She nods. But it wasn’t the heat. It was the insides of her head.
‘Well, let me get you a nice strong coffee.’
Normally Libby would say no, no, no, I can get my own coffee. But today her legs are so heavy, her head so woolly, she nods and says thank you. She watches Dido as she makes her coffee, feeling reassured by the sheen of her dyed black hair, the way she stands with one hand in the pocket of her black tunic dress, her tiny feet planted wide apart in chunky dark green velvet trainers.
‘There,’ says Dido, resting the cup on Libby’s table. ‘Hope that does the trick.’
Libby has known Dido for five years. She knows all sorts of things about her. She knows that her mother was a famous poet, her father was a famous newspaper editor, that she grew up in one of the most illustrious houses in St Albans and was taught at home by a governess. She knows her younger brother died when he was twenty and that she hasn’t had sex for eleven years. She knows that she lives in a tiny cottage on the edge of her parents’ estate and that she still has the horse she rode as a teenager and that that horse is called Spangles. She knows that the illustrious house has been left in Dido’s parents’ will not to her but to the National Trust and that she is fine about that.
She knows that Dido likes PG Tips, Benedict Cumberbatch, horses, Gianduja, coconut water, Doctor Who, expensive mattress toppers, Jo Malone Orange Blossom, stir fries, Nando’s and facials. But she has never been to Dido’s house or met Dido’s family or friends. She has never seen Dido outside of work hours apart from at the annual Christmas party at the posh hotel up the road and the occasional leaving drinks. She doesn’t actually know who Dido is.
But she looks at Dido now and it is suddenly, blindingly obvious to her that Dido is exactly the person she needs right now. She’d sat in April’s back garden on Saturday night flirting mildly with Danny – who was not really all that hot, had a face like an eight-year-old boy and very small hands – and she’d looked around for someone she could talk to about the crazy things happening to her, about the house and the magazine article and the dead parents and the person coughing in the attic. But all she’d seen was people like her, normal people, with normal lives, people who still lived at home with their parents or in tiny flats with partners and friends, people with unpaid-off student loans, unexceptional jobs, unexceptional dreams, fake tans, handbag dogs, white teeth, clean hair. She’d felt caught between two painfully disparate places and had left before eleven, come home to her laptop and back to the internet’s take on what had happened to Serenity Lamb.
But this had raised more questions than it had answered and she’d finally slammed down the lid of her laptop at 2 a.m. and gone to bed where her sleep had been disturbed, her dreams filled with strange leitmotifs and encounters.
‘I need some advice,’ she says to Dido now. ‘About the Chelsea thing.’
‘Oh yes,’ says Dido, rubbing the oversized silver disc that hangs from a chain around her neck. ‘What sort of advice?’
‘Well, just to talk about it, really. You know about … houses. I thought you’d know about houses.’
‘Well, I know about a house. Not houses in general. But sure, yes, why not. Come for supper.’
‘When?’
‘Tonight?’
‘Yes,’ Libby says, ‘yes, please.’
Dido’s cottage is beautiful. It’s double-fronted with leaded windows, tiny pink roses growing across the doorway and there, outside, her shiny black Fiat Spider with its tan convertible roof. The car complements the cottage and the cottage complements the car and Libby can’t help herself from taking her phone from her bag and photographing it for her Instagram page. Dido greets her at the door in wide floral trousers and a black vest top. Her hair is held from her face by large red sunglasses and she is barefoot. Libby has only ever seen her in clumpy work shoes so it’s a surprise to see two small, white, perfectly pedicured feet with rose-pink nails.