Fast Friends (27 page)

‘
Ah,’ he replied
affectionately, enfolding her in his burly
arms, ‘but I shall spend enough money here this afternoon to
keep you in younger men for the next year, and
that can’t be
bad, can it?’

‘You might have to pay your young men, Terry,’ countered
Loulou as he gave her a slobbery, whisky-sodden kiss on the cheek, ‘but I
certainly don’t have to pay mine. Mac, come over
here,’ she shouted, twisting around to catch his eye. It was
stupid,
she knew, but Mac had never fully understood how necessary to a successful
business these hugs and kisses were. That slight degree of mistrust which he
had never been able to
overcome had caused
countless arguments during their
marriage.

This time,
she vowed to herself, she was going to make him see how needless such jealousy was.

She was going to make damn sure that nothing went wrong.
He wasn’t going to get away from her again.

‘Mac, you must meet Terry Howard,’ she said, praying that
Terry wouldn’t choose this moment to make one of
his bad-
taste jokes about her love
life. ‘Terry, this is Mac, my ex-
husband.’

‘
I’ve heard of you. You
do excellent work,’ said Terry, shaking
Mac’s hand. ‘And you have one hell of an ex-wife, if I may say
so. As for you, Lou,’ he went on, turning to her, ‘I
had no idea
that you were ever hitched to
the
Mac. Whatever went
wrong between the two of you? Doesn’t anyone ever bother to work at staying
married these days?’

Terry’s outspoken manner and
journalistic style was legend
ary. Loulou, her toes curling up in embarrassment, glanced at
Mac from beneath her lashes and couldn’t make up her mind
whether she should knee Terry in the balls or give him another kiss.
Talk
about coming straight to the point, she thought faintly.

But when Mac’s arm slipped around her waist, her insides
contracted with love. His warm hand found hers and she felt his fingers
interlace with her own, then gently squeeze them. How, she marvelled, could
such a simple gesture make her
melt
like that? And what did Mac mean by
it?

Having apparently considered Terry’s
words – the whole
world
knew that Terry was devoted to his wife of twenty-six
years – Mac took a sip of his drink and nodded
thoughtfully.

‘
Maybe you’re right,’ he
said, and Loulou held her breath.
‘We
were pretty young then, and perhaps we didn’t try as hard
as we might have done. But sometimes people can
learn by their mistakes. I think I have, and I hope Lou has too. Who
knows,
we might have better luck if we try again.’

Unable to
stop herself, and with tears of happiness glisteningin her eyes, Loulou
launched herself into Mac’s arms, scarcely daring to believe that he had really
said those words, but at the
same time not
giving him a moment to reconsider. Showering
him with tiny, frenzied kisses and clinging to him as tightly as
was humanly possible, she murmured, ‘Oh Mac, oh
darling, I
love you,’ in between kisses, and was only dimly aware of the
raucous roar of approval from the rest of the party.

‘
I have to
warn you that anything you might say or do,’ said
Terry, placing his arms around both of them like a boxing
referee,
‘will definitely be taken down and used in tomorrow’s gossip column.’

‘Oh, yes, please,’ cried Loulou effusively, so grateful to
him for saying the words which had prompted Mac’s reply that she simply had to
give him another kiss. ‘You’re one hell of an ugly fairy godmother, Terry, but
you’re an absolute darling, anyway.’

‘Drinks on the house?’ yelled one of the younger
journalists hopefully, and drunk with love and sheer ecstasy, Loulou raised her
hand at Christo behind the bar.

‘
Why not? Drinks on the house for everyone!’

Then a voice behind her said with
silky iciness: ‘Does that
also
include me?’ and she froze. Shit, no. Please, please no, oh God,
no . . .

‘
What the fuck did you think you were doing with me –
playing some fancy white woman’s game?’ demanded Joshua
loudly, and Loulou closed her eyes, dying inside, too stricken to
even think of a reply. She had thought she was
safe; the
possibility that Joshua would decide to confront her in public
hadn’t even crossed her mind.

But he had, and he was here. And so .
. . oh shit, please no,
no . . .
was Mac.

‘
I asked you a question,’ Joshua persisted, his
Scottish-
Caribbean
voice horribly clear above the abruptly hushed conversation around the bar.
Half of Fleet Street was listening, determined not to miss a single word,
Loulou realized numbly. But they didn’t matter, and under any other
circumstances she could easily have handled Joshua.

If only Mac
wasn’t here . . .

‘
What’s the
problem?’ said Mac, his own tone measured and
deliberately
calm, his arm remaining protectively around
Loulou’s quivering shoulder.

‘Ah, another Scot!’ exclaimed Joshua, his words rife with
sarcasm. ‘And a white one, this time.’

‘
Now look here . . .’
began Terry, moving between Loulou
and Joshua, but Mac interrupted him.
Narrow-eyed, he stared at
the towering
figure of Joshua and repeated slowly: ‘What’s
your problem?’

‘The bitch is the problem,’ said Joshua, and Loulou began
to
shake violently. ‘You’re welcome to her –
I don’t need her kind
of trouble – but maybe you should know what you’re
taking on, because she’ll probably do the same to you, man. When you’re
living with a girl you don’t expect her to run off
in the middle
of the night leaving you in Gloucestershire at some
fucking ball without a word of explanation. Got it?’

‘
Got it,’ said Mac
quietly. ‘And now that you’ve said what
you came here to say, perhaps you’d leave. This is a private
party.’

‘
Yeah, but think about
it,’ said Joshua coldly. ‘She might be
a good lay, but she’s a cheating
bitch as well. Here’s your key,
bitch,’ he
added, tossing the narrow brass key at her feet. The
tiny, tinkling sound broke the stunned silence and
Loulou took
a step backwards, casting a stricken glance in Mac’s
direction.

‘
Leave now,’ he instructed Joshua evenly, and
to Loulou’srelief Joshua turned. Without uttering another word, he left.

‘
Oh, thank
God,’ she whispered, clinging on to Mac’s arm for support. ‘Darling, I’m so
sorry about that . . . it was all the most horrible mistake . .

‘It certainly was,’ he said slowly, removing her hand from
his arm with a finality that chilled her to the bone. ‘Let go of me, Loulou. I’m
sorry too, but it was my fault for even thinking that you’d changed.’

‘You don’t understand! Mac, you have to listen to me,’ she
babbled frantically. ‘It’s not what you think, I swear it isn’t.’

‘But it is,’ he contradicted her brutally, his dark eyes
cold,
reflecting his disgust. ‘It’s
exactly
what I think. I just should
have thought of it earlier. Goodbye.’

‘
No!’ she screamed, as
he turned and made his way through
the
enthralled crowd of journalists towards the door. ‘Mac,
wait. Please!
You can’t leave me now! You can’t!’

Chapter
25

Bloody typical; a decent British summer, thought Roz
irritably, mopping a trickle of perspiration from the valley between her
breasts. Just when she didn’t bloody need it.

Even in the shade she was still uncomfortably hot, but it
was
equally stifling inside the house.
Whatever she did she felt
perfectly vile and it seemed that there was
nothing she could do to escape it.

With a sigh of irritation she hauled
herself into a better
position on the sun lounger and crossed her ankles, then
remembered that crossing your ankles caused thrombosis and
almost certain death and threw down, her book in disgust.

I look like a whale, she thought, and
not for the first
time, remembering
feeling bloated and uncomfortable years
previously.
She hated the sight of her smooth, brown belly
glistening with Ambre
Solaire and swollen beyond belief. It
couldn’t
be normal to look this abnormal, surely. It was God’s
way, she presumed,
of making sure that pregnant women didn’t
get
any sex. By transforming them into totally undesirable
creatures He ensured that no man in his right mind
would want
to go anywhere near them.

And no men, in their right minds or otherwise, had been
near
her for so long now that she probably
wouldn’t be able to
remember what to do anyway, she thought, wincing as
the baby kicked out beneath her ribs. Bloody baby. Bloody men. Bloody
bloody
weather.

The only thing that cheered her even
slightly was the prospect
of Loulou’s visit, partly because Lou had sounded even more
fed up on the phone than Roz.

‘
We’ll be miserable together,’ Roz had said
consolingly. ‘No, we won’t. I can be far more miserable than you,’ Loulou had
promised her.

‘
You can try, sweetie. But I warn you, I’m
a
hard act to
follow at the moment.’

’Bloody hell,’ exclaimed Loulou with
characteristic frankness.
‘I see what you mean. No wonder you’re miserable. Are those
tits
real?’

‘
It’s all
real,’ said Roz, gazing dispiritedly down at her hugely swollen breasts and
vast stomach, spilling over the sunflower yellow bikini. Then she looked up and
saw from the expression on Loulou’s face that she was joking.

‘You ass, does getting knocked up take away your sense of
humour? You look fine, Roz. Sort of . . .
maternal.’ Loulou
burst out laughing
and took off her dark glasses, stepping
forward to give Roz a kiss. In a
brilliant violet off-the-shoulder
number,
Loulou exuded wealth and health. She was even
looking happy, thought Roz
with a stab of envy.

Having weathered the shock of discovering that she was
pregnant, she had planned on being happy herself,
of course.
She had day-dreamed for hours, envisaging the surprise of her
friends when they witnessed the
transformation of bright,
snappy,
single-girl-about-town Roz Vallender into glowing,
serene mother-to-be
Roz Coletto. She had been convinced that
Nico
would be utterly captivated by the idea of becoming a
father, and that
he would insist they married. Maybe it was something to do with the hormones,
but the idea of being
married was no longer
repellent to her; she wanted to be
cosseted,
spoiled and loved. Nico’s flat refusal to even see her
had been the
biggest shock of all.

The amount of press interest hadn’t helped either. Nico
hadn’t
exactly denied that he was the
father, but his brusque ‘No
comments’
had aroused much public speculation as to the
reasons for his non-involvement. Roz, in turn, had been forced
to adopt an aloof, ‘we-have-our-reasons’ attitude
in order to
salvage the small amount of pride she had left. Her visions
of
herself and Nico as the next Ma and Pa
Walton, idyllically
happy with both
their children and each other, were looking
less likely to happen.
Instead she was faced with the far less exciting prospect of single parenthood
and a rapidly nose-diving career.

‘I don’t want to be maternal,’ she said, when Loulou had
flopped down on to the thickly padded white sun
lounger
opposite and poured herself a
tall glass of iced orange juice.
‘Nico clearly doesn’t want me to be
maternal and Eric Daniels
doesn’t want me to
be maternal so badly that he offered to pay
for the abortion himself.’