Fast Friends (24 page)

She found herself in that most difficult situation: being
wildly
in love, but at the same time
chillingly aware that it was all
going
to end in tears. Something was wrong and if
she
didn’t
have the experience to recognize the dawning
symptoms, she
told herself sadly, then no-one did.

Joshua was with her for neither her mind nor her body. And
finally acknowledging the true reason for his apparent devotion didn’t give her
any happiness at all.

I must be mad, Mac told himself as he elbowed his way past
a
crowd of dickie-bowed stockbrokers and
their Sloaney girl
friends. One of the men had his trousers round his
ankles and everyone was shrieking with laughter. If it’s that small I’m not
surprised, thought Mac dismissively.

But he was still convinced that he was
mad, coming all the
way down to a charity
ball in Gloucestershire in the very faint hope of seeing Loulou.

He didn’t even know why he had done
it. Impulse,
presumably. But it was
quite alien to his deliberately laid-back character. The idea of her had simply
overwhelmed him earlier
this evening, and he
had driven almost against his will to
Vampires. How would she react when
she saw him there, after their last non-eventful meeting? Mac had been hollow
with
anticipation when he had walked into the
packed wine bar –
and quite disgusted with himself when he realized how
disappointed he was to discover that she wasn’t there.

Finally, he
had asked Christo Moran where she was.

‘
The Easter Ball, at Elm House,’ Christo had responded with
a typically
Irish shrug, at the same time pouring Chardonnay at
lightning speed into six glasses. ‘Some charity do at her old
school.’

Shit, thought Mac, taking the glass which Christo had
poured
for him. All that anticipation and
now this. What a waste. And
this was his fifth drink in an hour.

‘Call me a taxi,’ he had demanded, and Christo had nodded
sympathetically, only too aware of the power
Loulou was
capable of wielding even when she wasn’t aware of doing so.

‘
Where to, Mac?’ They
both knew already what the reply
would be.

‘Elm bloody House,’ said Mac, draining his glass in one. ‘Gloucester-bloody-shire.
I must be bloody mad.’

And now he was here, the only male in
the entire place
dressed
in faded Levis and a baggy white linen shirt without a
tie, only reluctantly allowed inside
because he had employed
every last ounce of his charm upon a very gay-looking
doorman.

‘
My wife thinks I’m
still in Egypt,’ he had told him with a
totally disarming smile. ‘She’s
here with her sister and it’s her
birthday. I’ve
flown back specially. I promise you, this will
make her night.’

The doorman had pouted upon hearing
the word ‘wife’ but an encouraging wink from Mac and a handful of tenners had
finally done the trick. He was in.

Now all he had to do was locate Loulou among the frantic,
heaving noisy masses. It shouldn’t be too difficult, he thought
sardonically; there were only about two thousand
of them
crammed inside the place. If
he could make his way up the main staircase upon which a jazz band was playing
‘Sweet Georgia Brown’, and jostle for position at
the carved-
stone balustrade
overlooking the main hall, he might have a
chance of spotting her. Damn
the woman, he cursed. And damn himself for succumbing to his own sudden desperate
urge to see her.

Noise, noise, noise, thought Loulou miserably, realizing
that she
had been hiding in the loo now for
over twenty minutes.
Searching the bottom of her bag for stray aspirin
to numb her headache, she stared at her reflection in the age-spotted mirror
above the basin. The unglamorous fluorescent
lighting wasn’t
doing anybody any favours, but it wasn’t only that.

I’m not happy, she thought, reaching automatically for the
fuchsia-pink lipstick which would show off
her mouth to its
best advantage, but which couldn’t make her smile. Half
of her wanted to run away, to disappear into the night and escape the
problems which were becoming more menacing with
every
glass of champagne she drank.
The other half wanted to stay,
either
to fight it out or simply pretend it wasn’t happening.
That, of course,
would be the easiest thing to do for the moment, but it wouldn’t solve anything.

Pathetic, she told her reflection,
mouthing the single word
with
perfect clarity. The girl standing next to her dropped a pot
of
shimmering eye shadow into the basin and said, ‘Shit.’

‘Absolutely,’
said Loulou, from the heart.

‘
You think you’ve got problems,’ said the girl, abandoning
the glass pot and zipping her make-up bag with a decisive
gesture
which made her look like an efficient secretary. Loulou noticed her eyelids
were wet with recent tears. ‘My fiancé
disappeared
upstairs with some little tart over an hour ago.
They’re in one of seven locked rooms on the second floor and
I’ve
shouted through the keyhole of every one.’

Despite her own unhappiness, Loulou was fascinated. ‘What
did you shout?’

‘I said, "That’s my husband you’re bonking, and for
your
information, darling, I’ve got a
gun," ‘ explained the girl
gloomily.

‘And do you?’

‘
I wish I did.’ She
managed a weak smile. ‘You’ve cheered
me up a bit. Can I buy you a
drink? My name’s Poppy.’

‘
I’d love a drink,’ said
Loulou, her own spirits lifting, ‘but
could
we possibly have it in here? I rather need the privacy at
the moment.’

‘No problem,’ said Poppy briskly. ‘I’ll go and get a
bottle of bubbly, and you can tell me why you’re having such a shitty evening.’

She turned to leave, clutching her purse, but Loulou
deftly
removed it from her grasp. ‘Just
outside the champagne bar
you’ll see a
man holding a bottle of Moët. Tell him you’re a
friend of Loulou’s and
that she’d like her drink. Bring back the Moët and two clean glasses.’

Poppy looked doubtful. "There are going to be a
couple of hundred men holding a bottle of champagne.’

‘
Ah,’ said Loulou, carefully gathering up her
glittering skirt
and sliding down the wall
into a sitting position, ‘but this one,
you see, is black.’

Chapter 23

Where the hell
was
she? Mac
leant against the balustrade,
searching the crowds below for the instantly recognizable,
rippling hair of his ex-wife. For
almost an hour now he had
been
leaning and looking, and so far three women whom he had never seen before in
his life had waved and smiled back at him,
and
climbed the curving staircase in order to introduce them
selves. But
there had been no sign of Loulou.

Was she actually here, after all? He
was beginning to
doubt
it now, recalling the ricocheting decisions she had
always been capable of. It was quite
possible now that Lou
was sitting in some seedy pub in North Wales playing domi
noes with the locals, but at the same time some sixth
sense told
Mac that she was here. It was
just a question of discovering
exactly
where.

Damn her, he thought with a trace of irritation. Loulou’s
spur-of-the-moment decisions always seemed to work
out for
her. Yet here he was, as out of place as a nun in a nudist
colony, making his first truly spontaneous action in years . . . and it was
proving to be a total disaster.

’It’s not the fact that he’s Jamaican,’ explained Loulou,
balancing her champagne glass precariously on her bent knees and examining a
tiny hole which had appeared in one of her sheer black
stockings. ‘It’s just that he bullies me. He does it very nicely,
which
is why I’ve only just realized that that’s what it really is.

Do this, do that, buy this . . . but
at the same time he’s calling
me angel and running his hand down my back. I guess I’m just
a girl who can’t say piss off,’ she concluded with a sigh,
leaning her head back against the cool white tiles and realizing that she was
beginning to feel slightly drunk. What a relief, though, to
finally voice the thoughts which had been
subconsciously
troubling her for days.

‘Well, darling,’ said Poppy, her cut-crystal accent
becoming
more pronounced with every glass of
champagne, ‘with your looks, you don’t have to put up with gigolos, so if you
know
what’s good for you, you
will
learn to say it. I suppose he’s
sensational in bed,’ she added with a directness which Loulou
found reassuring. She nodded, and Poppy said, ‘I
thought as
much. He looked as if he would be when I introduced myself.
Those kind always are, though, aren’t they?’

‘You mean good-looking men?’

Poppy laughed and shook her head. ‘I
mean bastards. Which
is why, of course, they so often manage to get away with it.’
Then she looked serious again,
remembering why she was
spending the evening in the ladies’ lavatory instead of dancing
out in the main hall. ‘And speaking
of bastards, I wonder how
mine is getting on. What are we going to do, Loulou? Your
man’s been waiting out there for you for quite some time
and he wasn’t exactly thrilled when I told him you’d be back in five minutes.’

‘
Perhaps he’s given up
and gone home,’ said Loulou wistfully,
then gave herself a mental shake.
Bloody hell, she hated being
wistful. It
simply wasn’t necessary. She should be grateful to
Poppy for helping her sort out her muddled ideas.
Briskly she
rose to her feet. ‘But I don’t care
what
he’s doing,’
she announced with a new determination, her silver-grey eyes flashing and her
fingers snapping as she gestured Poppy to follow
her lead.
‘Let’s see what we can do
about your bastard. Do you think
he’ll still be in one of those rooms
upstairs?’

‘Oh, bound to be,’ said Poppy gloomily. ‘Yours isn’t the
only one who’s good in bed, you know. Jamie always takes his time.’ Then she
brightened and winked at Loulou. ‘Particularly when
there’s a madwoman shrieking through the keyhole that when
he
comes out she’s going to shoot him.’

‘
Well, let’s go then,’
Loulou urged, helping her to her feet
and
tucking the almost empty bottle of Moët under her free
arm. ‘I think it’s
time we practised a little coitus interruptus.’

Mac was on the verge of giving up and going back to London
when he heard Loulou, her voice echoing from
the far end of
the darkened corridor
on the first floor. To his utter disgust he
felt his heartbeat
quickening and experienced a diving sensation in his stomach.

Without even daring to think, or to
wonder how she would
react when she saw him, he headed away from the gallery
encircling the hall and made his way along the wide
corridor,
which was unlit. His eyes,
accustomed to the glittering bright
lights from the chandeliers,
strained in the blackness to detect shapes or movements, but were unable to
make such rapid adjustments. There were no sounds now, either, and for a second
he wondered whether he had been
hallucinating, conjuring up
the sound
of Loulou’s voice because it was what he so badly
wanted to hear.

Then he caught the rustling sound of
taffeta skirts and
realized that someone
was standing just a few yards away from
him.
Narrowing his dark eyes, he glimpsed a flash of silver
amidst the darkness
and drew to a silent halt, his heart thumping
wildly.
If this was Loulou, what was she
doing?
And with whom?
Dear God, this was all a terrible, humiliating
mistake! If she’s
with a man, thought Mac, his stomach churning with
jealousy, what on earth can I do? As only the second of Loulou’s three
ex-husbands, he hardly had any rights, after all, and none which permitted
punching the other guy’s lights out, which was what sprang most immediately to
mind.