Fast Friends

by Jill Mansell

  “I won’t be a minute.”

  When she reached Christo, she said crossly, “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing at all.” He gave her a bland look. “I just thought it might be easier to talk over here. It’s Nico, calling from Las Vegas.”

  “Hey!” cried Loulou, grabbing the receiver from him with both hands and blowing Christo a kiss. Whatever Nico’s shortcomings as far as Roz was concerned, he was still her friend, and hearing from him always cheered her up. Turning her back on the bar and glimpsing Roz’s dark reflection in the mirrors lining the wall, she blew more enthusiastic kisses into the phone.

  “And how’s my favorite all-American boy! What’s happening, Nico?”

  “Loulou, is that you? Is it the middle of the night over there—did I wake you up?”

  There was music playing in the background, and the babble of voices. Nico sounded excited and a little drunk.

  “It’s lunchtime, you fool. How’s everything going? Are you having fun—did you win me a casino yet?”

  “Oh, I’m having fun. It’s five o’clock in the morning and I’m on my second bottle of Tequila. Guess what I did today…no, yesterday now? Come on, Lou, guess.”

  He was very drunk indeed. “I can’t guess. Tell me before your dime runs out. What did you do yesterday that brought all this on?”

  The line grew fainter and the music louder; jamming the phone against her ear, she glanced guiltily over her shoulder at Roz and saw that she was ordering herself another drink.

  “…went and got married, Lou.”

  “Who?” she exclaimed in disbelief, and the transatlantic line miraculously became clear.

  “I did. Me and this girl. I met her yesterday…no, the day before, in a launderette, and we married each other. No one else knows yet—you’re the first. My mother’s going to kill me when she finds out.”

  His mother wasn’t the only one, thought Loulou, her heart turning somersaults. How the hell was Roz going to react to this? And what did Nico think he was doing, marrying someone he’d met only the day before—in a launderette of all places?

  “Are you truly happy?” she demanded ruthlessly, and heard Nico hesitate for a second.

  “What sort of question is that?” he protested. “Weren’t you happy on all your wedding days?”

  “Hmm. Well, as long as you are happy, then congratulations. I’m sorry if I don’t sound terribly enthusiastic, but you don’t need me to tell you what a pile of shit you’re landing me in. I’ll have to let Roz know about this before it hits the press.”

  “Yes.” He sounded more sober now, and defiant. “But I am happy, Lou. I had to do it. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” she said, praying that what he had done was more than simply a means of escape. Few people had managed to waste as many marriages as she herself had, but that didn’t mean she didn’t take the idea of them seriously. “I’ll look forward to meeting her when you get back. She must be a terrific lady.”

  “Of course she’s a terrific lay,” Nico said, laughing. “We both are. I’ll see you soon, Lou. Take care of yourself.”

  “And you,” she said, feeling helpless, but the line had already gone dead.

  “Come upstairs,” she urged Roz, wondering how she was going to tell her.

  “No. I like it here.” Roz clung obstinately to her drink, then viewed Loulou with almost telepathic suspicion. “What’s up?”

  Seeing that she had no intention of moving, Loulou retrieved her stool and planted herself firmly upon it.

  “That was Nico.”

  “I guessed it might be.” Eyes bright, Roz clasped her hand and said rapidly, “I was about to tell you just now… Yesterday, I phoned him in Las Vegas and told him that we ought to get married. Lou, he said maybe we should. Don’t you think that means he’s prepared to—”

  “He did,” blurted out Loulou, realizing that, like dead soldiers, it didn’t matter how she said it. “He got married. Yesterday.”

  * * *

  Bastard, son of a bitch, bastard.

  Staring ahead, her fingers seemingly glued to the steering wheel, Roz accelerated hard and tried to make sense of it all. As the dark-blue Mercedes sped along the M4, she struggled to organize the jumbled thoughts in her mind. Without realizing it, she had pinned all her hopes, her entire future, on Nico and this searing, slashing betrayal was almost more than she could bear. She wasn’t Camilla, or even Loulou, both of whom seemed to expect, almost to invite, disasters—she was Roz Vallender and until now she had always been in control, getting whatever and whomever she wanted without even having to work at it.

  It angered her still more to discover that she couldn’t overcome the problems that faced her now. Other women coped in the same situation, so why was she finding it so desperately difficult to accept?

  Shaking her dark head and tightening her grip on the steering wheel as the speedometer touched ninety and she passed a car transporter loaded with Sierras, all identical, she wondered if it was that which troubled her. The fact that from now on she was going to be more ordinary, more vulnerable…like so many other women.

  Nico had done it on purpose, she could see that clearly enough. She had been chasing him, pursuing him like one of his despised groupies, and he had drawn back in horror and disgust, retaliating by showing her in the plainest way possible that she no longer interested him. How many more obvious ways were there of letting her know than by marrying someone else?

  The way she had behaved was deplorable. Blackly, bitterly, Roz wished she could cut it out of herself. It was a malignancy and she wanted above all else to be rid of it.

  At that exact moment, an eight-year-old Mini doing seventy in the fast lane had moved over to allow Roz to overtake, then unaccountably swerved back again, just enough for its front bumper to touch her rear one. Shocked by the contact and overcompensating for the momentary loss of control, Roz’s Mercedes careered along the edge of the crash barrier, finally ricocheting off it and smashing back into the side of the purple Mini.

  The impact of that second collision seemed like an explosion. When both cars had finally come to a halt after what seemed like hours but that had, in fact, been less than twenty-five seconds, Roz fumbled with the door handle, stumbled awkwardly from her car, and crawled across the inside lane, finally collapsing on the hard shoulder beside the crumpled front wings of the Mini. Deathly pale and icy with shock, she lay there like a stunned rabbit, her dark eyes wide and staring, her breath coming in short, quickening gasps. Her dress was patched with blood and her fingers clawed the road as waves of pain gripped her, dulling both her vision and her mind as they slowly grew in intensity.

  Shaken but miraculously unhurt, the driver of the Mini got himself out through the passenger door and made his way around to Roz. He turned away, sickened, and covered his eyes with a trembling hand when he saw the swollen bulge of her belly and the ominous dark blood staining her dress.

  It was all a blur to Roz. Dazed, she realized that the police and an ambulance had arrived, and from then on, she allowed herself to think no further, sinking into the oblivion of a pain-killing injection and the soothingly matter-of-fact voices of the ambulance men as they lifted her with smooth efficiency onto a stretcher.

  “Is anyone hurt? Have I hurt someone?” she murmured, her pale forehead creasing as she struggled to speak.

  “No one else was injured,” the burly ambulance man assured her, monitoring her pulse with one big hand and briefly lifting the hem of her dress to reassure himself that the flow of blood was lessening. “We’ll have you into the hospital in no time at all, Mrs. Vallender, so don’t you worry.”

  “But I am worried,” she said through clenched teeth. “It’s my fault, all of it. I’m pregnant. What am I going to do now?”

  * * *

  Having smelled alcohol on Roz’s b
reath, the police waited in the emergency department of Gloucester Royal Hospital until Roz had been examined by the doctors and then Breathalyzed her. Although she had only had two spritzers, they had been generously poured and consumed on an extremely empty stomach. The level of alcohol in her blood proved to be just over the legal limit, and the charges were drunken and reckless driving. She had been traveling at something in the region of ninety miles an hour, according to eyewitness accounts, and had also told the police officers, amid tears and confusion, that the accident had been entirely her own fault.

  * * *

  Before you could say Bupa, Roz found herself bang in the middle of Gloucester Royal’s busy obstetrics ward. Having recovered from the initial shock of the accident, and after being strongly reassured that the baby was alive and apparently suffering no ill effects, she was feeling much better, physically at least. The spectacular laceration on her left thigh, which had been sustained as she stumbled from the car onto broken glass and which had bled so copiously at first, had been cleaned and stitched, the pain reduced now to a dull ache. As the shock had subsided, however, her anger at this new trauma—just when she least needed it—inflamed and grew. Her mood blackened. Niggling irritability vied with plain bad temper. Together, they rose within her like a swelling, slow-motion wave.

  To her disgust, she was surrounded on all sides by openly curious women whose stomachs were all at least as large as her own. Their stares infuriated her, as did the manner of the ward manager, who was brisk in her actions to the point of roughness and was obviously a raving Socialist to boot, determined that Roz Vallender wasn’t to get any preferential treatment just because she was well known.

  “I’m a member of a private health scheme,” pointed out Roz irritably, examining with distaste the stiffly starched hospital gown she was forced to wear. It hadn’t been like this last time around. “I don’t want to be in a public ward. Don’t you at least have side wards?”

  “We have one side ward,” the woman informed her tartly, “and it is occupied, Miss Vallender, by someone much sicker than yourself. You may make arrangements to be transferred to a privately run hospital as soon as the doctors here are satisfied that you are stable enough to be moved, but I’m afraid that, until then, you’ll just have to put up with us.”

  Roz stared at her with dislike. “Then could I at least have the curtains drawn around my bed? Ow, that hurts…”

  “We need to be able to keep an eye on you,” replied the nurse, continuing to pump air into the thick cuff around Roz’s upper arm until it felt as if her hand would explode. The tautness was abruptly released and she wrote the blood pressure reading onto a chart at the foot of the bed.

  “You’ll have to learn to withstand more pain than that, dear.” Her tone was deliberately condescending now. “And you should be grateful that that wee baby of yours is still all right. You might easily have lost it in that accident, y’know.”

  Roz’s eyes narrowed; her fists clenched at her sides. “I didn’t crash the car on purpose. It was an accident, so don’t try to make me feel any worse than I do already.”

  Evenly, the nurse replied, “I wouldn’t dream of it, dear. But even I can smell alcohol on your breath. Maybe if you hadn’t been drinking, the accident wouldn’t have happened in the first place.”

  “Oh, go away,” shouted Roz, fighting back tears of frustration and anger. “Just get out of here and leave me alone. You’re a bitch and I’m reporting you to the consultant. Women like you shouldn’t be allowed to look after people who are ill.”

  Over the next twenty-four hours, Roz dug herself deeper into a hole of her own construction. The doctors insisted that she stay on the ward under observation, the nursing staff treated her with the barest minimum of courtesy, and the other patients, having heard her call their beloved Nurse Mason a bitch, all decided that she was a jumped-up, ill-mannered hussy. Roz hated them all back in return, with a vengeance.

  Within hours of her arrival, the news was relayed to the press, and they had an absolute field day, telephoning and turning up in droves. If the hospital staff was too professional to voice their personal opinions of Roz Vallender, the female patients had no such scruples, taking enormous delight in informing the avid-for-news reporters about her foul mouth and vile temper. After a sleepless night, Roz was forced to endure the humiliation of lying in bed while twenty-seven pregnant women sat up in theirs, avidly reading twenty-seven copies of the only tabloid newspaper that had chosen to feature her on the front page, right next to a piece on Nico and his mysterious new bride.

  “He’s gorgeous,” declared a redhead named Sharon, glancing across at Roz and addressing her neighbors in an overly loud voice. “I’m dead glad he’s married that Caroline Whatsername; mind you, I can see now why he didn’t want nothing to do with her over there. Bet he’s glad he got away from her too, stuck-up cow.”

  Keeping her eyes closed and lying perfectly still, Roz said in a clear voice, “Get stuffed.”

  “I already have, thanks,” replied Sharon, amid much muffled laughter. “But at least I had a husband to do the job for me.”

  Christ, thought Roz. I can’t stand any more of this. I’m going home, right now.

  Opening her eyes, she hauled herself into a sitting position and began sliding her legs toward the edge of the bed. At precisely that moment, a strange tugging sensation gripped her lower back. She paused, drawing in breath, then stared in horror and disbelief at the damp patch on the sheet beneath her.

  As she watched, the patch grew, seemingly of its own accord. “Oh shit,” said Roz, feeling the wet warmth between her legs and tensing as another wave of pain began low down in her abdomen. That was it, then—the great escape plan well and truly thwarted. She was being prevented from leaving by her very own baby, who quite clearly had no taste at all and wanted to be born in this hellhole of a hospital. Mistake number one, sweetie, thought Roz with a wry smile. But never mind; we all make them. You’re just starting earlier than most.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Mummy, I hate Gus. Tell her to give me back my hat,” yelled Charlotte, hurling herself at Zoë’s five-year-old daughter and wrenching the floppy pink sun hat from her head.

  “Five minutes ago you told me you hated the hat,” said Camilla, raising her eyebrows at Zoë and signaling despair.

  “I do hate it,” Charlotte informed her triumphantly, hurling it onto the bleached grass and stamping on it with her bare foot. “But it’s still mine and Gussie can’t have it.”

  Zoë groaned and covered her eyes. “You’ve got a Bolshevik on your hands, Cami. Charlotte, are you sure you want to be a nun when you grow up?”

  Charlotte glared at her, quite immune to Zoë’s sense of humor. She didn’t care for her mother’s new friend. Accustomed now to the endless spoiling of her father and grandparents, it came as quite a shock to her that her mother no longer gave in to her as she had in the past. Now, her mother was a lot more fun when all was going well between them, but if Charlotte stepped out of line, she was rapidly reminded of it and punished accordingly. She didn’t quite know what to make of her new mother, with her makeup and perfume and butterfly-bright clothes.

  “Give me some cake,” she declared, her tone challenging, her lower lip sticking out.

  “May I have some cake, please,” Camilla corrected her. “Yes, you may, just as soon as you’ve apologized to Gussie and given her your hat.”

  “I won’t.”

  Her mother shrugged, unconcerned. “Fine. In that case, no cake. Gussie darling, would you like some?”

  “She can’t have any!” squealed Charlotte, outraged. “I hate her—and she can’t bloody have any.”

  The squeal increased in volume and rose an octave when Camilla firmly placed the plate of cake out of her daughter’s reach.

  “And I hate you,” she wailed furiously, her gray eyes swimming with tears.

 
“Yes,” said Camilla firmly, her own gaze steely with determination, her newfound assertiveness coming to the fore. “And you’re being pretty horrible yourself at the moment. You have to grow up, Charlotte—your father might put up with your nasty little tantrums, but I certainly won’t. Now go inside and wash your face and hands. When your manners have improved, maybe you can have something to eat.”

  “Well, well, look at you!” said Zoë with an admiring whistle while Charlotte, kicking her feet in the dusty gravel of the path, made her way slowly toward the house. “Executive superwoman no less, with her cell phone on her lap and her business under control, making deals in the garden and teaching her kids a thing or two at the same time. Cosmopolitan will be queuing up to interview you before you know it, my sweet.”

  Camilla’s smile was self-deprecating. “You should have known me when I was still married. The children ran rings around me, and even trying out a new recipe made me twitchy. I was the original doormat.”

  “In that case, I’m glad I didn’t know you,” Zoë declared. “And for God’s sake, don’t tell all that to Cosmopolitan when they arrive.”

  Camilla fell silent, remembering the day Loulou had dragged her along for moral support to Nico’s house when the woman from Cosmopolitan had been due to interview him and Mac had been commissioned to take the photographs. That day’s events had proved traumatic for all concerned; Loulou had been devastated by Mac’s disinterest in her, and—months later—she herself had single-handedly destroyed her own relationship with Nico.

  If she ever daydreamed, even for a second, that maybe one day she and Nico could somehow put the disastrous events of the past behind them and renew their relationship, she buried the thought almost instantly. For now, the flourishing business was her life; that, her friendships with Loulou and Zoë, and the budding, still tentative new relationship she was building with her children. Now that she was seeing them three times a week, she felt confident that it would grow and improve, and that once they learned to accept the change in their mother, it would become better than it had ever been before.