Fast Friends (12 page)

As it was, she had been able to cope. Jack, knowing that
she
was coming back to the house to see the
children, had left for
the office
early. Everything was clean and tidy. And Jennifer,
the most competent
nanny Camilla had ever known, had assured
her
that she was coping perfectly well and that Jack had
increased her
salary in order to cover the extra work entailed by Camilla’s absence.

‘
Two children or three,
it doesn’t make much difference to
me,’
she assured Camilla with a wry smile. ‘I give Jack the
same food as the kids and tell him off if he leaves
his shoes in
the sitting-room.’

‘
Is he . . . home much?’
asked Camilla hesitantly, unsure
how
to phrase the question uppermost in her mind. She didn’t
even know if
Jennifer was aware of the circumstances surround
ing her abrupt departure. Had Jack told her about Roz? Had Roz perhaps
been there with him? She didn’t really want to
know, but some inner compulsion drove her to find out. Bravely,
she met Jennifer’s sympathetic gaze and tensed
herself in
preparation for her answer.

‘Every night he comes home at six o’clock,’ Jennifer
replied
straightforwardly. ‘He doesn’t go
out, just watches television
until it closes down, then he goes to bed.’

There, that wasn’t so bad after all, thought Camilla. She
had dared to ask, and had got the answer she wanted. Curiosity overcame her and
she asked again.

‘
And how does he . . . er . . . seem, to you?’

Jennifer tried not to smile at the suitably vague terms
Camilla was employing.

‘
I think he’s seen the
error of his ways, if that’s what you
mean,’
she said simply, then reached across and squeezed
Camilla’s hand. ‘Of
course
I know what
happened at that party.
I made him tell me. And you did the very best
thing, Camilla, honestly. My father had an affair, but when Mum found out she
didn’t do anything about it because she was afraid
to. When
that affair ended he found
another woman . . . and then another
.
. . and didn’t even bother to pretend it wasn’t happening. I
hated him
for it, and I’m afraid I despised my mother for her
weakness, but she always said she couldn’t manage without
him,
even though she was desperately unhappy with him.’

Recalling Loulou’s words: "There’s a lot of it about,’
Camilla swallowed and said, ‘What happened?’

‘
Mum died,’ said
Jennifer simply, ‘of cancer. My father
remarried a year later and now he’s
having an affair with his secretary. You see, no-one’s ever done anything to
try and stop
him. And that’s why
I’m
glad
you’ve
had the guts to make a
stand. The short, sharp, shock
treatment, I suppose. Leave, give
Jack a few
weeks to realize what he’s lost and what a bastard
he’s been, then come back and start again on equal
terms. I’m
all for it, Camilla. I’m
completely on your side. When you
decide to come home again he’ll be as
good as gold.’

In silence, Camilla gazed around at the well-loved objects
in the living-room which were so familiar. Everything in the room was a
reminder of some part of their lives together and she felt
the dull ache of gathering tears as she turned to
face Jennifer
once more.

‘
But I’m not coming
back,’ she explained slowly. ‘Not in a
few
weeks, not ever. I want to be with Toby and Charlotte, but I can’t live with
Jack again. That’s all over. I can’t forgive him,
I’d never trust him, and I’d be just as unhappy as
your mother
was, wondering when he was going to do the same thing again.
I’ve got a right to be happy, Jennifer, and
it’s
my
life to do what I want with. I’m sorry if this places an extra
burden on you, but
if you feel it’s
too much then we’ll just have to find another
nanny and of course you
needn’t worry about your references. We’d all hate to see you go, but I’d
understand. I can’t pretend,
though, that
this separation is temporary. I’m going to divorce
Jack and it’s only
fair that you should know that now.’

As she spoke aloud the thoughts which
until that moment
she had only hesitantly
considered, Camilla felt the tears recede and a sense of swelling pride take
their place. She felt more
convinced of the
rightness of her actions than at any time before.
She was making her own decisions, deciding the
future of her
own life, and at last realizing that she did, indeed,
have
a future without Jack.

It was a powerful, almost exhilarating sensation and in
her triumph she was unable to suppress a new, confident smile that almost
spilled into laughter.

Jennifer smiled back, recognizing the change in her
employer
and privately applauding it. If only
her mother could have been
as brave in the same circumstances, she
thought, how different things might have been. Having had neither the strength
nor the will to fight the battle with cancer, she had died. Maybe, just
maybe, if her frame of mind had been more positive
she might
still be alive today.

‘
Don’t worry about me,’
she assured Camilla, her voice
faintly husky now as her own emotions
asserted themselves.
‘There’s no reason at
all for me to leave. I’m very happy here
and as I said before, the extra money Jack’s paying me more than makes
up for the extra work involved. I’ll miss you not
being here as well, of
course, but I certainly won’t leave.’

‘
Oh Jennifer, I’m so glad,’ said Camilla with
heartfelt relief.

For a few seconds both women were silent, listening to the
muted screams and laughter of Charlotte and
Toby as they
played boisterously upstairs.

‘
There’s just one
other thing I’d like to say,’ Jennifer ventured,
almost diffidently.

‘
Go ahead,’ said
Camilla with concern, thinking Oh God,
what now?

She waited
whilst Jennifer scrutinized her.

‘
I have to tell you,’
she began slowly, teasingly, then broke
into a broad smile, ‘you look absolutely . . . fantastic!’

Remembering Jennifer’s words now as
she held brightly
patterned wrapping
paper around one of the presents she had
bought
this morning for Charlotte and tearing a strip of Sellotape
off with her
teeth, Camilla experienced once again the flood of
almost indecent pride which had swept over her in response to
the compliment. She had promised herself that from
now on
she would always make the effort to look good. This morning,
shopping for the children’s Christmas gifts, she had swept into Harrods feeling
wonderfully confident, not at all as she had felt that day when she had bumped
into Roz.

Looking good, feeling good, she thought happily, and best
of all . . . still losing weight!

‘
Spaghetti Bolognese. With tons of garlic and
mushrooms and lots of red wine in the sauce,’ Loulou had replied dreamily
when Camilla had asked her last night what she
would most
like for Christmas.

‘
Difficult to gift-wrap,’ she had remarked, dead-pan. ‘And
it might leak a bit, but if you’re sure that’s what you want . .

‘
Oh darling, I’m
positive. All my
boring
old chef ever cooks
is fillet steak and chicken and
boring
old
lamb, and you know
only too well what my own cooking’s like. What my
stomach
yearns for is spaghetti. So
that’s
what I most want for Christmas.’

Halfway through the seemingly endless task of wrapping
presents, Camilla had suddenly decided that she
would dash
over to Fortnums, buy all the ingredients and make Loulou her
longed-for spaghetti Bolognese. They could share it before the wine bar
reopened in the evening, and it would go a tiny way
towards repaying her friend for her wonderful generosity over
the
last fortnight.

Now she
hummed happily to herself as she moved about the
kitchen, chopping mushrooms, crushing the garlic and stirring
the
simmering pan of minced beef in its thick tomato and basil
sauce. Loulou had phoned through an hour earlier to
let her
know that she would be out for
the afternoon, but that she
would
definitely be back by five and could she ask the chef to grill her a rare
steak. Camilla had cheerfully agreed, and done
no such thing. As she tipped half a bottle of rather good red
wine
into the heavy pan of sauce she told herself with determination that this would
be the best spaghetti Loulou had ever eaten

Nico parked the muddy white Ferrari on the double yellow
lines
outside Vampires and slid out of the
driver’s seat, shivering as
the icy December wind penetrated his thin
black sweatshirt.

After a day in the recording studios
arguing with his sound
engineer and accomplishing precisely nothing, he felt in need
of Loulou’s effervescent company. Ever since Roz’s sudden
withdrawal into herself she had been most
unstimulating
company and Nico found himself now beginning to run out of
patience. How sympathetic could a man be, after all, when the
woman he loved complained to him about the
problems caused
by one of her other
lovers? She was a selfish bitch, he told
himself not for the first time, and although he was sure that
what
he felt for her was love, he wasn’t at all convinced that he actually
liked
Roz.
It had been time, therefore, for a tactical
withdrawal,
and Loulou’s was the ideal place to withdraw to.
Also, less selfishly,
he had some news for her concerning Mac, although whether she would regard it
as good news or bad he wasn’t sure.

Shivering violently, he pushed open the glossy black door
bearing the discreet brass plate engraved with
Loulou’s initials
and entered Vampires. The lunchtime session was almost
over now; time had been called and only three or four parties of pre-
Christmas revellers in varying degrees of
drunkenness were
left, attempting to
gear themselves up for a return to their
offices. Loulou, however, was nowhere in sight and Nico
claimed the attention of one of the barmen while at
the same
time taking care not to catch
the eye of any of the office girls.
He wasn’t in the mood for drunken
propositions and an extended
round of autograph
signing, and alcohol-sodden females were
the worst pain of all.

‘Is Loulou upstairs?’ he asked, and Christo shook his
head. Shit, thought Nico.

‘
She went out a little while ago, but she did
say she wouldn’t be that long,’ Christo explained. ‘If you come back in a
couple
of hours . . .’ he hesitated,
observing Nico’s weary expression.
He
was
a friend of Loulou’s
after all. ‘Or maybe you’d prefer to wait upstairs for her. She wouldn’t mind,
would she?’

‘
If she did, I’d shoot
her,’ said Nico with a wry smile. "Thanks,
I’ll go straight up.
She’ll probably come home and find me
asleep .

Damn, thought Christo a few seconds after Nico had
disappeared up the stairs leading to Loulou’s flat. I forgot to tell him
that there was someone else there as well. Ah
well, let’s just
hope that Camilla isn’t a frenzied Nico Coletto fan —
the poor fellow looks as if that’s just what he doesn’t need at this moment.

Since there was no point in knocking, Nico simply opened
the door and marched straight into the flat. Abruptly he was
plunged right back to his childhood as his senses were assailed
by the most
evocative, marvellous aroma of Italian cooking. It wasn’t the first time it had
happened, of course; whenever he entered an Italian restaurant the heady wafts
of garlic and herbs
instantly had the same
effect, but this was
Loulou’s
flat, and it
had to be quite simply the last place on earth
where he would
have expected to encounter such sensational smells.

Chapter
11

Camilla, sandwiched inside Loulou’s
sunbed, heard the front
door open and close and quickly switched off the power. Leaping
to her feet and wrenching off the protective goggles, she
hurried towards the bedroom door, wanting to enjoy Loulou’s surprise when she
saw the spaghetti Bolognese.