Fast Friends (68 page)

As Camilla was attempting to formulate some kind of reply,
the door swung open.

‘Simple,’ announced Natalie calmly, although her voice was
husky and her cheeks wet with tears. ‘You
tell her the bloody
truth,
to her
face,
and let
her
decide what to do. My father
might be the biggest, most selfish bastard of all
time, but he’s
not going to spend the
rest of his life in ignorance. Someone’s
got to tell him he has a daughter, and I think it might be best if
it
were me.’

’It’s a double-page fucking feature,’
exploded Loulou,
still quivering with
rage as she sat on the end of Camilla’s bed
dressed
in a child’s white vest and creased white track
suit trousers. Waving the newspaper at Camilla she said, ‘Read
it!’

‘
I can’t,’ complained Camilla, blinking as the
early morning sunlight burnt her eyes. ‘I haven’t got my contact lenses in.’

‘I’ll read
it,’ said Loulou through clenched teeth. ‘Can you at least see the bloody
headline? It’s big enough.’

‘
"The Price of Love – £2 million," ‘ read out Roz, peering
over her
shoulder. "Loulou Marks won the hearts of our nation when she donated two
million pounds to research into the tragic syndrome of cot deaths. But all
lovely Loulou was trying to do was win back the heart of sexy Scottish
photographer ‘Mac’ Mackenzie, the second of her three husbands.

"Last week, heavily disguised, she crept into the
Kendall-Fordyce Gallery in Kensington where Mac’s latest exhibition is
currently receiving critical acclaim. All she wanted was to catch a glimpse of
the man she loved, the man who rejected her when she gave birth to her daughter
Lili. But when Mac arrived at the
gallery
arm in arm with his new love, the stunning model Cecilia
Drew, Loulou went to pieces . . ." Good
heavens, Lou, you
didn’t, did you?’
said Roz, gazing at her in astonishment.
Loulou, snatching the paper from her, ripped it into confetti
and
glared back.

‘
Of course I bloody
didn’t!’ she snapped, her silver-grey
eyes blazing. ‘And if I did, it
wasn’t how it
sounds.
Shit, that double-crossing, smarmy, money-grabbing
little . . . I told him
everything!’ she
wailed. ‘It was
private
and he went and sold it
to that bloody
scum-bag paper. I didn’t even know he was a journalist . .

‘Who!’ demanded Roz and Camilla in unison, and Loulou
covered her eyes in despair, waiting for them to say, ‘I told you so.’

‘Martin Stacey-sodding-Thompson, of course,’ she groaned. ‘He
sold me down the river and got his big break. Do you know how much he was paid
for writing this trash?’

‘Not as much as he’s going to pay out in libel damages,’
said Roz, trying not to smile.

‘
Don’t make fun of me,’ shrieked Loulou,
throwing herself
down on the bed. ‘How can it be libel when it’s bloody
well
true?’

‘
I’ll make us some
coffee,’ said Camilla, who really wasn’t
up to coping with such drama before breakfast, but Roz
motioned
her to stay where she was.

‘I’ll get it. You stay where you are and make sure Lou
doesn’t throw herself out of the window.’

‘
Don’t panic,’ murmured
Loulou, lying across the bed with
her
eyes closed. ‘I may not be able to sue the bastard, but I can
still kill
him. I need to stay alive for that. Oh God,’ she moaned, rolling over and
sitting upright. ‘Whatever is Mac going to say when he finds out about this?’

‘He was married to you,’ called out Roz as she made her
way downstairs. ‘He should be used to it by now.’

Two minutes later she was back. "The stupid little
bitch!’ she
stormed, her dark brown eyes
narrowed with fury. Camilla pulled
herself upright once more and wished
for the second time that
morning that she
had decent eyesight as yet another piece of
paper was thrust into her
hands. ‘She’s only run off to Zurich!’ exploded Roz. ‘My daughter’s determined
to ruin my life. What the hell am I going to do now?’

‘Zurich?’ Loulou, intrigued, abruptly forgot her own cata
strophe. ‘Why on earth would she go there . . .
what’s she
looking for, anyway? A gnome?’

Heathrow Airport was chaotic with excited,
height-of-the-season
holiday makers; queues
were forming in every direction, the
tannoy was blaring non-stop and
Natalie, sitting on her small suitcase, clutched her one-way Swissair flight
ticket to her chest as if it were a rosary. For the first time she began to
doubt the wisdom of her action. All she had was the name of her father, and the
city in which he lived. Most of her savings had gone on
the price of the plane ticket; the number of travellers’ cheques
in
her purse was pathetically small.

Now she was both hungry and thirsty
but dared not spend
any money.
Realistically she knew that she could only afford to
stay in Zurich for three or four days. And if she was unable to
find
her father within that time she was going to be stuck; no money to stay and
none with which to get back to England.

What the hell, she thought with mounting trepidation and
excitement. This is it. No going back. This is real life!

Gradually she became aware of a
commotion at the other
end of the
great hall. A photographer ran past, cameras flapping against his chest, and
she could hear young girls shrieking with excitement. Some kind of celebrity
must have arrived.

Anxious for any diversion Natalie rose to her feet and
hauled her case into her arms, making her way across the crowded hall. Maybe it
was Sting – she was crazy about him – or a film star heading back to the States.

By the time she reached the other end of the hall a
sizeable
crowd had formed, and several more
photographers were
flashing away with their cameras.

‘
Who is it?’ she asked
one of them, and he paused to glance
at
her. Pretty girl. Photogenic. Great legs. Shame about the
clothes.

‘Nico Coletto, on his way to Montserrat,’ he told her as
he
slotted a new film into his camera, and
watched the expression
on the girl’s face change.

‘
Nico !’ she screamed,
more loudly than anyone else,
and
cannoned through the crowd using her case as a battering
ram.

‘
Nico, stop!’ Natalie yelled again, pushing her
way to the
front and seeing that he had finished signing autographs.
He
was
moving away towards the VIP lounge and she knew he was her only chance .. .

‘Please stop, I have to speak to you,’ she bellowed, sweat
breaking out on her upper lip. By the way he
hesitated, but
didn’t turn round, she knew that he had heard her.

‘
It’s about my mother,’
yelled Natalie in desperation. ‘You
know her . . . it’s a matter of life
and death!’

At last he turned, his gaze sweeping
the crowd until it came
to rest
upon Natalie.

‘
Oh please,’ she said,
her knees almost buckling with relief
and ecstasy. ‘We really,
really
have to talk . .

In the VIP departure lounge, Nico seated himself opposite
Natalie, his green eyes watchful.

Unable to utter a word, she returned
his gaze, breathing
shallowly
in her excitement and struggling to convince herself
that she was really here. Nico, her mother’s lover, and
her own
long-time hero, was sitting less
than four feet away from her,
his baggy cream linen jacket screaming
Armani and his slender, sun-tanned fingers tapping against his jean-clad thigh.
He was
wearing white beach shoes, a
sea-green T-shirt which matched
his incredible eyes, and the most
heavenly aftershave she’d ever smelt.

For a long moment he said nothing
either, just watched her
as if she were a puzzle he couldn’t quite work out. Glancing
behind him, Natalie saw Caroline, his
wife, speaking in an
undertone
to an overweight middle-aged man who was pouring lager from a can into a
slender champagne glass.

‘
So,’ said Nico
finally. ‘A matter of life and death. Was that
a very over-the-top
exaggeration or a downright lie?’

Natalie
felt a hideous blush crawl up her cheeks. ‘A slight
exaggeration,’ she amended with an embarrassed smile. ‘But it
is
important.’

‘
Maybe you’d better tell me who your mother is,’ he said
slowly,
tilting his blond head. ‘I think I can guess; it’s just very hard to believe.’

She grinned suddenly, and shook her head in a manner which
so reminded him of Roz that he knew he was right. Jesus, it was uncanny how
much she resembled her.

‘
Say it,’ commanded
Natalie. ‘And don’t look so worried –
I’m not going to tell everyone you’re
my old man.’

‘You’re Roz’s daughter,’ said Nico with a faint,
incredulous smile which lit up his face. ‘Does
she
know?’

This time Natalie burst out laughing. ‘Of course she does!
Yesterday she told me who my father is. That’s why I’m here, to
go over to Switzerland and meet him. Have you seen
Mum
lately?’

‘Not recently,’ Nico said, thinking fast. This was,
without a
doubt, the voice which had
answered the phone yesterday
afternoon when he had tried to contact
Camilla, so she and Roz had to be staying with her in Belgravia.

He longed to ask this girl – Christ, those dark, slanting
eyes were
so
like Roz’s – about Camilla, but it would only complicate
matters. And right now he was supposed to be
getting away
from all that. Asking
questions would only make things
worse . . .

‘
So what’s the
emergency?’ he asked, glancing at his watch
and nodding at the blonde
waitress who was hovering discreetly with a pot of coffee.

‘A favour.’ Natalie held her breath for a second then
plunged
in. ‘I’ve paid for my ticket, but now
I’m skint. If you could lend
me some money I wouldn’t have to sleep in
Swiss doorways.’

‘
Why didn’t Roz make
sure you had enough?’ intercepted
Nico,
outraged. Then he sank back in his seat. ‘Oh, don’t tell
me. She doesn’t
know you’re here.’

Cringing from the resigned expression
and the disapproval
in his thickly-lashed,
onyx-green eyes and terrified that he might
be
about to send her home under armed escort, Natalie said with a touch of
defiance, ‘She knows I’m here because I left
her a note. She just didn’t
know about it beforehand, that’s all.’

Nico saw the determination which tautened every line of
her slender young body, and knew that nothing he could say would
sway her. It occurred to him at that moment that
if he had
married Roz this teenager
would be his step-daughter. Jesus,
Roz could only have been about
fifteen when she’d had her.

It occurred to him too that Roz had caused her fair share
of
problems for him over the years. When
they had been together
she had treated him in the most off-hand manner
imaginable in order to keep his interest alive. And afterwards she had abruptly
reversed tactics, using every dirty trick in the book to win him back.

Nico, with his family-orientated
Italian blood, couldn’t think
of one good
reason why this girl shouldn’t meet her real father,
and it caused him some small amount of satisfaction to know
that
Roz was opposed to the idea.

What the hell, he thought, glancing across the tables to
where
Caroline and Monty were sitting, both
studiously pretending
not to be
watching him. Let’s give the girl a break and show
Roz that she can’t
always have her own way.