Fast Friends (14 page)

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 on to 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.’

C
hapter
12.

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 programme
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 Italians
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 which
vanished
in an instant. It
would
be a damn shame if he had to
go. Lovers as skilful 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 spoilt 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 Afghan, Roz remembered with a painful
jolt that Camilla had been almost dog-like
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 round 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, and 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 and 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 towards 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 13

’We came down to London just after we got married,’ said
Loulou, fiddling with the wildly unsuitable gold lame 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 straight away as the manageress 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 Scottish male, 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 a Chinese takeaway 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 AIDS, ‘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!’