A Night In With Marilyn Monroe. Lucy Holliday

hear the kitchen door open, and then I hear Lottie say, in a startled voice, ‘Oh! Adam!’

      So he really is back pretty early from his work dinner. Just not early enough, unfortunately, to have prevented me from ending up in my current predicament.

      ‘This probably all looks very strange to you,’ Lottie is going on, ‘but we have, well, a bit of a situation … I don’t suppose either of you happens to have a hacksaw on you, by any chance?’

      Wait a second: either of you?

      ‘I don’t have a hacksaw,’ comes Adam’s voice, sounding bewildered and anxious – unlike him – in equal measure. ‘Ben, uh, I’m assuming you don’t have one either?’

      ‘No, I didn’t bring a hacksaw,’ comes another voice. Just like Adam’s voice, it’s American-accented.

      And just like Adam’s voice, it’s male.

      ‘And I gotta tell you, Ads,’ the strange man’s voice goes on, with an abrasive chuckle, ‘I’m glad we’ve been dating this long before you asked me that question. I’d be out that door faster than a speeding bullet otherwise.’

      I can’t move.

      I mean, obviously I can’t move. None of us would be here right now if I could.

      Well, Adam and Ben would probably still be here, for their own cosy night in. My boyfriend and … his boyfriend?

      The bars of the safety gate may be gradually cutting off the blood supply to my brain, but even I can put two and two together on this one and make four.

      There’s the faint squeak of Converse on marble, and then Posh James’s face appears in front of me again.

      ‘Here’s your phone,’ he says, matter-of-factly, as he hands it through the bars to me and folds my frozen fingers around it. And then he adds, equally matter-of-factly, ‘I told you he was gay.’

      Then he gets to his feet and heads towards the hallway, perhaps to give me a moment of privacy.

      With a strength of will I didn’t even know I had, I force my fingers to unfreeze so that I can call Bogdan.

      He and his hacksaw can’t get here fast enough.

      

      The half-hour after Adam and his date got home turned into a bit of a blur, if I’m honest with you.

      Thank God Lottie and James slipped quietly away, and then Adam came (sheepishly) into the kitchen to find me. He didn’t say a lot, and I said even less … I have a dim memory of being peered at, for a moment, by a very scowly man in a very smart suit, who I can only assume was Ben … and then, just as Adam suggested it might be a good idea for me to snack on some edamame beans and a coconut water, to keep my energy levels up, Bogdan arrived.

      With Olly.

      My second unexpected, unannounced and frankly unwanted visitor of the night.

      Don’t get me wrong: I’m always happy to see Olly. It’s a truly rare situation where I don’t want his lovely, friendly face around. I’d hardly have dragged the poor guy up to Dad’s wedding this past weekend if I hadn’t thought it would make the whole thing better, just having him there.

      Tonight, however, was precisely one of those rare situations.

      ‘Am decorating at restaurant,’ was Bogdan’s explanation, through the noise of the hacksaw, when I asked him, through gritted teeth, why he’d decided to announce my predicament to Olly before the pair of them set out in Olly’s van, like cape-less crusaders, to rescue me from Death By Humiliation in Shepherd’s Bush. ‘Olly is right there beside me when am answering phone. You are expecting me to be lying to him about reason for phone call? When he is currently being my boss? And also, am hoping not to be presuming too much, my friend?’

      Well, no, I wasn’t expecting him to lie.

      And given that he blurted, ‘Let me be getting this straight, Libby – you are trapped somewhere against your will and only wearing what I am guessing to be some sort of undergarment?’ a couple of moments after my terse explanation over the phone, I suppose it’s only to be expected that Olly would grab his car keys and hurtle to my assistance.

      But it’s just one more layer of awkwardness to endure: Olly, who didn’t even know I was dating Adam to begin with, coming face to face with me in that terrible, semi-naked, head-wodged predicament.

      Quite honestly, the discovery that my new boyfriend, who I really thought might be The One, is in fact gay … well, it’s almost the least bad thing about the last couple of hours.

      I said almost.

      Olly has insisted on driving me all the way home, which is nice of him, because I’m feeling a bit too bruised – physically and emotionally – for the rough-and-tumble of the tube just now.

      The downside, though, is more of that terrible awkwardness.

      Even though – obviously – I re-dressed myself as soon as I was free from the bars, the atmosphere between us is so uncomfortable that I might as well be still wearing nothing but the Ribbony Elasticky Thing and a slick of sesame oil. We’ve sat in embarrassed silence ever since Shepherd’s Bush, and we’re over the river and stuck in a bottleneck of traffic near Wandsworth Bridge when Olly finally breaks it.

      ‘So. Adam Rosenfeld.’

      ‘Yes.’ I swallow, hard. ‘Did you know he was gay?’

      ‘Libby, come on. I only work with the guy. And barely even that, really. He dropped into the restaurant this afternoon for the first time in a week. I mean, I don’t remember pondering, as we pored over some thrilling spreadsheets together, what his sexual orientation might be …’

      ‘Fair point.’

      ‘And it’s not like I was looking out for anything in particular, one way or the other.’ Olly changes gear as we finally move up a little way in the traffic. ‘I mean, I didn’t even know you were seeing him, Libby. You kept that one pretty close to your chest.’

      I wince, inwardly, at Olly’s mere mention of my chest, given that he’s seen more of my chest this evening than I’d have liked him to do in a lifetime.

      ‘It was pretty recent,’ I mumble.

      ‘You could have mentioned something over the weekend.’

      ‘I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to shout it from the rooftops in case … well, it didn’t work out. Which has turned out to be pretty prophetic of me, really.’

      ‘You’re not pathetic.’

      ‘Prophetic,’ I say.

      ‘Oh … well, you might be that.’

      ‘Yeah, except I thought the reasons we might not work out would be because we were both too busy with our jobs, or because we didn’t like each other’s families … I never stopped to think that it might be because he was using me as a beard to hide his true identity from his Orthodox Jewish parents.’

      This is based on something that Adam muttered at me, by the way, a few minutes before Bogdan and Olly and the tool kit got there: I’m really sorry, Libby … my mum and dad … it’s an Orthodox thing … they wouldn’t approve …

      Which, you know, I can sympathize with. I’ve endured the disapproval of my own mother for the majority of the last thirty years. But I still don’t think it’s reasonable to drag someone else into the middle of it. Someone unwitting. Someone ignorant.

      ‘I’m just such an idiot,’ I say, miserably, gazing out of the window as unidentifiable