Fast Friends (49 page)

‘Typical,’ he had told Nico with disgust. ‘That woman isn’t
capable of living without a man. I would
have thought that
Christo at least might have had more bloody sense.’

He refused absolutely to believe that
Loulou’s relationship
with
Christo was platonic. ‘She’s a tart. She sleeps with anyone. And don’t try and
tell me she’s changed because I
know
her. I know her only too bloody
well.’

Thinking also that he might have
arranged to spend
Christmas
up in Scotland Camilla had phoned him anyway, but
to her surprise, Mac had thanked her and accepted the
invitation.
‘I’ll bring my camera and take
some thoroughly indiscreet,
informal
photos for your wedding album,’ he had said cheerfully.
‘Nico’s going to
be there too, isn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ said Camilla, wondering whether her decision to
invite Mac had been prompted by Loulou’s insistence that Nico should
be there. It was all so complicated, she barely
understood it
herself

‘
Great,’ said Mac. ‘I’ll
see you there, then. But just don’t
expect me to speak to Loulou,’ he
had added in warning tones. ‘Because I couldn’t.’

Having just autographed a dozen gold-embossed menu cards
for one of the waitresses, Nico tucked his pen back
into the
inside pocket of his suit jacket and watched Camilla and Matt
dance together at the other end of the room.

Taking care to conceal his feelings, although why he felt
it
necessary when Caroline was continuing to
flirt outrageously
with Matt’s
good-looking younger brother, he realized the truth
of Camilla’s statement earlier that afternoon. She
had come a
long way.

Camilla was clearly one of those people, he thought with a
flash of envy, who could put the past firmly behind them and if
the events were not forgotten they were at least
relegated to a
level of such
unimportance that they could cause no further
pain.

Unlike his own, which occupied his
thoughts night and day
and refused
to fade. If anything, he realized, the mismatch with Caroline only accentuated
the unhappiness, made the might have-beens more poignant and desirable. Life’s
a bitch, Mac
had recently grown fond of
informing him. And Nico was
beginning to understand exactly what he
meant.

Camilla was looking stunning tonight,
the silky material of
her dress shimmered beneath the warm silvery glow of light
from the chandeliers, her eyes
sparkled and she never seemed
to stop
smiling.

Radiant was
the word, he supposed and shook his blond head slightly, mocking himself. I
must be bloody mad, he thought, coming here today.

Loulou was infuriated to find herself glancing
across the
room
each time the impressively carved, golden oak doors
swung open to admit new arrivals. But
Mac had told Camilla
that he
would be here and no matter how many times she told
herself he no longer mattered, still her heart leapt and her head swung
round like a bloody metronome whenever the
doors moved.

Of all the lousy men in the world to have fallen in love
with,
she thought, Mac was the worst. He was
so moody, so jealous
and unpredictable . . . and by renewing their
friendship, but resolutely refusing to sleep with her, he had only enhanced the
fascination, that mysterious aura of
desirability. Not that she
would
have gone to bed with him, she
reminded herself, but it
would have been nice
to have the chance to say no, particularly
to Mac who appeared to
believe that it was a word outside her vocabulary.

Hugging Lili to her, she caressed the wondrous curve of
her daughter’s cheek as she slept contentedly amidst the noise and
celebration. Any minute now Daisy’s sister, who
had volunteered
to babysit for the rest of the evening, would be
arriving to take Lili back to Christo’s flat. And any minute now, thought
Loulou wistfully, since Camilla had warned her with gentle tact that he would
probably ignore her, Mac might arrive.

‘
I saw you on TV the
other afternoon,’ Daisy was saying to
one
of the Spanish golfers, wondering if he would notice that
she had undone an extra button on her shirt when he
wasn’t
looking. ‘I was very impressed with the way you handled your nine
iron.’

‘As I am impressed with
you,’
insisted Manuel,
gazing at her pale cleavage with devotion.

At that moment, in the reflection from one of the enormous
gilt-edged mirrors lining the walls, Daisy
saw Mac arrive.
Sliding off the edge
of the table upon which she was perched,
she nudged Lena furiously.

‘
Guess who’s turned up?’
In unison their heads swivelled to
the left.

‘And look what he’s brought with him,’ said Lena loudly,
her voice betraying both admiration and dismay. ‘Bloody hell. I bet Lou wasn’t
expecting this.’

Loulou wasn’t. For some ridiculous
reason, she told herself,
the idea
that Mac might bring someone with him had not even occurred to her. If she
had
been prepared, she would have been
able
to carry on without even missing a beat. As it was, however,
she had to
turn abruptly away and stare hard at a large bowl of creamy white lilies,
willing her eyes not to fill with tears.

The hope, so faint that she had
scarcely dared to acknowledge
its existence, that she and Mac could somehow be reconciled
and reunited, was dashed to
smithereens like the champagne
glass lying
unnoticed beneath a chair.

Mac kissed Camilla on the cheek and shook Matt’s hand. He
looked relaxed and cheerful, almost triumphant as he introduced Cecilia Drew.

Camilla felt a stab of sympathy for
Loulou, whose faint
hope she had mutely
shared. Cecilia Drew, with her hip-length ebony hair, topaz tiger’s eyes and
svelte six-foot figure was a
formidable
opponent, a force to be very seriously reckoned
with. Even Loulou, no
slouch in the looks department herself, could scarcely compete with such
ferocious glamour.

The copper and gold bugle-beaded dress she wore, strapless
and slit to the thigh, was incredibly over-the-top, yet if anyone
could carry it off Cecilia Drew,
Vogue’s
favourite
model, star of
a thousand catwalks and of a far grander agency than
Sheridan’s, could.

Her grip as she shook Camilla’s hand was surprisingly
firm. Her wide, gold-slicked mouth curled into a smile.

‘
Congratulations on
your marriage,’ she said in a low,
carefully modulated voice strangely
at odds with her startling appearance. ‘Mac has told me a lot about you.’

Camilla didn’t make the obvious reply
but Matt, typically,
had no such
reservations.

‘Well, Mac has certainly kept quiet about you,’ he
declared
with open admiration, winking at
Mac. Camilla nudged him in
the ribs.
Didn’t he realize that Loulou, at the far end of the
room, had turned back round and was now silently
watching
them? She looked as if someone was slowly pulling out all her
toenails with steel pliers.

Mac, wickedly handsome in a white
tuxedo, his pristine
white dress shirt undone at the neck and his black bow-tie
dangling, ran a proprietary hand down
Cecilia’s bare brown
back. His black eyes, catching the light from the chandeliers as
he tilted his head, glittered like
coal. Helplessly, Camilla
glanced
across the room once more. Loulou’s eyes were desolate with longing and pain.
At that moment she could have kickedherself for inviting Mac. This wasn’t what
was meant to have happened. In trying to help, to be a good friend, she had
only succeeded in making things a million times worse.

‘
We can’t stay too long,
I’m afraid,’ said Mac. ‘I do realize
that
you weren’t expecting both of us, but I wanted Cecilia to
meet you.’

‘
Stay,’ urged Matt,
reaching for a bottle of Krug and searching
for a couple of glasses.
Camilla realized that he simply didn’t understand her frantic signals for him
to shut up. He had got on well with Mac on that fateful night at Vampires and
he couldn’t see any reason why he should leave now that he was here.

Across the room, to her relief, she saw Nico leave
Caroline’s
side and go to Loulou, placing a
comforting arm around her
slender shoulders.

Mac shook his dark head. ‘No, really.
Camilla understands why we have to leave.’ He looked at Cecilia and Camilla saw
with a sense of foreboding the odd
expression of triumph in his eyes as he did so. ‘We just wanted you to be the
first to know.
Cecilia and I have decided to
follow your excellent example.
We’re getting married in the very near
future ourselves.’

This time, even Matt was momentarily
caught off balance.
He
finally realized what was really going on. Camilla felt as
if she had been kicked in the stomach.
In that slow second
before Matt recovered
and began a fresh round of handshakes,
kisses
and slightly forced congratulations, Camilla’s gaze
locked with Mac’s
and they exchanged a look which told her everything.

Nothing could have stopped him, she realized, and Loulou
wasn’t the only one who would suffer. Both Mac and
Cecilia were victims, too, of his desperate compulsion to hurt her as
she
had hurt him.

But for the moment Mac was happy. He
genuinely thought
this was what he
wanted. And he had done exactly what he had come here tonight to do.

Chapter 38

Being married again was wonderful, thought Camilla as she
unpacked the last of the suitcases and shook sand out of a white silk skirt,
but Loulou’s unhappiness still hung like an ominous cloud over the horizon. The
change in her was appalling and Camilla was genuinely concerned. Her friends
were all standing by her, helping her as much as they dared — for she still had
her pride and tried as hard as possible to present a brave front — but there
was only one person who could cure her of the terrible
depression and he was equally proud, equally determined to
keep
well away from her.

Mac and Cecilia were the darlings of the gossip columns.
Everywhere you looked there they were, immortalized in black
and white, presenting dazzling smiles to the
cameras, whooping
it up in Paris,
Mustique, London and Gstaad. Camilla urged
Loulou not to read the
papers. Compulsively, Loulou devoured every one, hating herself for doing it
and wondering why it hurt so damn much.

‘I can’t understand it,’ she confessed when she had last
seen
Camilla and Matt. ‘I’m
never
like
this. It’s pathetic. You can
laugh your head off at me, Cami . . .
remember all the brilliant
advice I gave you?
Remember how I bullied you, gave you a
couple
of weeks to get over. Jack? And now here I am, not
having even spoken to Mac for months, dripping
like a hot tap
all over your settee.
Go on,’ she added bitterly, ‘have a good
laugh.’

‘
We aren’t laughing,’
Camilla reassured her, taking her thin
cold hand, ‘and I feel terrible —
I should never have invited Mac to our wedding reception.’

Loulou shook her head; even her hair
looked tired these
days, lacking its
normal bounce and lustre. ‘He would still have done it. But it’s so
stupid .
. .
nothing bothered me after Lili was
born.
I floated round on a cloud. I was happy and I didn’t care
too much about Mac doing his disappearing act. It
wasn’t until
he turned up with Cecilia bloody Drew that it suddenly hit
me. And who could compete with someone like her even if we were starting out on
level pegging?’

It was as if she had given up, Camilla realized. Her
fighting
spirit was gone. Nico, to Caroline’s
semi-concealed fury, had carted Loulou and baby Lili off to his sisters in
Bath, staying
there with her for a week. That had really got the Press
going. Speculation was rife. Neither Nico nor Loulou cared. The short
break was pleasant enough and the mayhem which
always
reigned in the homes of Nico’s beautiful sisters and their noisy
families diverted Loulou’s attention to a degree,
but it didn’t
really help.