A Night In With Grace Kelly

And, to be honest, it’s not the worst thing in the world to pretend that all this empty space is a Design Statement rather than a mundane necessity. In half an hour’s time my investor, Ben, who’s just flown into London for a couple of days, is dropping round for a meeting. Bringing his BFF Elvira with him.

Elvira being Elvira Roberts-Hoare: ex-model, bohemian aristocrat, Ben’s chief talent scout and also, as of yesterday, my brand-new landlord.

I mean, her own flat, just a short distance away in South Kensington, is practically a museum to her incredible vintage fashion archive, with Ferragamo shoes displayed in a custom-made Perspex sideboard and Alexander McQueen scarves draped artfully over the soft furnishings. I know this not because I’ve ever been invited, obviously, but because I saw it in all its glory in a recent issue of Elle Decor magazine. My own attempts at turning this gorgeous flat into something worthy of Elle Decor are being seriously hampered by the fact that I don’t have an incredible vintage fashion archive to display like artwork. And, even if I did, it would be let down by my crappy and – as I’ve already said – paltry furnishings: a futon, an IKEA wardrobe, a glass coffee table and – last but absolutely not least – a huge and ancient Chesterfield sofa upholstered in apricot-coloured rose fabric and smelling of damp dog.

Actually, now that I look at it, the mere presence of the Chesterfield, in all its chintzy, overblown glory, is a bit of a strike against my claims that I’m deliberately styling this place in a minimalist fashion.

Though I’m also being hamstrung by the fact that my sister Cass showed up ten minutes ago and is somehow, in her own inimitable way, cluttering up the place. Handbag slung on the floor, tea sloshing out of her mug, and just generally sort of filling the room up with herself.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ she’s shrieking now, peering down at her phone, and splashing yet more tea on the floor beside her. ‘Zoltan’s ex has been speaking to the Mirror. It’s all over their website.’

This, by the way, is the latest in the long-running series of Massive Dramas that make up Cass’s lifehsq. A week ago, my little sister was outed for the three-month-long affair she’s been having with a Premiership footballer. A married Premiership footballer, to be more precise. And while I may be wearily familiar with her nasty little habit of getting involved with married men, this particular married man’s wife was not. The whole thing came as such a horrible shock to the poor woman, in fact, that she bodily threw her cheating scumbag of a husband out of their home and went on a rant on Mumsnet – a rant that was then picked up by the Daily Mail … The rest, as they say, is history.

It’s even made its sordid way into this week’s OK! magazine, a copy of which Cass brandished at me, with something disturbingly close to triumph, when she showed up at my door. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure that triumphantly brandishing a copy of OK! was the reason she showed up at my door in the first place. It certainly wasn’t to help me get my flat ready for my impending visitors.

‘I don’t know if it’s all that fair, Cass,’ I say, ‘for you to be the one talking about having no shame.’

Though frankly I don’t know why I bother continuing to express my disapproval over Cass’s extramarital shenanigans. It’s not like she’s paid the slightest bit of attention to me at any other time in the last three years. Her relationship with Zoltan – a Charlton Athletic defender and member of Bulgaria’s national team – is coming hot on the heels of her last married boyfriend, Vile Dave. (I called him Vile Dave, by the way, in my head; it wasn’t like that was actually his name, or anything.)

And, as I expected, she ignores me.

‘Isn’t there anyone I can complain to?’ she asks, dramatically. ‘Some sort of – I don’t know – union, or something?’

‘A union for women who’ve been sleeping with other women’s husbands?’

‘No!’ she says. ‘I meant someone to complain to about the constant press intrusion!’ Then she thinks about this for a moment. ‘Is there a union for women who’ve been sleeping with other women’s husbands, though? Because even if my situation is a bit unusual, me being a celebrity, and all that … if there was somewhere I could get some expert advice …?’

My sister (half-sister, if we’re being really specific, and on occasions like this, I have to say, I find myself emphasizing the half part) has her own reality TV show, Considering Cassidy. Hence her ‘celebrity’ status. Hence, I guess, the reason she’s made it into a quarter-page snippet in the OK! that’s now lying on my coffee table, with Prince Albert of Monaco and his lovely blonde wife Charlene smiling rather fixedly at me from the cover.

‘I honestly don’t think there’s a union for that, Cass,’ I say, firmly. ‘Now, look, if you don’t mind, lovely though it is for you to have dropped round to see my new flat …’

‘Oh, well done, Libby,’ she pouts, with a swish of her hair and another swill of her tea everywhere. ‘Nice way to drop your swanky new Notting Hill pad into the conversation.’

‘I wasn’t doing anything of the sort! Besides, it’s not my swanky new Notting Hill pad.’ I feel the need to point this out to Cass, partly because it all still feels a bit surreal to me myself. ‘I’m only living here because I’m renting the studio below.’

And because, despite the extremely hefty discount Elvira Roberts-Hoare is giving me on the rent of the ground-floor studio that Ben wanted me to start working out of – the posh address and upmarket surroundings making it ideal to use as a showroom – I still can’t afford to pay that and to rent somewhere else to actually live in as well.

But still, Cass is right about one thing. This side street, a little to the north of Notting Hill, is a hell of a lot swankier than anywhere else I’ve ever lived. And this flat is a hell of a lot swankier, too: a bit jumbled-up, with the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom crammed up on the top floor and this, the living room, here in the middle, but I’m never going to complain about that. I’m living here, in a particularly gorgeous bit of Zone One, pretty much for free. Sure, I have no security on the place, and Elvira can throw me out tomorrow if she decides to find a new, proper tenant, but it’s worth it for the sheer joy of living somewhere – anywhere – that doesn’t rumble every time a tube train passes underneath it and doesn’t have eye-wateringly pungent aromas wafting up from the takeaways below.

For the sheer joy of living and working somewhere this … fabulous.

‘You know, I had a personal trainer that worked in a private gym on this same road a couple of years ago, when I was getting in shape for Strictly. Or rather,’ Cass adds, bitterly, ‘when Mum led me to believe that I was in with a shot of getting Strictly.’ She’s perched her perfectly plump posterior on the arm of my Chesterfield. ‘I should probably go and start training there again and get in amazing shape, if I’m going to end up splashed all over the tabloids every five minutes.’

‘I’m sure they’ll lose interest soon,’ I say.

‘God, I hope so,’ she says, unconvincingly. ‘I mean, sure, in the olden days, I’ve never minded press intrusion. But this is different. My priorities are different now. I’m a mother.’

‘Cass. You’re not a mother.’

‘I am! I mean, Zoltan has two children, you know! Daughters! And if I end up marrying him …’

‘You’ve only been with him three months!’

‘… I’ll be their brand-new stepmother. Which, obviously, is going to be amazing. I mean, I’ve wanted to be a mother for, like, soooo long …’

I stop trying to arrange the sinfully expensive flowers I bought from a posh shop up the road, and stare at her. ‘Really?’

‘… but this way, I get to do the fun part without having to go through all the really shit stuff, too. You know, getting fat, and all that.’

‘Pregnant, Cass. Not fat. Pregnant.’

‘Well, you say that, Libby, but when I saw those christening photos of Nora, she looked absolutely massive! And that was, like, at least two months after she’d had the baby, right?’

‘It was four months,’ I say, defensively, because the Nora of whom Cass is speaking is my best friend of almost twenty years. I was the chief bridesmaid at her wedding last summer. I’m godmother to her eight-month-old daughter, Clara, for Christ’s sake. ‘And she didn’t look fat, she looked amazing.’

‘Yeah, well, either way, I’m not going to take the risk. Anyway, it’s not just the getting-fat thing. Little children cry, and they make a mess of stuff, and you’re really tired at night so you only get to have sex, like, three times a week and stuff … But then they get to, like, six, or nine or … well, whatever age Zoltan’s kids are … well, they’re just super-easy by then! You just hang out, and do really cute mother-daughter stuff like … talk about whatever boy bands they fancy, and …’ Inspiration clearly runs dry for a moment. ‘I don’t know … go for spa days?’

‘I don’t think nine year olds are really into spa days, to be honest with you.’

‘Well, I was. I had a lovely spa weekend with Mum for my ninth birthday!’

‘When I was thirteen …? I don’t remember us going to a spa with Mum that young.’

‘Oh, it was probably a weekend when you were at your dad’s, or something … Hey, I remember now! I think we told you she was taking me to an audition for Doctor Who.’

‘I remember that!’ Especially as I was no longer a regular weekend guest at my dad’s by then, which still didn’t stop him leaving me home alone with a box-set of Humphrey Bogart videos so that he could go out with some new girlfriend all afternoon on Saturday and most of Sunday. I made cheese sandwiches (partly because that was all I knew how to make and partly because cheese and bread was all there was in the flat) and fell asleep on the floor in front of the TV because there was a creepy old walk-in closet in the spare room and I was too scared to sleep there in case someone was hiding in it and crept out of it in the middle of the night. ‘Anyway, look, Cass, can we talk about all this – your, er, new role as a stepmother – another time, please?’

‘Why? You’re not busy, are you?’

‘Yes!’ Has she completely missed everything I’ve been doing while she’s been wittering on? ‘I’ve told you! Ben and Elvira are getting here for a meeting any minute now!’

‘Oh, yeah, right. Though you do know, don’t you, that there’s nothing you can really do, right now, to make the place look decent enough to impress Elvira Thingy-Doodah?’ Cass casts a disparaging glance around the room, then wrinkles her nose as she peers down at the sofa. ‘God, Libby, are you still so hard up that you can’t afford something a bit better than this? You could get one for literally a hundred and fifty quid at IKEA!’

‘I know. I like this one.’

She pulls a face. ‘Then I can’t help you. Anyway, you’re the one who has to convince this Elvira woman that you’re not about to infest her entire apartment with bedbugs, or whatever the hell is lurking in here.’

‘Nothing’s lurking in there,’ I say. ‘Bedbugs or … anyone else.’

‘Anything.’

‘Right. Yes. Of course. But seriously, Cass, I do need to get ready …’

‘Fine. I’ll go.’ She gets to her feet, tottering a bit on the five-inch heels that she considers mandatory for an average day out and about. ‘I’ve got to get to the hospital to see Mum.’

Early this morning, Mum had her gallstones out at a private hospital near Harley Street. No, scratch that: she had minor cosmetic surgery. Or rather, this is what she’s insisting on telling people, because gallstones are far too unglamorous a condition for my mother. She’d rather everyone thought she was having a face-lift or a nose job, evidently, than that they knew she had ugly old gallstones rattling around inside her.

As far as I knew, she’d banned me and Cass from visiting until tomorrow, when she’d be feeling sufficiently recovered to drape a bed jacket over her shoulders and hold court. But apparently Cass is exempt from this condition.