Fast Friends (28 page)

Eric Daniels was Roz’s producer on ‘Memories’,
the chat
show which she had
presented for the last two and a half years. Nudging fifty and trendy to the
extreme, he had thrown up his
hands in
horror upon hearing Roz’s news. He couldn’t have
been more appalled if
she had told him she was a mass murderer.

‘But it’s none of his business!’ declared Loulou
indignantly. ‘Unless he was the father, of course.’

Roz pulled a face. ‘What a revolting thought. No,
apparently chat show presenters mustn’t get pregnant unless they have
husbands. The public doesn’t allow it. And, of
course, the fact
that Nico refuses to acknowledge the baby makes mine the
worst crime of all. If I even dared to venture on to a TV screen
millions of outraged viewers would switch over to
the other side.
According to Eric my
viewing figures would be approxi
mately
twenty-seven. I’m a corrupt, depraved woman who
makes Lucrezia Borgia
look like a nun. The next series starts in October and unless I get married
before then, they’ll be using someone else.’

‘
Oh Roz. I’m sorry.
Christ, can you believe it? It’s supposed
to be the age of equality but
women still get this hassle. You’ve
made me
feel quite guilty. I’m as miserable as sin but at least
I’m not going to
lose my job.’

‘Tell me about your sins,’ urged Roz, wanting to change
the subject. ‘What’s been happening? I feel like a recluse, stuck out here in
the sticks. Tell me everything – you never know, I might be able to help.’

Loulou took another sip of her orange juice, stalling for
time while she considered her choice of words. If it wasn’t all such a sad and
sorry mess it would almost be funny.

‘
You
can
help,
actually,’ she said slowly. ‘You can give me
all those baby clothes when
yours has grown out of them.’

‘No!’ Roz sat bolt upright, and the baby kicked
protestingly beneath her ribs. ‘You’re not serious, Lou!’

‘
It’s like when you buy
a really expensive outfit and then
your best friend goes out and gets
another one exactly like it,’
prattled
Loulou. ‘I hope you don’t think I’m copying you so
that we can both look
the same, God forbid.’

‘
Are you
really
pregnant?’

‘
Yeah. Only
I call it in pig. A pig that’s been well and truly
poked. You don’t seriously think I’d be drinking neat orange
juice
otherwise, do you?’

‘
Whose is it?’ said Roz, curiosity vying with
astonishment.

She still couldn’t quite believe that Loulou had made the
same catastrophic mistake as herself.

Loulou removed her dark glasses and swung them from her
fingers as she surveyed Roz’s expression. ‘Let’s put it this way,’
she said evenly. "There’s only one thing I’m
absolutely sure
about, and it’s that this baby is definitely going to be
black. Or white.’

‘
What?’

‘
You heard me,’ said Loulou, replacing her glasses so that
her face became a mask once more.
Idly, she surveyed the
perfect Cotswold scene, all so damned pretty and normal-
looking that the sight brought tears of exasperation to
her eyes. For the last hundred years or so, families had lived here;
normal
families with parents who were married, children
who were
truly wanted, and maybe the odd puppy here and there just to
complete the revoltingly picturesque scenario.

What would those families think if they could hear the
conversation taking place in this sleepy, sunny
garden today?
Two women with supposedly successful lives in the
tumultuous
fast lane of central London, both
caught in the same sad old
trap
because no matter how wealthy they were, they couldn’t
buy themselves a
settled, traditional existence.

‘So who are they, and are they still around?’ persisted
Roz, realizing that she
was
feeling better, having learnt of Loulou’s
predicament. It was always comforting to hear
other people’s
bad news, after all.

‘Well, they’re still
alive,
I suppose,’ said Loulou
gloomily,
stirring the ice cubes in her
drink with her finger, ‘but they
certainly aren’t around me. It was the
classic girl meets boy, girl
meets another
boy, girl gets found out situation. I haven’t
seen either of them since.
Oh Roz,’ she burst out, aching with
the
unfairness of it all, ‘I didn’t do it on purpose! The second
one was Mac and we’d just got properly back
together again
when the other guy turned up and blew the whistle on me.
I was truly, ecstatically happy for about fifteen seconds and then .. .
bang! All over. Mac stormed out. And now here I am,’
she
concluded with a mournful look, ‘in the bloody pudding club.’

‘Are you going to keep it?’ asked Roz, eyeing Loulou’s
flat stomach. It was likely that there was still time to choose.

‘
Oh, I’ve thought and
thought, but I can’t get rid of it,’
Loulou
shook her silver-blonde mane decisively. ‘I know I’m
mad, but I can’t.
You see, it still might be Mac’s.’

C
hapter 26

Nico surfaced from sleep and lay with his eyes closed, one
arm
above his head and the other
outstretched as he tried to
remember
where he was. The texture of the sheets was un
familiar, but then they always were these days. By stretching
the
fingers of one hand he discovered that the headboard was wooden, varnished and
ornately carved. The bedside table, by
contrast,
was plain and sharp edged. The lamp resting upon it
was . . . a lamp.

It was no good; he still couldn’t
figure it out. Knowing that
he was making a mistake, Nico opened his eyes. Oh, look at
that – a hotel room. What a surprise.

He surveyed the Spanish style room
with boredom and
loathing.
The heavy black wood carving was everywhere,
adorning the door frames, the TV table, even the air
vents. The rest of the huge room, walls, thick carpet and bed linen, were all
white. A single colossal picture on the far wall
was also black
and white.

Rolling over in the king-sized bed
and realizing that he was
the only
thing in the whole damn room that wasn’t monochrome,
Nico reached for the brochure lying next to the lamp. So this
was
where he was; the Hotel Balfour, Las Vegas.

He studied the Rolex on his wrist.
Wednesday 3 July. 2.30
p.m. And
just to make matters even worse he had the niggly remains of a hangover as
well. Just what he needed. Fantastic.

Stepping
into the shower – tiled in black-and-white marble, naturally – Nico considered
his situation. Why, he wondered as
the hot
needles of water bombarded his body, was he here,
doing something that
was so little fun? It had been his record
company’s
idea that he should make this promotional tour in
order that he might
well and truly ‘break’ in the States. More publicity equalled greater
recognition which in turn sold more
records
and so made more money. More money for both the
record company and
himself. But was it really worth all this monotony, boredom and unutterable
dullness?

Of course not.

Pouring shampoo on to his head and lathering it with such
vigour that his hangover intensified in protest,
Nico concen
trated his thoughts. The
real reason why he had allowed himself
to be persuaded across the
Atlantic was simple. He was just as bored at home.

In the last few months he had written
scarcely any songs at
all, and
those few he had managed to complete were so pitifully
below standard that he had destroyed them himself, before
anyone
else could hear them and do the same. Officially, he had
been taking a well-earnt rest. Unofficially, he was
totally
disinterested.

And what was there at home, anyway? On that disastrous
day when
Camilla had removed herself from his home she had
hired Hazel Hampton to replace her and he still hadn’t been
able to figure out whether she had done it
deliberately out of
spite, or whether it had been a genuine mistake. But
how, he
wondered with renewed exasperation,
could he possibly be
expected to
enjoy
the company of a housekeeper who, at forty-
one, gazed at him with
such open and helpless adoration that he
felt
permanently ill at ease, and who insisted on calling him,
‘sir’?

He couldn’t fault her work; Camilla
had kept the house
clean
and relatively organized, but Hazel, her pale, eager eyes
able to spot a dust particle at fifty
paces, had turned the place
into a laboratory. She was an excellent cook, but he had never
seen her eat. Whenever Nico spoke to her she blushed
violently and took so long to stammer out her replies that he lost all track of
the conversation.

And it was purely because she was so shy, and so
desperately eager to please that he didn’t have the heart to replace her. Also,
he had a nagging fear that if he tried to, she would throw herself off the top
of the BT Tower. Making no mess when she landed, naturally.

So work was
no fun. Home was no fun.

Somehow, Camilla had managed to remove all the fun from
his life as efficiently as she had cleared her
room on the day
she’d left.

Nico sighed; he’d finally — after far too many hours of
soul-
searching — come to the conclusion that
Camilla was simply
too terrifyingly honest.

He still winced at the memory of her
quiet disappointment,
her attempts to tell him that his failure to please her really
hadn’t mattered. He would
never
be able to forget
the saddened, pitying look in her eyes . . .

And although he hadn’t even wanted to
take anyone to bed
since
that night, his ego had taken such a colossal battering that
if he had, some dreadful inner warning bell made him
wonder if he’d actually be able to perform at all.

So much for Camilla, whom he wanted to
hate but could
only succeed in
missing terribly.

And
finally, of course, there was Roz. He could hardly leave her out of it, could
he? That messy situation was perhaps the least fun of all, what with his own
muddled sense of guilt and morality vying with doubt and at times plain
disbelief.

Should he have accepted the facts as they had been
presented to him, without once even asking himself whether they were accurate?
Didn’t he owe the child that much, at least?

But then, did he owe Roz herself
anything, after the way
she had behaved? Christ, it was difficult. Even his manager,
Monty Barton, hadn’t been able to decide what he should
do,
although that opinion was less to do with
morals than plain
cash. Would it harm
Nico Coletto’s glittering career if he
failed
to publicly acknowledge his child, or would it be worse
still if he did the Right Thing and married Roz?
His image
was not, after all, one
which lent itself to family life and
fatherhood.

Stepping out of the shower and shaking
his blond head so
that
a spiral of water droplets fanned out around him, Nico
picked up a white bath towel and half-heartedly rubbed
himself dry, thinking dark thoughts about capricious women, the havoc they
wrought, and blackmail.

He refused to allow himself to be threatened by any of
them. And he would start by putting a call through to Monty Barton’s room and
telling him that the appearance he was scheduled to make on "The Susie
Sellars Show’ this afternoon was cancelled.
Due
to an incredible lack of interest on the part of the invited
guest.

Shooing
away a persistent fly and kicking off her espadrilles, Loulou leant back and
wondered what she could possibly talk about that would effectively change the
subject, but at the same time avoid those sensitive areas concerning Camilla
and Nico.
Her way of dealing with
unpleasant events was by simply putting
them out of her
mind, and she had quite successfully ignored
the fact of
her pregnancy for hours whenever thinking of it had become too confusing.