Fast Friends (33 page)

Over the next twenty-four hours Roz
dug herself deeper into
a hole of her own construction. The doctors insisted that she
stay on the ward under observation, the nursing staff
treated her
with the barest minimum of
courtesy and the other patients,
having
heard her call their beloved Sister Mason a bitch, all
decided that she was a jumped-up ill-mannered
hussy. Roz
hated them all back in return, with a vengeance.

Within hours of her arrival the news was relayed to the
Press
and they had an absolute field day,
telephoning and turning up
in droves.
If the hospital staff were too professional to voice
their personal opinions of Roz Vallender, the
women patients
had no such scruples, taking enormous delight in
informing the avid-for-news reporters about her foul mouth and vile temper.
After a sleepless night, Roz was forced to endure the humiliation of lying in
bed while twenty-seven pregnant women sat up in theirs, avidly reading
twenty-seven copies of the only tabloid
newspaper
which had chosen to feature her on the front page,
right next to a piece
on Nico and his mysterious new bride.

‘He’s gorgeous,’ declared a red-head called Sharon,
glancing
across at Roz and addressing her
neighbours in an over-loud
voice. ‘I’m dead glad he’s married that
Caroline Whatsername,
mind you I can see now
why he didn’t want nothing to do with
her over there. Bet he’s glad he
got away from her, too, stuck-up cow.’

Keeping her eyes closed and lying
perfectly still, Roz said in
a clear
voice, ‘Get stuffed.’

‘I already have, thanks,’ replied Sharon, amidst much
muffled laughter. ‘But at least I had a husband to do the job for me.’

Christ, thought Roz, I can’t stand any
more of this. I’m
going home, right now.

Opening her eyes she hauled herself
into a sitting position
and began sliding her legs towards the edge of the bed. At
precisely that moment a strange tugging sensation gripped
her lower back. She paused, drawing in breath, then stared in horror and
disbelief at the damp patch on the sheet beneath her.

As she
watched, the patch grew, seemingly of its own accord.

‘
Oh shit,’
said Roz, feeling the wet warmth between her legs
and tensing as another wave of pain began low down in her
stomach.
That was it then – the great escape plan well and truly
thwarted. She was being prevented from leaving by her very
own
baby, who quite clearly had no taste at all and wanted to be
born in this hell-hole of a hospital. Mistake
Number One,
sweetie, thought Roz with a wry smile. But never mind; we
all make them. You’re just starting earlier than most.

Chapter 28

’Mummy, I hate Gus. Tell her to give me back my hat,’
yelled Charlotte, hurling herself at Zoë’s five-year-old daughter and wrenching
the floppy pink sunhat from her head.

‘
Five minutes ago you
told me you hated the hat,’
said
Camilla, raising her eyebrows at Zoë and signalling
despair.

‘I do hate it,’ Charlotte informed her triumphantly,
hurling it on to the bleached grass and stamping on it with her bare foot. ‘But
it’s still mine and Gussie can’t have it.’

Zoë groaned and covered her eyes. ‘You’ve
got a Bolshevik on your hands, Cami. Charlotte, are you
sure
you want to
be a
nun when you grow up?’

Charlotte glared at her, quite immune
to Zoë’s sense of
humour.
She didn’t care for her mother’s new friend. Accust
omed now to the endless spoiling of her father and
grandparents, it came as quite a shock to her that her mother no longer gave in
to her as she had in the past. Now, her
mother was a lot more
fun when all was
going well between them, but if Charlotte
stepped out of line she was
rapidly reminded of it and punished accordingly. She didn’t quite know what to
make of her new
mother, with her make-up and
perfume and butterfly-bright
clothes.

‘
Give me some cake,’
she declared now, her tone challenging,
her lower lip sticking out.

‘May I have some cake, please,’ Camilla corrected her. ‘Yes,you
may, just as soon as you’ve apologized to Gussie and given her your hat.’

‘I won’t.’

Her mother shrugged, unconcerned. ‘Fine.
In that case, no
cake. Gussie darling,
would you like some?’

‘
She can’t have any!’
squealed Charlotte, outraged. ‘I hate
her — and she
can ‘t
bloody
have any.’

The squeal increased in volume and
rose an octave when
Camilla smacked her
bottom. It was the first time in Charlotte’s life that she had been struck.

‘And I hate you,’ she wailed furiously, her grey eyes
swimming with tears.

‘Yes,’ said Camilla firmly, her own gaze steely with
determination, her newfound assertiveness coming to the fore. ‘And
you’re being pretty horrible yourself at the
moment. You have
to grow up, Charlotte
— your father might put up with your
nasty
little tantrums, but I certainly won’t. Now go inside and
wash your face
and hands. When your manners have improved, maybe you can have something to
eat.’

‘Well, well, look at you!’ said Zoë with an admiring
whistle while Charlotte, kicking her feet in the dusty gravel of the path,
made her way slowly towards the house. ‘Executive
superwoman
no less, with her mobile on
her lap and her business under
control,
making deals in the garden and teaching her kids a
thing or two at the same time.
Cosmopolitan
will
be queuing up
to interview you before you know it, my sweet.’

Camilla’s smile was self-deprecating. ‘You
should have
known
me when I was still married. The children ran rings
around me and even trying out a new
recipe made me twitchy.
I was the
original doormat.’

‘In that case I’m glad I didn’t know you,’ Zoë declared. ‘And
for God’s sake, don’t tell all that to
Cosmopolitan
when they
arrive.’

Camilla fell silent, remembering the day Loulou had
dragged her along for moral support to Nico’s house when the girl from
Cosmopolitan
had been due to interview him and Mac had been commissioned to take the
photographs. That day’s events had proved traumatic for all concerned; Loulou
had been devastated by Mac’s disinterest in her, and – months later – she
herself had single-handedly destroyed her own relationship with Nico.

If she ever day-dreamed, even for a second, that maybe one
day she and Nico could somehow put the
disastrous events of
the past behind
them and renew their relationship, she buried
the thought almost
instantly. For now, the flourishing business was her life; that, her
friendships with Loulou and Zoë and the
budding,
still tentative new relationship she was building with
her children. Now
that she was seeing them three times a week
she
felt confident that it would grow and improve, and that
once they learnt
to accept the change in their mother, it would become better than it had ever
been before.

So for the moment . . . no men.
Problems like them she
could quite
easily do without.

She turned as something tugged timidly at the sleeve of
her
shirt. Charlotte stood before her,
looking distinctly ill at ease
but remorseful.

‘I washed my face and hands, Mummy,’ she said, her eyes
searching Camilla’s for forgiveness. ‘And I’ll play
with Gussie
too.’ It was the nearest
her daughter had ever come to an apology,
thought Camilla, bursting with pride both for Charlotte and
herself.

‘
I’m glad to hear it,
darling,’ she said fondly, brushing a
strand of light brown hair from
her daughter’s smooth forehead.
’You and Gus
could be such good friends. When you’re hungry
I’ll make you both some
lunch, OK?’

Charlotte assumed an expression of great importance.
Reaching behind Camilla’s chair, she picked up a tray and carefully handed it
across to her. ‘I’ve made
you
some,’ she announced, pointing to the
glass of raspberryade, a mangled peanut butter
sandwich and a plate piled high with flapjack and fruit cake.
And the paper was on the front door mat so I
brought it for you
to read,’ she added anxiously. ‘You like reading the
paper, don’t you, Mummy?’

Camilla, wanting to laugh and cry at
the same time, bit her
lip and said, ‘I
love
reading the paper. Thank you, sweetheart –
this is very thoughtful of you. Mmmm . . .’ she took a sip
of the
disgustingly sweet drink and rolled
her eyes in appreciation,
‘just what I wanted.’

Charlotte beamed, hopping from one leg
to the other. ‘I’m
good at making lunch,
aren’t I, Mummy?’

‘
You certainly are.’
Catching sight of Zoë, silently applauding
behind Charlotte’s back, Camilla said, And
I’m
going to share
this lovely sandwich with Zoë, because she’s
my
friend.
Here
you are, Zoë .’ Carefully
dividing the sandwich, which had
evidently started off being spread with
blackcurrant jam before
Charlotte had finally
decided that it should be peanut butter
instead, she handed it across to
Zoë.

‘
How heavenly,’ remarked
Zoë, pulling a face that only
Camilla
could see. And how nice to have
friends,
Charlotte,
don’t you
think?’

‘Gussie’s my friend,’ said Charlotte complacently, basking
in
the warmth of her mother’s approval. ‘I’m
going to go and be
nice to her right now.’

When she
was out of earshot, Zoë said in a low voice,

‘
Congratulations on the rebirth of your daughter, even if this is
all rather
too
Sound of Musicky
for me.’

‘Shut up,’ replied Camilla, grinning as she quietly tipped
her
drink into the grass beneath her chair, ‘and
eat your lovely
sandwich.’

‘
Don’t tell me to shut
up; I’m your
friend,’
retaliated Zoë,
expertly tossing her half of the sandwich over the fence into
next
door’s garden. ‘And instead of sitting there looking smug, why don’t you read
your paper?’

Camilla stared in horror at the front
page, willing herself to
have read
it wrongly. Her fingers, she noticed irrationally, were
gripping the paper like frozen claws. It had to be a mistake .. .
it
had
to be.

But the headline screamed ‘Nico –
Married!’ and as she
continued to gaze at it, and at the picture below of Nico
embracing a small, curvaceous girl, she realized that
there could
be no mistake whatsoever, no
doubt at all that the one event
which had never even crossed her mind
had actually happened.

Those brief doubts which she had taken
such pains to bury;
that faintest of faint
hope that somehow one day, miraculously, they would be reconciled, was now
obliterated. While she had
been wasting
time, mourning the loss of their fragile relation
ship, Nico had been
busy falling in love with someone else .
and marrying her.

Chapter 29

’I need a woman,’ repeated the male voice on the phone and
Camilla, acknowledging that it was an
extremely sexy voice,
deep and
American accented, reached for the appointment
book.

‘
What kind of
assignment is it, and when is it planned for?’
she asked, tapping her pen against her cheek and wondering
why it
was that men with impossibly sensual telephone voices always turned out to be
fat, pink and sluglike.