A Night In With Marilyn Monroe

Like I say, it’s only been eight weeks. But I really think I might actually be falling in love with Adam already.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that a) I’m an incurable romantic and b) my standards are embarrassingly low. I mean, if you’re the sort of girl who’s constantly being showered in dozens of red roses just because it’s Tuesday, or whisked away to five-star luxury in the Italian lakes before being proposed to on a gondola, in Venice, at sunset, then my reason for suddenly realizing that Adam might be The One is going to seem a bit … silly.

But then, they do say that it’s the little things that make a relationship go the distance. The offer to dash to the shop at eight a.m. on a drizzly Sunday morning to pick up milk for a cup of tea. The random text message in the middle of a stressful day that tells you how great you make someone feel. The surprise scrawl, at the bottom of the tedious weekly shopping list, that simply announces Thinking about you.

My new boyfriend turning up to meet me outside my Very Important Meeting, bringing a Pret espresso and a packet of yogurt-covered raisins, is exactly this sort of ‘little thing’.

So yes, it’s not red roses, and it’s a long way from Venice at sunset, but it’s thoughtful, and lovely, and it matters.

‘You really, really shouldn’t have,’ I tell Adam, wrapping my arms round him and giving him a kiss. ‘You’re so busy. And your flight only got in two hours ago.’

‘I slept loads on the plane. I’m fresh as a daisy.’ The expression, in his Brooklyn accent, sounds as incongruous as it sounds sweet.

He’s probably not fibbing about this: he works for a swanky investment fund, and today’s flight, back to London from New York, is bound to have been one of the business-class variety. Unlike my mere hour’s flight back from Glasgow last night which, though brief, was of the Ryanair variety: cramped, hectic and a bit like finding yourself in a thirty-five-thousand-feet-high tin of sardines. And Adam does, in fact, look fresh as a daisy: impeccably dressed as ever in his crisp blue shirt and rumple-free grey suit, not a single dark hair out of place. To look at him now, lean and tanned and bright-eyed, you’d think that instead of just stepping off a seven-hour flight, he’d stepped out of a salon.

‘Anyway, it’s right around the corner from my office,’ he goes on.

‘Your office is in Mayfair. This –’ I gesture around at the slightly unlovely street we’re standing on – ‘is Clapham. Now, I know distance is nothing to you Americans, but I wouldn’t say this was just around the corner.’

‘So I’ll drop in on Olly while I’m over here. See how everything’s going at the restaurant.’

Even though Olly is very definitely the proprietor of his brand-new restaurant, most of the money is being supplied by Adam’s investment company. It’s how I met Adam, in fact. He was at Olly’s brand-new premises, the day after the builders started a little over two months ago, and I dropped in with a bottle of champagne. We got to chatting, and then he walked me to the tube … and, eight weeks later, here we are. Proud owners of a fully functioning, mature, adult relationship.

‘Anyway,’ Adam goes on now, fondly pushing a stray lock of hair behind my ear. (At least, I think it’s fond. I can’t help harbouring the suspicion that my hair, the opposite of his own neat, never-a-strand-out-of-place locks, drives him slightly nuts.) ‘I know what a big deal this meeting is for you, Libby. I just wanted you to realize that I’m cheering you on.’

‘You’re lovely. Thank you.’

‘Not to mention that I expect you were up until the small hours polishing up your business plan …’

He’s half right. I did stayup late after I got home last night after the wedding, but that wasn’t so much because I was polishing my business plan as panicking about it.

I mean, this is the first time I’ve ever done what I’m about to do – go into a meeting with a bank manager and ask him for a small business loan – and I’ve no idea if what I’ve produced is even remotely good enough. Professional enough.

But then, perhaps that’s the downside of ending up turning a hobby you love into a career you need to make a go of. I started my jewellery design business, Libby Goes To Hollywood, almost a year ago, but I still can’t quite shake the sense that it’s just a bit, well, rude to be walking into a meeting with a perfect stranger and announcing that you’d quite like him to stump up eight thousand pounds – ten if he’s feeling really generous – so that you can carry on living your dream of being a jewellery designer, just with a bit more all-important dosh around so that you can buy better equipment, and maybe even employ an intern to come and work for you so that you can keep up with all the orders.

‘I was up late,’ I tell Adam, lifting a hand to waggle the espresso and yogurt-covered raisins at him. ‘So these are absolutely perfect.’

Which, of course, they are.

I mean, it’s not Adam’s fault that he thinks I drink espresso, or that I’m a person for whom yogurt-covered raisins are the very acme of pre-meeting treats. I might accidentally have implied, on our second or third date, that I was a go-getting, gym-hitting, green-juice-quaffing sort of girl. Just, you know, to keep up with his own go-getting, gym-hitting, green-juice-quaffing ways.

Obviously in an ideal world, it wouldn’t be an espresso, it’d be a cappuccino. And they might be chocolate-covered raisins instead.

OK: in a really, really ideal world, the snack Adam had so thoughtfully brought me wouldn’t have the faintest whiff of raisin about it at all. It’d be those big, chocolate-coated honeycomb bites I’ve recently developed a slightly worrying addiction to, or a good old Yorkie bar, or – seeing as he’s just got off a plane – a massive great Toblerone.

‘Well, I know you’ll sock it to ’em,’ he says, leaning in to give me another big, encouraging squeeze. ‘And I can’t wait to hear absolutely everything about it – oh, and about your dad’s wedding, of course – tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Dinner?’ he says. ‘Tuesday – that Thai place you like?’

‘Er … sure … but I thought we were seeing each other tonight. Weren’t we?’

‘I don’t think so, Libby.’ Adam shakes his head. ‘It’s certainly not down in my schedule.’

‘Oh. It must be my mistake, then. I just thought we were going to meet at your place, and … um … you’d said you were going to cook red snapper and kale.’

‘That does sound oddly specific …’ He frowns. ‘But I have a work dinner this evening, Lib. And I’ve asked the Cadwalladrs to keep Fritz for another evening, which you know I’d never have done if I’d planned to be home at a normal time. I mean, I’ve missed him so much … Lottie’s been sweet, and sent photo messages a few times a day while I’ve been away, but it’s not the same as really being with him. Holding him. Smelling him …’

Fritz, I should probably explain, is Adam’s dog.

A very, very cute dog. And I’m a dog person, through and through, always have been. But still. At the end of the day, just a dog.

It’s just about the only thing I’d change about Adam right now, to be honest. This tendency towards ever-so-slight nuttiness about Fritz the German shepherd puppy.

‘Though, now I think about it, he’s probably missed me horribly … I guess I could blow off the work dinner, head home early for some Fritz time … And red snapper with you, too, Libby, of course.’

‘No, no, don’t worry about it. You should go to your dinner. Better not to unsettle Fritz at, er, his bedtime.’

‘You’re right. He hates that. When I picked him up late from the Cadwalladrs one time after I got back late from Chicago, he was so excited, he didn’t sleep all night, and then of course he was grouchy all the next day, and—’

‘And you and I can have a nice meal tomorrow evening, like you thought we were doing,’ I interrupt, before he can go off on one of his Fritz monologues. Fritz-ologues, I suppose you could call them. ‘I can fill you in on all the details of my meeting and my weekend then.’ Except, of course, I’m not going to fill him in on all that many of the details of Dad’s wedding, because even though we’ve reached the Possible Love stage, I still think we’re a fair way away from me opening up to him about the myriad issues within my family. ‘And talking of my meeting …’

‘You should go, you should go.’ He leans in to kiss me on the forehead. ‘Go get ’em!’

‘Thank you … do I look OK?’

‘You 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 Hollywoodversion 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.’