When Good Friends Go Bad (3 page)

Georgina felt sick suddenly, full of shame and self-loathing as she racked her memory. Two whole tubs? Was it possible? Her elbow caught her forgotten glass of water and sent the contents flying over the desk.

'Well, send Max to get some then,' she said through gritted teeth as she mopped up the spill. She could feel hysteria rising again. 'It can't be that hard, can it, to buy some groceries? All I need is a little support, is that too much to ask? Where were you anyway when the gardener was here? Did you even see the mess he made?'

For just an instant her husband's long lean body was completely still, as if he were mentally withdrawing from her crazy rantings. He picked up his guitar by the neck and headed for the door. 'I'll get it myself. Max has enough to do.'

In the doorway he stopped, fixing her with his brown eyes. 'By the way,' he sounded carefully non-committal, 'I didn't want to worry you with this earlier but Meg Lennox called again. Several times. She left an Ashport number on the machine. I didn't answer.'

Georgina found herself doodling a butterfly. It was a nervous habit she'd developed, something she did whenever she was blocked.

'Ashport? Did she say what she wanted?' She kept her eyes lowered.

'Only that it was urgent. "A matter of life and death", apparently.'

Georgina took a moment to shade spots on the wings of the butterfly she'd doodled. The first time she'd heard Nutmeg's voice chirping merrily on the home answerphone, all kinds of unpleasant memories had come flooding back. She'd been filled with righteous indignation for her friend Bella and, remembering other elements of that night at the Marlow Arms, a sense of dread for herself.

'Matter of life and death?' she repeated quietly, almost to herself.

'I guess some things don't change.' She thought she sensed an undercurrent of animosity in his tone, the emphasis on 'some'. 'I'll let you deal with that one, shall I?' he added.

He was cross with her. She just knew it. He'd had enough of her moods and bossiness. Suddenly she was overcome with guilt and fear. 'I'm sorry. I do love you.' It was whispered, part apology, part plea.

'I know.' Lightly he kissed two fingers and planted them on her forehead. 'I'll call Heal's tomorrow.'

As she stared past the rhododendrons towards the massacred hedge, she felt the pencil snap in her hand.

APRIL 1998

By the time the marshal had raised his yellow flag, Jen's heart was climbing into her throat; her palms sweating, adrenalin surging through her veins like a shot of cocaine. Was she petrified? Excited? Out of her bleeding mind? For a few chest-pounding seconds, as the flag quivered in the air, all she could think of was the first time she and Starkey lay on a bed together, his hands fondling her breasts, sliding gently over her navel, flirting with the lace of her skimpy pants until her own hand clamped over his to stop him. Another memory – darker, disturbing – tried to sneak in, but she pushed it away, her clammy fingers tightening over the steering wheel.

She'd been thinking of Starkey a lot lately, not surprising perhaps. Ollie had triggered so many memories of the first boy she'd ever loved. Quite simply Starkey had broken her heart and it had taken years of sleepless nights to accept she was better off without him. So how bloody unfair for these flashbacks to show up today, like a harbinger of doom, as if proof she were facing imminent death.

Concentrate,
she scolded herself as she focused back on the marshal, the air thick with exhaust fumes and the sound of revving engines. Finally, the flag dropped. Jen rammed her foot down on the accelerator as she lifted the other off the clutch and the car lunged forward, swerving on the tarmac. The cheering crowd was a blur.

What – shit, that was close! – was it Ollie had said? 'Keep your elbows bent and hold the wheel lightly, don't clutch it like you're in the last stage of rigor mortis. All that straight-arm, leaning-back stuff from the movies is so fake – you can't control a car that way.'

And then from the passenger seat his hand had moved to rest heavily on her shoulder, his strong work-blistered fist between hers on the wheel, his manly cheek so close she could feel his breath as he steered them round a practice curve. 'Remember, slow in, fast out. Slow in, fast out.'

'Are we still talking about car racing?' she'd teased.

But Ollie had been serious. 'Stop messing about, Jen. You could get hurt out there.'

A car overtook her on the left, two more on the right. In a flash she forgot everything except that everyone was passing her. She dropped gears straight from fourth to second and jammed the accelerator unmercifully. Too busy smiling at another driver's startled face as she zoomed past, her foot was still floored as the car flew into a curve. There was a bang, the sound of crumpling metal, and a momentous impact that threw her back and forward against her harness.

Bugger!
She was only at the third corner, the very first lap, and she'd crashed the bleeding car. More of Ollie's instructions filtered into her ringing skull. '
Whatever happens, don't get out until the race is over, or until the marshal tells you to. You'll probably get run over. Unless the thing's about to blow up, of course. If you're hurt –
God forbid – or there's smoke coming out of the hood, someone will come to help you.'

Oh fine! No problem there, then. All she had to do was choose between getting run over or being fried to a sizzle in an explosion of flames. Wonderful options. She was so
so
incredibly glad she'd been talked into this.

She scanned the car anxiously. The bonnet looked like a wrecking ball had hit it but she couldn't see smoke. The marshal came running to the barrier and she gave him a shaky thumbs up. Remembering the protocol, she found the fuel pump and switched it off before staring out in stunned shock, her ears reverberating from the collision.

So much for her moment of glory, such a short time ago. Sitting behind the roll bars on the back of car No. 53 in full get-up, deafened by the roar of engines, breathing in petrol fumes, she'd waved proudly as Ollie drove her round the processional for the Ladies' Race. She imagined with dread how very soon he'd be staring in disbelief at what she'd done to his precious motor.

A pain shot through her knee as she shifted position. Well, at least she wasn't paralysed and her coveralls were reassuringly free of blood . . .

The car shook violently as No. 9 took the corner and put another dent in her Fiat's rear fender. Not fair. Her newly acquired mentor had been quite clear on that point. '
This isn't a banger race, you're not supposed to hit anyone.'

Right – so where was the black flag then? Apparently that lunatic was getting away scot-free with vehicular assault, and so were the others who evidently found it hard to miss a large non-moving target sticking out alluringly into the track. With only the occasional shuddering sideswipe to occupy her until the race ended, she found herself reliving the unfortunate sequence of events that had brought her to being a punchbag for premenstrually violent speed freaks.

Was it because of her beloved Mini, Mickey Finn? (Jen had decided that if boats were female, cars were definitely male. Noisy, smelly, easily overheated and perpetually full of gas.) She'd arranged to meet her flatmate Helen in a pub on the edge of Hampstead Heath. And, late as usual, she'd driven like a maniac into the car park with a screech of tyres because she was twenty minutes past what Helen had said was the absolute limit she would wait.

As she ran to the pub door, a young man – a kid really, barely drinking age – had held it open, grinning, and said, 'Nice wheelie,' and she'd flashed back, 'Kamikaze parking – it's the latest Olympic event,' and stalked past him.

Later Helen, dressed to score in a shiny new top and scolding Jen for turning up in well-worn jeans and scruffy trainers, suddenly nudged her with a big smirk and said, 'Don't look now, but someone's checking out your booty.' Automatically Jen spun round to find herself staring into very blue eyes and quickly looked away, blushing.

Then, to Helen's great amusement, the blond kid who'd held the door joined them, introducing himself as Ollie. Transfixing Jen and Helen with those incredible eyes, he proceeded to spout forth a load of gibberish in which the words hot saloons, street stox and ladies' night popped out. At first Jen thought he was inviting her to some sort of drinking den – she had a vision of dancing girls, small medieval torture devices and two-for-one Martinis – until her brain took in the words banger and racing cars and everything clicked.

Helen was chortling openly into her glass of Shiraz. At the bar a small group of young men were finding their friend's defection equally hilarious. It appeared to Jen's jaundiced eye as if money was passing hands.

'Nope,' she told the youthful stranger. 'Not interested. If it's all the same to you I'll stick to burning my own clutches.'

'Nonsense,' Helen contradicted, sniggering. 'She's a born racer. A regular Damon Hill, aren't you, Jen?' She nudged her friend again, staring blatantly down at the young man's faded denim jeans, or rather, the bulge by his zipper, and added archly, 'She'd love to see your
hot rod.'

'And who are you? Her manager or her mother?' Ollie asked cheekily, earning Helen's undying enmity with one foul slur. Half a pint later, he'd revealed that he was an engineering student, working part-time in construction (which explained the rippling biceps and gym-worthy abs).

'A builder,' Helen sneered, clearly smarting from their opening clash. 'So
you're
one of those vulgar louts that like to harass innocent pedestrians. And tell me, in your experience, has that immortal line "get yer tits out, love" ever, in the whole history of male–female relationships, worked on any woman, anywhere, under any conceivable circumstances?'

Ollie winked at Jen. 'I wouldn't worry,' he said in his best builder's drawl, beer slurping down his chin, which for Helen's sake Jen really shouldn't have found funny. 'We only yell it at the old 'uns to cheer 'em up. I wouldn't take it seriously unless you're walking with a doll like Jen here.'

Pissing off Helen was bad enough, but worse was to come. Not only was this kid at uni but he freely admitted to being a mere twenty years old. A child compared to Jen's mature twenty-eight.

But he
was
determined. Ignoring Helen's open hostility and Jen's threat to charge him babysitting fees, he wouldn't leave until he had a reluctant 'I'll think about it' for an answer.

An amateur stock-car racer, Ollie had entered his girlfriend, Lisa, in a ladies' race – entry fee non-refundable – but since then they'd broken up. Witnessing Mickey Finn do a ninety-degree turn and judder to a halt between two parked cars, he'd had the brilliant idea that Jen should take her place – as a driver, not his girlfriend. And the racetrack, the souped-up Fiat, the chance of accidentally bashing another car and not being arrested, all sounded temptingly dangerous to a confirmed tomboy, especially since her current incarnation as secretary for a shipping agency was sadly lacking in thrills.

Which was why, regardless of all Helen's jibes, she'd found herself burning rubber in the big parade ground of the local military barracks, skidding round corners, under Ollie's tuition, until her head spun.

Who knew how Ollie got permission to practise there, with all the security surrounding the Ulster peace talks. But in those three practice sessions – woefully inadequate, she now realised – she'd learned that few people refused Ollie anything.

It only took a couple of debriefing drinks (not as racy as it sounded – despite Helen's slurs, Jen's briefs stayed up) for Jen to recognise that Ollie was another thing that was temptingly dangerous.

To say she didn't go out with many guys was an understatement, like saying Don Juan was a bit of a lad. Logically she knew that not all men were bastards; Helen had been telling her so ever since they met after the nightmare events surrounding Starkey's abandonment when she'd felt like all the light had gone out of the world, her trust in the male sex irreparably damaged. She'd little interest in giving her phone number to strangers or having some revolting creep maul her in 'payment' for an overpriced dinner, setting them both up for an embarrassing rejection when he expected to come up to her flat afterwards.

In several years only three men had lasted long enough to make it to her bedroom and even then she'd had to force herself to go through the motions, pretending to enjoy the lovemaking while they might as well have dosed her with novocaine for all her body responded. But when Ollie's hand covered hers on the gear shift, she felt parts of her anatomy fizzing that hadn't fizzed in ages.

His childish antics – swinging from his feet on playground monkey bars, dangling Jen squealing over Hampstead Pond, pulling her under a gushing gutter in an unexpected downpour – made her feel like a teenager again, like the light-hearted girl who'd capered around Ashport with Starkey, riding the dodgems when the carnival was in town, spending hours playing shove ha'penny on the crappy slot machines on the decrepit pier.

Better to feel a kid again than a moody cow approaching thirty, a hopeless underachiever who earned peanuts, littered her boyfriend-free bedroom with dirty coffee cups and discarded clothes, and spent her evenings drinking till dawn with her equally dissolute, irresponsible mates.

Helen, Jen's infinitely more sophisticated friend, flatmate and landlady, was the eternal temp, thriving on an endless source of potential boyfriends and fresh scandal. In their shared two-bedroom, fifth-floor flat (the only good thing, Helen said, to come out of her divorce) it was Helen who led the dizzying social life, enjoying steamy sexcapades while Jen was just left with hangovers. That was the status quo, until Ollie disrupted it. However often Jen argued that he wasn't a date, Helen seemed to take his intrusion as a personal insult, until Jen found herself sneaking out to meet Ollie just to avoid Helen's blistering sarcasm.

It was almost worse than her dad had been about Starkey, and at least that was justified, given Jen was still fifteen. From the moment she first met Starkey she imagined him to be the most romantic, tortured, passionate lover her soul could crave, a wounded wolf that only she could touch. And sex – was it ever on their minds, underlying the most innocuous exchange. 'Fancy an ice cream?' SEX. 'Wanna see a flick?' SEX. 'There's a smudge of ketchup on your chin.' SEX, SEX, SEX! If it wasn't for Jen wanting to wait till she'd turned sixteen, they'd have been at it like rabbits from day one.

But sex wasn't part of the deal with Ollie. No messy awkward bedroom encounters to destroy their fun. Nor would this end, like Starkey, in her tears, too many pathetic lonely years of them. No, this – like his car – was destined to be written off the minute the race was over. She would never let him get too close, never risk rocking the equilibrium of her barren life.

But Christ Almighty, how long would she have to sit here? Couldn't somebody win the bloody race by now? Her knee was throbbing and swelling, her eyes watering, her head ached from the noise and the stink of exhaust fumes.

She found herself thinking of a recent pub visit, the jukebox playing 'When a Man Loves a Woman', a song Starkey had loved. Ollie had whirled her round in a jokey dance move and she'd been filled with such a weird mixture of jumbled-up emotions – how could she
ever
have liked anything so corny? – that she'd had to pull free and grab a cigarette from her packet of Silk Cut, puffing away furiously. If her fingers were trembling, it was probably from shame at being seen in public participating in an episode of such horrifying uncool.

On their last encounter prior to today, they'd eaten greasy cheeseburgers at TGI Friday. At the railings by her street door Ollie had bent to kiss her mouth lightly and she'd felt a familiar jolt in the stomach, an unexpected yearning.

Ollie smelled so masculine and yummy, better than any powdered baby, better even than freshly cut grass or autumn woodsmoke, that her traitorous nose wanted to stay glued to his shoulder or nestle into his soft leather jacket like a little fledgling bird.

Anyway, nothing had come of it, whatever ancient instinct her nostrils had been obeying. Before she'd found herself trailing snot marks, she'd pulled her rebellious proboscis away, laughed, patted his cheek and said something like, 'Nice try, sunshine, but I don't do infants.' And he'd shrugged, flipping his blond hair from his eyes, and said, 'I'm falling for you.' To which she'd smartly countered, 'Too bad, kiddo. Hope you find a soft landing,' and skipped hastily through the front door.