Fast Friends (18 page)

Chapter
16

Outside, pale green buds unfurled
along the slender branches
of the
young elm trees surrounding the house and clumps of daffodils dotted the lawns
on either side of the gravelled drive. Camilla crossed the kitchen to turn down
the central heating a
notch, because Nico
liked the temperature inside the house to
be at least tropical and after an hour and a half of vacuuming
she
was beginning to feel pretty tropical herself.

Bending down to wind the flex back
on to the vacuum cleaner
she paused
for a second and smiled to herself. Who would have
thought a few months ago that she could wear a pair of size
twelve
501s and actually
bend down
in them?

But then, who would have imagined that she would be here,
housekeeping for one of Britain’s most popular and successful rock stars, let
alone looking after him, who certainly required a
great deal of looking after, and who didn’t help matters by
constantly
urging her to ‘sit down and relax, Cami. We can both do the washing-up later.’?

Throughout his upbringing in an extremely Italian
household, Nico had watched his father issuing commands and his mother
obeying them, assuming every imaginable duty
without com
plaint. It had made his
stomach churn, yet to protest was
hopeless for his mother invariably,
and infuriatingly, sided with
his father. So
Nico had suffered in silence, vowing to himself
that never would he treat a woman in such a chauvinistic
manner,
and now Camilla was learning to suffer – not always
silently – as a result. It was undoubtedly an admirable quality
in a man, but it drove her insane. She was his
housekeeper, yet
he was too honour-bound to let her housekeep without
interrup
tion, and since he was as eager to
learn as he was to help,
simple tasks
like preparing a meal took three times as long as
they should have done.

Only last night he had removed three quarters of the
leaves
from the Brussels sprouts and
painstakingly carved crosses in
the
tops
of the acorn-sized
remains. And after their dinner the ridiculously expensive washing-up machine
had remained redundant whilst Nico had splashed around in the sink, washing
saucepans first and glasses last, and losing three
solid silver
knives down the waste
disposal. It had taken Camilla two hours
to retrieve them this morning.

Yet she loved her new, unexpected life
and knew that it
suited
her. Her work was endlessly appreciated, the nightmare
of her separation from Jack and the
children was at last
beginning to fade, and she was regaining confidence so long
buried that she had almost forgotten it ever existed. Nico’s
enthusiasm for music, food, parties and fun was infectious and
their easy relationship, though Camilla still
couldn’t understand
it, was
infinitely precious. The almost instantaneous camara
derie hadn’t needed to be worked at; she had never
had to try
less
hard in her life, yet it worked, effortlessly and
of its own
free will. With Nico, and to almost the same extent with
Loulou, she could simply be herself.

And here I am, she thought, reaching
for the phone as it
started to ring for
the tenth time and catching a glimpse of her
reflection
in the kitchen window as she moved. If I’d passed
myself in the street six months ago I wouldn’t
have recognized
me. Someone had once remarked that death was nature’s
way of
telling you to take -it easy. Well,
maybe divorce was nature’s
way of telling you it was time to go on a
diet.

She picked up the phone, hoping that
it wasn’t the BBC
again.
Nico was supposed to have rung them this morning and
had sloped off instead to look at a
helicopter he’d taken a fancy
to.

‘
Hello.’

‘
Ah, yes.
May I speak to Nico please?’ said the voice at the
other end and Camilla almost dropped the phone. Horror
flooded
through her. There were some voices which one could
never forget and Roz’s was indelibly stamped in her memory.
Roz. Jack. That fateful dinner party.
Involuntarily, Camilla
turned towards
the doorway, almost expecting the nightmare
scene that had taken place
in Jack’s study to be repeated. Stupid, stupid, she told herself fiercely. This
was no recorded message, this was Roz on the other end of the phone. And she
was asking to speak to Nico.

‘
I’m afraid he isn’t
here,’ said Camilla, thinking wildly that
she should be disguising her own voice, but unable to conjure
up
an accent in time. Why was Roz phoning Nico, anyway? For her TV programme? Did
they know each other? But if that were
the
case surely either he or Loulou would have mentioned it
before now. He
couldn’t know Roz, she thought possessively. It wouldn’t be fair.

‘
I see. Well, are you expecting him home today?’

‘
Who’s speaking, please?’ prevaricated Camilla, her
voice
stiff and businesslike, and Roz’s soft laugh made her skin crawl.

‘
Oh, don’t worry, I’m a very close friend of Nico’s.
My
name’s Roz Vallender. Are you writing this down?’

It was an
effort to speak; all the oxygen seemed to have been sucked from her lungs. ‘Yes.’

‘
Well, would you let him know that I’d like to see him tonight.
I’m at my London flat. If he can’t make it, could he ring me.
Got that?’

Hesitating for a suitable length of time, Camilla said, ‘What
number shall he ring?’

Again, the smooth, confident, overtly
sexual laugh which
knew
no rejection. ‘Don’t worry about that, dear. Nico knows
my number well enough. Goodbye.’

So there it was, thought Camilla
numbly as the line went
dead. The
casually dropped bomb, wounding and maiming
indiscriminately,
but always seeming to land on her. There could
be no mistake; Nico and Roz either had been – or still were –
lovers,
and once again she was the last to know about it. Greedy
Roz, taking whomever she pleased to her bed, had
most probably
been seeing both Nico
and Jack at the same time since the tone
of her voice hadn’t suggested
that she and Nico had been out of touch for any serious length of time. She
hadn’t even had the
decency,
Camilla realized with a mixture of burning
jealousy and hatred, to be faithful to the man whose mistress she was.
Well
maybe, just maybe, it was time to let Roz discover what it felt like to be on
the losing side for once.

Not daring to analyse her muddled motives, knowing simply
that she had to do it, Camilla set to work with a bottle of white
Chardonnay and great attention to detail.
Lunchtime slipped
into afternoon and
by seven in the evening, everything was
done. Nico, invariably an hour late anywhere, had left that
morning saying that he would be home by six thirty
at the
latest. Camilla, falling into
an armchair and pouring herself
another small glass of wine, reckoned
that she had another half-hour in which to plan the finer details of the
campaign. Several minutes later, when none whatsoever had come to mind, she
gave up and had another drink instead. How, after all, could she
be expected to plan a seduction? She had never in
her life tried
it.

C
hapter
17

’You look exhausted.’

‘
I’m not exhausted, I’m
just windswept,’ said Nico with a
grin,
running his fingers through his blond hair and trying to
look guilty. ‘I
bought the helicopter.’

‘
Then you’re exhausted
and broke,’ Camilla told him, pushing
an
enormous glass of Scotch into his hand and marvelling that
she could still talk to him naturally. ‘Let’s hope
the cheque
doesn’t bounce.’

‘Let’s hope the helicopter doesn’t either. Cheers.’ He
took a
gulp of his drink and almost choked. ‘Christ,
there isn’t any
water in it. Are you trying to get me drunk, Cami?’

‘Of course,’ she replied lightly, allowing her gaze to
drop the
length of his body. ‘When I’ve done
that I shall take compro
mising
photographs of you and send them off to the
News of the
World.
I hope you’re hungry, by the way.’

‘Ah.’ He regarded her gravely. ‘You’ve drugged the food as
well, to make doubly sure. Have I time for a shower before it’s ready?’

‘
I should hope so,’
admonished Camilla as she disappeared
in the direction of the kitchen. ‘You
want to be nice and clean, don’t you, for the
News of the World?’

She was just putting the finishing touches to the steak
au
poivre
when Nico returned wearing only a pair of white Fiorucci
jeans and a loose, cotton shirt. She had turned up
the central
heating quite deliberately two hours earlier.

He tweaked a strand of her hair as she poured the cream
and
brandy sauce over the tender fillet
steaks. "That looks great,
Cami.
And you’re looking pretty good yourself tonight. Going
out somewhere
special?’

Camilla shook her head and hoped that
she hadn’t overdone
it.
She had taken great care to ensure that she looked ‘pretty
good’ rather than done up to the
eyeballs, which was why she
was wearing
just a plain white silk shirt and a clean pair of
ultra-faded jeans rather than anything deliberately glamorous.
And
Nico would have to be very close indeed before he could smell the subtle
fragrance of the perfume she was wearing.

Nico carried the plates through to the sitting-room, where
Camilla had laid a small table and lighted fat beeswax candles. She followed
him with the bowls of buttered courgettes, incredi
bly garlicky mushrooms and golden sautéed potatoes. Two bottles
of good Beaujolais, opened earlier in order to have
time
to breathe, stood at opposite
ends of the table glowing ruby red
in the candlelight. Not too obvious,
she told herself reassuringly;
Nico liked
candles and often lighted them himself. Music,
though, was a different
matter. She had rummaged through his
vast CD
collection earlier and unearthed an Eva Cassidy CD,
then had chickened
out and hurriedly returned it to its case.

The choice must be left to Nico, and
she’d just have to pray
that he
wouldn’t choose something too earsplitting.

‘Now, what goes well with steak
au poivre
and
Beaujolais?’
mused Nico, surveying the stacks
of records and CDs as he always did before sitting down to eat, and Camilla
held her
breath. If he played Eminem now she wouldn’t be able to go
through with it.

She almost sagged with relief when
Ella Fitzgerald at her
most
laid-back flooded the room with her sexy voice and the accompaniment of a slow,
mellow tenor saxophone.

‘Good old Ella,’ murmured Nico, sliding on to his chair
and
winking at Camilla. ‘Every time I hear
her she just makes me
want to take all my clothes off.’

The thought made Camilla’s skin tingle. She looked
pointedly
down at his bare brown feet. As
Nico’s housekeeper she knew
only too well that he didn’t possess a
single pair of underpants.

‘
It wouldn’t take you
long,’ she observed drily. ‘Do you
realize
that you’re in the very worst position in the world to
play strip poker?’

‘
Or the very best,’ he
replied with a wicked smile as he
heaped
mushrooms on to his plate. ‘And you don’t have too
much of an advantage
yourself, Camilla. I may be young and
innocent’
– she pulled a face – ‘but even I can tell that you
aren’t wearing a
bra.’

‘
Eat your steak,’
instructed Camilla, wondering what Roz
was doing at this moment and
whether Nico would realize soon
that she had
disconnected the phone. How clever she was, she
told herself, to have
thought of absolutely everything. ‘Eat,’ she repeated, ‘and tell me all about
your new helicopter.’