Fast Friends (16 page)

‘
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
Cosmpolitan,
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 which 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, then kicked the dashboard with
her booted foot
and swore colourfully. ‘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 14

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 on to 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 tell-tale 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 house guest. 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 were 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 hospital,
the morning service and more children in hospital.
Terrific.
Heaving a long drawn-out sigh she gazed around in dissatisfac
tion at the midnight blue, lilac and gold bedroom.
What on
earth was the point, she
thought, of wearing a negligé 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 non-stop 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
towards Roz, who had everything any woman could
possibly
want but who had,
nevertheless, wanted more, burnt 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 tear-stained reflection with dislike. At this lowest of
ebbs, without both make-up 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 them
and herself 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 which
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 immedi
ately 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 hospital on Christmas
Day. Their little faces and heart-breaking 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 was 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 door jamb the child
yelled ‘Pick up’ and released its grip on her knees
in order 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,’
announced the child 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
on to their laps. Still carrying the squirming child, who was
now twisting handfuls of her hair around its arms,
Camilla
made her way towards them.
Unlike the television programme
she had watched earlier, there were no
families with the children on this ward. The smell of turkey mingled with
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 girl whose name was
Marie, and who
had
noticed Camilla’s puffy eyes beneath the carefully applied make-up, ‘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 cracker, Marty?’

‘
Happy Kissmas,’ said
Marty, ripping the cracker to shreds
all
by himself and screaming with delight when Camilla
manoeuvred the yellow
paper hat on to his darting head.

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

‘
I’ll see to him’ said
Carol, reaching across to take him from
her.

Camilla’s arms tightened around his
plump little waist. ‘It’s
OK, I know
how to change a nappy,’ she said happily. ‘I’ll do it when he’s finished his
food.’

‘You did
what?’
yelled Loulou down the phone, at
midnight.

‘
I went to St Stephen’s,’
repeated Camilla patiently. ‘I’ve
been there since lunchtime. I loved
it.’

‘But that’s the loony bin!’