Fast Friends (75 page)

Sebastian ignored her. Calmly, his
tone mildly curious, he said, ‘Have you honestly spent all these years trying
to match
up to the high
expectations you thought I demanded?’

‘
Oh, shut up!’ yelled
Roz, burying her wet face in a yellow
silk cushion. Leaning across,
Sebastian pulled the cushion away and tossed it into a corner of the room. Now
he was in control
again, the ultra-efficient
male who stood no nonsense from
hysterical women.

‘
Tell me,’ he insisted,
his grey eyes boring into her like
lasers. Roz felt fifteen again,
immature and cornered.

‘I don’t even understand the question,’ she countered
truculently, avoiding his chilling gaze.

‘Did you want me to think you were . . . perfect?’ probed
Sebastian with maddening patience.

Oh, why didn’t he just
go,
she
thought wildly, and realized
that he wouldn’t move until she admitted it. No one flew this
far for a mere ounce of flesh, after all. And Sebastian,
it seemed, wanted the lot.

‘
Of course I did,’ she
said, sniffing loudly. ‘Of course I wanted
you to think I was perfect. But I’m not. I wreck every relationship I’ve
ever had. I’m selfish, I’m a bitch, I use bad language,
I smoke and I have a foul temper. Jealous? Damn
right I’m
jealous . . . it always tore me to pieces when you used to
tell me
about your other women, and now I’ve
even got to the stage
where I’m
jealous of
my
friends because they’re happy and I’m
not. So there
you go,’ she concluded with heaving, breathless
defiance. ‘That’s the real Roz Vallender. Aren’t you glad I told
you
about her? Now you can push off with a clear conscience
because nobody in their right mind would dream of having
anything
to do with a selfish cow like me.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ said Sebastian, moving towards her and
pulling
her unwillingly to her feet. ‘It truly
can’t be that bad. Our
daughter
thinks you’re wonderful. "Cool" I think was the
adjective she used.’ He paused for a second, deep
in thought.
‘Or maybe it was
"triff". Anyway, if there’s one thing I’ve
learnt recently it’s
that our daughter is an exceptional judge of character.’

‘T-truly?’ hiccuped Roz, wondering why on earth Sebastian
should be running his fingers slowly up and down
her inner
arms and regarding her with
an expression of such tender
warmth. ‘I’ve
been awful to her, really. Not motherly at all. I
could have murdered her when I found out she’d
gone to look
for you.’

‘
Oh, she thinks you’re
"ace",’ Sebastian assured her with a
smile that sent tremors
down her spine. Surely, thought Roz in bewilderment, he wasn’t going to kiss
her?

‘
So you aren’t perfect,
after all,’ he murmured, his mouth
now
only inches from her own. ‘And you’re right – it
is
almost
a relief to know that. Perfection can be somewhat
wearing after
a while. But in the
meantime, what’s "triff" and "cool" and
"ace" enough for Natalie is quite good
enough for me, and
although I never
thought I’d say this, would you consider
marrying me, Roz?’

‘
Wha –’ gasped Roz, and at that moment
Sebastian sealed
her
mouth with a kiss. When it ended, he held a finger firmly to her lips, his eyes
forbidding her to utter another word.

‘
Wha –’ He echoed
consideringly. ‘Very good, Roz. Very
concise
indeed. It sounds like a definite yes to me. Nod your
head if you agree.’

Struck dumb, enthralled, still scarcely daring to believe
that this was really happening, Roz gazed up at him with reddened, swollen eyes.

And slowly
nodded.

‘
Brill,’
said Sebastian cheerfully, kissing her again. ‘Now I suppose we’d better call
Natalie in from the car and tell her that
her
entirely ace parents are finally going to make her legal.
That is, of
course, if she doesn’t know already.’

Chapter 53

’How on earth,’ said Caroline, sipping
disconsolately at her
drink, ‘can
anyone be
this
bored with the Caribbean?’

The ice rattled in her glass as she gestured towards the
virgin-smooth beach stretching before them. The hills behind their sprawling
white bungalow were a shimmering collage of greens,
a hundred different shades of the colour which had given
Montserrat
its nickname of the Emerald Isle. The sunshine was
miraculous and endless, the supply of drink and dope inex
haustible.

‘God,’ she groaned, shielding her eyes from the relentless
perfection of it all, ‘this should be enough
to keep anyone
happy, and all I can do is hate it.’

Susie, who was the long-time live-in
girlfriend of Jake, the
bass
guitarist, chewed a piece of pineapple which she had fished from her own glass
and gazed thoughtfully at her pinky-brown
stomach,
barely swollen by four months of pregnancy. Until
this week, Caroline
had spoken scarcely more than a few words
to
her, but now, by virtue of being the only other female in
Nico’s
entourage, Caroline had been virtually forced to make overtures of friendship.
Susie at least understood the situation, being what she cheerfully termed a ‘lesser
half’ herself. And although she was perfectly well aware that Caroline’s sudden
‘friendship’ was nothing more than an antidote to loneliness, it
didn’t bother her. Susie was that sort of girl;
she couldn’t be
bothered to be bothered. Living with darling Jake,
carrying his
baby and making the most of
their life of unexpected luxury
was all that mattered. But Caroline was
still moaning and she clearly needed an audience. With a barely audible sigh,
Susie
wriggled down on her sunlounger into a
more comfortable
position and
transferred her baby-blue gaze to Caroline.
Although she had eyes as innocent as a Cindy doll’s, they were
far
shrewder than most people gave her credit for. It was this combination of
naivety and shrewdness which had carried her
from
a crowded council house in Bristol to the imposing
Georgian residence in
Surrey which she and Jake now shared.

‘It’s not the island,’ she said now, her voice
hypnotically soft, ‘it’s because Nico isn’t paying you enough attention. Even I
can see that.’

‘
I thought we’d be
having a proper holiday,’ said Caroline,
her inhibitions loosened by her
third glass of rum punch. ‘Well, maybe not a proper one, but I didn’t think
that Nico would be working in the studios for more than a few hours each day.
The rest of the time we’d be together, having fun . . . I
thought,’
she
concluded with heavy sarcasm. ‘Do you know, he didn’t even
speak to me on the flight over? He spent the entire
bloody
trip gassing with Monty instead, leaving
me
stuck next to
some fat greasy businessman from Birmingham called Hubert, for Chrissake.’

‘
Jakey and I thought
about calling our baby Hubert,’ said
Susie calmly and Caroline shot her
a sideways look. The trouble with Susie was that one could never be entirely
sure whether or not she was joking.

‘But the point is that Nico
ignored
me,’ she went
on, twisting
her almost-empty glass in her
hand. ‘And that was only the
start.
Since we’ve been here he’s done nothing but work and
sleep. Eighteen
hours a day in that goddam studio and the other
six sleeping. Needless to say,’ she concluded with alcohol-
induced indiscretion, ‘I am not included in either
activity. So
much for the weeks of sun, sand, sea and sex that I’d
imagined.’

Susie tilted her straw hat over her
nose. "Three out of four
isn’t bad,’ she said with a slight smile, glad that Jake hadn’t
been similarly affected. After last night’s marathon she
had wondered if she’d be capable of walking today.

‘
Only someone with a
truly great sex life could say something
as ridiculous as that,’
retorted Caroline bitterly.

’Nico’s wife’s pissed off,’ said Susie much later that
night, when she and Jake were the only two still awake. Shaun, lying out on
the verandah surrounded by empty beer cans, was
snoring
gently. Paddy, the band’s
keyboard player, slept peacefully on
the settee opposite them. It was
well past midnight and George Benson was providing suitably laid-back music on
the stereo.

‘Serves her right for tagging along when she knew she wasn’t
wanted,’ said Jake easily, draping his arm around Susie’s plump
shoulders and drawing her against him. ‘I bet he’s
still over at
the studios now, going over the stuff we did today and
keeping out of the old dragon’s way.’

‘
She isn’t a dragon,’
protested Susie, pinching the back of
his hand. ‘You can’t say she doesn’t
have the looks or the body.
She isn’t fat
like me.’ With ill-concealed pride she gazed down
at her slightly
swollen stomach, and Jake gave the mound an affectionate pat.

‘
She’s a stuck-up bitch
and she’s only bothering to talk to you now because she hasn’t got anyone else.
Back home she
knocks about with that
bird who does the modelling, Cecilia. I
bet she thinks she’s really
slumming it, having to make do with people like us . .

‘Thanks!’ exclaimed Susie, laughing.

Jake shook his head. ‘You know what I
mean. She thinks
she’s
better than us, but we know she isn’t. And we’re a lot
happier than her and Nico, aren’t we?’

I’m happy. I’ve got the best fella in the world,’ she
murmured, resting her cheek against his chest and breathing in the salt
and-honey scent of his skin. ‘But I can’t help
feeling kind of
sorry for her. Their
sex life’s non-existent, she told me today.
It’s really getting to her.’

‘She looks like she needs to get laid,’ remarked Jake
idly, stroking her hair.

‘Does Nico go with other women?’

‘Course he does. He keeps pretty quiet about it, but I’ve
seen
him sloping off with the occasional
bird after a gig, and I
shouldn’t think it was for a game of chess . .

‘
Poor Caroline,’ said
Susie sleepily. ‘She ought to find
someone
to give her a good time, then. Sex is so lovely it’s a
shame to miss
out, don’t you think?’

‘Now you’re talking,’ said Jake, sliding his hand beneath
her
loose cotton top and skilfully caressing
her breasts. ‘Come on,
let’s leave those two here and go to bed.’

Paddy Laharne waited until they had
left the room before
opening his eyes. Now there was a challenge, he thought.
Caroline Coletto was a damn
good-looking girl; he’d always
been attracted to that voluptuous body and those catlike dark
blue eyes, but she had seemed so
distant, keeping herself glued
to Nico’s
side whenever he’d seen her, that he hadn’t made the effort to get to know her
better.

Ah, but now . . . he grinned to himself
in the semi-darkness,
his fingers
tapping out a three-four beat against the side of the settee. Now he knew the
state of play, that presented a definite challenge.

And Paddy Laharne, he reminded himself, could never resist
a challenge.

Caroline woke up as Nico slid out of
the bed. Other husbands,
she thought with a renewed flash of irritation, tried to be quiet
out of consideration for their sleeping wives. Nico, she
knew, simply didn’t want to have to speak to her.

It was six
thirty.

‘
What am I going to do today?’ She heard the whine
in her
voice and despised herself for it.

The look
Nico gave her was one of disbelief

‘You can’t
think of anything to do?’ he gestured towards the window. ‘Here?’