Fast Friends

by Jill Mansell

  Of course not.

  Pouring shampoo onto his head and lathering it with such vigor that his hangover intensified in protest, Nico concentrated his thoughts. The real reason he had allowed himself to be persuaded across the Atlantic was simple. He was just as bored at home.

  In the last few months he had written scarcely any songs at all, and those few he had managed to complete were so pitifully below standard that he had destroyed them himself, before anyone else could hear them and do the same. Officially, he had been taking a well-earned rest. Unofficially, he was totally disinterested.

  And what was there at home, anyway? On that disastrous day when Camilla had removed herself from his home, she had hired Hazel Hampton to replace her, and he still hadn’t been able to figure out whether she had done it deliberately out of spite, or whether it had been a genuine mistake. But how, he wondered with renewed exasperation, could he possibly be expected to enjoy the company of a housekeeper who, at forty-one, insisted on calling him sir and gazed at him with such open and helpless adoration that he felt permanently ill at ease?

  He couldn’t fault her work; Camilla had kept the house clean and relatively organized, but Hazel, her pale, eager eyes able to spot a dust particle at fifty paces, had turned the place into a laboratory. She was an excellent cook, but he had never seen her eat. Whenever Nico spoke to her, she blushed violently and took so long to stammer out her replies that he lost all track of the conversation.

  And it was purely because she was so shy, and so desperately eager to please, that he didn’t have the heart to replace her. Also, he had a nagging fear that if he tried to, she would throw herself off the top of the BT Tower. Making no mess when she landed, naturally.

  So work was no fun. Home was no fun.

  Somehow, Camilla had managed to remove all the fun from his life as efficiently as she had cleared her room on the day she’d left.

  Nico sighed. He’d finally—after far too many hours of soul-searching—come to the conclusion that Camilla was simply too terrifyingly honest.

  He still winced at the memory of her quiet disappointment, her attempts to tell him that his failure to please her really hadn’t mattered. He would never be able to forget the saddened, pitying look in her eyes…

  And although he hadn’t even wanted to take anyone to bed since that night, his ego had taken such a colossal battering that if he had, some dreadful inner warning bell made him wonder if he’d actually be able to perform at all.

  So much for Camilla, whom he wanted to hate but could only succeed in missing terribly.

  And finally, of course, there was Roz. He could hardly leave her out of it, could he? That messy situation was perhaps the least fun of all, what with his own muddled sense of guilt and morality vying with doubt and at times plain disbelief.

  Should he have accepted the facts as they had been presented to him, without once even asking himself whether they were accurate? Didn’t he owe the child that much, at least?

  But then, did he owe Roz herself anything, after the way she had behaved? Christ, it was difficult. Even his manager, Monty Barton, hadn’t been able to decide what he should do, although that opinion had less to do with morals than plain cash. Would it harm Nico Coletto’s glittering career if he failed to publicly acknowledge his child, or would it be worse still if he did the Right Thing and married Roz? His image was not, after all, one that lent itself to family life and fatherhood.

  Stepping out of the shower and shaking his blond head so that a spiral of water droplets fanned out around him, Nico picked up a white bath towel and half-heartedly rubbed himself dry, thinking dark thoughts about capricious women, the havoc they wrought, and blackmail.

  He refused to allow himself to be threatened by any of them. And he would start by putting a call through to Monty Barton’s room and telling him that the appearance he was scheduled to make on The Susie Sellers Show this afternoon was canceled. Due to an incredible lack of interest on the part of the invited guest.

  * * *

  Shooing away a persistent fly and kicking off her espadrilles, Loulou leaned back and wondered what she could possibly talk about that would effectively change the subject, but at the same time avoid those sensitive areas concerning Camilla and Nico. Her way of dealing with unpleasant events was by simply putting them out of her mind, and she had quite successfully ignored the fact of her pregnancy for hours whenever thinking of it had become too confusing.

  Roz, however, was obviously so delighted to learn that they were both on the same sinking ship that she couldn’t stop talking about it, speculating and giving advice—most of it in the form of dire predictions. She was, in fact, being more boring than Loulou had believed possible.

  “…and then you have to go along to these revolting prenatal classes where everyone else looks even more cowlike than you do and the sadistic old bitch who runs it shows video nasties about giving birth. It’s all perfectly disgusting,” concluded Roz languidly, although Loulou detected a flash of triumph in her narrowed, dark eyes.

  “I don’t want to know,” she said, her voice firm.

  “But you should know,” Roz insisted, pointing at her swollen brown stomach. “I know you, Lou. You’re just pretending that it isn’t happening, but you can’t, not this time. It isn’t going to go away of its own accord. Well,” she amended with a faint smile, “there’s always a slim chance that it might, I suppose, but as far as I can make out miscarriages only happen to women who are desperate for children. So you and I have to be prepared for the whole bit.”

  “Hey, you really know how to cheer a girl up,” said Loulou, draining her glass. “Ever thought of joining the Samaritans?”

  “I’ve thought of phoning them.”

  She was really enjoying this, Loulou realized. “Well, I told Camilla yesterday,” she retaliated crossly, “and she said having babies was a fantastic experience. She really enjoyed being pregnant.”

  “All two hundred pounds of her,” remarked Roz cuttingly. So Loulou had told Camilla first, she thought with a stab of jealousy.

  “She weighs less than 130 now and looks great,” Loulou countered, realizing that Roz was beginning to irritate her. “And that new business she set up is really taking off.”

  “I did her a favor then, having a fling with her husband.”

  “Don’t be such a bitch.” God, it was so tempting…the urge to tell Roz about Camilla and Nico…

  “I am a bitch,” said Roz sadly. “I know I am, but I can’t help it. Blame it on my upbringing.”

  “That’s no excuse.”

  “It’s the best one I’ve got. And if it makes you feel any better,” she added with a burst of honesty, “being a bitch isn’t that much fun. I’m not particularly happy, you know.”

  Loulou, hiding the surprise she felt at hearing what practically amounted to a confession, pulled a face. “Who is, at the moment?”

  “Camilla, by the sound of it.” Roz twisted the halter-neck tie of her bikini around her index finger. “Do you know, I’m almost jealous of her. Whoever would have thought it? Me, jealous of Camilla.”

  * * *

  Still not quite able to take in the fact that working could be so absorbing and enjoyable, Camilla was doing as much as possible as fast as possible, as if afraid that there was some kind of unwritten time limit upon the enjoyment.

  Not that working for Nico had been awful, of course; it was just that that had been housekeeping, much the same as she had done when she had been married to Jack—but with better company. This was entirely different, a proper job, whose success depended upon her own abilities and capacity for hard work. And Zoë’s too, of course, for where would she have been without Zoë, her knowledge and her contacts?

  Camilla could still recall in absolute detail the sunny morning in April shortly after she had moved in with Zoë, when she had admired her new landlady’s grace and perfec
t posture, as she finished washing Fee, her three-year-old daughter. Dressed in daffodil-yellow leggings and an ancient yellow-and-white sweatshirt, with her bright-russet corkscrew curls piled on top of her head with the aid of three clothespins, she wore not a scrap of makeup and yet her beauty was irrefutable.

  “You could be a model,” observed Camilla.

  Zoë promptly dissolved into fits of laughter. “I’m afraid you’re ten years too late, Cami, but thanks all the same.” She giggled, picking Fee out of the bath.

  “But you could,” persisted Camilla. Scooping Fee up into her arms, she breathed in the delicious scent of just-bathed toddler.

  “Ten years ago,” said Zoë, crossing her arms and leaning against the sink, “I couldn’t leave the house without being recognized. I dreamed of the day when people would no longer know who I was. You’ve just made me realize that that day has well and truly arrived.”

  Seeing the confused expression on Camilla’s face, she continued, “I was a model, darling. Catwalk, photographic, Vogue—the lot. It was hard work, but lots of fun. I even met the queen once…”

  Camilla groaned. “I’ve put all my feet in it again. The first time I ever met Nico, I didn’t recognize him. And now you too. But why on earth did you give it up if you enjoyed it so much?”

  Zoë threw a pointed glance in the direction of her youngest child. “Why does any model give up when the going’s good? Babies. There isn’t much call for a catwalk model with a forty-two-inch waistline. And my husband wasn’t thrilled with the idea of me carrying on working afterward. And then…and then…I realized that I was simply too far out of touch and too bloody old. So there you are,” she concluded with a self-mocking smile. “Tragic, isn’t it? The rise and fall of Zoë Sheridan, all in the space of three and a half years. Chuck over my walking sticks, Cami. I’m going to hobble into the sitting room and have another bash at that knitting.”

  “But that’s crazy!” exclaimed Camilla, outraged by Zoë’s flip comments. “You’re only twenty-nine, for heaven’s sake. And you haven’t got a husband to contend with now. Why on earth don’t you go back to it if you enjoyed it so much?”

  Zoë shrugged and helped herself to a chocolate cookie. “It just seems a bit daunting, I suppose, the whole idea of starting again from scratch. I’ve kept in touch with quite a few of the girls from the old days, and they all feel much the same. The hassle of getting everything sorted out is simply too much, what with the kids and those snooty agencies. It’s a tough business, Cami, and we’re just not tough enough anymore to compete.”

  “Aren’t there any friendly agencies who will help you get back on your feet?” asked Camilla, and Zoë laughed at the naïveté of her question.

  “Why should they bother, when they have more than enough models who don’t need help? People like us—out of touch and tied down with children—are more trouble than they’re worth as far as they’re concerned. If I were an organized person, with a nanny and an understanding agency, I’d do it like a shot. But here I am”—she popped the rest of the chocolate cookie into her mouth and paused while she swallowed it—“thoroughly disorganized and quite unemployable. Now why are you looking at me like that? Are you scheming, Camilla, or have you gone into some kind of trance?”

  * * *

  Sheridan’s had been born that night, when the children had been put to bed. Sitting Zoë down with a bottle of Rioja, Camilla had outlined the plan that had materialized almost of its own accord in her mind, and Zoë had listened with rapt attention, her chestnut-brown eyes registering at first astonishment, then growing interest, and finally undiluted excitement. She was the one with the know-how, and Camilla the one with the time and energy to put the plan into action. The agency should be called Sheridan’s because, although Camilla in her ignorance had not recognized Zoë, people in the industry would still remember the name. Zoë’s friends, all those with young children, would leave them at Zoë’s house while they worked. No model ever threw away her old portfolio, so it needed only to be updated. Camilla would organize the advertising, the bookings—all the time-consuming work that the women found so daunting. She would be able to manage all this because the agency would be small, with maybe just a dozen clients on its books…

  * * *

  And now here she was, just three short months later, working twelve-hour days to coordinate the assignments of fifty-six models, all of whom had been introduced to Sheridan’s by word of mouth, and who between them possessed eighty-seven children.

  As the agency had expanded, the idea that either Zoë or Camilla would look after the offspring of working models had rapidly become impractical. Instead, she had scouted around and finally managed to discover a barely used church hall less than a quarter of a mile from the house. She’d organized a lease for a more than reasonable rent, and the day care was now run by two qualified daycare workers and a flexible rotation of model mums. As a result, those mothers were able—for a modest sum—to leave their children at the crèche whenever they were required to work, safe in the knowledge that they were both happy and expertly cared for.

  The existence of Sheridan’s itself had become known to advertising agencies, department stores, and magazines, largely by word of mouth as well. Their own advertising campaign had been cleverly chosen and pared down to the absolute minimum. Any more had proven quite unnecessary, since fifty-six ex-models had their own extended network of contacts, and news of this new, cleverly coordinated agency that employed utterly trustworthy, wonderfully experienced women had spread like wildfire throughout the circles that mattered most. Sheridan’s models, professional and all thrilled to be working once more, were still undeniably beautiful, but they also had an extra, hard-to-define quality that was solely due to the fact that they were more mature than younger models. They had more personality, somehow, and this showed through in their work. Happy to be working, doing what they had always known how to do best, happy to be earning once more, and secure in the knowledge that while they worked their children were being well looked after at the boisterous Sheridan day care, their true personalities shone, unhampered. They had élan, charisma, and character.

  Sheridan’s models, the clients all agreed, were a delight, an absolute joy to work with.

  * * *

  “Oh shit,” said Camilla aloud. Pen in one hand, she had been flipping through the Daily Mail with the other, because Zoë was featured on the fashion pages modeling city suits. And there on page eleven, hitting her like a body blow, was a photograph of Nico.

  It wasn’t the first time, of course, but the reminder of him still affected her, and it still hurt like hell.

  How to make a complete idiot of yourself in one easy lesson, she thought bitterly, scanning the piece that accompanied the picture. Nico was in the States on a promotional tour and was rumored to be about to start work on a single with Stevie Wonder. The report also stated that while his erstwhile “friend” Roz Vallender remained at home in the Cotswolds to await the birth of her child, Nico had been spotted dining out with a young American actress, star of the latest Nicholas Sparks movie.

  That hurt, too, despite everything Camilla had learned about press reports while she was living with Nico. For some time now, she had been nursing the tentative idea that she might see him again, explain her terrible behavior and beg him to forgive her for it. In her wildest dreams, he did. In real life, however, she knew deep down that she had wounded Nico’s pride, betrayed his kindness, and killed his trust in her too thoroughly to allow him to forgive.

  “We were such good friends,” she had said helplessly, attempting to explain to Zoë what had happened. “And out of pure spite, I wrecked everything.”

  “Well, it’s a shame,” said Zoë, attempting to console her. “But it isn’t the end of the world, is it? He’ll get over it. Cheer up, Cami. Worse things have happened at sea.”

  And Camilla’s own sense of pride had prevented her from g
oing on to explain why else she found the situation so upsetting. It would sound simply too juvenile for words to say that she had discovered—too late—that she had fallen in love with Nico.

  She could just imagine the expression on Zoë’s face. “I see. So you slept with him once, made him think he was completely useless in bed, left him—and then decided, weeks later, that you loved him? Isn’t that rather an odd way to go about things, darling?”

  So Camilla had suffered in silence, trying to tell herself that she didn’t really love Nico, that it was all part of the guilt pattern, and that she should simply chalk it up to experience. Her relationship with him had been a freak of nature anyway—why on earth should someone like him wish to be involved with her? They were on entirely different planets. That night would only ever have been a one-off anyway…

  * * *

  Leaving the claustrophobic confines of the Hotel Balfour—although heaven knew how such a vast monstrosity could possibly make him feel claustrophobic—Nico sauntered lazily along the dusty sidewalk, relieved to be out in the fresh air even if it was at least 100°F in the shade, with practically no humidity whatsoever. The sun blazed down, scorching the sandblasted streets, and it was only now that he fully appreciated the efficiency of the air-conditioning system in the hotel.

  But he wasn’t going to let the fierce desert heat drive him back into that Spanish-styled monument to bad taste, nor into one of the endless lines of gambling establishments for which Las Vegas was famed. Gaudily lit, brash, and noisy with the clatter of money and the electronic machines that paid out a precisely calculated percentage of that which went in, he felt only discontent and derision for those who mindlessly played for hours, sometimes days, on end.

  Adjusting his dark glasses and pushing his hands into the pockets of his black cotton Levis, Nico ignored the heat and turned off the main street in search of normality. Somewhere, somewhere in this audacious, unreal town there had to be some small signs that it was real: a supermarket, a hairdressers, a dry-cleaning store, a normal shop that sold Marmite, and Branston pickle, and proper sausages…