Sophia Money-Coutts - The Plus One - escape with the hottest, laugh-out-loud debut of summer 2018!

‘I don’t know, but I can ask him,’ Lala replied, lowering her head again to her flower.

Peregrine sighed. He struggled with Lala, with her lateness, with the Monday mornings when Lala only appeared in the office at midday. Her list of improbable excuses had previously included lack of sleep due to bed bugs and having to call a handyman round to get rid of a spider in her bath. But equally, the office needed Lala. Her random musings on British toffs – ‘Oh, by the way, I heard this weekend that the Duke of Anchovy is having an affair with his butler’ – were vital to the magazine.

‘OK, Lala, marvellous, thank you. Could you possibly get in touch with Jasper this morning and see what he says?’

‘’Course. Could I just go and get a coffee first? I’m desperate for a coffee, didn’t get much sleep last night.’

‘OK, go and get a coffee and then could you kindly find Jasper for us? If you can possibly manage that teeny-tiny one thing this morning?’

‘Yah, yah, I’ll track him down, Peregrine, don’t you worry. Poor old Jaz.’

‘In the meantime, Polly, I want you to be in charge of this. So can you make a start on research. Go through old issues; we did an interview with the Duke five years ago. I think that was when he trod on a gun and accidentally shot one of his Labradors.’

‘On it.’

I spent the rest of the day alternating between research on the Montgomerys and obsessively checking Instagram to see if Callum had followed me back. If, at any moment, I had to step away from my desk – to Peregrine’s office, to the loo, to Pret at lunchtime – I took my phone and obsessively checked that too. But by 5.30 p.m. Callum still hadn’t followed me back and my mood was hovering somewhere between high-risk depression and suicide.

‘So there’s good news,’ said Lala, the next morning in Peregrine’s office, twirling a strand of hair around her pen. ‘Jasper says he will do an interview, an exclusive one because he trusts us, but I don’t want to do it. It would be a bit strange, you know, given everything…’

‘Terrific, thank you, Lala. Congratulations on the most productive thing you’ve ever done. When can he do it?’

‘Well, he suggested the last weekend in January, at home. Montgomery Castle. They’re shooting so everyone’s at home, and he said whoever does the interview is very welcome to join them for Saturday, for the shoot, then stay for dinner on Saturday night. If that works?’

‘Why are they giving us so much access?’ I asked. I was suspicious. Normally, you were given half an hour with an interview subject, you had to email your entirely inoffensive list of questions over beforehand – What’s your favourite colour? What’s your star sign? What’s your favourite animal? – and then a minder would sit in on the interview, like a Rottweiler waiting to tear the journalist apart if they dared deviate from their questions.

‘Erm, not sure really. I think the family just really want to set the record straight and feel like we’re the ones to do it. I’ve promised them it’ll be a nice piece,’ said Lala. ‘It will, won’t it?’

‘Of course!’ said Peregrine. ‘It’ll be excellent. I can see the headline now: PULLING THE TRIGGER WITH BRITAIN’S MOST ELIGIBLE BACHELOR!

‘Polly,’ he went on, ‘I’d like you to do the interview, so cancel whatever you were doing that weekend and start getting ready. I want you to find out everything you can about him. Why can’t he keep a girlfriend? Are the Duke and Duchess pressurizing him to get married? Does he think he’ll ever find The One? And can you talk to the picture desk about it, I want photos of Jasper through the ages. As a page boy at the King of Lichtenstein’s wedding, his first day at Eton, the university years, at the races, out hunting and so on. Everything.’

‘Sure,’ I said, but I was suddenly nervous. ‘La, what should I wear? And dinner, will it be smart?’

‘You need tweed for the shooting, a hat and some boots. Oh, and some shooting socks. And then it’ll probably just be black tie on Saturday night.’

‘ Just black tie?’

‘Well, you know, a dress or skirt. Knee-length or longer. Heels,’ said Lala.

‘Polly, do stop fussing about the detail,’ said Peregrine. ‘Lala, take her to the fashion cupboard. Sort it out there.’

Back at my computer, I had a little red Instagram notification: Callum had followed me back. Only twenty-four hours later, I thought to myself, which seems odd when everyone has their phones on them all the time. And then I thought: stop being so psycho.

‘Lala, look, he’s followed me back.’

‘Who?’

‘That guy Callum I told you about from the weekend.’

‘Ohhhhh yes. The one who lives in Brixton?’

‘No, no. That’s Bill. You’ve met Bill.’

She frowned at me.

‘You know. Dark hair, used to work for Google, now developing his own app.’

‘Oh yes. Cute. Dimples?’

I frowned. ‘You have weird taste. But no, I don’t mean Bill.’

‘Who then?’

‘Callum.’

‘Is he the Instagram one?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Is he the one who’s just added you on Instagram?’

‘YES. Jesus, I feel like we might both die of old age having this conversation.’

‘But who is he?’

‘A friend of Bill’s. I kissed him on Friday night after Bill’s dinner party. Do you really not remember me telling you all this yesterday?’

‘When?’

‘When we went to get coffee after talking to Peregrine about Jasper.’

‘Oh, then. Pols, that was eleven o’clock on Monday morning. I can barely remember my own name at eleven o’clock on Monday mornings.’

‘So I need to take you through the whole thing again?’

‘Yes. Come on. Let’s go to the fashion cupboard and you can talk me through it there.’

While I repeated the entire sorry story of Friday night, Lala and Allegra the magazine’s French fashion editor (nicknamed Legs on the basis that hers were skinnier than a pair of chopsticks), clicked through websites looking for suitably tweedy clothes. After half an hour of umming and aahing, they decided I needed the following:

1) One tweed Ralph Lauren coat

2) One brown felt hat with a feather sticking out of it (‘You must wear a hat, Pols, toffs like everyone wearing hats because it means they can pretend it’s still two hundred years ago and they rule everything’)

3) One pair of Jimmy Choo riding boots

4) One three-quarter-length black Dolce & Gabbana dress

5) One pair of Charlotte Olympia heels.

‘And not too much make-up, Pols, they don’t like too much make-up,’ Lala added sternly.

‘Why? What’s wrong with make-up?’

‘It’s vulgar. Makes you look like you’ve tried too hard.’

‘OK. And what shall I do with my hair?’

‘Mustn’t be too perfect, otherwise that suggests that you’re vain and have been indoors all day.’

‘Instead of running around outside killing things?’

‘Exactly. Happy? You never know, you might fall madly in love with Jasper and end up marrying him. Imagine that. Oh, except you don’t need a boyfriend any more.’

‘Callum is not my boyfriend. Did you not listen to a word of my story?’

‘But do you want him to be? You must like him, otherwise you wouldn’t have talked on and on about him.’

‘I had to keep talking on and on about him because you weren’t listening. And I don’t really know. I think maybe he’s just a distraction. Or maybe it’s just my biological clock.’

‘What ees thees clock?’ interjected Legs. Being French, she disliked most things, but she especially disliked: fat people, most forms of carbohydrate, London buses, flat shoes, any kind of comfortable or functional clothing, Peregrine and rain.