Fast Friends (74 page)

Blushing furiously and realizing that he had deliberately
engineered the situation in order that she would do just that, she
pushed the can underneath her chair and stood up to
introduce
him to everyone.

‘
Roz let me in just now
when I rang the bell,’ he said,
extending
his hand and taking in at a glance Roz’s slender,
tanned figure. ‘Of
course I recognize you from your TV show. And you must be Loulou,’ he went on,
taking over with the ease of a politician. ‘If it hadn’t been for you doing
your disappearing act last night, I might not have had the opportunity of
meeting
Camilla, so thank you. How did it
work out with your ex-husband,
by the way?’

‘
The absolute pits,’ said Loulou, so cheerfully
that Camilla
stared open-mouthed at her. ‘I threw all his clothes out
of an
hotel
window.’

Piers grinned. ‘Good for you, he must
have deserved it.
Now,’
he turned to the children, ‘you must be Toby . . . and
you’re Marty . . . and this beautiful
young lady has to be
Charlotte.’ Entranced they each shook hands with him, until
finally he turned to Lili, sitting sucking her thumb on
the grass. ‘And this gorgeous girl is Lili, am I right?’

He remembers every name, thought Camilla with a surge of
amazed gratitude as Lili, tears forgotten, showed
her pearly
teeth in a smile. Within
seconds, Piers’ arrival had transformed
the atmosphere, a knack which
Matt had possessed, but at which Piers was clearly a true master. Glancing
sideways, she saw Roz
joking with Charlotte.
Marty was jumping up on to her
abandoned
chair with his favourite teddy and Loulou was
gathering Lili into her
arms so that Piers could admire her more closely.

His smile, when he finally turned to
look at Camilla once
more,
almost stopped her heart.

‘
You’re even more
beautiful now than you were this morning,’
he said, his voice low and
caressing. ‘I had to see you again. Do you mind terribly?’

‘
I was just surprised,’
she murmured, still lost in admiration
at
the way he had recalled everyone’s name. He was one of
those oh-so-rare men who genuinely listened to people
instead
of waiting for them to stop talking so that he could start.

And he had driven up to London to see
her. What on earth
was she going to do
with him for an entire Sunday afternoon?

‘We’ll go out,’ he said, as if reading her hopelessly
untogether thoughts.

‘
But the children . .

Piers brushed a ladybird from the sleeve of his yellow-and
white striped shirt and pulled a pair of dark
glasses from his
pocket.

‘They come too, of course,’ he said simply, as if the idea
that they should be left behind hadn’t even occurred to him. ‘I love kids.’
Then he winked. ‘Especially casseroled.’

Driven to drink, thought Roz gloomily, gazing at the
half-empty bottle of wine on the table beside her. The cottage seemed dark and
oppressive, and was almost eerily silent, but outside swarms
of midges danced in the last of the evening
sunlight and she
hadn’t the patience right now to tolerate them.

Seeing Camilla with Piers had depressed her still further;
it seemed that fate was taking a fairy-tale hand and presenting the good girl
with a charming prince whilst at the same time making
sure that Roz, the evil witch, got all the punishment she
deserved.

And Piers
was
charming, there was no doubt about
that, she thought with a resurgence of the jealousy which had gnawed at her throughout
her lonely trip home. Once, she wouldn’t have thought twice about making a play
for him. Now, however, she
wondered whether
he would even be interested. The look he
had given her had been appraising, pleasant, polite . . . and
decidedly
uninterested.

The interest, thought Roz with guilty envy, had been
reserved entirely for Camilla.

And as she took another slug of the not-quite-chilled
white
Burgundy, she reflected that only
yesterday Piers and Camilla had undoubtedly spent a night of fevered, exquisite
passion in
her very own bed.

I mustn’t
be jealous, she told herself hopelessly. But it was
hard not to be when her own life was so barren, and there had
still been no word from either Natalie or
Sebastian. In her
present mood she could almost believe that never
hearing from them or seeing either of them again would be the best thing that
could happen. Loving people only caused pain.
Losing them
was far, far worse.

’I still don’t know why I’m doing this,’ complained
Sebastian as
he indicated left to turn off
the motorway. Unfamiliar with the
hire car he had picked up at Heathrow,
the windscreen washers burst into life instead and Natalie giggled.

‘Because you try too hard to be perfect. You think Roz is
perfect. And so you both lead single,
almost-perfect lives and
don’t even realize that you’re lonely. If you
and Mum think so much of each other, how, can you bear to see her only once or
twice a year? It’s like eating one chocolate and
throwing the
rest of the box away.’ Enjoying herself, and revelling in
the role
of Agony Aunt, Natalie grew
expansive. ‘You think self-denial
is
good for the soul, and maybe some of the time it is, but
human relationships aren’t like that. When two
people love
each other they make compromises and accept each other’s
imperfections, and
that
makes them happy.’

Sebastian held up his hand. ‘All
right, all right. If there’s
one thing I can’t stand it’s being preached at by a girl almost
young enough to be my daughter. Now look, are you quite
sure
Roz is even going to be at the cottage
when we finally get
there?’

‘
Of course,’ said
Natalie complacently. ‘When I phoned
Loulou she told me that Mum had
left London at around three. Just trust me, Dad . . . and stop worrying!’

‘
And if there’s one thing I never do,’ replied
Sebastian ruefully, ‘it’s place my trust in a girl almost young enough to be my
daughter.’

She
laughed. ‘Make an exception, Dad. Have a little faith. Everything’s going to be
all right.’

Dusk was falling when Roz heard the car pull up outside
the cottage, but she was too depressed to go to the window and see who it was.
Having neglected to switch on any lights, she hoped vaguely that the visitor
might think the house was empty. If she
ignored
the doorbell they would disappear again and leave her
in peace.

But the doorbell did not ring.
Instead, Roz heard a key
turning
slowly in the lock, and experienced such a rush of relief that she felt
momentarily light headed. Thank God, she thought
with fervent gratitude, Natalie had come back. At least she
hadn’t
lost
her.

The sight of Sebastian standing
silently in the doorway of
the dimly
lit sitting-room was so totally unexpected that for a
second she truly wondered if she was dreaming, that after
having
thought so hard and so often about him since Natalie’s
flight to Zurich, her mind had somehow conjured up this
apparition.

But Roz was a practical person and she
didn’t allow her
mind
to play tricks on her. Besides, apparitions didn’t wear
Gucci loafers.

Nor, particularly when the apparition
concerned was
Sebastian,
did they sport wayward black inkstains on their
pristine white shirt.

‘So she did find you,’ said Roz, managing to sound almost
conversational despite the frantic clamour of her
heart. Now,
now
at last,
she would know how Sebastian had reacted
to the news which she had been too afraid to tell him for over eighteen years.

‘
Naturally,’ he replied,
with a faint dry smile. ‘It was what
she set out to do. Can you imagine
anything or anyone defeating that girl?’

‘She’s certainly strong-willed,’ admitted Roz, thinking
how crazy it was that she and Sebastian should be standing here like this
discussing their daughter with such stilted formality. It was like a
parent-teacher meeting at school, for God’s sake.

Sebastian, however, seemed not to
notice the incongruity,
but then
that was him all over.

‘
She nags me,’ he was
saying now, looking perplexed. ‘Can
you believe that?
Me,
nagged
by a scruffy eighteen year old who doesn’t even brush her hair. She bullied me
into flying over here
today . . .
I’m
supposed
to be at a board meeting first thing
tomorrow morning and she simply
doesn’t
care
about that.’

‘And you have ink on your shirt,’ murmured Roz, almost in
wonderment. The Sebastian she had known for so long
didn’t
allow himself to be bullied by
anyone, and his clothes were
always
entirely immaculate. Although in a curious way the
inkstain reassured
her more than anything else could have done and because of it she felt able to
make her move.

‘
So why
are
you
here, Sebastian?’ she ventured boldly, her
dark eyes meeting his with a challenging stare, her bare toes
tensing against the thick pile of the Persian rug
beneath her
feet.

He gestured aimlessly, a most
un-Sebastian like feature. ‘I
don’t
honestly know. Natalie insisted, I suppose.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘
In the car.’ He half-smiled again. ‘Probably
with a pair of binoculars trained on this window.’

Since a romantic Hollywood embrace didn’t appear to be on
the cards, Roz sank back down into her corner of
the settee,
tucking her legs beneath her.

‘Were you furious when she told you who she was?’ she
persisted, bracing herself for the worst.

‘Furious?’ Sebastian paused, considering the word. ‘No,
not
furious. Stunned, disbelieving at first,
amazed . . . and very
confused, I
suppose. Once it began to sink in I realized I was
bitter in some ways, at not having known she
existed, yet
relieved in others. I’ve
never been interested in babies or
children,
never wanted any of my own – you knew that of course,
which was why you decided not to tell me at the
time. I
understand that much. But
how,’
he said with a flash of
controlled anger laced with resentment, ‘could
you have kept it from me all these years?’

To her horror Roz, who scarcely ever
cried, felt tears
brimming against her
lower eyelids.

‘
I didn’t want to lose
you,’ she said, her control sliding away
as she realized that what she had most dreaded was now
happening
for real. With a trembling hand she reached for the
bottle of wine and filled her glass. ‘You would have thought I
was trying to trap you. I couldn’t go through with
an abortion,
so I gave Nat up for adoption and tried to forget her. It
never
occurred to me for a moment that she’d
ever try and find me
when she grew up . . . telling you afterwards would
only have made you hate me. I couldn’t do it, Sebastian. I needed you too much
to ever risk losing you.’

‘
Don’t cry,’ he said, looking alarmed. ‘You
never cry.’

‘
Well, I am
now,’ Roz almost shouted, as the tears slid down her face. Hating herself for
being so weak she glared up at him, desperate for the confrontation to be over.
It was humiliating,
Sebastian of all people
seeing her disintegrate like this. ‘So
now
you know. I’m a cheat and a liar and I’m not the person
you thought I was. I’ve
never
been that
person, so there’s no
need to waste any more time talking to me because
I’m only an
imposter. Now
go,’
she
said fiercely, closing her eyes so that
she wouldn’t have to see him do
so. ‘Just leave me alone. If you
go now you
won’t even have to miss your precious bloody
board meeting tomorrow
morning.’