Fast Friends (36 page)

Nico had been profoundly relieved and she had
congratulated
herself on her performance. As
long as she remembered not to
sing
along with his old songs when they were played on the
radio – and she
knew most of them off by heart – she would be safe.

And so far she had managed to pull it
off. She had also
managed to become
accustomed to the fact that almost anything she wanted, Nico could give her.
Provided, of course, that those things were purely material ones.

She knew she had behaved badly, deceiving Nico from the
word go, but she had seen her chance and grasped
it. And it
hadn’t meant that she didn’t
love him, either. Because she did,
with all her heart.

Which was why the situation she now
found herself in was
so tragic
and so very bizarre.

Twisting the massive, square-cut diamond ring he had
bought her from Cartier on their return to London, Caroline opened her eyes and
gazed at it, trying hard to find pleasure in the glittering whiteness of the
exquisite stone. Instead, hot tears threatened to spill on to her cheeks at the
desperate tragedy of it all, because Nico was only able to give her
almost
everything.
He tried, but
nothing, nothing in the world
could make up for the fact that
every
once in a while she would glance up and catch him
looking at her as if
she were a total stranger. And at other times,
she recalled, he looked as though he knew only too well who
she was, and was appalled with himself for having
so impetu
ously made her his wife.

How could she possibly be expected to make it a happy
marriage
when Nico was so obviously unhappy with
her?

By tilting her head sideways she was
able to see the time by
the narrow, diamond-studded Rolex he had bought her last week.
Ten past five. If she strung it out with a long bath it
was about
time to start getting ready for the
charity dinner they were
supposed to
be attending together at eight. Nico’s manager,
making the best of what
he clearly thought was a very bad job
indeed,
had decided to milk the marriage for all it was worth
and the gossip
columns had been filled for almost three months now with photographs of Nico
and herself attending galas,
concerts and every party imaginable. It
wasn’t that much fun –
Nico always looked to
her as if he would rather be lying on a
bed of red-hot nails – but Monty Barton insisted that they be
seen
and Caroline felt she might as well go along with it because anything was
better than being alone at home, or alone with a husband who tried too hard but
clearly didn’t want to be there.

Camilla and Matt were in bed. ‘I don’t believe I’m doing
this,’ exclaimed Matt, one strong brown arm flung across his face. ‘If
the news ever got out I’d be ruined – do you hear
me? My
reputation would be in shreds.’

‘
I won’t tell if you
don’t,’ Camilla assured him, smiling into
her pillow. ‘And stop
talking;
we’re supposed to be getting a well-earnt rest before tonight. I’m tired
even if you aren’t.’

‘Matt Lewis, sharing a room with a delectable female and
sleeping eight feet away from her. Who the hell invented twin-bedded hotel
rooms anyway?’

‘
Hotels. They’re more expensive than doubles.
Go to sleep.’

‘
It just isn’t
natural,’ he complained, admiring the back of her
neck from a distance. ‘Couldn’t I come into your bed and
give you
the best massage of your life? Hell, I wouldn’t take advantage of you if that’s
what you’re worried about.’

‘I’m asleep,’ said Camilla, enjoying herself because she
knew he didn’t mean it. Matt let out a tragic sigh. "This is like some
goddam Rock Hudson and Doris Day film. Don’t you have
any
respect for
male hormones?’

‘Far too much respect to allow them into my bed.
Sleep,
Mr Lewis. We have a long evening ahead of us. You may be used to walking
around a golf course all day, but I certainly am not.’

‘
You’re a terrible woman, Mrs Stewart. A cruel
and terrible woman.’

‘
I am, I am.’
Camilla pulled the bedclothes over her head. Beside her Marty slept, his
angelic cheeks pink, his dark hair
brushed
back from his forehead, and his closed fist resting against
Camilla’s
left shoulder.

‘
Oh Marty, Marty,’ murmured Matt, watching them
together. ‘You just don’t know how lucky you are.’

Roz still couldn’t quite believe what
a mess she had become,
yet at the same time she was unable to do a single thing about
it. Here she was now, at six in the evening and still in
the
dressing-gown she had put on when she
first got out of bed.
Since she had
had neither the time nor the energy to wash her
hair it stood up in ugly
dark spikes all over the head, and since there were no beauty salons in
Littleton Grey her unwaxed legs
displayed a
regrowth of fine dark hairs. She didn’t dare take a
razor into the bath
with her these days; it would be too tempting.

‘
Shut
up,’
she
muttered, lighting a cigarette and pouring
black coffee with a shaking hand as Nicolette’s wailing increased
in volume and intensity. Surely no baby in the
history of the
world had ever cried as much and as loudly as this one
and she
seemed to specialize in timing her
onslaughts to coincide with the exact moment when Roz herself had only finally
managed
to snatch a few minutes of fitful sleep.

It wasn’t surprising that she had
gone through three nannies
in as many
months, although Roz had decided that they were all
incompetent fools anyway. She couldn’t be expected to know
how to
keep a baby quiet, she was new to all this, after all – but that was what nannies
were paid for, and none of them had been
able
to do a damn bit of good either. The first had stayed for
three weeks until Roz had screamed at her to do
something
about the bloody noise. The second had handed in her notice after
only a fortnight, announcing that she was too used to Knightsbridge to be able
to adapt to life in the country. A feeble excuse, Roz had told her coldly, for
the fact was that she quite
clearly didn’t
have a clue about caring properly for young
babies.

Maria, the third, had lasted the longest – almost five
weeks –and Roz had almost become friendly with her. Until one night when they
had drunk half a bottle of brandy together and Maria had informed her that she
was a complete mess.

‘You might not think it my place to say so, but you drink
too much, you show no affection towards Nicolette, and you’ve let yourself go.
Why don’t you visit your doctor?’

Roz had eyed the girl with suspicion, outraged at her
words. Maria returned the look with a conciliatory smile.

‘
You’re quite right,’
said Roz slowly, placing her brandy glass
on the coffee table and rising
to her feet. ‘It is
not
your place to say so. You’re fired.’

It was good in a way that all three had left quickly, but
the drawback was that it left her holding the baby – the eternally screaming
baby – all alone. And Roz’s adverts in the slender weekly magazine which
specialized in placing nannies with employers were fast becoming an
off-puttingly frequent sight.

‘
I need help,’ she said
aloud, standing in the messy kitchen
with both hands clasped around her
coffee mug. ‘I need someone to help me. Now.’

It was chilling to realize that she
had no-one to ask. Loulou
was
probably her only friend, and she was now so engrossed in her own pregnancy
that she wasn’t able to give Roz the help and support she badly needed. It was
almost unimaginable; Loulou,
the woman least
likely to succeed in pregnancy, was adoring
every single moment of it.
She had been transformed, and Rozfelt too ashamed of herself to admit to Loulou
how hard, how exhausting and how very unlovely having a baby really was.

How about her mother, then? Marguerite had paid a fleeting
visit, making very short work indeed of Roz’s
last bottle of
vodka and announcing airily, ‘You aren’t exactly flavour
of the
month at the moment, are you, darling?
But don’t worry about
it. Everyone will forget soon enough.’

She had then mentioned in passing, whilst patting
Nicolette’s
chubby knees, that she was going
to Antibes for a couple of
months with
her latest flame, a balding French financier. ‘I’ll
let you know where we’ll be staying. Send me some
photos of
this gorgeous baby, darling. Let me know how she is. Good
heavens,’ looking at her watch, she swiftly transferred Nicolette back to Roz
and rose to her feet, ‘is that the time? I must dash.
Keep in touch, sweetheart. Lovely to see you and don’t worry –
I’ll
see myself out.’

So much for her mother, now safely installed in a Med-side
villa with her latest man. Roz dismissed her with a weary shrug,
and stubbed out her cigarette as Nicolette’s
wailing increased.
At least she had
an appointment with the paediatrician tomor
row; hopefully he would show at least some interest in her
catalogue
of complaints. Maybe he could recommend something
to keep Nicolette quiet – a sleeping pill, a strip of Elastoplast or
a
slug of Remy Martin . . .

And that
was only if she had the energy to keep the appoint
ment. Since losing her licence for drink-driving on the day of
the
crash, travelling – even without the hassle of a baby – had become more of a
problem than she had ever imagined possible. It had come as a grim shock to
her, discovering that now she
was unemployed
she could no longer afford to order taxis
without thinking. Littleton
Grey was miles from anywhere, and
since Roz refused absolutely to catch
the only bus of the day, crammed with noisy teenagers and nosy housewives, she
had to
plan her excursions from the village
with care. Tomorrow, as
well as taking
Nicolette to the hospital, she would have to fit in
a visit to the supermarket and stock up with
enough food and
drink for the next fortnight.

Struggling on alone was so much harder than she had ever
imagined, she no longer knew how she was going to manage.
Her only friend wasn’t available, her
mother was a positive
liability,
Sebastian was too busy at present to escape from Zurich
for even a
couple of days . . . and finally, just to prove that bad things came in fours,
there was Nico.

Cruel Nico.

After having pinned all her hopes upon him, his attitude
had crushed her totally. So much, thought Roz with tired bitterness,
for assuming that his so-Italian, so
family-orientated heart
would melt at
the news of Nicolette’s birth. He had refused
even to see her.

And after she had taken the decision
to call the child
Nicolette, too. The
Press had loved it, confirming as it did their endless speculations, renewing
interest in the story of the fallenfrom-grace TV personality and the singing
star who had rejected her and so suddenly married someone else. Nico was a
heartless shit.

And to Roz’s fury, she couldn’t get over him. The more he
ignored her, the greater her longing for him grew. It was so
ridiculous, and so very ironic, that it was almost
laughable. Here she was, the Ice Queen herself, the very person whom
Nico
had once begged to marry him – caught in the oldest and saddest trap of all.

* * *

When Caroline nudged open the door
she saw that Nico was
only half
ready. Dress shirt unbuttoned, bow-tie dangling untied
around his neck, he lay across the scarlet and grey striped sofa,
a cigarette burning in the ashtray beside him, his
blond head
bent in concentration over a copy of last week’s
Sunday
Times.

God, he was beautiful, she thought
with a pang of longing.
But so very remote that sometimes she felt as if she was unable
to even touch him. If she reached out, her hand would
pass, ghostlike, right through him.