look fabulous. Very chic.’ He casts an admiring glance down at my all-black outfit (cigarette pants, silk top and nipped-in jacket) before reaching up a hand to brush my earrings. ‘And I love these. Hey, are these brand new? From that little-known but amazing online jewellery store, Libby Goes To Hollywood?’
‘They are,’ I say, with a little bow. ‘From the new Marilyn collection.’
He frowns. ‘Named for your mom?’
‘Named for Marilyn Monroe!’
‘Oh. Yeah, that makes a lot more sense.’
The jewellery that I make is Old Hollywood-inspired, you see: a costume version of the sort of thing you might have seen, say, Ava Gardner sporting to the Oscars, or Lauren Bacall wearing in a shoot for Harper’s Bazaar. It’s a Lomax thing, I reluctantly have to admit, this obsession with the movies, whether it’s Grandmother with her Grace Kelly wedding or Dad with His Book and his entire university career. My obsession with the movies comes out, these days, in my jewellery line, and since I started Libby Goes To Hollywood, my flat is piled high with endless, and expensive, coffee-table books featuring beautiful posed on-and off-screen photographs of all my favourite stars. These earrings, which as I just said are from my new ‘Marilyn collection’, were inspired by the glittering chandelier-style ones she wears in that iconic dance scene from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: it’s just that in the Libby Goes To Hollywood version they’re made from silver and vintage Swarovski crystals, and not the Harry Winston diamonds that Marilyn is singing about.
‘I thought I’d better show the bank manager what his money would be going towards,’ I go on. ‘Which will be a huge mistake if he hates them …’
‘He won’t hate them. They’re gorgeous. You’re gorgeous. And you have to remember, Libby: it’s not his money, it’s the bank’s money. And they’re not giving it to you as a form of charity, they’ll be giving it to you as an investment. You don’t need to go into this meeting to get him to like you. Just show him your stuff, show him what you’ve done and what you know you can do, and you won’t have a thing to worry about.’
‘Thanks, Adam. I …’ Can’t say I love him, because we haven’t said that yet. ‘… really, really like that you came here today.’
‘And I really, really like that you liked it.’ He kisses me, swiftly. ‘Good luck, sweetheart … wait. It’s not bad luck to say that, is it? Should I be saying “break a leg”, or something?’
‘That’s only bad luck for actors. And thank God I’m not one of those any more.’
Seriously, thank God. Because if I were still an actress (as I was, shockingly unsuccessfully, until almost a year ago), I wouldn’t now be about to walk up these steps and into a meeting with a bank manager to ask for great wodges of cash – sorry, an investment – to plough into my very own small business.
It’s a big moment.
I watch Adam for a moment or two after he turns away and starts to head towards Olly’s new premises, partly for the simple pleasure of watching such a fine figure of a man stroll away from me, and partly to see if he’s going to ogle the even finer figure of a hot blonde in a tiny skirt who’s just crossed the road to walk ahead of him.
But he doesn’t.
Because, as I need to get to grips with remembering, he’s Adam. Not Dillon. And I’m not with Dillon any more.
Then I turn away myself and head up these steps, trying to feel as go-getting as Adam thinks I am.
I mean, all his American positivity, it’s bound to be rubbing off on me in some way, isn’t it? If I just believe that the meeting will be a rip-roaring success, then it will be.
*
It wasn’t.
A rip-roaring success, that is.
On a sliding scale, with rip-roaring success at one end to abject failure at the other … well, that meeting with Jonathan Hedley, Barclays Business Development Manager, Clapham branch, was quite a lot closer to the latter end of the scale than the former.
All right, so he didn’t actually tell me I wasn’t going to get the small business loan I was applying for. But then he didn’t actually say, out loud, that there was more chance of his bank investing in a factory that makes inflatable dartboards and chocolate teapots.
It doesn’t mean he wasn’t thinking it.
I don’t know if it was an issue with my business plan, or if he didn’t like the Marilyn-inspired earrings, or if he just didn’t like me, but I certainly didn’t walk away from our half-hour meeting with the sense that the eight grand I urgently need will be forthcoming.
And there isn’t any time for me to properly take stock (or even to endlessly replay the meeting over and over in my head, torturing myself with the things I must have said and done wrong), because I came out of the meeting to a series of texts from my sister Cass.
Libby where are you?
Libby I need to talk to you
Libby why are you ignoring me?
Libby this is really unfair, call yourself my big sister, what a joke, I’m always there for you when you need me and now when I really need you for like once in my life you can’t even be bothered to pick up the phone and call me back
Which did press my guilt button quite a bit because, to be entirely fair to Cass, she did send me a couple of really nice supportive text messages while I was on my way to Dad’s wedding (he’s not her dad; we have different fathers).
So of course I picked up the phone and called her back, only to be directed, through a barrage of incoherent sobs, to come straight to her flat in Maida Vale, ‘because everything’s completely shit, Libby, I can’t do this any more!’
I’m not too worried about all the tears and hysterics. Cass has a tendency to overdramatize things. The last time I was summoned to hurtle to her flat, after a nerve-chilling six a.m. phone call, it turned out to be because she’d stubbed her big toe getting out of bed, wasn’t going to be able to make it to her early morning spinning class, and could, apparently, literally feel the fat blobbing itself on to her thighs. There’s no way of knowing what this afternoon’s crisis has been caused by, but it’s not worth ignoring it in the hope that it goes away. It never does. I have a couple of hours before I need to get to my client appointment in Shepherd’s Bush, so I may as well use it profitably by ensuring that my client appointment in Shepherd’s Bush isn’t constantly interrupted by the pinging of my phone, with increasingly furious messages from Cass.
There’s another message pinging through now, as I emerge from the tube at Warwick Avenue.
Popped to nail salon. Meet me there?
Oh, and another one, a moment after this.
Bring coffee?
When I stamp into the nail bar around the corner from her flat ten minutes later, with a frappuccino for her and the cappuccino for me that I
