Fast Friends (17 page)

‘It’s a hospital for the mentally handicapped. I went
along to
help out on the children’s ward.
Most go home for Christmas
but some can’t. They’ve either been
abandoned, or the families simply can’t cope with them. Do you know, Lou, that
the nurses there draw lots to see who can work on Christmas Day? Three nurses
came in, even though it was their day off. I couldn’t see
Toby and Charlotte this year, but I suddenly
realized that I
could
be with children who weren’t able to see
their own parents. It was wonderful, there’s a little boy there called Marty
who has Down’s Syndrome and he . .

‘She’s flipped,’ whispered Loulou to Nico, her hand over
the
mouthpiece. Then she grinned at him,
because it was difficult
not to grin
at a rock star wearing a blue plastic necklace out of
a cracker and a pair of false Dracula teeth. ‘But
she sounds
more cheerful now than she
has since she moved in, so who am
I to say anything if a visit to a
loony bin makes her happy?’

Chapter 15

Meeting and instantly flooring Omar
Khalid with one of her
more
reckless insults had been one of the most important events
in Loulou’s life. Possibly
the
most
important, she sometimes
felt, since
Vampires had stayed with her for far longer than any
of her three
husbands or numerous lovers.

It had been fate – she had never for a second doubted that
–which had caused his pale blue Silver Shadow Rolls-Royce to break down
directly outside the shabby Clapham wine bar where she was working at the time.
Men like Omar travelled between Heathrow, Mayfair, Knightsbridge and maybe
Surrey, but they
never intentionally
went
to places like Clapham. Which ex
plained why it had to be fate that
had quite deliberately snapped
the
accelerator cable and worsened Omar’s mood to the extent
that he had
stormed into the wine bar and demanded irritably: ‘Give me an orange juice and
a cigar.’

Loulou, who had spent most of the night fighting with Mac
because he categorically refused to keep the
expensive lambs
wool sweater she had bought him, was in no mood for
further displays of male arrogance.

‘What are we, a goddamn charity?’ she had snapped back
through tightly clenched teeth. ‘You probably earn
more in a
day than I do in a year. And you want me to
give
you an
orange
juice and a cigar? Would you give
me
that car of yours? Mind
your manners and pay for what you want or
take a hike.’

Omar
Khalid, accustomed as he was to the ultimate indeference and humility, actually
felt himself turn a shade paler.
Through his
quick mind ran a series of conflicting emotions
jostling for position:
shock, amazement at the audacity of this stunning looking young girl, a faint
sense of outrage, a stronger
one of
admiration . . . and amusement, because he had never in
his life been addressed in such a manner and it
really made
rather a refreshing change.

The wine bar, since it was not yet
midday, was entirely
empty. Late morning sunlight streamed through the stained-
glass windows behind the girl,
surrounding her with colours
which only
enhanced his image of her. She was an angel.

Without moving a muscle or opening
his mouth to speak,
Omar
gazed at her, drinking in her shimmering blonde beauty
and defiant eyes. Incongruous amidst
the leafy foliage and
brass fittings, she looked so ferocious that he didn’t want to do
or say anything to spoil the exquisite moment.

And then she smiled a dazzling smile, and he was utterly,
infinitely
lost. It was the smile of the century; melting,
beguiling and at the same time so
knowing
that
it gripped the
very centre of his
soul. This is it, thought Omar. This is the
girl I want.

‘The car is yours, of course,’ he said, inclining his head
and
permitting himself the smallest of smiles
in return. ‘And I do
most humbly apologize for my rudeness, which was
unpardonable. May I now have my orange juice please, and the honour of knowing
that you might forgive me, madame?’

Loulou, enjoying her victory enormously, leant across and
tickled the seventh richest man in the world beneath his smooth
brown chin. Tor a Rolls-Royce, sweetie,’ she said
in cheerful
tones, ‘I can forgive
anybody
practically
anything.’

Omar was
even further enchanted, though perplexed, when
he later learnt
that Loulou had been joking and that she
steadfastly refused to take seriously his perfectly serious offer
of the
Rolls-Royce.

‘
I’m used to driving a
Mini, for Christ’s sake,’ she giggled.
‘How
the hell do you suppose I’d ever manage to squeeze a
Roller into a
parking space?’

‘
That is not a
problem,’ replied Omar with a shrug. ‘Naturally,
the chauffeur will park
it . .

Bestowing gifts upon Loulou proved difficult, if not
imposs
ible. She either howled with laughter
at the idea of accepting
the more
extravagant ones – and Omar Khalid was not at all
used to being laughed at – or very touchingly
attempted to
return in kind the smaller ones.

Each time he bought her a drink during
his now daily visits
to her wine
bar, she would invariably buy him one in return. By the end of the week he had
proposed to her.

‘
I wish to propose to
you,’ he said, his brown eyes solemn,
and Loulou burst out laughing.

‘I’m already married, dipstick! Hey, that’s pretty appropriate
for you, being in oil, wouldn’t you say? I’m
wittier than I
thought.’

‘
I propose,’ continued
Omar, leaning across the polished
bar,
‘that you leave this place and become the manageress
of a new wine bar, which I happen to own.’ He felt
it un
necessary to mention that he had owned it for less than twelve
hours.

Loulou stared at him, and his stomach muscles tautened in
admiration.

‘I didn’t know you had one.’

‘
There are many things
about me of which you are unaware.
It is in Knightsbridge, and very much
larger than this,’ he
gestured with a sweep
of his hand around the small, now
crowded
bar. "There is a restaurant also, attached to it, and a
large flat
above which would, of course, be yours.’

‘
Why are you offering it to me?’ Loulou challenged him,
and he
shrugged.

‘It needs you, my dear. It very badly needs you.’

Exactly a month later, redesigned and renamed, Vampires
opened amidst a whirl of expertly planned publicity, although it
was not that alone which made it such an instant –
and then
lasting – success. Loulou did that herself, simply by being
there in the right place and at the perfect time. People with plenty of
money to spend, tired – like Omar – of being
pandered to,
welcomed Loulou’s irreverent attitude with open arms, a
joyful
explosion of champagne corks and a
tireless compulsion to
return.

‘He wants your body,’ Mac told Loulou, his Scottish pride
by
this time severely dented by the manner in
which the oil-rich
Omar had so effortlessly altered their lives. Loulou
was fast
becoming a celebrity, and he was
still struggling to make even
the
poorest of livings. "That’s if he hasn’t had it already,’ he
added
unfairly, yet unable to stop himself.

‘
Darling, you
know
that
isn’t true,’ said Loulou absently, as
she
rearranged a line of bottles above the sleek new black
marble bar. ‘Omar simply thought I was the right
man for the
job.’

Mac watched her, so happy and so
totally involved in her
work that she was oblivious to his own jealousy. "That’s exactly
it,’ he said, his voice dangerously
quiet. ‘You’re the right man
for the job, and I’m the housewife who gets her allowance
every week. I won’t be your wife,
Loulou. Don’t expect me to
be.’

She turned, exasperated by his
stubbornness. ‘You’re so
bloody
Scottish,
Mac. What does it matter who’s earning the
most money at the moment? I’ve had my lucky break, that’s
all. You’ll have yours, sooner or later. Why can’t you just be grateful to Omar
for giving me mine now?’

Mac’s eyes glittered. ‘I don’t
want
to be grateful
to Omar,’ he
said bitterly. ‘Do you think I
don’t notice the way he looks at
you,
dammit? Why the bloody hell should I be grateful to a
man who only wants
to sleep with my wife?’

Exactly
four weeks later he moved out.

‘
Now I know
why it’s called the monthly curse,’ Loulou had
joked feebly to her friends, while inside she disintegrated and
died. ‘I realized that we women had to expect
period problems
but this is ridiculous.’

And when, just three months after Mac’s
departure, Omar
Khalid
was killed in a freak air accident over the Persian Gulf,
the curse was compounded. Grieving for both her lost
husband and the man who had been both friend and benefactor to her for such a
short period, she turned to Roz.

‘He never laid a finger on me,’ she sobbed, ‘but Mac
wouldn’t believe me. Poor, poor Omar. And now that they’re both gone, poor me.’

‘
Perhaps Mac will come
back,’ said Roz, ‘now that
Omar’s . . . gone.’

‘
Why should he?’ Loulou
sniffed inconsolably. ‘He still
thinks
I was unfaithful to him and how the hell can I prove that
I wasn’t? They
can hardly test to see if my hymen is still intact.’

Loulou was right, and at the same time Mac felt that his
assumptions had been proved correct when she was
contacted
by Omar Khalid’s high-powered lawyers and informed that
Vampires was hers.

‘You’re telling me that he didn’t even go near you, yet he
left you a property worth almost one and a half million pounds? I
wasna born yesterday, you know,’ he shouted, his
Scottish accent
increasing in direct proportion with his jealousy.

Loulou, longing to hurl something at
his head, jammed her fists into her trouser pockets and faced him with
unconcealed
fury.

‘
You nasty, vicious bastard!’ she yelled back,
unable to stand
the torture of being innocent
but proven guilty. ‘Sex isn’t the be-all and end-all for everyone, you know.
You might not be
able to think further
than your dick, but some people can
manage without it.
I
certainly
can. In fact since you walked out, sweetheart,’ she went on heedlessly, wanting
only to wound him now in return for the pain he had caused her, ‘it’s been a
positive pleasure not having to sleep with you. You never did a bloody thing
for me anyway!’

It was odd, thought Roz as she lay back and submitted to
the ineffective foreplay of the man kneeling over her, that sex – the sexual
act – could be the ultimate pleasurable pastime with one man, yet so
unutterably dull with another. How could one affect her so deeply, whilst
another left her ice-cold.

Lost in her own thoughts, she stifled a laugh, which David
Shearing interpreted as a sigh and plunged
into her so vigorously
that she
winced. Any moment now she would have to begin
faking her orgasm, and she didn’t really know whether she
could be
bothered. Men like this didn’t deserve even a fake, she thought, but then if
she didn’t pretend he might carry on longer and the only thing worse than
boring sex was a boring sexual marathon.

It was best
to get it over with as quickly as possible, Roz
decided, and raked her fingernails along his spine. ‘Oh, David,
yes,
yes . .