Fast Friends

by Jill Mansell

  “I didn’t love her,” he said simply, stubbing out his cigarette. “I tried, God knows, but it wouldn’t happen. And I don’t honestly know whether Caroline loves me, which just goes to show what terrific lines of communication there are between us. She says she does, but maybe she feels she has to say it… Christ, we can’t even talk to each other without sounding like a couple of strangers thrown together at some awful dinner party. I listen to us and wonder why the hell we’re bothering, but Caroline keeps on trying. She tries so hard, Cami, but that’s just what it seems like—trying. And it doesn’t ring true. So you see, we’ve never really had the kind of relationship you and Matt shared. But what am I supposed to do? Caroline hasn’t done anything wrong and she refuses to admit that anything is wrong. And since I’m the one who got us into this mess, I feel obliged to try to stick it out, even though I know it’s hopeless.”

  “Hmm.” Camilla allowed herself time to think and Nico watched her, admiring the sweeping twin curves of her eyelashes and the high cheekbones that her loss of weight had accentuated. She bit her lower lip, considering his words, and he wanted suddenly, desperately, to kiss her soft, pink mouth. The urge was so great that he had to look away and was slightly disconcerted to find Rocky gazing straight at him, as if the dog knew exactly what was on his mind.

  “Before, you were impetuous,” she announced, tilting her head to one side to gauge his expression. “Impetuous is exciting, irresistible almost. Now, though, you’re being noble, and it’s about the most boring thing anyone can possibly be. And since I went through a brief phase of it myself, I can promise you that it’s a bloody hard state to snap out of. Before you know it, it’s become a habit and everyone gets sick to death of you.”

  “I’m not noble; I’m just guilty,” he protested, shying away from the idea that he might be boring.

  “So you’ve assumed all the responsibility for that guilt,” Camilla told him with wicked accuracy. “And I bet poor Caroline’s bored to tears. You’re no fun anymore—when you’re with her, I mean,” she added hastily, catching the mutinous glint in his catlike green eyes. “You have to snap out of it, stop blaming yourself, and make a real effort to enjoy yourself instead. You have a brilliant life, a lovely wife, and so much money it’s coming out of your ears. Give it a chance. Take her away on vacation and concentrate on all her good points instead of your big mistake. Failed marriages are so miserable and such a dreadful waste of time, and you’re so nice you don’t deserve to be unhappy.”

  Deeply touched by her speech, Nico said gently, “You’re so nice, Cami. If anyone doesn’t deserve to be unhappy it’s you, yet you’ve had more tragedy in your life than most people. Why is life so unfair?”

  And it was at that moment, when her eyes filled with uncontrollable tears at his tender words, that Nico kissed her. Unthinkingly, he bent his head and found her mouth with his own, all the emotions held in check for so long exploding inside him as he pulled her into his arms and felt her body trembling in response. Her hot tears touched his cheeks, ran down, and added their poignant, salty wetness to the kiss. He no longer knew whether he was doing this for her sake or his; the incredible rightness of holding and kissing Camilla, the culmination of a two-year dream, was tangled in his mind with the desperate need he felt to drive away at least some of her terrible grief. If he could only banish it and make her happy for a few minutes, a few hours, a whole night, then that was all that mattered. His own happiness was secondary.

  But at this moment, he realized as his hand slid down her back and she gave a small moan of pleasure against his mouth, he had never been happier in his entire life.

  By shifting slightly onto his side, he maneuvered them both into a more comfortable position. Without taking his lips from hers, he ran gentle fingers along the sleek curves of her waist and hips, then lightly played along the slender line of her thigh. He was so aroused that he knew she must be able to feel him against her other leg, now stretched between his own. Slowly, very slowly, taking care not to alarm her, he outlined her lips with his tongue and allowed his hand to travel back up to her waist. Beneath the shell-pink cashmere sweater, he encountered the irresistible silky warmth of her skin. God, she had lost weight. But her breasts were still as gorgeous as they had always been. His mouth brushed her cheek, then her faintly scented neck. When it touched the sensitive hollow above her collarbone, she sighed, her fingernails raking his shoulder, her hips moving imperceptibly against him, and he thought he would explode with joy. Camilla wanted him, really wanted him.

  And this time, he vowed silently, he wouldn’t let her down. Then he felt the wetness of a teardrop on his temple.

  “Nico, we can’t,” she whispered, her voice husky. “We really can’t. It isn’t right.”

  “Of course it’s right.” He was licking her salty cheeks and dropping light butterfly kisses around her mouth. “I just want to make you happy.”

  Camilla managed a faint smile. “I thought I told you to stop being noble,” she said with a feeble attempt at humor.

  His eyes glittered with answering amusement. “Well, maybe I’d be making myself happy too.”

  But his heart sank as, with infinite regret, she stroked his cheek. “We still can’t. I can’t,” she said softly, and it occurred to him all of a sudden that she hadn’t slept with anyone at all for almost a year, since Matt had died. She was probably afraid of breaking that link with him. It was a traumatic hurdle to overcome.

  “I understand, Cami. I know how much you loved Matt,” he said with difficulty, “but he wouldn’t want you to lock yourself away. Don’t think that you’d be betraying him…”

  “Oh, Nico, I didn’t mean that.” She was half laughing now, through her tears, and squeezing his arm. He shifted slightly on the settee, realizing that she was turning him down and wondering why a certain part of his anatomy still hadn’t got the message. “It’s not me, it’s you. We’ve just spent half an hour sorting out your marriage, thinking of ways to save it. How is sleeping with me going to help that, you fool? You can’t be unfaithful to Caroline.”

  “If it’ll help you change your mind,” he said, unwilling to give up this easily, “it wouldn’t be the first time.” No need to mention the fact that the first time had been with Roz. He would spare her that unnecessary detail.

  “Well, that has to stop,” she told him firmly. “A bit of fidelity might work wonders for the two of you.”

  “OK. After tonight?” he suggested, making one last-ditch attempt and giving her his most beguiling smile.

  “Don’t, Nico.” This time, she laughed aloud, in control of herself again. “I would never sleep with a married man. I know only too well how it feels to be the jilted wife, remember. We shouldn’t even have gone as far as we did tonight, but you caught me at a vulnerable moment. And I’d had more wine than I’m used to,” she added, glancing at the two empty bottles on the coffee table. “But thank you for the offer. It was very generous of you.”

  Generous, Christ! thought Nico helplessly. How could she not know that he was crazy about her? Since he couldn’t think of anything else to do, he lit another cigarette and watched the blue smoke spiral toward the ceiling.

  Ah well, he decided ruefully, at least he and Camilla could still be friends, which was, when you came to think of it, all he had been expecting anyway when he had turned up here. For a few glorious minutes, he had believed there would be more, but those hopes had been smartly dashed.

  He would be a good loser. He would not sulk. It was just so very unfair, though, he reflected with a wry sideways glance at Camilla, that the only woman in the world he really wanted was practically the only woman in the world who didn’t want him back.

  “I know it was generous of me,” he said, teasing her as she had teased him. “It’s because I’m such a wonderful guy.”

  “Nice,” corrected Camilla shrewdly. “You’re basically a nice guy. Wonderful is stretching it
a bit far. You’ll be wonderful when you stop cheating on your wife.”

  “I’ve already stopped,” he reminded her with feeling. Then he winked. “Don’t tell me you didn’t notice?”

  * * *

  It wasn’t until several days later that Camilla realized she had finally turned the corner. It came home to her as she was driving down the M6 back to London, when she heard herself singing along with a song on the radio. She was looking forward to being back in London. She was happy.

  And thanks to Nico, she could even contemplate the idea of sex once more.

  It had been one of the things she had badly missed after Matt’s death. Not that she had wanted to leap into bed with anyone—there was no question of that—but the fact that their sex life had been so wonderful made it all the more difficult to accept that it was over.

  Then she had lost the baby, and the frustrations had subsided as if in sympathy with her double grief. Since she couldn’t have Matt, she would have no one. Her hormones seemed to put themselves on indefinite hold. She didn’t need them. Sex was no longer a part of her life.

  But Nico had reawakened those feelings, and their intensity had stunned, almost alarmed her. At the time, she had panicked slightly, concealing her alarm with humor and, luckily, a damn good excuse.

  But she knew now that she had wanted him to make love to her. She had wanted to make love to him. If he hadn’t been married, she would have done so.

  What she couldn’t work out was whether, if he hadn’t been married and she had gone to bed with him, she would have been doing the right thing.

  Camilla concluded that maybe it was just as well they hadn’t. For now, it was enough to know that her body was returning to normal. Welcome back, she thought, breaking into a smile and turning up the volume on the radio. It had been a good week, and it deserved to be celebrated. Once more, she broke into song.

  * * *

  Thoughts of Nico, however, continued to occupy her mind. On arriving home, she infected Toby and Charlotte with her newfound happiness, whisking them off to the fair that had materialized since her departure on Hampstead Heath and treating them to dinner at McDonald’s afterward, since that was their particular idea of heaven.

  Back at the house in Belgravia, when the children were asleep in bed, she poured herself a small glass of Cointreau, put on a much-loved Roxy Music album, and curled up at one end of her favorite settee.

  Nico had been such good company, she reflected lazily, her mind drifting. There had been no awkwardness after their potentially very awkward encounter. When she had reminded him that he was miles from anywhere and over the limit to drive, he had said, “That’s what I was counting on,” but had cheerfully slept in the spare room, yelling at her the following morning to get her ass in gear and come downstairs this minute because he had cooked breakfast. They had explored the beach with Rocky after that, then driven into Drumlachan, where he caused quite a stir. The townspeople who normally exchanged pleasantries with the quiet English girl staying at Squirrel’s Gate were struck dumb when the gray Lamborghini roared into the marketplace and she emerged with the singer whose face adorned a good many of their daughters’ bedroom walls.

  Later that afternoon Nico had left to return to London. She had urged him to remember what she’d told him about Caroline, and with great decorum, he had kissed her goodbye on both cheeks, European style.

  “I will. Who needs an Italian mother when they have you around?”

  “I’m serious,” she’d protested, laughing.

  He had given her a quick hug. “So’s my Italian mother. You should meet her. Nice earrings,” he had added, touching one of them with his index finger. “Real?”

  “Real,” she’d replied, smiling.

  And he had jumped into his car and left.

  * * *

  Putting down her liqueur glass, she touched the diamonds in her earlobes, a rapid, habitual gesture to check that they were still there. That was another small triumph, she reflected. It had been on the morning of Matt’s funeral, while she was wandering in a completely dazed state around their bedroom, that she had opened the smallest drawer of an ornately carved Victorian oak chest bought by Matt from one of his beloved antique fairs and found the tiny red box from Cartier. Her surprise semi-anniversary present.

  The brilliance and perfect simplicity of the twin diamond studs, each weighing almost two carats, had seared her very soul. She had teased him so often about his terrible taste—he couldn’t help it, he adored intricate detail on clothes, jewelry…everything. The flashier the better, as far as Matt was concerned.

  But he had obviously listened to her good-humored criticism. Realizing that she did not share his own exquisite eye, he had taken care to choose a gift that he knew she would love. And he had chosen the unadorned, oval diamonds realizing that she would adore their uncluttered elegance.

  It was this thought that had made them so very precious to her, proving beyond all else the depth of his love. She had slipped the glittering diamond studs into her pierced ears and worn them ever since, day and night, removing them for only a few minutes every week to clean them.

  And when Nico had remarked upon them, for the first time in almost a year she had not developed a lump in her throat in memory of the morning of their discovery.

  That sign, more than anything else, had made her realize that she was finally on the road to recovery.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  When Loulou arrived on her doorstep a fortnight later, Camilla knew at once that something was very wrong. A huge, puffy bruise was beginning to form along one cheekbone, a trace of blood was visible beneath the froth of silvery hair at her temple, and her black T-shirt was torn at the neckline. She was trembling, her enormous gray eyes opaque with terror.

  “Come inside.” Reaching for Loulou, she pulled her into the house. “Do you need a doctor?”

  “I need a lawyer,” wailed Loulou, stumbling into the sitting room. “That bastard: I think I’ve murdered him!”

  While Camilla sponged the blood from her hair, applied an ice pack to her cheek, and plied her with cognac, the story came out. Simon, it appeared, had celebrated the closure of a particularly lucrative business deal with far too much champagne. Summoning Loulou to his flat in Kensington so that they could continue celebrating, he had started picking on her almost immediately. She looked like a tart. She was sleeping around. She was wearing stockings—that proved it.

  He had hit her, hard. Defending herself, she had fought back, and Simon, unsteady as a result of all the alcohol, had fallen against the dining room table, hitting his head. Lying there, he hadn’t moved. His breathing was alarmingly erratic, his eyes closed. Loulou had panicked and run away, coming to Camilla’s house for sanctuary.

  “Oh God, I bet I’ve killed him,” she moaned, clutching the ice pack to her cheek and looking anguished but unrepentant. “That son of a bitch would die just to pay me back for pushing him. He’d do it out of spite, to make me suffer. Do you know what he called Lili?”

  “What’s his number?” said Camilla calmly. “Why don’t I phone him first and find out if he’s dead?”

  * * *

  “Alive,” she announced, replacing the receiver. “He sounds like a bear with a sore head. I told him that if he was extremely lucky, we wouldn’t press charges and that you never want to set eyes on him again.”

  “You told him that!” wailed Loulou. “But, Cami, I love him.”

  “He beat you up.” Camilla inwardly despaired of Loulou’s hopeless attraction to men who treated her badly. “Next time, he could murder you. Lou, it’s over.”

  Now Loulou was looking even more alarmed than she had when she thought Simon might be dead.

  “He won’t do it again,” she said quickly. “It was probably all my fault anyway and he was only—”

  “Trying to break every bone in your face,” snapp
ed Camilla, her tone deliberately brutal. “If you went back to him he could do it to Lili. Anyone who’d hit a woman would have even more fun beating up a young child. That’s even easier—they can’t put up so much of a fight.”

  “Don’t!” moaned Loulou, agonized. “OK, OK…I won’t see him. I suppose you’re right. Shit.” She gazed absently at her fingernails. “We were going to go live with him next week as well.”

  “You’ll be far happier staying where you are,” Camilla told her firmly. “And Lili adores Christo, after all.”

  “Hmm,” said Loulou. “The trouble is, Lili isn’t the only one. Christo’s girlfriend adores Christo too. She’s moving in with him, and although they’re both far too nice to say so, I know they’d really prefer not to be part of a ménage à quatre.”

  “Lou, sometimes you really are the absolute limit,” exclaimed Camilla, fizzing with exasperation. “Don’t you ever even think of your friends?”

  Loulou looked hurt. “What have I done now?”

  “Come on, get up.” Pulling the melting ice pack from her friend’s hand, Camilla dragged her to her feet. “We’re going over to Christo’s flat right now to pick up Lili and your things—God knows, you don’t have enough even to fill the car. And don’t argue. You’re coming to live with me. Now.”

  * * *

  They stayed up late into the night, talking nonstop, both so excited about being there together that they didn’t even notice the grandfather clock chiming first twelve, then one and two.

  “I can make sure you eat properly,” said Loulou, adding with a gleam of triumph, “I can cook for you!”

  “I want to gain weight, not lose it,” Camilla reminded her.

  Their conversation ricocheted from one subject to the next. While Lili, Charlotte, and Toby slept peacefully, their mothers discussed their upbringing, then moved on to men. Nico, Camilla learned, was taking Caroline away to Barbados. Caroline had confided to Loulou that they were hoping to start a family. Loulou was aware that their marriage wasn’t perfect, but since she evidently had no idea of the extent of Nico’s unhappiness Camilla thought it prudent to keep the news to herself. Likewise, she censored her own account of his visit to her cottage in Scotland, saying only how nice it had been to see him.