A Night In With Audrey Hepburn

‘Supper at Selfridges?’ I suggest.

‘Lunch at Liberty’s?’

‘Tea at Tesco’s?’

‘Now, there’s a movie I’d definitely go and see,’ he says, with a bark of delighted laughter.

As we start down the half-billion stairs, I zip up my grey hooded top as far as it will go. This is partly to hide my own delighted smile – because I’m not sure I’ve ever made a boy laugh like that before – and partly because I don’t want anyone in the café to choke on their smoothie when a thirteen-year-old girl wanders in wearing an egg-yolk-yellow dirndl.

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Everyone on set is looking suspiciously gorgeous this morning.

The catering bus is filling up quickly on our location shoot near King’s Cross this morning, with crew members already on their second (or third) bacon roll of the morning, and actors and actresses sipping, piously, at large mugs of tea and honey. All over the bus, people are looking as if they’re off for a Big Night Out. There are freshly blow-dried hairdos, newly fake-tanned legs, and more layers of mascara than you can shake a stick at. Everybody looks stunning.

And then there’s me.

Today is myfirst day in my brand-new speaking role, after months of being a random, silent extra.

Unfortunately, the role I’m playing is Warty Alien. So this morning I’m wearing the most grotesque costume you’ve ever seen in all your life.

I give it one last go with Frankie the Wardrobe assistant as she passes by my table now, just to see if there might have been some sort of mistake.

‘You’re absolutely sure,’ I say, ‘that I’m down on your list as Warty Alien? I mean, there couldn’t have been a spelling mistake? And it isn’t meant to be … I don’t know … Party Alien?’

See, that couldn’t be too bad. Especially if I could wear one of the alien costumes like my sister Cass wears, in her starring role as one of the Cat People. They’re actually quite sexy – skintight silvery bodysuit, mysterious eye mask, high-heeled knee boots – and even if I had to accessorize it, as Party Alien, with, say, a silly paper hat and a hula skirt, I’d still look halfway decent. Especially if I had to wear a hula skirt, in fact, because it would hide whatever horrors the silvery bodysuit would reveal in the bum region. Two birds, one stone!

‘Sorry, Libby. There’s no spelling mistake. Anyway, the part’s not actually called Warty Alien, you know. You’re down on my list as—’ Frankie glances down at the notepad she never lets more than two inches from her sight – ‘Extra-Terrestrial Spaceship Technician.’

(This basically means that I’m playing an alien version of a Kwik Fit mechanic, and explains why my one and only line – my Big Break! On National Television! – is: ‘But fixing the docking module could take days, Captain, maybe even weeks.’Look, I never said it was a good line.)

‘OK, then,’ I say, desperately, ‘are you sure this is definitely the costume the Extra-Terrestrial Spaceship Technician is supposed to wear?’

‘Well, you’re more than welcome to query that with the Obergruppenführer. Because if there had been any kind of an error, it would be her mistake.’

The Obergruppenführer, otherwise (just not very often) known as Vanessa, is the production manager. It’s probably obvious, from her nickname, that she’s not the sort of person you want to accuse of making mistakes. Particularly not when you’re a lowly extra on a surprise hit TV show, with literally thousands of out-of-work actors ready to kill their own grandmothers to take your job instead.

‘Anyway, I don’t know why you’re complaining,’ Frankie adds, over her shoulder, as she sashays in impractical four-inch heels to the bus’s exit. ‘In technical terms, that costume is a work of art, you know.’

I stare down at the vomit-green latex suit I’ve been sweating into since seven o’clock this morning and pick up the separate alien head that’s sitting on the chair beside me. The head features one particularly giant pustule, right in between the eyes. It doesn’t look like a work of art.

‘God, Libby, is that your costume?’

It’s Cass, squeezing into the seat opposite me.

And I mean literally squeezing, because she’s some-how managed to inflate her already fulsome cleavage by another couple of cup sizes, and given herself the biggest blow-dry this side of Texas. She’s not changed into her Cat Person costume yet, so the eye-popping cleavage is (barely) contained by a teeny pink hoodie with the zip pulled scandalously low, and I’m quite sure she’s teamed this, as she always does when she’s all out to impress, with either an equally teeny pair of denim cut-offs, or a sassy towelling micro-skirt.

(We’re half-sisters, by the way. Different dads. Even though the irony is that actually, my dad is the better looking out of the two: her dad, Michael, is a nice-but-nerdy geologist while my dad is as handsome as he is an utter waste of good oxygen. Anyway, Cass is quite definitively the better-looking out of us two: blonde, blue-eyed and curvy while my hair and eyes are from an uninspired palette of browns, my bosom is very nearly non-existent, and the only reason you’d ever call me ‘curvy’ is because I have a sturdy bottom half that’s seemingly impervious to all forms of exercise.)

‘Yes, it’s my costume,’ I tell Cass, with as much dignity as I can scrape together under the circumstances. ‘It’s a technical work of art, as a matter of fact.’

But Cass has already lost interest. ‘So, do I look OK? Do I look better than Melody? Do you think he’s going to notice me?’

Melody is the lead actress on our (sci-fi, if you hadn’t already guessed) TV show, The Time Guardians.

The he that Cass is referring to is Dillon O’Hara, our brand-new star. Whose first day on set it is today and who – in case you were starting to wonder – is the reason that everybody has turned up to work this morning in their Saturday Night Best.

‘I’m sure he’ll notice you, Cass. You look very eye-catching.’

‘You’re sure? Because you do know, don’t you, the kind of girls Dillon normally goes out with?’ To back up her point, Cass rifles in her bag for this week’s copy of Grazia magazine, puts it down on the table next to the script I was given this morning, and jabs a manicured finger at the front cover. ‘That’s the competition.’

It’s a paparazzi shot of a blonde Victoria’s Secret model – I can’t remember her name, but she’s platinum blonde and buxom, with legs roughly a mile high – exiting a nightclub with Mr O’Hara.

I hate myself for thinking it, given that the wretched man is keeping an entire cast and crew waiting for him on location this morning while he decides if he can be bothered to show up or not. But he’s annoyingly gorgeous. If you happen to be a fan, that is, of ripped torsos, muscular shoulders and angelic cheekbones. His hair is sooty black, his eyes almost match, and he’s stocky and well muscled in a way that implies not so much a life spent pumping iron while gazing into a gym mirror, but long teenage summers spent working on building sites. Shirtless, probably. Getting an all-over tan on that ripped torso …

‘Rhea Haverstock-Harley,’ Cass spits, gazing at the Victoria’s Secret model with loathing. ‘You know she won Hottest Woman in the Stratosphere again in Made Man magazine’s Hundred Hottest list this year?’

Oh, well, now Cass has reminded me of the name, I do, vaguely, know this. And I also recall that, in a (deliberate? publicity-seeking?) echo of the whole Naomi-Campbell-throwing episode, this double-barrelled Rhea girl got in pretty big trouble a few years ago for hitting her hairdresser with her phone. Which, now that I’ve remembered it, has sort of put me off Dillon O’Hara a bit, even though I don’t think he was going out with her at the time.

‘Oh, Made Man,’ I scoff, with a practised air. (Cass didn’t make the top 100 in the most recent poll. I’ve not quite recovered, yet, from the sobbing 3 a.m. phone calls I received from her last week, four nights in a row.) ‘What do they know? And anyway, there’s more to life than just being leered at in your bra by a bunch of drooling pervs, you know.’

‘You’re so right, Lib. I’m going to show them all tomorrow night, by the way.’

(Tomorrow night is the Made Man party celebrating their pathetic poll, and Cass is attending. She may not be Top 100 material, but she’s pert and blonde and on TV, which is evidently quite enough for an invite.)

‘That’s the spirit, Cass!’ I undo one of my Warty Alien gloves, reach across the table and pat her on the hand. ‘You show them all!’

‘That’s why I bought the dress I’m going to wear. It’s got a massively plunging neckline, and it’s totally sheer down the back, so you can sort of see my bum – but through the lace, so it’s really classy.’

‘Cass, no, that isn’t what I meant by show them all …’

‘And I’ll need you to alter that ruby pendant thingy. It’ll look amazing with the dress, but remember I said I’d prefer it longer, so the ruby bit dangles right down into the top of my cleavage.’

That ruby pendant thingy is actually a garnet necklace I made for Cass’s twenty-fifth birthday; painstakingly crafted, to be more accurate, from a gorgeous garnet cabochon (garnet being her birthstone) and a vintage Swarovski-crystal teardrop charm, both hanging from a gold-plated chain that I customized with teeny-tiny garnet-coloured crystals at intervals along the length. Pendant-making may only be a hobby, but I did put a fair amount of work into this particular one, and the chain was so expensive that I could only afford to make it an eighteen-inch pendant (sitting elegantly against Cass’s collarbones) rather than a twenty-four-inch one (nestling brassily between her breasts).

‘I can’t make it any longer,’ I tell her. ‘I don’t have a replacement chain.’

‘Well, bung the ruby bit on the end of a bit of ribbon, or something,’ Cass says, airily unconcerned about compromising the artistic integrity of my creation. ‘I just need it to draw maximum attention to my boobs.’

‘I don’t think you’ll need a necklace to do that.’

‘No, Libby.’ She looks very serious. ‘I really have to pull out all the stops if I’m going to stand a chance up against Rhea Haverstock-Harley.’

‘Surely,’ I say, feeling a bit like whatshisname standing in the sea, telling the tide to go back, ‘you shouldn’t really be in hot pursuit of Dillon O’Hara anyway, Cass. If he has a girlfriend, that is. Not to mention the fact that you have a boyfriend of your own.’

His name is David, apparently. I say ‘apparently’ because Cass hasn’t introduced him to either me or Mum yet. All I know about him is that he’s a ‘talent manager’ for a big showbiz agency, so it’s perfectly possible that he’s covered from head to toe in huge warts, just like my costume, but oozing real pus – and Cass would still be perfectly happy dating him.

‘David isn’t my boyfriend. We’re just seeing each other.’ She emits a sigh of exasperation, as she always does when I don’t just happily spout whatever it is she wants to hear. ‘You’re no use, Cass. I’m going to text a selfie to Mum, see if she thinks I should change into something a bit sexier.’