Fast Friends

by Jill Mansell

  He grinned as she came reluctantly toward him and gestured apologetically with his free arm. “I’m sorry, I know I should have come clean yesterday, but I couldn’t resist it. Are you cross with me?”

  “Very,” said Camilla, straight-faced, then added, “Embarrassed.”

  Loulou, almost bursting with impatience, said, “He isn’t here yet, is he? Are we in time?”

  “If we hurry,” replied Nico solemnly, “you may even be able to sink a few drinks before they arrive. That should calm your jangling nerves… Will you stop juddering, Lou? And get inside this damn house?”

  He certainly looked more like a rock star today, thought Camilla as he led them inside. In close-fitting dark-green leather trousers and a darker green T-shirt upon which, in scarlet, were the words Italians do it bella, he presented an altogether more dangerous image than that of yesterday. Yet the easy, unaffected smile and good humor were unchanged, and she clung to that fact with gratitude. She had felt at ease with Nico before; knowing now how well-known and how wealthy he clearly was shouldn’t make her react any differently toward him. If only she could just stop thinking about it…

  The interior of the house was spectacularly decorated and incredibly untidy. In the center of the wood-paneled hall stood a twenty-foot-long carved oak table covered with pieces of drum kit, empty beer cans, and dust. Silver candlesticks, tarnished and spotted with green wax, stood sentinel at either end of a vast fireplace. The parquet floor was dull and splattered with mud.

  “Like it?” said Nico, turning to Camilla.

  “It’s a beautiful house,” she said carefully, glancing up at the cobwebs.

  “But a bloody mess,” he admitted with a rueful expression. “My housekeeper’s a darling, but she was inconsiderate enough to fall in love a few weeks ago with the milkman. Couldn’t get a stroke of work out of her, and then last week, she announced she was going away on vacation with him to Spain. What could I say? I just hope that, if and when she comes back, she’ll remember how to work the Hoover. First love.” He shook his blond head and sighed. “It’s an alarming thing.”

  “How old is she?” asked Camilla, thinking that to hire such a young and obviously vulnerable housekeeper was asking for trouble.

  Nico grinned. “Fifty-three.”

  The kitchen was even worse, and Camilla’s hands itched when she saw the mountains of washing up. By the look of it, Nico was working his way through his fourth dinner service in an attempt to avoid getting his hands wet.

  “You could always hire someone temporary.” Even Loulou sounded faintly shocked. Nico looked vague.

  “Keep forgetting to get around to it. Marian should be back in a few days or so. She’ll sort it all out then, I expect.”

  They took it in turns to taste the mulled wine, before pouring it into an enormous silver jug and retiring with it to Nico’s chaotic sitting room. Scarlet and gray silk-lined walls were hung with gold discs and framed photographs that only made Camilla feel more ashamed. Even she could recognize Paul McCartney, Kylie, and Elton John, with whom Nico had been photographed. Hastily, she swallowed half a glass of the hot, spicy drink and felt it course through her bloodstream like a drug. Loulou, by now visibly apprehensive, was already well into her second, and when the doorbell rang moments later she automatically reached for a refill.

  “Why am I here?” she wailed loudly, pulling a carefully pinned ringlet of gold ribbon from her hair in violent agitation.

  “Because you bloody well insisted upon it,” Nico told her, rising to his feet. Camilla breathed in the scent of warm leather as he passed.

  “No, no! I mean what’s my excuse?” clamored Loulou, shredding the ribbon and looking aghast. “I can’t remember why I’m supposed to be here, and Mac will guess that…”

  “Stage fright,” he said with a shrug in Camilla’s direction as he left the room.

  “You’ve brought me here because I’m going to be his new cleaning woman,” said Camilla quickly, without even stopping to think.

  “Oh, that’s brilliant!” exclaimed Loulou, still pale, but smiling with relief. “Cami, you’re an angel. What would I do without you?”

  No, thought Camilla with a rush of affection and sympathy—for their ex-husbands were the source of both their problems—what would I do without you?

  Having had Mac described to her by Loulou, Camilla had known to expect a tall, lean man with black gypsyish curls, dark eyes, and an exquisite dimple, but there was far, far more to him than that. He was attractive, certainly, but he possessed an arresting quality that would automatically draw the attention of even the most indifferent onlooker. Unconscious sex appeal mingled with lazy grace and a sureness of his actions that was almost hypnotic. It was easy to see why Loulou had fallen in love with him, and equally impossible to know what Mac was thinking behind that proud, handsome exterior.

  Loulou might have been suffering from stage fright, Camilla thought several uncomfortable minutes later, but she didn’t deserve to, for surely only actresses suffered from that.

  And Loulou was no actress. Every pent-up emotion was etched with dazzling clarity upon her mobile features in perfect contrast with Mac’s quite unreadable expression when he saw his ex-wife sitting cross-legged in the center of the sofa. Camilla still couldn’t quite believe that Loulou had actually said, with a bright, false smile, “Well, hello, fancy meeting you here!” Equally toe-curling had been the entirely unconvincing way in which she had immediately launched into a breathless explanation of her presence there.

  “…so I suggested that Camilla would be just the person to take over as Nico’s new housekeeper, and Nico was thrilled. He insisted that we dash straight over…so here we are!”

  “Amazing,” Mac murmured with that dark, Scottish-accented voice that made spaghetti of Loulou’s knees.

  “Amazing” isn’t the word for it, thought Nico, glancing across at the woman who had introduced herself to him as Jane Smith after having been caught by him with rather more than just her trousers down. He had guessed that it wasn’t her name, but he certainly hadn’t realized that this was the old school friend who had left her husband after discovering he was having an affair with Roz. How could he have guessed, after all? Roz had dismissed her as “a great white whale, all knitting patterns and coordinated bathroom fittings.”

  Nico recalled that first memorable meeting, when he had admired for too few seconds Camilla’s voluptuous, lightly tanned body, and later devoured the exquisite meal she had cooked. Camilla was a little shy, certainly, but in his experience, that was an all-too-rare quality in a woman. He could easily imagine how she would be overawed by someone like Roz, but she was undoubtedly easier company, and considering what she must have gone through in the last few weeks she was coping incredibly well.

  Don’t judge people by your own standards, darling, he thought, mentally addressing Roz and experiencing a wave of emotion dangerously close to dislike for the woman who was his mistress. And don’t dismiss her as easily as you have, because if you do, you’re sadly underestimating Camilla.

  The interview, as prearranged by Nico’s agent, lasted exactly one and a half hours. Cosmopolitan’s features writer was determined not to be captivated by Nico’s famous charm and asked dozens of questions about politics upon which he patiently declined to comment.

  “We want to know about your serious side,” she persisted, while Mac sorted out the lighting behind them in preparation for the photo session. Camilla saw him smile as Nico, straight-faced, said, “That would be my left side.”

  “And what do you like to do when you aren’t working?”

  “Screw,” replied Nico, then he winked at Camilla. “And look at naked women.” Camilla blushed.

  “Anyone in particular?” said the woman from Cosmopolitan, determinedly unshockable.

  “I don’t know.” He tilted his head to one side and gazed steadily at her through
half-closed eyes. “What are you doing tonight?”

  * * *

  “The bastard,” sobbed Loulou, streaking her face with mascara as she rubbed her eyes with balled-up fists like a child. “He did his bloody best to act as if I wasn’t even there. All that worrying and I would have been better off not going anyway—how can he be like that when I’m like this?”

  Camilla, unfamiliar with the MG that Loulou was far too drunk to drive, struggled to manipulate the ferocious clutch.

  “He knew you were there, Lou. He’s just…better at hiding his feelings, I suppose,” she said lamely, wishing that she could say something more positive.

  “Do you think he guessed that I was only there to see him?” asked Loulou, who then kicked the dashboard with her booted foot and swore colorfully. “Of course he did! And I bet he loved it. He makes me so mad I feel like going off and getting married again, just to spite him.”

  The declaration sounded so absurd that Camilla laughed. “You could always have Jack.”

  Loulou sniffed loudly then managed a watery, reluctant smile. “I know it sounds daft, Cami. But the only reason I married Hugh was to teach Mac a lesson. You don’t know what I’m like with bloody men. You really don’t.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Christmas Day, as far as Roz was concerned, was the absolute pits.

  Particularly when it was spent alone. Carelessly forcing the cork out of the bottle of Lanson with her fingernails so that it ricocheted off the ceiling and champagne foamed over her hands onto the lilac silk bedcover, she tipped the bottle to overfill her solitary glass and mentally ticked off all the people with whom she had not been invited to spend Christmas Day.

  Roz’s thoughts turned to Nico as she relived yesterday’s difficult conversation with him. To her eternal shame, out of a mixture of loneliness and desperation, she had buried her pride and phoned him.

  “Just thought I’d ring and wish you a merry Christmas. Where will you be?” she had said, despising the telltale note of weakness in her voice.

  “Oh, hi, Roz. We’re going to see my sisters.”

  “We?”

  “I’m taking Loulou with me,” Nico had added, answering the question she refused to allow herself to ask. “Poor kid, she’s had a bit of a rough time recently. She ran into Mac again and the reunion didn’t go quite as she’d hoped, so I thought she needed cheering up. If Lucia and Bianca and their brood of banshees can’t take her mind off Mac, nothing can.”

  There was no mention of Camilla, and Roz had no intention of asking him if Loulou still had a houseguest. It had hardly been the most relaxed of phone calls, and Nico, though polite, had sounded quite unlike his usual, warmer self.

  Almost as an afterthought, it seemed, he had said, “What are you doing for Christmas, then?”

  “Oh, the usual,” replied Roz, her pride by this time biting like shoes three sizes too small. “Loads of parties, lots of people to see.”

  And it was true, she reflected. It was simply that none of the parties was on Christmas Day itself, when they were most needed.

  “That’s great,” Nico had said absently. “Well, have a good time. Bye.”

  The day stretched endlessly ahead of her, threatening to last at least five times as long as a normal one. Roz sipped her champagne moodily, flicking through the TV channels with the remote control to be greeted by cartoons, children in the hospital, the morning service, and more children in the hospital. Terrific. Heaving a long, drawn-out sigh, she gazed around in dissatisfaction at the midnight-blue, lilac, and gold bedroom. What on earth was the point, she thought, of wearing a negligee and lying in a king-sized canopied four-poster bed in one of the most seductively styled bedrooms imaginable when there was no one there with her to seduce? The only thing to do, clearly, was to drink her way through the solitude until sleep returned and this hideous day came to its silent, interminable end.

  * * *

  If Camilla had known that Roz was spending Christmas Day alone and lonely, she might have felt a little better herself.

  As it was, though, the black depression had descended, and since just before six o’clock—years of motherhood had conditioned her to wake up particularly early on this of all mornings—she had wept nonstop into her coffee. All the suppressed tears of the past few weeks now poured down her cheeks, and the aching hollowness in the pit of her stomach clutched at her like a knuckle-dustered fist. Resentment and hatred toward Roz—who had everything any woman could possibly want but who had, nevertheless, wanted more—burned within her, and for the first time, she experienced a yearning for revenge.

  The sensation was so alien to her nature that it quite shocked her. Rising quickly, she crossed to the ornately gilded mirror, framed by Loulou with holly and gold feathers, and surveyed her tearstained reflection with dislike. At this lowest of ebbs, without both makeup and confidence, she had reverted to the unattractive, insipid woman who allowed life to beat her. So much, she thought with self-hatred, for her insistence that she wanted to—and would—spend Christmas on her own.

  It had seemed so important at the time, when Nico had invited her to stay with him and Loulou at his sister’s house in Bath. It had been a statement of self-confidence, an assurance to both her and them that she was able to cope without the moral crutch of their company, and she had meant it, had been confident that she could achieve this small but important goal set by herself. The more they had urged her not to stay in London, registering their doubts that she was strong enough to do so, the more strongly Camilla had reacted. In the end, she had had to insist that they leave her behind, and they had only reluctantly agreed after making sure that the flat was filled with festive food, bottles of champagne, their phone number in Bath, and a pile of lavishly wrapped presents that put the small gifts she had bought them to shame.

  And they had only left last night.

  It’s only another day, exactly the same as all the rest, she told herself savagely as she turned away from the mirror and felt the burning of incipient tears once more. So why did it have to be so bloody different?

  Switching on the television, she realized almost immediately that she had made another mistake. Having worked so hard to suppress the memories of Toby and Charlotte, she found herself with a relentlessly cheerful disc jockey visiting children unfortunate enough to be in the hospital on Christmas Day. Their little faces and heartbreaking smiles were more than she could bear. She could remember every detail of her children’s faces, the sound of their voices when they laughed—and when they cried. The newly washed scent of their bodies as she hugged them at bedtime. What had she done? Was this really the best thing for them all—or should she go back? Sinking to her knees before the television set, tears pouring unheeded down her cheeks, Camilla wished for the first time in her life that she were dead.

  * * *

  Cautiously pushing open the swing door, its chocolate-brown paint scuffed and scratched with years of careless use, her knees were instantly attacked by a pair of chubby arms, enfolding her legs as if she were a box of groceries. Brown eyes and a huge, gappy grin greeted Camilla when she looked down, and before she could even steady herself against the doorjamb, the child yelled “Pick up” and released its grip on her knees to fling its arms wide before her. She wasn’t sure whether it was a boy or a girl, but that didn’t matter. Bending down, she scooped the plump child, who was wriggling with delight, into her arms.

  “What’s your name?” she said carefully, disentangling a strong fist from her hooped earring.

  “Pretty,” the child announced unhelpfully and shrieked with laughter. “Happy Kissmas.”

  At the far end of the ward, which had been decorated for Christmas with more enthusiasm than taste, several nurses were supervising lunch, pulling wheelchairs up to a cluster of pushed-together tables, and hauling other children into normal chairs or onto their laps. Still carrying the squirming child, who was
now twisting handfuls of her hair around its arms, Camilla made her way toward them. Unlike the television program she had watched earlier, there were no families with the children on this ward. The smell of turkey mingled with those of disinfectant and urine, and the tiny, fake Christmas tree was placed on top of a cupboard, well out of reach from inquisitive hands.

  “Hello, I’m Camilla. I phoned earlier and was told by one of the sisters that it would be all right to come along.” It was impossible, she realized, to be shy when a small child had its fingers in your ears and its legs wrapped around your waist.

  “The more the merrier,” said one of the nurses, smiling at her and expertly twisting a wheelchair into place before the table. The occupant, a boy of about ten, gazed ahead with sightless eyes and repetitively banged the side of his chair with a twisted hand.

  “I’m Carol. This is Tina, Marie, Jeannie, and Tom.” She nodded to each of the other nurses in turn. “And it rather looks as if you’re stuck with that baby gorilla there,” she added with an infectious grin. “His name’s Martin. We call him Marty. If you’d like to sit down, I’ll give you his plate and you can feed him.”

  “Pretty,” announced Marty, his dark, shiny hair swinging as he turned and kissed Camilla wetly on the nose.

  “Yes, darling,” said the nurse named Marie, who had appeared to notice Camilla’s puffy eyes beneath the carefully applied makeup. “She’s a very pretty lady, and she’s going to make sure your lunch goes into your mouth instead of all over the floor.”

  “How old is he?” said Camilla.

  “Six. He’s a bugger for earrings. I’d take yours out if you want to keep your ears intact. Want to pull a Christmas cracker, Marty?”

  “Happy Kissmas,” said Marty, ripping the cracker to shreds all by himself and screaming with delight when Camilla maneuvered the yellow paper hat onto his darting head.

  “His nappy’s wet,” said Camilla, as a dark stain spread over her elegant shirt.