A Night In With Audrey Hepburn

And we all do weird things for comfort, don’t we? Some people eat entire tubs of Phish Food ice cream. Some people have kinky sex with complete strangers. So it’s pretty harmless, surely, that I occasionally like to zone out with an imaginary shopping trip, or afternoon tea, or night out dancing, in the company of the delightful Miss Hepburn?

My phone pings with another text from Nora: Please Libby for love of all that is holy don’t tell me you’re just going to string beads and watch back-to-back Audrey Hepburn films in your PJs all night. If u wanted to do that u could have stayed living in old bedroom with your mother.

Damn and blast her.

No intention of anything of sort, I text Nora back. Am planning productive evening of unpacking, sorting out, and then might spend five mins on Amazon looking up best cookbook to buy for delicious stew-making.

Which is met with total silence, either because she’s been called away to a life-threatening medical emergency or because she just doesn’t believe me.

Anyway, I need to hop back on the tube now and make my way to Colliers Wood, because it’s time for me to pick up the keys to my brand-new, grown-up, very own home.

*

The shops in the little parade beneath my new flat are an eclectic mix, with one unifying theme.

BOGDAN’S TV REPAIRZ

BOGDAN’S DIY SUPPLIEZ

BOGDAN’S CHICKEN ’N’ RIBZ

And finally, just in case you started to worry that Bogdan didn’t get quite enough of a good deal on the letter Z from his sign-making people:

BOGDAN’S PIZZA PIZZAZZ!

My particular flat, somewhat unfortunately, is right above this final one. But still, this might have its advantages, because I won’t even have to change out of those pyjamas Nora is being so negative about if I get a sudden craving for pizza, with pizzazz or otherwise, at ten o’clock at night.

And it’s at Pizza Pizzazz that I’m due to collect the keys, where Bogdan the landlord has left them for me.

The keys are handed over to me by a very large, rather frighteningly silent woman (who does not possess, if truth be told, the smallest hint of pizzazz), and I let myself in at the little door outside the pizza parlour before climbing the stairs all the way to the third … no, hang on, I forgot, fourth floor, where there are three doors arranged around a little landing. Which is odd, because I only remember there being two doors. Anyway, mine, Flat F, is on the side closest to the street.

I try to control the little chill of excitement I get as I turn the key in the lock, and …

OK, it’s … well, it’s quite a bit smaller than I remember.

I told you I’d seen rappers’ downstairs loos that were bigger, didn’t I?

I think, actually, that I’ve also seen public conveniences that are bigger.

I step inside, trying to estimate how big it really is (eight feet by ten?) and offset this against how big I remember it (fifteen feet by ten?).

How can it have shrunk by seventy square feet since I first saw it? And – by the looks of things – lost a window and … an entire shower room … at the same time?

Though it’s the very last thing I want to do, I’m going to have to phone the landlord.

He picks up after a couple of rings.

‘Is Bogdan.’

‘Bogdan, hi! It’s Libby Lomax …’

‘You are happy with flat?’

‘Well, that’s the thing, Bogdan, I—’

‘You are liking renovations?’

‘Renovations?’ It’s only now that I notice the smell of fresh paint and the faint hint of sawdust. ‘Um, Bogdan, have you … put up a partition wall, or something?’

‘Well observed, Libby. Am turning one flat into two.’

As I stare around the place now, it’s quite clear that this is exactly what he’s done. Turned one small flat into two tiny ones, taking one of my two windows and my only bathroom with it.

‘You are liking? Is perfect, yes? Is more compact, is more cosy, is more easy to be keeping clean …’

‘But Bogdan—’

‘And you can be recommending next-door flat to friend, perhaps? I am thinking girl friend,’ he adds, for clarity, breathing hotly into his end of the phone. ‘As you will be needing to share bathroom.’

‘Bogdan.’ I try to sound as stern as possible, so he’ll know I’m Not Messing Around. ‘What have you done with the bathroom?’

‘Is only across hallway. Have put it all in new. Is what girls like, yes? New bathroom suite for pampering? For shaving the legs, for taking the bubble bath, for putting on the body lotion …’

I make a mental note to ask Olly to check this bathroom out for hidden cameras before I so much as brush my teeth in there.

‘But the thing is, Bogdan, I’m paying rent for a flat twice the size of this one.’

‘But you are getting brand-new bathroom suite.’

‘A brand-new shared bathroom suite! Across the hallway from a flat you’ve cut in two!’

‘Is chic studio,’ he counters. ‘Is minimalist lifestyle.’

‘But I don’t want a studio!’ I ignore the fact that this place, with its wonky partition wall and its general aroma of sawdust, isn’t even in the region of chic. ‘I wanted a proper flat, Bogdan! With a bedroom and a bathroom.’

‘In Moldova,’ Bogdan tells me, sternly, ‘whole families, with ten children, are living in less than half space than you are getting now.’

Which – if it’s true – makes me feel like the worst kind of spoilt brat.

On the other hand, he would say that, wouldn’t he? He’s the one trying to fob me off with a divvied-up flat.

I mean, look at this place. I’m never going to be able to do any of those things I planned here. Those cosy stew parties, for example: how am I (or how is Olly) going to cook when the kitchen space has been reduced to a tiny corner with a single wall-hung cabinet, a two-ring hob and a mini-fridge? And where are my friends going to fit when they pop round for the evening with bottles of red wine? I may not have hundreds of friends, but right now I’m worried that even letting Nora bring Mark with her is going to be an issue. And it’s even worse than this! I’d almost forgotten about the furniture Olly is bringing round any minute now. Yes, I was very careful about choosing only small pieces, but obviously there was nothing in the props storeroom that was actually doll-sized. The lovely leather armchair I picked out will fit in OK, but only if I abandon any hope of also fitting in the little gate-legged table. And I’d chosen this really nice walnut-wood coffee table, and a small but incredibly useful chest of drawers, and Olly is bringing me an old futon from his own flat …

Where the hell is it all going to go?

‘Bogdan. Look …’

The buzzer goes.