Fast Friends

by Jill Mansell

  It was going to be all right, Jack decided with considerable relief. Roz, the bitch, was behaving perfectly and had met his eyes without even a flicker of recognition when Camilla had proudly introduced them to each other. And Christ, she looked beautiful tonight. Roz and Loulou were like night and day, one so mysterious and dark and the other so ethereally fair. He couldn’t tell whether Loulou had been briefed on the situation; she, too, greeted him with absolute decorum. He watched for a second as Loulou sucked an ice cube with an unconsciously provocative gesture, then hastily looked away once more as a prickle of sweat caught against his shirt collar. God, if he wasn’t already sleeping with Roz, he could quite easily have been tempted to make a serious play for this gorgeous friend of hers.

  “So you three were at school together,” said Margaret Jameson, who loved to dominate dinner party conversations and who was in her element here, with the famous Roz Vallender at one end of the table and the gossip columnists’ darling, Loulou Marks, at the other. She could hardly wait to name-drop at the next bridge club meeting on Thursday and fully intended to squeeze every last drop of newsworthiness from tonight’s dinner.

  Roz smiled bleakly, toying with a mushroom on her fork and Camilla, realizing that Roz wasn’t intending to answer Margaret’s rhetorical question, rushed blindly in.

  “I look so much older than Roz and Lou, I expect,” she said hurriedly. “And they’re both so wonderfully slim, of course, whereas I put on loads when I had the children, although even when we were at school I was much bigger than they were. I must look ten years older by comparison now…”

  You’re kidding, thought Jack, and risked the briefest of smiles in Roz’s direction. Roz, to her amazement, felt her stomach curl with disgust at his complicity and dropped her fork to her plate with a crash.

  “Don’t put yourself down, Cami,” she said in a firm voice. “You’ve got a perfectly good figure, and most men prefer a few curves anyway. Don’t you agree, Jack?” she concluded, fixing him with a distinctly cool gaze.

  The super-bitch, he thought to himself, inwardly furious. Well, two could play at that bloody game.

  “Absolutely,” he replied, smiling at Camilla more persuasively than he had for years. “I love my wife just as she is, don’t I, darling?”

  Flushing with pleasure and embarrassment, Camilla grabbed her wineglass and swallowed the contents. Jack never complimented her on anything anymore, and to have done so in front of all their guests—even if Roz, bless her, had rather forced the issue—made her feel quite exhilarated.

  “Thank you, darling,” she said, attempting to sound as casual as if he paid her at least a dozen such compliments every day. “More zucchini, anyone?”

  As the dinner progressed, Roz and Loulou became more animated, sensing the reason for their invitation and obligingly forming a double act to entertain the other guests and retain Camilla’s credibility among them. Roz was still angry with Jack for some reason she couldn’t clearly define, and Loulou had decided quite simply that she didn’t like him. If he thought he was being clever, entertaining both his wife and mistress at the same table and being seen to get away with it, she thought he was merely fatuous—and entirely resistible. Twice he had turned his smooth seducer’s gaze upon her, confident that she would respond, and twice she had longed to hurl her plate at his handsome head. She was also slightly ashamed of herself. At first, when Roz had explained the situation, Loulou had thought it amusing. Now that she was here, however, and able to see how desperately hard Camilla was trying, she was sickened by the deception and her heart went out to Camilla, the most innocent of innocent parties. It was clear that Jack had sapped whatever confidence she had once had, and now he was playing on it with brutal, self-centered satisfaction, entirely for his own amusement. She wouldn’t have minded betting either that he was just as selfish in bed.

  Oh, no charmer, this one, Loulou thought with compassion for Camilla, who so obviously worshipped him.

  At the same time, Camilla wondered if she had ever been happier in her life. Looking around her subtly lit sitting room, at her guests talking and laughing and so obviously enjoying themselves, she wanted to burst with joy and pride. Her house looked lovely—she was thankful she had rushed out and bought those bronze and cream chrysanthemums at the last minute—and dinner had been a huge success. And since I cooked it, I have been a success too, Camilla realized almost with amazement. Roz had praised her home and admired her ludicrously expensive dress and Loulou had noticed the photographs of the children and had complimented her extravagantly.

  “They’re beautiful, Cami. A pair of absolute stunners—and they look so much like you.”

  Really, she thought happily, it had been the most perfect evening.

  “Well, I’m afraid I have a hideously early start tomorrow morning,” Roz announced at eleven o’clock and was gratified to sense the disappointment of the rest of the party. She was the main attraction, after all. As soon as she left, their sparkling moods would begin to disintegrate and they, too, would make guilty excuses to leave.

  Rising to her feet and smoothing her hands over her narrow suede-clad hips, she gave Camilla a perfect smile. “I’m afraid I’ve had far too much to drink so I’ll abandon the car, but it’s too cold to walk. I have a small apartment in the Barbican,” she added, catching the look of astonishment on Camilla’s face. Presumably, she imagined that Roz was planning a midnight hike down to the Cotswolds. “Could I possibly phone for a cab from here?”

  “Oh, that’s silly,” protested Camilla. “Jack can drive you. The Barbican’s only a couple miles away. It wouldn’t be any trouble, would it, darling?”

  “Of course it would be trouble,” Roz replied evenly so that only Jack would read the underlying meaning in her words. She smiled at Camilla once more, without even glancing in his direction. “He really shouldn’t risk it. Please, I’d be much happier taking a cab.”

  Feeling guiltily relieved, because she didn’t feel confident enough to maintain the party unaided, Camilla jumped to her feet. “In that case, I’ll phone one now. Jack, could you refill some glasses while I’m gone?”

  The fernlike study was cool and quiet as she reached for the phone and leaned against the edge of Jack’s desk before dialing. More alcohol than she was used to had blurred her senses slightly, but it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling. She struggled for a few seconds to recall the taxicab number before remembering that she had phoned them this afternoon to catch the florist. Ordinarily she would have walked, but thanks to her earlier extravagance, she now had the number on memory dial.

  “Press M,” Camilla said to herself with a giggle, “for motorcar. M for marvelous, miraculous dinner party. M for magnificent evening.”

  “Hello,” said a female voice as the telephone was finally answered.

  “Oh, hello, would it be possible to book…” began Camilla, but the female voice on the other end of the line continued without pausing.

  “This is Roz Vallender. I’m not at home at the moment, but if you’d like me to call you back,” Roz’s silkily persuasive recorded voice said, “do please leave your name and number after the tone. Thank you.”

  Standing silent and unnoticed in the shadowy doorway, Roz saw Camilla’s expression freeze and guessed instantly what had happened. Obscurely, she had almost known that it would, and now she experienced a shuddering jolt of remorse.

  Chapter Four

  Camilla never knew afterward what made her do it. At the time, however, it had seemed there was simply no other choice. Some part of her mind was telling her: Your life is changing…in a couple of minutes you’ll go completely to pieces…but in the meantime, just before that starts, do something that will hurt him back.

  And although she had always been uncritically adoring of her husband, Camilla knew that humiliation would do the trick far more effectively than tears or recriminations.

  As if still frozen in
a dream, she moved past Roz, murmuring “Excuse me” as if she were a stranger in an elevator. Back into the sitting room and to the dinner guests so unsuspecting. Smiling absently at Loulou who was curled up like a leather-clad kitten on the settee, Camilla crossed to the low coffee table and picked up her wineglass. As she sipped the ice-cold Sancerre, she heard the sitting room door click shut and from the corner of her eye glimpsed Roz’s slender outline.

  So she’s wondering what I’m going to do, thought Camilla with a smile. It was rather exciting, in a weird kind of way. She felt detached, as if she were just another onlooker or a member of an audience.

  There was Jack, laughing too loudly at one of his own jokes and surreptitiously eyeing Loulou’s stocking-clad legs. He looked so handsome and successful and so very sure of himself that Camilla wondered for a brief moment whether what she planned to do was fair. Then she remembered afresh that in just a few moments, when this dreamlike numbness wore off, she would have to face up to the worst event of her life.

  Replacing her wineglass carefully on the table, she clasped her hands around the large, fat white bowl of bronze and cream chrysanthemums and lifted it into her arms. Jack shot her an impatient glance, clearly thinking that she was starting to clear up in the hope that their guests might take the hint and leave.

  Put them down, he mouthed at her, and Camilla smiled at him for the last time.

  “No,” she said in a clear, carrying voice. “You have them, darling.” And the contents of the bowl, a sudden bright tidal wave of chrysanthemum petals and feathery leaves and at least three pints of water, flew straight into Jack’s handsome face.

  It was the most outrageous gesture she had ever made in her life, and it gave her the most gloriously satisfying sensation she had ever known. The stunned expressions on the faces of their guests and the incredibly sudden silence—broken only by the sound of water dripping steadily onto the floor—was sheer perfection. She wanted to laugh aloud at the absurdity of it all.

  But, at the same time, she realized that she was just as likely to burst into tears and that now was the moment to escape.

  “Thank you all for a most memorable evening,” she announced in a voice that was amazingly calm. “And now if you would excuse me, I think I shall leave.”

  * * *

  The frosty pavement glittered beneath the streetlamps, and to keep her mind occupied, Camilla counted each pool of light as she walked. Seven streetlamps. No sound other than the rhythmic click of her own high heels as she headed down Marson Road toward the common. There would be no lights there, only trees, but it seemed as good a place as any to be aiming for.

  “You were terrific, by the way.” The voice scarcely startled Camilla at all, despite the fact that she hadn’t realized she was being followed. It was Loulou, barefoot and silent, who had chased after her, and now she felt tears of gratitude welling up at the thought that someone had cared enough to do so.

  “You’ll freeze,” said Camilla uncertainly, eyeing the blond girl’s paper-thin gold top.

  Loulou grinned. “Well, you certainly won’t. Margaret Jameson’s doing her nut back there because you walked off with her bit of rabbit.” She touched Camilla’s arm, feeling the softness of the mink fur beneath her hand.

  “Is that why you came after me?” said Camilla, saddened. “To take her coat back?”

  Loulou gripped her arm tightly, pulling her to a halt and then impulsively flinging her arms around her. It was like hugging a large, unhappy animal. Camilla’s eyes reminded her of next door’s spaniel, and now that she had stopped walking, her entire body was beginning to droop with defeat.

  “You idiot, of course not,” she said gently, trying not to shiver as the freezing night air shot down the back of her shirt. “I spoke to Roz. She told me all about it. Your husband got what he deserved and if you hadn’t got there first, Roz probably would have done the same thing herself. She didn’t know, you see.”

  Amazed that she was still able to speak so calmly, despite the hot tears trickling down her cheeks, Camilla said, “It’s odd. It never occurred to me to take it out on her. Whatever else Jack’s done to me, I’d always thought that at least he was faithful. And now that I know he hasn’t even been that…I can’t cope…everything’s spoiled.” Her voice cracking, rising as she fought for control, she said, “Oh, Lou, what on earth am I going to do?”

  Loulou considered the problem as rapidly as only a barefooted, scantily clad woman on the verge of hypothermia could. Her shoes she had abandoned in the hallway of Camilla’s house, but she had her handbag with her. Camilla had nothing but a stolen fur coat.

  “Do you want to go back, sweetie?”

  “I can’t. I really, really can’t.”

  “Then that’s settled,” said Loulou briskly, though her eyes were kind. “You must come stay with me.”

  Chapter Five

  In the weeks that followed, Camilla came to realize how lucky she was to have been taken in by Loulou, whose irreverent humor and down-to-earth attitudes did far more good than the quiet sympathy and exaggerated concern she might have received from anyone else.

  “I’m giving you a week to be really, really upset in,” Loulou had cheerfully informed her the morning after the fateful dinner party. “And that’s pretty generous because I only ever allow myself four days. So, for the next week, you can be as miserable as you like, drink as much as you like, and cry buckets. But after that, you have to be cheerful again. Why waste your precious time grieving over a man who isn’t worth it, after all?”

  And while Camilla had obediently taken her old-new friend’s advice, Loulou discovered for the first time what it was like to look after someone else, to be in the position to help them, and she adored every minute of it. Like a well-meaning but hopelessly incompetent nanny, she attempted to cook appetizing meals for Camilla, working on the assumption that since Camilla was overweight, food would bring her the most comfort. And since she refused to order food from her excellent restaurant, feeling that it was mainly the thought that counted and that Camilla would appreciate it more if Loulou did it herself, the meals were so appalling that they were almost funny. Loulou, whose restaurant featured in all the good food guides, was incapable of cooking even a potato.

  “Lovely,” said Camilla, struggling valiantly with burned cauliflower and a cheese soufflé the consistency of a place mat.

  “If you’re going to get on in life,” Loulou told her sternly, “you really must stop being so polite. This food is hideous, and you know it and I know it, so why don’t we just chuck it in the bin and open an enormous bottle of Chablis instead?”

  In that first week, Camilla appreciated afterward, she had consumed more alcohol than she usually drank in a year. It helped to blur the edges of her grief, to make the future seem not quite so black, and best of all, it put her to sleep faster than Pentothal. As yet, she had made no plans for the future, concentrating solely instead on the realization that her marriage was over. Other women, she knew, were able to accept their husband’s flings and infidelities, but never for a moment did it cross her mind to do the same. Maybe, if it hadn’t been Roz, if Jack had had an affair with some unknown secretary, it might just have been bearable. But it had been Roz, and as a result, their marriage was obliterated. Her children, their children…she couldn’t even think about them just yet, beyond wondering how Jack would have explained her sudden disappearance from their lives. Though it horrified her to feel so little, she was simply too numb, too wounded at present to do otherwise.

  But she had plenty of time to allow her tears and jumbled thoughts to come to the surface. For all Loulou’s air of fragility, she worked punishing hours in the wine bar, sometimes fourteen or fifteen hours a day, and although she would pop up to her flat above the premises every couple of hours or so to check on Camilla, to fry her an inedible snack or regale her with snippets of the wickedest gossip, Camilla was alone for the vast
majority of the time.

  “Come down and join us whenever you want,” Loulou urged on the fifth day.

  But Camilla backed off in alarm. “I’d be the specter at the feast,” she protested. “Just listen to them.” From the flat, they could hear a regular hum of music and voices punctuated with screams of laughter. Just the thought of joining them made her shudder.

  Loulou pulled a face at her customers, through the living room floor, then leaped up from her position on the leather sofa and ran over to give Camilla a hug that enveloped her in a cloud of Chanel.

  “I know, I know. Bloody people—how dare they have fun while you’re going through hell? But just remember, Cami. At a rough guess I’d estimate that eighty percent of that crowd downstairs have been through something similar once in their lives. Most of them are divorced, at least once, and even those who are married aren’t necessarily happy. I know it’s no comfort to you at the moment, but no one goes through life without getting hurt. And those who do,” she added paradoxically, with a dismissive gesture of her slender hands, “are such god-awful shits that the rest of us wouldn’t want to be like them anyway.”

  “Like Jack,” said Camilla, shredding an amber rosebud that had unaccountably found its way out of its silver vase and into her restless fingers.

  Loulou vigorously shook her head. “No! OK, he’s a shit, but I’ll bet you he’s as miserable as sin right now. The difference between the two of you is that he deserves it and you don’t, but what you have to do is to come out on top. You’ve got two more days of feeling sorry for yourself, Cami, then it’s time to get going with the old rehab. In a year’s time, I guarantee”—she thumped the coffee table now for emphasis, making their wineglasses shudder—“that you’ll be able to face Jack and feel sorry for the bastard. You’re going to win this one, and I’m going to help you do it.”

  Loulou had far more faith in her than she did herself, Camilla thought wearily when she was alone once more. Sinking back into the soft leather of the settee, she closed her eyes and pictured Jack, imagining what he might be doing at this moment. Saturday afternoon. On the one hand he could be in bed with Roz—her mind instinctively recoiled from the thought—but alternatively he could be sitting alone, as she was, in their living room regretting his behavior and wishing he had never met Roz in the first place. Funny, until Loulou had mentioned it just now, it had never occurred to her that Jack might be unhappy as well. She felt her self-esteem rise by a single, hesitant notch and realized to her amazement that she was smiling.