of our uncomfortable alliance. ‘From Pinewood Studios.’
‘No.’ Her eyebrows shoot upwards. ‘How did you get hold of something like that?’
‘I used to be an actress,’ I say, before adding, swiftly, ‘well, just an extra, really. But I was working on a show at Pinewood a couple of years ago when I first moved into my old flat, and a – uh – friend of mine who worked there too had an arrangement with the guy who ran the props warehouse. Anything they didn’t really want any more was fair game to take away.’
‘And nobody else wanted this?’ Elvira puts her Birkin down on one of the sofa’s
