Fast Friends

by Jill Mansell

  “And fitting perfectly onto a triple-word score,” she observed. “Incredible.”

  “You don’t believe me?” he protested, clutching his heart. “Shall I phone my dear old mother so that you can ask her yourself? Why, at this very moment she is probably sitting at her kitchen table peeling delicious zuka in preparation for the evening meal…”

  “We’ll phone her,” intercepted Camilla firmly, calling his bluff and reaching for the phone. “Where is she?”

  “At home, in northern Italy.”

  He grinned as she dropped the phone back onto the floor. “Why, how good of you, deciding to believe me after all. That’s another fifty-four points to me, I think.”

  When Loulou returned home at almost five o’clock, Nico and Camilla were still sprawled on the living room floor, so engrossed in their game that they didn’t even notice her arrival. Loulou gazed in astonishment at the cozy scene, registering the empty wine bottle and glasses beside them, the totally relaxed atmosphere, and the laughter in Camilla’s eyes as she accused Nico of stealing her Q. She guessed instantly that Camilla had no idea whom she was lying next to; if she had known that Nico Coletto was one of Britain’s most successful rock stars and a huge sex symbol to boot, she would be paralyzed with shyness. And if she knew that he was another of Roz’s lovers, Loulou doubted whether she would even remain in the same room as him.

  Her heart softened and she felt a small surge of personal triumph as she realized how lovely Camilla was looking. The other night, when she had dragged her down into Vampires and placed her at the mercy of Miles Cooper-Clarke, all the makeup and finery in the world had been unable to disguise her inner anxieties. But now, bathed in the intimate glow of the twin brass lamps on either side of the sofa, her exquisite new hairstyle endearingly tousled, and her lipstick scarcely visible, she exuded confidence and joy.

  With Miles, an ordinary man, she had been cripplingly ill at ease, Loulou recalled wryly, yet here with Nico—who was by any standards extraordinary—she was at peace.

  From her position in the doorway, Loulou smiled. There couldn’t be that many people in Britain who wouldn’t recognize Nico when they saw him. Trust Camilla to be one of that tiny minority.

  “Zuka!” she exclaimed, having crept up behind them, and Camilla jumped. Nico, who could detect the click of a photographer’s camera at fifty paces and who had known all along that Loulou had returned, reached out and grabbed her slender ankle, pulling her down in an untidy heap beside him.

  “Rinti?” howled Loulou, transfixed by the outrageous words he had been allowed to get away with. Camilla, she knew instinctively, would never cheat like that.

  “Keribel!”

  “Shh, Lou,” Nico chastised her, pulling a lock of her rippling blond hair for emphasis. “You know perfectly well that a keribel is a child’s rocking chair. Look, I’m winning by seventy-two points. Isn’t that incredible?”

  “It’s a miracle of modern cheating,” she observed drily.

  “Oh, come on. Jane knows I’m not cheating. Merely because I have a more extensive knowledge of the English language…”

  “Jane doesn’t know you aren’t cheating,” interjected Camilla. “She just doesn’t have a dictionary to prove that you are, that’s all.”

  Loulou stared at them, wondering exactly how much they had had to drink. “And who the bloody hell,” she demanded of Camilla, “is Jane?”

  Grinning broadly, Nico said, “Jane is the woman who greeted me, stark naked, when I arrived here a couple of hours ago. But you don’t want to hear about that; it really wouldn’t interest you. Your go, Jane.”

  “Tell me, tell me, tell me!” yelled Loulou in a fever of anticipation. “It’s my business to know all the gossip and scandal that’s going around. I have to know, for the good of my health.”

  “Gossip and scandal?” said Nico, pretending to concentrate on the letters Camilla was putting down. “OK, I’ll give you gossip. I’m doing an interview for Cosmopolitan tomorrow morning.”

  Ah, he must be a journalist, thought Camilla. That would explain his ability to lie so convincingly.

  “Who gives a damn about your lousy interview,” declared Loulou ferociously, punching him on the shoulder.

  “Such gratitude,” murmured Nico. “I simply thought you might be interested to know who they’d got in to take the photos, but obviously…”

  “Mac!”

  “…you aren’t interested in knowing that either, so it’s a waste of time even telling you that it’s at my place, at twelve thirty…”

  “Mac? Is it really? Oh, I just knew something was going to happen. I was only thinking about him this week. Mac!”

  Rolling onto his side, Nico studied the expression on her face, faking astonishment. “So you’re glad I told you?”

  “Ah, you’re an angel,” exclaimed Loulou, launching herself at him and covering his face with kisses. Camilla watched in amusement, trying to remember which of Loulou’s husbands Mac was. Either the second or the third, she thought, but Loulou had listened so unselfishly to Camilla’s depressing litany of problems that she had scarcely had time to do more than briefly mention in passing her own tangled love life. And Mac, it appeared, was still an important part of it.

  “I’m afraid I did something very wicked this afternoon,” confessed Nico.

  But Loulou, still clinging to him like a puppy, shook her head. “I don’t care. I forgive you.”

  “Jane made you the best spaghetti Bolognese in the world, and I ate it.”

  “You’re a bastard,” she said affectionately, “but I still forgive you. Was it wonderful?”

  “Bellissimo.”

  “That’s all right, then. Only the very best for my darling Nico.”

  At that moment, disentangling himself from her clutches, he spotted the word Camilla was setting out along the bottom of the board, managing to encompass two triple-word scores.

  “Quiglioni? What in heaven’s name is quiglioni, for God’s sake?”

  Camilla smiled innocently at him. “It’s derived from the Italian language,” she explained. “It means ‘man of huge appetite who eats all the spaghetti.’ You surprise me, Nico. I really thought you would have been familiar with that one.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Shrinking further into the depths of her velvet-lined coat, Roz set her glossy red lips into a determined line and braved the freezing December morning air. Her brown, high-heeled boots tapped out a rhythmic staccato as she crossed the icy road and headed for Hyde Park.

  She needed to think. In less than an hour, she had to be at the television studios for a meeting to discuss the first program in her new series of Memories. In an hour, she would have to deal tactfully with a frenetic producer, his ever-flappable assistant, and a whole team of equally excitable people, none of whom spoke when they could shout, nor discussed when they could argue. And she would have no time whatsoever to think.

  As she entered Hyde Park with its acres of crisp, heavily frosted grass and silver-filigreed trees, her spirits lifted slightly. It didn’t compare with the Cotswolds, of course, but it had a citified beauty of its own, and at least it was relatively quiet at this early hour.

  Confiding in Nico had been a big mistake; she realized that now. Almost every man she had ever met had been possessive, but he appeared to be even more so. Maybe the time had come to move on, leaving Nico behind, but then…

  Roz sighed, breathing out a white cloud of mist that vanished in an instant. It would be a damn shame if he had to go. Lovers as skillful and generous as Nico were hard to come by. Or rather, not hard to come by, she thought with a tiny smile as she recognized her own unintentional pun. And Nico was definitely a sensational lover; she had had enough experience with men to know that.

  But was the relationship spoiled anyway, now that Nico knew rather than merely suspected that she had taken other lovers?


  Roz gave up thinking for a moment and watched a silky-haired Afghan hound launch itself in pursuit of a stick. Long ears flying, honey-blond coat rippling like the sea, it pounced on the stick and returned it, wagging its tail and gazing up in devotion at its balding, portly master.

  Such uncompromising adoration, thought Roz with a trace of jealousy. Would the Afghan mind for more than five minutes if its owner brought home another dog? Why couldn’t men be more like dogs: uncritical and loving, and unhampered by the need to be the only one?

  Gazing across at the hound, Roz remembered with a painful jolt that Camilla had been almost doglike in her devotion: loyal, unquestioning, seeking no more reward than friendship. And in return, she had treated her so badly that had she been a dog, she would have been taken away by the RSPCA and given a better, far nicer owner.

  Roz smiled wryly to herself once more, at the ridiculous turn her thoughts had taken. This was worse than Orwell’s Animal Farm, for heaven’s sake! Camilla was a human being, after all… It just irritated her that her conscience wouldn’t let the situation rest. What had happened had happened, she told herself decisively.

  “Roz.”

  Having vaguely heard the footsteps behind her a few seconds earlier, she swung around as a hand touched her arm. Jack, his handsome face reddened by the icy air and his eyes watering slightly, looked both apprehensive and determined.

  “You followed me,” said Roz flatly.

  He nodded. “I’ve been waiting outside the TV studios all week, but the commissionaire wouldn’t allow me in, and since you won’t return my calls…”

  “Quite,” she cut in, her voice crisp and impersonal. “I told you when I came to the house to pick up Camilla’s things that there was no point in discussing the situation. It’s over, Jack. You disgust me.”

  With an expression of bewilderment, he gestured with his gloveless hand. “How can I disgust you, for Christ’s sake? You knew I was married, so don’t try to give me the morality bit. I didn’t disgust you a few weeks ago when…”

  “I didn’t know you were married to Camilla,” retaliated Roz fiercely, her dark eyes glittering with disdain. “Because you purposely didn’t tell me. Did it give you a thrill, Jack, to be the only one in on the secret? To play your clever little game?”

  His eyes shifted away from her, then darted back as his mouth twisted into a derisory smile. “You don’t like it,” he accused her, “because you think I made a fool of you.”

  Roz longed to hit him but instead kept her hands deep in the pockets of her coat. What he said was partly true, after all. “Oh no.” She shook her head. “I don’t like it because you chose—for your own amusement—to make a fool of your wife, who didn’t deserve it. If you had any sense at all, you’d apologize to her, spoil her to death, and beg her to come back. Not that she doesn’t deserve better, of course, but because you and the children are all she has. Go back to Camilla, Jack, and for God’s sake, leave me alone.”

  “She won’t come back,” he replied slowly, after a few seconds of icy silence. “She told Jennifer, so there’s no point in my even asking her. She’s left me for good, Roz, but it’s you I love anyway. Darling,” he said, reaching toward her, his voice suddenly husky, “we have to talk. Properly. I only want to be with you. Please.”

  “But I don’t want you,” snapped Roz, almost overcome with revulsion. Her eyes blazed as she glared at him, and he almost flinched at the hatred in them. “I don’t want you, Jack. Can’t you understand that? And now, for God’s sake, just leave me alone.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “We came down to London just after we got married,” said Loulou, fiddling with the wildly unsuitable gold lamé scarf around her neck and driving Camilla to distraction with her hyperactivity. She would never have imagined that Loulou could be so nervous, yet here she was in the fourth outfit she had tried on in an hour, acting like a teenager on her first date. It was oddly comforting, in a way, Camilla thought, to discover that men—or rather one man in particular—could reduce the invincible Loulou to the consistency of overcooked spaghetti.

  “I managed to get a job straightaway as the manager of a brasserie in Clapham, but we’d decided that Mac had to keep his time free to concentrate on his career, so we lived—in considerable squalor, of course—on my salary. I thought it was wonderfully romantic.” She sighed again, breathing smoke all over Camilla. “But after a couple of months, Mac began to get frustrated. Typical man, of course. He simply couldn’t handle the idea that he was being supported by a woman. Then I met darling Omar one night at the wine bar. Omar Khalid. He’d just bought this place and he needed someone to run it for him, so I agreed to come here if he doubled my salary. I didn’t have any idea then, of course, how wealthy he was. He didn’t even flinch and I started here two days later. It meant longer hours, but I thought Mac would be pleased because of the extra cash.” She pulled an exaggerated face. “But, of course, I hadn’t reckoned on that fearsomely macho Scottish pride of his. He did his damnedest to persuade me not to take the job, so it became a battle of wills, and you know what I’m like when I make up my mind. Mac was an absolute pig, refusing to take a penny more than necessary of my money. He gave up smoking, wouldn’t touch alcohol, and practically starved himself. I wasn’t even allowed to buy him Chinese takeout on a Saturday night,” she exclaimed in remembered horror. “So, of course, we fought like cat and dog whenever I was at home—such a shame, because we still loved each other madly—and the only way to stop the fighting was to not be at home. He was… Oh God, is that the time? We’ll be late!”

  Leaping to her feet, fanning her wet nails furiously, and visibly vibrating with agitation, she twirled in front of Camilla. “I’ll have to tell you the rest later. Am I OK?”

  Loulou, Camilla thought, looked absolutely stunning…but maybe just a little over the top for a cold Tuesday morning in December.

  “You look great,” she said warmly, then hesitated. “But I can’t help wondering…”

  “Say it,” commanded Loulou, biting her lower lip. “I know what it is, but say it anyway.”

  “Well, wouldn’t it have been better to play it cool and turn up in jeans?” Camilla suggested reluctantly. “Not that I’ve got much experience in these matters, but…”

  “Oh, I know, I know,” said Loulou, sounding forlorn but at the same time brushing the suggestion determinedly aside. “And you’re absolutely right, of course, but if there’s one thing I’ve never been able to do, it’s play it cool. Besides, Mac knows me too well to fall for it. He expects me to wear the wrong clothes. If I wore something appropriate”—she made it sound worse than hemorrhoids—“he probably wouldn’t even recognize me. But thanks for being honest enough to say it,” she concluded gratefully, bending to kiss Camilla’s cheek. “Now, are you ready? We simply must leave so that we’re there before Mac. I don’t want him to think that we’ve only turned up to see him!”

  Camilla gave her a doubtful smile. Mac couldn’t possibly think that the presence of Loulou—looking like a Dallas Christmas tree—was a coincidence, yet Loulou herself believed implicitly that he would. How easy it was, she thought sadly, to see the mistakes made by others, while remaining so utterly blind to one’s own.

  “I’m ready.” She stood up and glimpsed her reflection in Loulou’s stage-lit mirror. It still shocked her to see her new self, for a brief moment to catch herself unawares. The difference gave her a thrill each time. “I feel like a chaperone.”

  Loulou grinned as they headed for the door. “Happily, you don’t look like one.”

  * * *

  Nico’s house, overlooking Wimbledon Common, captivated Camilla instantly. Huge, rambling, and Victorian, its walls hung with Virginia creeper and almost every window ablaze with light, it epitomized a truly English home. Twin Christmas trees strung with what seemed like miles of white lights flanked the heavy oak front door, and the glittering l
ights of another could be seen through the hall window. Only the electrically operated gates and the notices reading BEWARE—GUARD DOGS struck a discordant note.

  “Tell me the truth,” she demanded as Loulou’s navy-blue MG screeched noisily to a halt at the head of the graveled driveway. “Just how famous is Nico?”

  Loulou tried to suppress a grin, her own anxieties forgotten for a moment. She had felt it only fair to warn Camilla that Nico was not, as she had first imagined, a journalist, but in order to break her in gently had somewhat skated over the truth.

  “Well, I suppose he’s a bit famous,” she conceded, privately amazed that the almost inevitable clutch of schoolgirls who hung around the front gates hoping for a glimpse of their idol were not in evidence this morning. Nico, apparently, wasn’t worth freezing for in temperatures of four below zero. “He’s sold a few records in his time, but you mustn’t let it bother you. You’ve met him now, so you know how lovely he is—not a bit intimidating.”

  “How many records?” persisted Camilla slowly. Not having known who Nico was was beginning to make her feel as gauche as failing to recognize the queen at one of her own garden parties, but since marrying Jack, who was a Radio 4 person himself, she had become hopelessly out of touch with what was popular.

  “About six million, I think,” said Loulou over her shoulder as she jumped out of the car. “That’s here in the UK, of course. He’s sold a lot more than that in Europe. Italy’s crazy about him.”

  Camilla swallowed hard, wishing she could sink down in her seat and hide in the car until it was time to leave, but even as the thought formed in her panicking mind, the front door was opening and Nico appeared.

  “Christ, it’s cold,” he shouted, holding out his arms as Loulou ran across the gravel toward him. “Jane! I hardly recognized you with your clothes on. Now come inside at once and help me with this mulled wine I’ve been concocting.”