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