Lucy Holliday 2-Book Collection: A Night In with Audrey Hepburn and A Night In with Marilyn Monroe

‘… reinstated as Extra-terrestrial Spaceship Technician? I’m serious, Libby, I’ll do it. And Vanessa would have to listen to me, because if there aren’t any bacon sandwiches ready at six in the morning the next time that crew is on location, she’ll have a riot on her hands.’

‘That’s really nice of you, Ol, but I don’t want that.’ I don’t add the obvious – that wild horses couldn’t drag me back to work on The Time Guardians after my toe-curling humiliation this morning – but there’s no need to, because I can see that Olly gets it without me having to say anything. ‘I’ll be fine. Job-wise, I mean. I’ve pre-paid the first month’s rent to Bogdan, and I’ll find something new in time to cover next month’s.’

‘Sorry – Bogdan?’

‘Oh, yeah, he’s my new landlord. In fact, that reminds me, Olly, you don’t happen to know what a secret camera in a bathroom might be hidden behind, by any chance?’

‘What?’

‘It’s just that Bogdan seems to have a bit of a thing about girls taking showers and putting on body lotion …’

‘OK, that’s it.’ Looking more than just a little alarmed, now, Olly picks up my jacket from where I’ve hung it on the back of the door, and holds it out for me to put on. ‘You’re coming back to my flat tonight.’

‘No, Olly, seriously, it’s fine. He thinks I’ve got a boyfriend now, anyway.’

‘Who?’

‘Bogdan.’

‘No, I mean, who does he think your boyfriend is?’

‘Oh, well, you, of course. So apologies, Ol, but you’ve just accidentally got stuck with me as an unwanted girlfriend!’ This is getting dangerously close to Mistaken Thing territory, I realise, so I add, hastily, ‘But don’t worry, you can dump me as soon as I’m sure there really aren’t any hidden cameras in the bathroom. Or anywhere else, for that matter.’

Olly turns round for a moment to hang my coat back up on the door, which takes him a lot longer than you’d think, because he keeps fumbling with the loop on the inside of the collar and almost dropping it on the floor.

‘Well, anyway,’ he says, as he eventually succeeds in getting the coat hung and turns back to me, ‘I’m a little bit worried about getting all your furniture in here. The place is quite a bit smaller than I thought it would be.’

‘Yes, that’s what I was trying to tell you earlier. Bogdan’s put that bloody wall up and made one flat into two!’

Olly gazes around the flat for the first time – well, gazes is a bit inaccurate, given that it only takes about three-quarters of a second to look at the place in its tiny entirety – and lets out a whistle.

‘You know, I really don’t think the furniture is going to fit.’

‘Look, can’t we start bringing it up before I start panicking about that?’

‘Lib, there’s no way we can get all that heavy stuff up here by ourselves. Which is why I asked Jesse to meet me here … ah, hang on. That could be a text from him right now.’ He fishes in his jacket pocket, takes out his phone, and nods. ‘Yep. That’s him, on his way from the tube. Look, I’ll go down and meet him, and you can crack …’ He produces, from the paper carrier I’ve only just noticed he brought with him, a bottle of champagne. ‘… this open!’

‘Oh, Olly, you shouldn’t have.’

‘Well, you don’t move into a new flat every day. Not even a chopped-in-half one with a pervert for a landlord.’

I laugh. I can’t help it.

‘My wine glasses are all in the boxes you picked up from Mum’s yesterday, though.’

‘Ah, well, that’s precisely why I brought a few of those boxes in already and left them at the bottom of the stairs. I’ll get Jesse to start bringing them up while I get the van open.’

‘No, no, don’t worry. I’ll come down and get them.’

We tramp all the way down the four flights of stairs together, then he heads off to his van, parked just round the corner apparently, and I start lugging one of my cardboard boxes up to my flat … then go back down to get another … then another …

The last thing I want to do is criticize Olly, not when he’s being so lovely and so helpful, but he and Jesse are taking a bloody long time to start getting this furniture in, aren’t they? I mean, seriously, it’s only a small armchair, a coffee table and a three-drawer plywood chest. If it weren’t for the bulk, I’m sure I’d be able to bring them up by myself.

Still, at least I’ve had the time to get all these boxes up, and I ought to be able to find the glasses in one of them. This one, most likely, that I’ve labelled NESPRESSO MACHINE AND MISC: sounds like it’s where I might have packed my kitchen bits and bobs. I open it up just as I hear a rather out-of-breath voice behind me.

‘I’m telling you, Lib. This isn’t going to fit.’

It’s Olly, who’s coming through the doorway. He’s purple in the face with exertion, his shoulders are straining underneath his T-shirt, and he’s gripping one end of the most enormous sofa I’ve ever seen.

Not only enormous, in fact, but upholstered in some truly terrible apricot-hued rose-patterned fabric that makes it look like a bomb has gone off in the world’s most twee garden centre.

‘Well, it might technically fit,’ an equally purple-faced Jesse grunts, inching through the door with the other end of the sofa, ‘but there’s not going to be much room for anything else.’

‘But this isn’t the sofa I put aside!’

‘What do you mean?’ Olly cranes his head round to look at me.

‘I mean, this isn’t the sofa I put aside! I didn’t put aside a sofa at all, in fact! It was meant to be a leather armchair.’

‘Well, this is the stuff Uncle Brian told us you’d chosen.’

Uncle Brian has made, it appears, a terrible, terrible error.

‘And there isn’t a leather armchair in the van,’ Olly adds. ‘There’s this sofa, and the oak blanket box, and the big mahogany chest of drawers, and …’

‘But I didn’t choose any of those things either! I chose an armchair, and a little walnut coffee table, and a small chest for my clothes.’

‘Walnut coffee table?’ Olly turns back to Jesse. ‘Hang on – where have I seen a walnut coffee table recently?’

‘There was one in the stuff we dropped off with your mum last night, for the Woking Players,’ Jesse says, scratching his head in a manner that suggests he’s not quite cottoned on to what’s happened.

Whereas it’s becoming fairly clear to me that the Woking Players are getting my furniture, and that I am getting the Woking Players’ set-dressing for whatever Noël Coward play or Stephen Sondheim musical they’re performing for the next couple of weeks.

‘I’m really sorry, Lib.’ Olly bends his knees to lower the sofa to the floor, and indicates that Jesse should do the same. I can hardly blame them; it must weigh a tonne. ‘Do you want us just to take it back to the van?’

‘Yes … well, no … I mean, did you bring that futon you mentioned?’

‘Futon …’ Olly looks blank-eyed for a moment, until recognition dawns. He slaps a hand to his head. ‘Shit. I forgot about that.’

‘It’s all right. But you’d better leave the sofa here. I’ve not got anything else to sleep on.’

‘Are you sure? I mean, apart from anything else, it’s a bit … well, up close, it’s pretty pongy.’

‘Sort of—’ Jesse leans down and inhales one of the overstuffed cushions – ‘doggy-smelling.’

He’s right, in one sense: the smell coming up out of the sofa cushions, now that they mention it, is distinctly doggy. More specifically, the smell of a dog that’s been out in the rain all morning and is now drying by a warm radiator, whilst letting out the occasional contented fart. Quite a lot like Olly and Nora’s ancient Labrador, Tilly, who farted her way to the grand old age of seventeen; she died five or six years ago but I can still remember her musty pong. Not to mention that there are deep grooves scratched into the wooden part of the arm on one side, as if the rain-dampened dog had a good old go with its claws on there before heading off to dry.

I stare up at Olly, despair taking hold. ‘Did you really think this was the sofa I’d chosen? You didn’t stop to question it at any point?’