by Emlyn Rees
Contents
About the Book
About the Authors
Also by Josie Lloyd and Emlyn Rees
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Part I
H
Stringer
Susie
Matt
Stringer
H
Susie
Matt
Part II
Stringer
Susie
Matt
H
Matt
H
Stringer
Matt
Susie
Stringer
Matt
H
Stringer
Susie
Matt
Stringer
H
Susie
Susie
Matt
Stringer
H
Stringer
H
Stringer
Matt
Susie
H
Matt
Susie
H
Matt
Susie
Stringer
H
Matt
H
Susie
Matt
H
Susie
Matt
Susie
Stringer
Susie
Stringer
Susie
Part III
Stringer
Susie
H
Susie
H
Matt
Stringer
Susie
Stringer
Matt
H
Susie
Matt
H
Copyright
About the Book
Friends. You can’t live with them – and you can’t live without them.
Or so Matt is discovering. His best mate is getting married, leaving him high and dry. No flat-mate – and no girlfriend.
Then he remembers Helen (H to her friends). H has no life outside her brilliant career – and all her best friend Amy wants to talk about is her wedding. Which suits Stringer, because catering the wedding is his first real chance to prove himself. The last thing he needs is to fall for one of the bride’s friends, Susie, particularly because she’s sworn off men while she sorts out her life …
Friendship, commitment, work, lust and loyalty all come under the spotlight as Matt, H, Stringer and Susie hurtle towards the big day.
About the Authors
Josie Lloyd and Emlyn Rees each had novels of their own published before teaming up to write bestsellers together. Their work has been translated into twenty-six languages. They are married and live in London with their three daughters.
Also by Josie Lloyd and Emlyn Rees
The Boy Next Door
Come Together
Love Lives
The Seven Year Itch
The Three Day Rule
We Are Family
Come Again
Josie Lloyd & Emlyn Rees
To our Shidduch-maker and the Wunderkind
(Vivienne Schuster and Jonny Geller), with our love
and thanks.
Acknowledgements
With thanks to Diana, Carol and Kate, Euan and Camilla, Sarah, Gill and Steve, Phil, Nick, Ali and Lorna at Curtis Brown. Lynne (our fantastic editor), Andy (our publisher and all-round guru), Grainne and Mark, Thomas (for being so patient), Ron and his fabulous team, Katie, Glen and Nigel (for another great cover) and everyone at Random House.
Also, many thanks to Gwenda and David for the inspirational hide-away. Finally, to our friends and all the new in-laws for their never-ending support.
Part I
H
Sunday, 13.15
Don’t have any friends. That’s the simple solution. Or, if you do have friends, change them every six months or so. Rip up those Filofax pages, wipe the memory on your electronic organizer, burn your address book and start afresh. Otherwise, things just get complex.
Because if, say, you land up becoming best friends with someone, there will come a day (like today) when you find that you’ve been up since nine a.m., with a hangover, on a Sunday, in the rain, carting boxes of their stuff, in your car, across town.
And despite the fact that the last time you helped them move, they swore blind it would be their permanent address for ever and ever, you find yourself sweating at the top of yet another flight of stairs going all Talking Heads and thinking, how did I get here? This is not my beautiful home.
But this is my beautiful best friend. Not that I ever tell Amy she’s anything but a ropy old tart. She’s got Jack to pay her all the compliments she needs these days. It’s my job to keep her feet on the ground, which is pretty tough considering she’s so happy all the time. Like now.
‘This is above and beyond,’ I grumble, wedging my chin on top of the pile of papers on the box.
‘Quit your whingeing,’ she tuts, smiling over her shoulder at me as Jack fiddles with the lock in front of her.
‘Hurry up, Jack,’ I beg, shifting my knee under the heavy box whilst trying to balance on the stairs.
‘We’re in!’ he shouts, finally pushing the front door open to his and Amy’s new flat. Amy squeals and claps her hands.
‘It’s so exciting,’ she squeaks, as I feel the bottom of the damp fruit box buckling in my hands.
‘Hang on, hang on.’ Jack takes Amy’s holdall from her and chucks it through the open door, adding to me, ‘Tradition’, as he picks her up in a fireman’s lift and carries her over the threshold.
‘Bit premature, aren’t you?’ I say, staggering up the few remaining stairs into the flat. ‘You’re supposed to be married when you do that.’
But Jack doesn’t hear me, since he’s too busy waltzing up their new hall with Amy laughing and protesting, bent double over his shoulder.
‘Where shall I put this?’ I ask, just as the box collapses and a jumble of papers and books tumble on to the floor.
‘Anywhere will do. Feel free to mess the place up,’ says Jack, putting Amy down.
‘Cheeky,’ I mutter, chucking a book at him as Amy comes over to me and crouches down. I start gathering everything together, piling up the magazines and I’m just reaching for the last one when I realize that it’s Bride.
‘Hello, hello?’ I say, raising my eyebrows at Amy. She takes it off me and holds it against her chest.
‘Someone gave it to me at work,’ she blushes, but I know her too well. She’s lying.
She puts Bride face down on the pile, then hastily stands and brushes her palms on the front of her old jeans. She knows and I know that she’s been rumbled.
For the past few months, she’s been bitching to me about how overblown the wedding industry is and how she doesn’t want to be just another conveyer-belt, commercially ripped-off bride and I’ve been totally with her. I’ve admired, colluded with and encouraged her healthy, low-key, no-fuss attitude to her and Jack’s wedding. But three weeks to go and here she is reading bridal magazines, signing up for the whole shebang.
‘Let’s have a look, then,’ I say, following her into the living-room.
‘It’s going to be fantastic,’ Jack sighs, looking round the empty space. ‘Plenty of light for me to work in . . . We’ll have shelves over there in the alcove, a window seat there . . .’
‘You’re not actually suggesting that you’re going to do some DIY yourself, are you?’ I tease.
‘You’ll see,’ he says, giving me a sideways glance. ‘Come on, let’s get everything else.’
‘You’re a slave-driver, Jack Rossiter,’ I groan, as he puts his arm round me and leads me to the door.
I drag my arms like a baboon, already feeling that they’ve been stretched to knuckle-scraping proportions by all this carrying.
‘The sooner we’re finished, the sooner we can go to the pub,’ he grins matter-of-factly.
But it takes ages to unload all Amy’s kitchen stuff from my car and there’s a hired van which is jam-packed full of Jack’s belongings. Including some very dodgy canvases.
Amy is in the kitchen, unloading, when I bring up the final painting.
‘Isn’t this one a bit . . . yellow?’ I ask, looking at it.
‘Oddly enough, it’s called “Study in yellow”, but I wouldn’t expect you TV executive types to appreciate the finer qualities of such things,’ mocks Jack, taking it.
I cling on to it to have a closer look. I’ve never been the greatest fan of Jack’s work, siding with Amy in her disapproval of his predilection for painting nudes – and beautiful nudes at that. But this is different.
‘I don’t know. I quite like it,’ I muse.
‘My Dad didn’t think so. He paid for it, but he said it was too bright for his office and gave it back.’
‘I think it’s perfect for an office. I’d love it in mine. Yellow’s supposed to be relaxing.’
‘Have it, then,’ says Jack, suddenly.
‘I can’t . . . I . . .’
‘No, honestly. Take it, H. One of these days I might go stellar and become so famous, it’ll be worth a fortune.’
‘Are you sure?’
Amy smiles, walks over to Jack and puts her arms around his waist.
‘It’s the least we can do to say thank you,’ she says, cocking her head so that it rests against Jack’s chest.
Freeze!
We? She’s been living with Jack for, what, four hours and nineteen minutes and she’s acting like those shiny couples in a building-society advert. But then Jack puts his arm around her and, as they both smile at me, I realize he’s in on it too. And all of a sudden, I feel all unsettled and like I’m a huge impostor in their space.
‘Now then . . . Pub?’ asks Jack, breaking away.
‘Not for me,’ I mumble.
‘Come on, H,’ says Amy. ‘We’ve got to have a drink to celebrate.’
‘No, no,’ I hold up my hand and duck for the door. ‘I’ll leave you to mark your territory – pee on all the walls, shag in every room, or whatever it is you want to do . . .’
‘Study in yellow’ isn’t relaxing. As soon as I hang it in my office the next morning, I feel stressed. I’m thinking of putting up ‘wanted’ posters for my lost sense of humour.
I never thought I’d be one of those people who got stressed. I thought stress happened to people who spent their lives trading millions in the City, or performing life-threatening operations. I.e. important people. Older people. Not people producing possibly the worst (and, yes, that does include Miami Vice) TV shows ever seen on our screens. I.e. me.
I never used to be like this. I used to saunter in to the office (usually late), flick through a couple of programme ideas, phone all my mates and bugger off to the pub at six o’clock. Roughly a 70:30 play-to-work ratio. Ideal.
But today is typical of the regime I’ve become used to. I was in at the crack of dawn, I’ve spent half the morning firing off grumpy emails and I haven’t even had time to go to the loo.
To make matters worse, Brat, my barely pubescent assistant, has been next to useless all morning. I’m trying to be patient, but earlier I had to send him away for the fifth time to correct the running order of tomorrow’s Sibling Rivalry show (the one in which Alan, a milkman from Sheffield, accuses his sister Jean, a housewife from Grimsby, of helping aliens to abduct his child) and Brat looked as if he was going to cry. Just now I asked Olive, the receptionist, if Brat (his real name is Ben, but Brat seems to have stuck) is OK and she said that he thinks I’m scary.
Me? Scary? I thought I was a pussycat.
It’s lunch-time when Amy calls to thank me for my help yesterday, before confiding that after I left last night she did indeed shag Jack in every room.
‘Too much information, thank you very much,’ I grimace.
‘I love it. Living with Jack’s going to be brilliant,’ she gushes.
‘Glad to hear it. You’re going to be doing it for a very long time.’
‘You make it sound like a prison sentence.’
‘Hmm. Well, you wait. You’ll be crawling the walls in no time. He might be behaving now, but give it two weeks and I bet he’ll be buying green toilet paper and other such male atrocities.’
‘H, you’re a cynical old bag.’
‘Experienced. Not cynical,’ I correct.
‘Yes, well, you and the others can warn me all about the horrors of men on my hen weekend. There’ll be plenty of time for all that. It’s all sorted, isn’t it?’ She laughs to herself. ‘What am I saying? Of course it is. I’m talking to the most organized person on the planet.’
‘That’s me,’ I say chirpily, feeling a pang of guilt. ‘I’ll email you.’
I put down the phone feeling utterly shabby. I know I’m being ungracious, but I had no idea when Amy asked me to be her chief bridesmaid that it’d be this much hassle. I thought all I had to do was hold a bunch of flowers on the day, make sure I didn’t tread on her train and then snog someone unsuitable. How wrong I was. Launching Amy into her life of wedded bliss is turning out to be more expensive and time-consuming than putting on the Olympics.
The big problem with the hen weekend (not hen night, note, not hen afternoon, or hen lunch, but whole flipping hen weekend) is that Amy is not content to go down the pub like a normal human being, which would be a piece of cake to organize.
No, no, no. Far from it. If Amy had her way, she’d quite happily commandeer all her random mates on an entire week’s holiday. She even suggested ten days in Ibiza, ‘just for old time’s sake’.
What old times she’s talking about, I have no idea. We’ve certainly never been to Ibiza and she’s gone with Jack on her recent holidays, so why she’s making such a big deal about leaving ‘girlie’ life is totally beyond me. She’s not some winsome nineteenth-century heroine (much as she’s making out she is) being dragged off to the World Of Men. She’s already there. If she was being dragged off to the World Of Leather, never to return, then I might understand what the fuss was about. But there you go.
I call Brat into my office and once I’ve given him some letters to type and tried to make amends for the bollocking I gave him this morning, I change the subject as casually as I can. I sit back in my chair and adopt my friendliest tone.
‘Now then, how far have you got with booking somewhere for that weekend I asked you about?’
Brat lights a cigarette and slings a trainered foot on to his trendily trousered knee.
‘What weekend?’ he asks, dumbly.
I hate it when he does this. He knows exactly what I’m talking about.
‘You know. The weekend? I asked you to book somewhere for seven people. Ages ago?’
I watch him blowing out smoke and shifting uncomfortably in his chair. It annoys me that he smokes in here, but since I’m the only one with a smoking office, it’d be fairly hypocritical to put my foot down.
‘Oh that. I couldn’t find anywhere like you wanted,’ he starts.
I put my elbows on the desk and rub my eyes, before looking at him. ‘But you have booked somewhere, right?’
He nods and flicks his ash towards the ashtray Amy stole for me from a posh restaurant in Piccadilly. The ash misses and showers over on my desk.
‘Well . . . yeah,’ he says, flicking his hand to wipe away the ash and missing half of it. ‘I got you a nifty deal.’
‘Where?’
‘Um . . . Leisure Heaven.’
‘Leisure Heaven! That dreadful place they advertise on the TV?’
‘It’s dead good, honest,’ says Brat. ‘You wanted saunas and all that girlie stuff and they’ve got that. There’s loads of waterslides and they’ve even got a disco on Saturd
ay night . . .’
I push my hair back with both hands. ‘You are joking?’
He shrugs his shoulders. ‘It’s the only place I could find.’
I close my eyes, visions of screaming, scabby children all helplessly urinating in the water filling me with horror. And that’s just for starters. Think of a holiday camp-style disco full of teenagers on dodgy Ecstasy!
‘What about all those country houses I suggested?’ I panic. ‘Surely we could get in to one of those?’
‘All full. It’s too late now, anyway. I’ve got the brochure, if you want.’ Brat gestures over his shoulder to his desk outside.
I nod wearily.
Why did I trust him to make the booking? Why didn’t I do it myself? This is a total nightmare. So much for being the most organized person on the planet.
A few minutes later, Brat brings the brochure in, along with a few message slips.
‘Thanks,’ I mutter, turning round in my chair to face the ‘Study in yellow’. In the window, I watch Brat’s reflection as he turns and leaves. Is it my imagination, or does he have a smug look on his face?
My afternoon doesn’t improve. Eddie spends most of it going ballistic about the schedules and, much to my annoyance, I have to rejustify every decision I’ve cleared with him in the last month. At the end of it all, he shuts the door and tells me in dramatic whispers about the imminent programme reshuffle from above. That’s all I need: the powers that be playing Russian roulette with all my hard work. I’ve spent months getting this far. Make my day, Eddie, I feel like saying when he leaves, winking and tapping the side of his nose. Go ahead, punk. Make my day.
It’s not until everyone has gone home and I’m left alone in my office at last that I have a chance to look at the pile of message slips. There’s another one from Gav. I screw it up and have great satisfaction aiming it at the wastepaper bin and scoring in one. Yes! I wasn’t wing-attack in my school netball team for nothing.
I check the emails and smile when I see a new one. I open it up and lean forward to read it.
To: Helen Marchmont
From: Laurent Chaptal
Hello, Helen. Are you ready for me? I will need you from a week on Monday. Call me – Laurent.
