Fast Friends (79 page)

‘I know,’ he had murmured in her ear. ‘I don’t want to
leave either.’

‘
It isn’t fair on you,’
she said stroking his just-shaved cheek
and breathing in the soap and shampoo smell of him. Then
shyly, she had added, ‘When the children are
staying with Jack,
I could always come down to Bath.’

His dark eyes had softened with
affection. ‘I’ll hold you to
that.’

When Camilla eventually trailed downstairs she spotted the
note Loulou had propped up against one of last night’s empty
champagne bottles. Ostensibly from Lili, it said, ‘Rocky
and I
have taken Mum off to the zoo.
She’s borrowed your yellow
jacket. Looks to me as if she’s tarted
herself up in the hope of
catching a man. I
told her she was far too old for that sort of
thing. Anyway, I’ll bring
her back at about five. Love, Lili. P.S. Hope you had a good bonk.’

Camilla grinned and switched on the
radio. One of Nico’s
songs was
being played, a slow and sensual track from his last
album, and just for a moment she forgot Piers, remembering
instead the happy times she and Nico had shared.
Her feelings for him, she realized with a pang of regret, were still as strong
as
ever, but nothing could have come of them. He was married and Piers was free.
Once more, at last, life truly seemed worth living and she wasn’t going to
waste a single moment of it by regretting what could never be.

And since Charlotte and Toby were away
for the next few
days staying with Jack’s
parents in Shropshire, Camilla decided with renewed vigour to drive over to the
hospital and pick up Marty. It was simply too good a day to spend alone.

Nico, making his way back to the
bungalow at around eight
o’clock, reflected that he was doing so with little pleasure and
a depressing sense of duty. Since Jake
had mentioned to him
this
morning that Caroline had been talking to Susie, and that
Caroline was ‘slightly pissed off’ by the number of
hours he
was putting in at the
studio, his conscience had continued to
nudge him. When the rest of the
band had left its cool confines shortly after six, he had planned to stay on as
he usually did, but
the thought of Caroline
sitting alone inside the bungalow
steadily
prodded away at his conscience. Eventually he had
called it a day and left. He would do the decent
thing and take
her out to dinner;
then he would at least be able to reason to
himself that he had made the
effort.

Jesus, he thought despairingly as he kicked at the dark
sand
beneath his feet and watched his
lengthening shadow move
steadily along
ahead of him, why did it have to
be
an effort?
Why couldn’t he be like Jake with Susie,
deliriously happy and
so relaxed in
each other’s company that it never even crossed
their minds not to be
together?

But I could be like that, he thought with a trace of
resentment
as the glaring white bungalow,
flanked by spindly palm trees and thickly banked scarlet hibiscus bushes, came
into view. I
could
be like that. With Camilla.

Having made every effort not to think about her since
leaving London, the full force of his loss now struck him with savage
suddenness. If it could really be termed a loss,
of course. But
seeing Camilla again in London, feeling that they were
finally coming together once more after so long apart and then her refusal to
meet him or even contact him the very day before he was due to leave had
shattered his hopes more brutally than he had imagined possible. The sense of
loss was for something exquisite and fragile, so fragile that it had scarcely
even existed.

And now it was gone, but he couldn’t accept that it would
be
gone for ever. If he worked hard he could
rebuild it, surely.
Maybe a jokey postcard to begin with. Something
light and unimportant to re-establish that slender, delicate link between them.
. .

Cheered by the idea, Nico ran up the
steps on to the verandah.
A scarlet
towel, hanging over the back of a chair, flapped gently in the sea breeze and a
half-empty jug of something-and-orange was gathering flies on the low cane
table.

Inside, there was no sign of Caroline. Nico paused for a
few seconds, gazing around the bedroom which had been tidied to
perfection by one of the cheerful maids. He
considered calling
on Paddy,
persuading him to join him up at the hotel for a
drink, then decided
against it. He would go alone, pick up some postcards and dream up a witty and
suitably casual message for Camilla. God knows, even that would give him more
pleasure than having to pretend to enjoy the company of his wife over dinner.

When the cab finally drew up outside
the house Juliet sat
without
moving for a while, rechecking that the number tallied with that written on the
scrap of paper in her hand.

This was it, then. This was where the woman lived, and
there was her car parked on the gravelled driveway. So Camilla Lewis
had money, did she? And plenty of it. What else,
wondered
Juliet, did Camilla have that other women like herself didn’t?

The urge to
see what Piers’ mistress looked like was almost overwhelming now. Paying off
the cab driver and adjusting her grey suit jacket as she stepped on to the
pavement, she couldn’t
help smiling. This
was what she had wanted to do so many
times
before, and now it was really happening. The man she
had hired from the detective agency had obtained
the informa
tion so much more easily
than she had imagined . . . and now
she was really here. Instead of
sitting at home crying she was doing something about it. The others may have
got away with it in the past, but Camilla Lewis wasn’t going to.

When Camilla answered the front
doorbell she assumed at
first that
the woman in the flannel suit, American tan tights and
sensible low-heeled shoes was collecting for some charity or
other. She was already reaching for her handbag,
which stood
on the hall table, when the woman said in a strangely
panicky voice, ‘May I come in, please? It’s very important.’

Automatically, sensing the urgency in
her voice, Camilla
stepped back into the
hall. Maybe there had been some kind of accident in the street .. .

The woman closed the door quietly behind her and Camilla
hesitated, experiencing the first pangs of misgiving
as she
found herself being stared at
with peculiar intensity. The
woman
was plump, with straight, very shiny brown hair and
grey eyes which seemed to be drinking in every
detail. Then
her gaze switched
abruptly to the hall itself, observing the
toys which littered the floor and the bizarre flower arrange
ments
on the carved oak dresser beneath the curving staircase. Was this, then, what
Piers longed for – not perfectly arranged cultivated flowers but
dandelions,
thrust ludicrously into heavy silver bowls?

‘
What was it you wanted?’
Camilla enquired politely,
feeling terribly English and wondering if the
woman had some
kind of psychiatric problem.
She could hardly be a burglar,
after all.

‘Wanted? What do I want?’ echoed Juliet, sounding faintly
surprised and glancing once more with evident
disapproval at
the jumble of toys on
the parquet floor. So she had a child – a
very young child judging by
the toys and the dandelions – and
possibly a
husband as well. Some women, it seemed, wanted it
all: a husband, children,
and
a lover with which to enliven their pampered lives .. .

She was beautiful, as Juliet had expected, although
slightly older than she’d imagined.

But still, inescapably beautiful. Glamorous, too, in an
obvi
ously expensive white dress with gold
chains around her neck
and glittering
diamond studs in her ears. Her eyes were a
dazzling peacock-blue, her streaky gold-blond hair fastened
up with gold combs. No doubt her child was
equally
perfect .. .

‘I’ve come to see you,’ she said at last, walking past
Camilla into the sitting-room and clutching her handbag tightly in both hands. ‘You
see, my name is Juliet O’Donoghue.’

‘
Juliet . . .?’

For about a tenth of a second Camilla
was confused. Then it
all became
horribly, sickeningly clear.

‘You’re his wife.’ It came out as a statement rather than
the
question she had intended, and Juliet’s
eyes narrowed with anger.

Feeling ill and frozen to the spot
with horror, Camilla said,
‘I’m so
sorry. I swear I didn’t know. Really.’

‘
Really?’ echoed Juliet,
pacing the sitting-room and survey
ing it as thoroughly as she had the
hall. An empty coffee cup balanced on the edge of the mantelpiece, more toys
littered the floor, scribbled-on paper and uncapped felt pens covered the coffee
table . . . the woman was a slut, no doubt far too busy conducting her illicit
affairs to have time for a few hours’ honest housework.

She might be beautiful, considered
Juliet almost pityingly
now, and
she might live in a big house in Belgravia, but when it came down to it she was
still nothing but a slut.

And a lying
one too.

‘
I am a
decent person, Mrs Lewis,’ she said aloud, marvelling
at the steadiness of her voice as she turned to face her once
more.
‘A decent woman, and an excellent wife.
Look
at me,’ she
added sharply as Camilla bowed her head in
distress. ‘Why
should Piers keep on
doing this? He punishes me when I’ve
done
nothing to deserve it. When really I should be punishing
him . .

‘I’ll never see him again,’ said Camilla rapidly, her
heart
hammering against her chest, her face
pale. ‘And please listen
to me; I know how you must feel. I
understand
–’

‘
You do not
understand,’ snapped Juliet, still clutching her
handbag against her stomach. ‘How can
you
possibly under
stand
how I feel? Just look at you. You have everything and you don’t even realize
how lucky you are, because if you did you
wouldn’t
want my husband as well. You have children.’ She
nodded jerkily at the clutter of toys. ‘And I’m sure they’re just
as
perfect as you are. Your husband – he’s got to be better than
Piers, for God’s sake. He certainly can’t screw
around as much
as Piers does . .

‘I’m sorry,’ said Camilla once more, appalled by the
entire situation and realizing that she didn’t know how to cope with it.

‘
Oh,’ Juliet’s
eyebrows arched in mock surprise. ‘You’re sorry.
How nice. Doesn’t it even bother you, sleeping with a man who
is
married?’

‘
But I swear I didn’t
know . . .’ whispered Camilla with shame
and mounting
desperation.

‘Don’t
lie
to me! Are your children here now?’

‘
No, but —’

‘Just as well.’ Juliet unzipped her handbag and took out
the
knife as casually as if it were a
fountain pen. ‘There’s no need
for
them to see this. With you as their mother I should think
they’ve
suffered enough already.’

This cannot be happening, thought
Camilla, frozen with
horror. As if in slow motion she saw Piers’ wife move towards
her, gripping the handle of the knife with both hands.
Trembling
violently, she backed away. If she
could reach the french
windows and unlock them quickly enough...

But Juliet was too fast for her. This was what she had
come here to do, what she had longed to do so often in the past, and nothing
was going to stop her now.

With a strangled yell she flew at
Camilla, lashing out with
the knife.
As the blade slashed through the white sleeve of her dress, a crimson stain
grew as if by magic. Camilla screamed,
stumbling
awkwardly against the coffee table and Juliet laughed,
revelling in the rush of adrenalin and launching
herself once
more at the figure now crumpled on the floor.