Fast Friends

by Jill Mansell

  “You daft, drunk, half-cut cow,” said Loulou affectionately, appearing beside her and scrutinizing the scales with the eye of a connoisseur. “Last week, you told me you weighed nearly 150 pounds. You’re down to 140. Between your lousy husband and my even lousier cooking, you’ve managed to lose ten pounds. Didn’t you even realize?” she exclaimed, and Camilla shook her head, scarcely able to believe it herself. Loulou had given her a week in which to get over Jack, and since she was used to obeying his orders, she had accepted it without question. Jack was almost all she had thought about—there had been no time to consider the fact that her bulk was disappearing almost of its own accord.

  “You’ll be a respectable size 10,” said Loulou with satisfaction. “Now, get some clothes on, you brazen hussy, and we’ll go stun Knightsbridge with it.”

  It wasn’t until four o’clock that afternoon that Camilla realized exactly how well planned Loulou’s campaign had been, and she was deeply touched by the enormous effort her friend had made. Incredibly, she was being transformed before her very eyes—and it was her eyes that had been the first to be transformed. When the optician had fitted her with tinted soft contact lenses, her gray-blue eyes had instantly become a thing of the past. Now they were the vivid turquoise of the Mediterranean Sea, and the effect of the color was almost magical.

  Still blinking, she had next been whisked into Faces First, run by Suki, a friend of Loulou’s, for the first professional makeup of her life. By shading and highlighting her face with squashy, feather-soft brushes, Suki had emphasized a bone structure she had never known existed.

  Stunned, Camilla watched her reflection in the stage-lit mirror as Suki deftly altered her appearance. She wasn’t just a changed person; she was a completely different one. Now she looked like one of those women whom she had always envied. She looked elegant, immaculate…and far, far more self-assured than she felt. But, at the same time, Camilla realized that she was also beginning to feel more self-assured than she had for many years. It was as if a small, new leaf was slowly unfurling within her, preparing to grow and take root, and suddenly Jack began to seem less important. Guiltily catching herself wondering for a moment what he would think if he could see her now, she firmly thrust the thought out of her mind. A far more worthwhile exercise was wondering what an unattached, non-philandering, thoroughly decent man would think if he saw her now, for although the question was purely academic at this stage, it was still nice to think that other people might find her attractive.

  “I’ve finished, love,” said Suki, standing back at last and surveying her work with approval. “And if I say so myself, you look smashing. Special occasion tonight, is it? Got a hot date?”

  “It’s a very special occasion,” interjected Loulou firmly before Camilla could reply. “And yes, she’s got a hot date. With me.”

  Explosion, with its aggressively trendy black-and-gold decor and loud, finger-snapping stylists, was the kind of hairdressing salon Camilla would have run a mile from, but with Loulou gripping her arm and dragging her up the front steps, she didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter.

  “Don’t go green on me now,” she said briskly. “Rocco’s the best scissor merchant in town, and heaven knows he’s what you need with your hair.” Which was more or less what Rocco, a blond Italian Cockney with flashing green eyes and a bewitching smile, had to say when he ran disparaging fingers through Camilla’s lank, dark-blond hair.

  “’Orrible, ’orrible,” he murmured, surveying the disaster area. “Still, never mind. The worse it is when they come in,” he said cheerfully to Loulou who had pulled up a stool beside them, “the better they look when you finish with ’em. Now, don’t even ask me what I’m going to do,” he added sternly, turning to face Camilla once more. “Just keep quiet and trust me. And if you don’t like the result, you can take the scissors to me own ’air. Deal?”

  Two hours later, Camilla stared into the mirror, her new eyes reflecting anguish.

  “I hate it,” she said flatly. “It’s a disaster. It doesn’t suit me. It’s a terrible color…”

  Unable to go on, she bit her lower lip and gritted her teeth hard, but the smile she was trying so hard to suppress was proving uncontrollable. Her mouth twitched, and the smile began to spread, becoming wider and wider until it dissolved into laughter and her whole body shook with it.

  “It’s sensational,” she cried, shaking her head and watching as the tumbling, silver-and-gold waves bounced miraculously back into place. “I can’t believe it. I don’t know how to thank you both…”

  “You could start by promising never to pull a stunt like that again,” said Rocco, leaning back against the wall and clutching his heart. “For just a second there, I thought you was serious, sweetie. ’Ad the old ticker going a bit, I can tell you, to think that you was goin’ to set about me own ’air with a vengeance.”

  “Ah, Camilla, you shouldn’t tease poor Rocco,” scolded Loulou with a smile. “She has a wicked sense of humor, I’m afraid,” she confided to him.

  Camilla felt the shy green leaf within her unfold a fraction further as she realized with a surge of joy and amazement that it was the first joke she’d played in years. And she had done it without even thinking about it.

  * * *

  “The last time I was in Harrods was when I bumped into Roz,” she murmured, shivering slightly at the memory as they entered the hallowed green portals.

  “You’ve come a long way since then, baby,” said Loulou dismissively, winking at her favorite doorman and making a beeline for the perfume hall. “Nothing boosts a woman’s ego like her favorite scent, so we’ll just treat ourselves in here and then it’s upstairs to spend the real money.” She sighed, closing her eyes in ecstasy. “And you have the even greater pleasure of knowing that it’s Jack’s money you’re spending.”

  “I won’t spend too much of it,” argued Camilla, feeling suddenly guilty. “I should really be using it sensibly, looking for somewhere to live. There’s enough money for a deposit on a flat…”

  “The clothes you’ll be buying will be an investment, dummy. By the time we’ve finished, you’ll look so great you won’t need a deposit for a flat. At least a dozen lovestruck men will be queuing up to buy one for you, and you can say, ‘Only Belgravia would do, I’m afraid. Well, maybe Mayfair at a pinch…’”

  “Loulou!” exclaimed Camilla in dismay.

  “Ah, you see you aren’t the only one who can make wicked little jokes,” replied Loulou with a grin.

  “Now what we need is color,” she explained, managing to collar a salesgirl. “My friend here has just returned from the great Australian outback—haven’t you, Sheila?—and she needs a complete new wardrobe. She’s allowed one little black dress, a Donna Karan of course, but apart from that, we want color and lots of it. And no office clothes, if you catch my drift.”

  “No office clothes, madam,” repeated the salesgirl solemnly. “If you’d like to follow me…”

  Chapter Eight

  It was like the Christmas mornings she remembered from childhood, thought Camilla as she surveyed her new personality, strewn around her in shimmering piles like some incredibly upmarket jumble sale. Sensitive with wonder, her fingertips stroked the ivory satin shirt, experiencing the texture as if it were a new and marvelous food, while her eyes feasted upon the fuchsia-pink Nicole Farhi strapless evening dress; the impeccably cut white wool loose jacket and matching trousers; the striped silk jacket in ice-cream shades of pink and lilac; the plain, wide-shouldered taffeta dress by Jasper Conran that was of exactly the same lapis-lazuli shade as her eyes…

  “Now I need another cash injection to pay the dry-cleaning bills,” murmured Camilla, who had been devoted to polyester for the last ten years. She tried to feel ashamed of her extravagance, but it wouldn’t happen. Her mouth kept stretching into a wide smile of pure satisfaction, and the Christmas-morning sensation simply refused to go a
way.

  “I’ll go see Jack tomorrow, see what I can do,” Loulou assured her, keeping a straight face. “I’ll just say, ‘Hi, Jack. Your poor cheated-on little wife blew the cash you gave her and now she’d like the same amount again. This time, she might even get around to buying some knickers. On second thought, why bother? Who needs knickers anyway?’”

  “You wouldn’t dare!” exclaimed Camilla, appalled. Then she thought, why not? There really was no reason why Jack shouldn’t be shocked. He no longer mattered to her. The children, however, were another matter. “How did he seem when you went to see him?” she asked for the first time, unable to hide the anxiety in her voice. It was no good; she couldn’t cut him out of her life so quickly and completely. A husband wasn’t a bad appendix. She still cared about him. And about Charlotte and Toby, desperately.

  “He was OK,” said Loulou casually, having felt it unwise to mention at the time that it had been Roz who had made the visit. And judging by the look on Camilla’s face, it wasn’t quite the moment to admit to it now. “He doesn’t deserve it, but he’s just about OK. Hey, let’s not spoil a good day talking about that lower-than-dirt little creep. I’ve got to get downstairs and hurl a few insults in the direction of my beloved customers. You,” she concluded, circling her index finger in Camilla’s direction, “have fifteen minutes to change into that divine little Jasper Conran creation and admire yourself in the mirror. Then you come down and join me, and we’ll watch how far Dirty Dicky O’Neill’s eyes pop out of his head when he clocks you.”

  * * *

  “I’m a fraud,” Loulou told Christo, her favorite barman, as she watched him expertly uncork four bottles of Beaujolais. “A bullshitter and a fraud. How,” she demanded, tearing a glossy leaf from a potted palm with unnecessary ferocity, “do I have the nerve to stand there and tell Camilla not to pine over her god-awful husband, when for the last three days all I’ve been doing is pining for one of mine—and he’s even more of a bastard than hers.”

  “Which one?” said Christo calmly, taking the spiky-edged frond of greenery from Loulou’s agitated fingers and dropping it into the bin behind the bar.

  “Mackenzie,” she admitted, her face the picture of gloom. “The very worst one, of course. You’d think I’d have the sense to find some better way of spending my time—like sitting on a bed of nails or playing Russian roulette—but no, I have to keep thinking about him, all day and all night, and at the same time put on a brave face for Camilla. It’s too much.”

  “What about Julian?”

  “Gone to Sweden for a fortnight. Do you think that’s why I’ve started thinking about Mac again?” Loulou gave him a wry smile. “You’re absolutely right, of course. Celibacy doesn’t agree with me—it’s just that I don’t think Camilla could cope with it if I had a man in my bed while she was staying with me. Seems a bit heartless, somehow.”

  “Careful, Lou. If people could hear you now, your reputation would be in tatters. This crowd”—he indicated with a nod of his head the party of yuppies who regularly inhabited Vampires—“would die laughing if they thought you had a conscience.”

  “Oh, sure,” said Loulou disdainfully. “They’d wet their knickers all right. But they aren’t going to find out, are they? Because if you so much as breathed one single word, my darling, I would garrote you with your own cheese wire. And don’t think I’m talking about your neck.”

  * * *

  Loulou Marks always maintained that her earliest memory was of pointing to a stranger on a train and shouting, “Mummy, look at that ugly man.” Her mother, after nearly passing out with embarrassment, had uttered for the first—but by no means the last—time those immortal words: “Loulou, don’t be so rude.”

  It was ironic, she felt, that her hugely successful living was now made from being as rude as she liked, to as many people as possible. Insulting them came as naturally to Loulou as breathing, and they cherished her for her ability to come out with what everyone else longed to say but did not dare. By a stroke of marvelous good fortune, what could have been a handicap had turned instead into a wonderful way of making a living and still having enough left over to satisfy her ludicrously expensive tastes in cars, clothes…and men.

  Loulou married Jerry Nash on her nineteenth birthday. The wedding, held in church, was the whitest her guests had ever seen, thanks in part to Celestine Marks’s fond belief that her daughter was still a virgin. She was also practical enough to realize, however, that the marriage was unlikely to last and insisted upon at least one church wedding, “Because in future you might only be able to do eet in registry offices, ma petite, and they are too ’orrible for words.”

  Equally firmly convinced that this was the Love Affair of all time, and that she and Jerry would live forever in the most spectacular married bliss imaginable—what did mothers know, after all?—Loulou happily went along with Celestine’s plans. There were a few anxious moments when Jerry announced that no way was he going to wear a morning suit, or any suit at all for that matter; he was a singer in a band and he was going to wear his best pink pleather jacket with the silver lapels and matching drainpipe trousers—or nothing.

  The anxiety and arguments lasted precisely thirty-five minutes, until Richard Marks drew his prospective son-in-law into the less heated atmosphere of the kitchen and spoke to him as persuasively as he knew how. When they emerged, Jerry announced with a casual shrug that OK, he’d wear the penguin suit after all, no big deal, and Celestine heaved a sigh of relief that could almost have been heard in Paris. Richard, thinking that £500 was a small price to pay for his beloved wife’s happiness, reflected at the same time with deep sadness that now he knew precisely what kind of person his daughter was marrying.

  The wedding, amazingly, went off without a hitch. The marriage itself, however, to no one’s real surprise, was a ghastly tangle of hitches from start to finish and lasted exactly seven months and three days. When Loulou had returned home from work one day and discovered her handsome husband making love on the staircase to a wanton-looking redhead clutching a Save the Seals collecting tin, she had wrenched the heavy tin from her hand and brought it down on Jerry’s head so fiercely that he slid out of the woman and down the stairs with a series of jolts that crippled his ardor for weeks. The scalp wound, requiring seventeen stitches, was almost negligible in comparison.

  The divorce, on the other hand, had been the most painful experience of Loulou’s life, so painful that she had dealt with it in the only way she knew how—by pretending that the marriage had never happened. In the space of a fortnight, she had found herself and her five large suitcases a new life in Glasgow.

  * * *

  “Have you done much bar work before?” asked the bar manager, and Loulou fell instantly in love all over again. With his deep voice and brown eyes and black tangled curls; with that heavenly Scottish accent, those clinging ultra-faded button-fly Levis and thrillingly taut brown forearms; with the sheer height of him…and oh, when he smiled he revealed the most bewitching dimple she had ever seen…

  “Speak to me,” he commanded humorously, passing a strong, beautifully shaped hand in front of her eyes. “I said, have you ever done…”

  “Oh sure, tons,” lied Loulou absently, struggling to regain her senses in the face of such heavenly perfection. Her stomach was down by her knees somewhere and she wasn’t at all sure that she wasn’t about to keel off the barstool, her sense of balance appearing to have left her completely in this moment of revelation. It absolutely had to be love.

  “You’re supposed to tell me about it,” the bar manager reminded her gently. He had introduced himself as Mac, she remembered. Such a wonderful, romantic, kissable name…

  “Yes. Sorry. Um, well…” With a suitably vague gesture, she almost succeeded in knocking over a soda syphon and three glasses.

  “God, sorry! Yes, I’ve worked a lot in clubs and pubs…down south. London, Bristol, Bath. Can I h
ave the job?” she blurted out helplessly, her silver-gray eyes wide and appealing. She would die if he turned her down now, just when she had fallen so desperately in love with him.

  Meanwhile, Mac was wrestling equally as desperately with his conscience. He made and lived by his own unbreakable rules, and the one that was causing him trouble at this moment was the one that stated firmly that he would never get involved with a fellow member of staff. He’d seen the unhappy results of other such relationships too often to hope that they might not happen to him. It was always, but always, a fatal mistake.

  Yet here was this gorgeous girl, lying her head off—she certainly wasn’t twenty-three for a start, and he seriously doubted whether she had ever been on the working side of a bar—and gazing at him with such an angelic, hopeful expression that all he wanted to do was take her to bed. But if he refused her the job, there was a chance he might never see her again, and that was every bit as unthinkable as becoming involved with a member of staff.

  Well, he decided suddenly, he’d just have to make damn sure that he would see her again. But really, it was asking too much of his hormones to expect him to be able to work alongside this beautiful blond angel and to keep his hands to himself.

  “I think, perhaps, that giving you the job here might not be a terribly good idea,” he began to explain slowly, but his words were cut off by a shriek of agonized dismay that could have shattered every glass in the house.

  “No!” Loulou gasped, unable to bear the thought of losing him or to tolerate the fact that he was rejecting her. Couldn’t he feel the chemistry between them, for God’s sake? Was he completely unaware of the way things were? “Oh, please don’t turn me down,” she begged frantically. “I’ve got to have a job—I’ve no money and nowhere to live, and I’ll have to sleep in a doorway, and I’d work so hard you wouldn’t believe it. I love this place,” declared Loulou with another sweeping gesture to indicate the smoky, tatty public bar with its nicotine-stained windows and battered wooden furniture. “And I swear to you that I’ll be the best bartender you ever had. Please, please give me a chance to prove it. Please, Mac? Will you? Please?”