‘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.
‘You’re seeing her today?’ I ask.
‘Yeah, she asked me to pop along if I was free. Why? Are you not going to make it today at all?’
‘No! I thought she didn’t want us there.’
‘Oh. Well, maybe it was just you she didn’t want there. Or,’ Cass goes on, generously trying to find a way to make this sound less harsh, ‘maybe it was just that she does want me rather than not wanting you, if you see what I mean.’
‘Well, tell her I’ll come along to visit tomorrow, as summonsed,’ I say, pointedly. ‘If she can find the time in her packed schedule to fit me in, that is.’
But Cass isn’t paying that much attention. She’s peering into the mirror by the door and getting her makeup bag out of her handbag to perfect her appearance – a few trowel-loads of blusher, an ocean of lipgloss and a small tidal wave of mascara – just in case she’s papped en route to the hospital, I guess. Then she’s off, with the briefest of waves in my direction, giving me a grand total of ten minutes to put my own makeup on, get into my chosen outfit, and head downstairs to the studio/showroom to assemble the pieces I want to show Ben and Elvira at our meeting.
I mean, it really does have to go well today. It has to.
The thing is that when Ben helicoptered in, this time last year, and put forty grand of his venture-capital firm’s money into my jewellery business, Libby Goes To Hollywood, I couldn’t believe my luck. His money, not to mention his bulging contacts book and business expertise, has turned LGTH from a teeny-tiny, financially strapped entity, with a handful of customers, into a proper little business with a glossy website, all kinds of terrific press, and – sorry, but this still excites me probably most of all – gorgeous swanky packaging, with eau-de-nil and dove-grey boxes stamped with silver lettering and filled with silver tissue paper. These days I can’t keep up with demand for the cheaper pieces I sell on the website, so I’ve outsourced the manufacture of those to a fantastic little artisanal factory in Croatia instead, while I try to concentrate on the design side, and on the manufacture of some of my more intricate pieces. Six months ago I even ended up doing a brief collaboration with the jewellery department at Liberty (the glamorous department store after which, though she’ll claim otherwise, I’m still pretty sure Mum named me) as part of a New Designers’ showcase. Recently there was an entire feature about me in Brides magazine, focusing on the vintage-style bespoke tiaras I’ve made for a few clients. I mean, I’m still small, but I’m growing, and none of it would ever have happened without Ben.
The flip-side of it all, however, is that it can occasionally be … well, a little bit of a fight to retain a hundred per cent of what I guess you might call ‘creative control’. Or, more specifically, the direction the business is heading in. Twelve months ago, I might not have had a crystal-clear plan for it all. I just wanted to make quirky, Old-Hollywood-inspired costume jewellery, at an affordable price – but at least I was still happily meandering in that general direction. Ben, I’m slowly beginning to realize, has slightly different ideas and, in every conversation we’ve had over the last couple of months, he has been pushing me towards scaling back the cheaper end and concentrating on expensive, bespoke orders. Admittedly the margins are higher on these, but I have a suspicion that his reasoning is also motivated by the fact that he has other designers making more mass-market jewellery and accessories in his little ‘stable’ of companies, and – most of all – by the fact that Elvira Roberts-Hoare, his close advisor, is advising him to stick to the luxury end of the market where I’m concerned. I don’t have all that much contact with her, but I know she’s not all that sold on the Hollywood-inspired angle, for one thing –‘at the end of the day, darling, they’re just dead celebrities. It’s all a bit too Sunset Boulevard’– and, more to the point, she’s even less sold on the whole ‘affordable price’ thing. Her vision for Libby Goes To Hollywood is, as far as I can tell, that I custom-make heinously expensive one-off pieces for a double-barrelled clientele – brides, mostly – who pop up on the society pages of Tatler.
I can only assume that this is because these things – double-barrelled clients, and the society pages of Tatler – are her particular area of expertise. And, I suspect, more to the point, because she’s cheesed off that Ben was the one who brought me under his umbrella in the first place, without her being the one to scout me, as is their usual arrangement. And that she wants to stamp her authority and opinions on Libby Goes To Hollywood as a way of asserting her position.
But I can’t complain. I mean that in its truest sense. I can’t complain. Ben owns sixty-five per cent of my company, and has put tens of thousands of pounds into it. And Elvira is his right-hand woman, so he’s always going to take her opinion over mine.
I’m just hoping that maybe, just maybe, today’s meeting might swing things a little more in my favour. I’ve been working really hard on the designs for a new collection of chunky bronze cuffs, studded with semi-precious birthstones, a few of which I’ve got to show Ben and Elvira today. I’m also armed with promising sales figures from the most recent collection that the factory in Croatia made for me, and …
I can hear that the front door is opening, and that Elvira and Ben are on their way in. Seeing as this means Elvira must have used her own door key, I’ll have to have a little word with her about privacy as soon as … actually, let’s be honest, I won’t have a word with her about privacy at all. This is her place – well, her father’s, but who’s splitting hairs? – and I’m staying here as close to rent-free as makes no difference. She could tap-dance in unannounced, in the middle of the night, with a marching band playing loud oom-pah-pahs right behind her, and I’d still keep my mouth shut.
‘Libby? You here?’
‘I’m right here, Ben!’ I reply, heading out of the back room and into the as-yet-empty showroom space at the front. ‘Hi! Great to see you both.’
Ben, who I go up to kiss on both cheeks, is looking as immaculate as I’ve ever seen him: sharp suit, open-neck shirt, and a hot pink silk pocket square, just to give the nod to the fact he’s the kind of multimillionaire venture capitalist who invests in fashion businesses rather than anything mundane like steel production or microchip technology. But Elvira … well, she looks positively extraordinary. She’s rocking a tiny paisley kaftan that only just covers her practically non-existent buttocks, Grecian sandals that lace up as far as her equally nonexistent thighs, a Hermès Birkin bag in the crook of one emaciated arm; her silver-blonde hair, in milkmaid plaits, is pushed back from her face with a colossal pair of sunglasses.
‘Elvira!’ I contemplate giving her a kiss too, but her forbidding aura of haughtiness puts me off. ‘Thanks so much, again, for all this.’ I wave a hand around the showroom. ‘Obviously I haven’t really had a chance to think about how I’m going to fit it out, yet, but it’s such a great space, I’m sure it’s going to be—’
‘I need water,’ she says, abruptly, cutting me off and starting to head up the