Lucy Holliday - A Night In With Audrey Hepburn

‘For fuck’s sake!’ Vanessa is yelling, again, as she stampedes away from us toward the catering bus door. ‘We need the fucking fire extinguisher!’

‘There’s no time for that.’ I hear Dillon’s voice, and then feel his hand grab my wrists to stop me ineffectually yanking at my head. ‘Stop,’ he orders, ‘and keep still.’

Then he grips the alien head, pulls it clear of my actual head, and throws the smouldering latex down onto the ground.

And then everything goes black.

I haven’t fainted, by the way. I think Dillon’s just thrown his T-shirt over me to put out any lingering sparks.

There’s a brief, stunned silence.

‘You all right under there?’ Dillon asks, a moment later.

I open my mouth to say ‘Just about’ when I’m hit, smack in the middle of the face, with a powerful jet of very cold liquid.

I gasp, which draws a large portion of sodden T-shirt into my mouth. I gag, splutter, and double over.

‘Fucking hell!’ I hear Dillon say, from my position near his groin. ‘It was under control. You didn’t need to blast the poor girl with the fire extinguisher!’

Ah, so it was very cold foam , then. Just in case I didn’t look like enough of an idiot with a wet T-shirt over my head … no, it has to be a foam-covered T-shirt instead.

But Vanessa clearly isn’t in any kind of mood for sympathy.

‘Libby! What the fuck are you playing at?’

‘Hey, leave her alone.’ I feel a hand on my shoulder, pulling me upright. ‘Let me get that off you,’ Dillon says, pulling at the T-shirt.

‘I’m fine! Might be better to leave it on for a bit longer, actually!’ Like, until the end of time. Or at least until I’ve regained my composure, and until everyone on the catering bus – whom I can now hear leaning out of the windows, asking each other what’s been going on, and having a good old chortle when they hear the answer – has gone home and, ideally, sixty or seventy years down the line, died, without me having to face them again. I grip onto the T-shirt at neck level. ‘Better not to … you know … expose burnt skin to the air.’

‘Shit, did your skin burn?’ Dillon rips the T-shirt off my head in one smooth movement; he’s obviously a man accustomed to removing items of clothing from women. ‘Oh, don’t worry, you’re all right. It’s only your hair.’

‘Only my hair what?’

‘That’s been burnt off.’

‘My hair’s been burnt off? ’

‘God, no, no, no.’

I feel weak with relief, until he goes on.

‘I mean, not all of it. Only most of the right side. Unless …’ He studies me for a moment. ‘I’m sorry, maybe I just didn’t notice. Did you have a lopsided haircut when I was talking to you five minutes ago?’

‘No!’ I yelp, clutching the side of my head. I’m horrified to feel short, crispy, burnt bits where there used to be, if not exactly locks worthy of a Victoria’s Secret Angel, at least a perfectly decent amount of hair.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Libby, it’s only fucking hair.’ Vanessa is snapping her fingers at one of the crew members leaning out of the bus window to come and take the fire extinguisher from her. ‘It’ll grow back. Unlike the chunk you’ve burnt out of that costume!’

‘I’m really sorry, Vanessa. It was an accident.’

‘Yeah, it was an accident.’ Dillon backs me up. ‘I mean, nobody would intentionally set light to themselves like that. Unless they were a Buddhist monk, or something. Which you’re not, are you?’

Before I can answer, there’s a collective wheeze of mirth from the watching crew members, and one of them starts up – oh, so hilariously – a chant of Om .

‘Ah, give her a break, guys.’ Dillon grins up at them and pats me on the shoulder. His hand stays there. I don’t breathe in case this alerts him and he decides to move it. ‘Poor girl’s had a nasty shock. You know, one of you baboons could make yourselves useful and get her a nice cup of sweet tea, instead of standing there taking the …’

His eyes suddenly flicker sideways.

Which is hardly surprising, given that my sister has just teetered into view.

Lord only knows what Mum texted her after seeing the selfie, but Cass has ramped up the sexiness by roughly one hundred degrees centigrade. She’s changed into her Cat Person costume, for the show, but with a few little tweaks that only a certifiable man-eater like Cass is truly capable of. She’s unzipped the front of the skintight jumpsuit down to a near-pornographic level, replaced the regulation black Dr Martens with – and I can only assume she either brought these with her this morning, or borrowed them from a streetwalker a little closer to King’s Cross – a thigh-high pair of stiletto-heeled boots, and coated her mouth in what is surely the entire contents of a tube of Nars Striptease lip gloss.

Part of me wants to applaud her for such brazen, no-holds-barred chutzpah.

A much larger part of me wants to rip off her thigh boots and beat her over the head with them.

Because Dillon’s hand has just dropped off my shoulder. And I’ve just dropped off his radar.

‘Oh, my God !’ Cass squeals, clasping her hands to her mouth and doing a pretty decent performance of Distraught Woman. ‘Libby! My darling sister! What happened? ’

‘Your darling sister set fire to her fucking head,’ Vanessa snaps. ‘Costing me six hundred quid for a replacement costume in the process.’

‘Oh, my God! ’ Cass says, again. (Her performance might be decent, but the script has its limits.) ‘And your hair , Libby! What have you done to your beautiful, beautiful hair!’

Which would be a nice thing for her to have said, if it weren’t for the fact that I suspect it’s just a vehicle for her next trick, which is to break down in melodramatic sobs and clutch a hand to her (ballooning) chest, as if she’s about to swoon.

‘Woah, there!’ Dillon slips an arm around her waist. ‘Let’s go and get you a hot, sweet cup of tea.’

The same hot, sweet cup of tea that he promised me a moment ago. And which, I can’t help but notice, the entire leering gang of crew members is practically leap-frogging each other off the bus to fetch for her.

‘I’m sorry!’ Cass gulps. ‘It’s just such a terrible shock …’

‘Oh, for crying out loud,’ Vanessa mutters, which actually makes me feel quite fond of her all of a sudden.

‘Of course it is, sweetheart,’ Dillon is saying, in a melted-dark-chocolate tone quite unlike the one he was using while he was chatting to me. ‘You just need that tea, and a nice sit-down …’

‘I do,’ Cass replies, dabbing prettily at dry cheeks. ‘I do need a lie-down.’

You have to give it to her (and Dillon, no doubt, will do exactly that), she’s good at this stuff. The Damsel in Distress act (when I’m the only one round here who’s got any reason to be in distress); the subtle hint that she’d rather be lying down than sitting …

‘I’m Dillon, by the way,’ Dillon is murmuring, putting a hand in the small of her back and steering her in the direction of the leap-frogging crew members on their way to Olly’s catering truck.

‘And I’m Cassidy …’

Vanessa and I watch them go, united – for once – in irritation.

‘Your fucking sister,’ says Vanessa.

To agree would be disloyal; to disagree would be rank hypocrisy. So I don’t say anything.

‘You’re all right?’ she asks, gesturing at my burnt hair. ‘Not actually injured or anything?’

‘No, I’m OK.’ I’m touched that she’s concerned. ‘But thanks, Vanessa, and I’m really sorry again about—’

‘Good,’ she says, briskly. ‘Then I don’t need to get the first-aid guys over before you leave.’