Fast Friends (9 page)

‘
‘Orrible, ‘orrible,’
he murmured, surveying the disaster
area.
‘Still, never mind. The worse it is when they come in,’ he
said cheerfully to Loulou who had pulled up a
stool beside
them, ‘the better they
look when you finish with ‘em. Now don’t even ask me what I’m going to do,’ he
added sternly,
turning to face
Camilla once more. ‘Just keep quiet and trust
me. And if you don’t like
the result, you can take the scissors to me own ‘air. Deal?’

Two hours later Camilla stared into the mirror, her new
eyes reflecting anguish.

‘
I hate it,’ she said
flatly. ‘It’s a disaster. It doesn’t suit me,
it’s a terrible colour . .

Unable to go on, she bit her lower lip and gritted her teeth
hard, but
the smile she was trying so hard to suppress was
proving
uncontrollable. Her mouth twitched and the smile began
to spread, becoming wider and wider until it dissolved into
laughter and her whole body shook with it. ‘It’s
sensational,’
she cried, shaking her head and watching as the tumbling,
silver and gold waves bounced miraculously back into place. ‘I can’t believe
it, I don’t know how to thank you both . .

‘You could start by promising never to pull a stunt like
that
again,’ said Rocco, leaning back
against the wall and clutching
his
heart. Tor just a second there I thought you was serious,
sweetie. ‘Ad the old ticker going a bit I can tell
you, to think
that you was goin’ to set about me own ‘air with a
vengeance.’

‘
Ah, Camilla, you shouldn’t
tease poor Rocco,’ scolded
Loulou with a smile. ‘She has a wicked sense
of humour, I’m
afraid,’ she confided to him
and Camilla felt the shy green
leaf within her unfold a fraction
further, as she realized with a
surge of joy
and amazement that it was the first joke she’d
played in years. And she had done it without even thinking
about
it.

’The last time I was in Harrods was
when I bumped into Roz,’
she
murmured, shivering slightly at the memory as they entered the hallowed green
portals.

‘You’ve come a long way since then, baby,’ said Loulou
dismissively, winking at her favourite doorman and making a
beeline for the perfume hall. ‘Nothing boosts a woman’s
ego
like her favourite scent, so we’ll just treat ourselves in here and
then it’s upstairs to spend the real money.’ She
sighed, closing
her eyes in ecstasy. ‘And you have the even greater
pleasure of knowing that it’s Jack’s money you’re spending.’

‘
I won’t spend too much
of it,’ argued Camilla, feeling
suddenly guilty. ‘I should really be
using it sensibly, looking for flat . .

‘The clothes you’ll be buying will be an
investment,
dummy.
By the time we’ve finished you’ll look so
great you won’t
need
a deposit for a flat. At least a dozen
love-struck men will be queuing up to buy one for you and you can say,
"Only Belgravia would do, I’m afraid. Well, maybe Mayfair at a pinch . .
." ‘

‘
Loulou!’ exclaimed Camilla in dismay.

‘Ah, you
see you aren’t the only one who can make wicked little jokes,’ replied Loulou
with a grin.

‘
Now what we need is colour,’ she explained, managing to
collar a salesgirl. ‘My friend here has just
returned from the
great Australian
outback – haven’t you, Sheila? – and she needs
a complete new wardrobe. She’s allowed one little black dress,
a Donna Karan of course, but apart from that we
want colour
and lots of it. And no office clothes, if you catch my
drift.’

‘
No office clothes, madam,’
repeated the salesgirl solemnly.
‘If you’d like to follow me . .

Chapter 8

It was like the Christmas mornings she
remembered from
childhood,
thought Camilla, as she surveyed her new person
ality, strewn around her in shimmering
piles like some
incredibly upmarket
jumble sale. Sensitive with wonder, her
fingertips
stroked the ivory satin shirt, experiencing the texture
as if it were a
new and marvellous food, whilst her eyes feasted
upon the fuchsia pink Nicole Farhi strapless evening dress,
the impeccably cut white wool loose jacket and
matching
trousers, the striped silk
jacket in ice-cream shades of pink
and
lilac, the plain, wide shouldered taffeta dress by Jasper Conran which was of
exactly the same lapis-lazuli shade as
her eyes .. .

‘Now I need another cash injection to pay the dry-cleaning
bills,’ murmured Camilla, who had been
devoted to polyester
for the last ten
years. She tried to feel ashamed of her
extravagance but it wouldn’t
happen. Her mouth kept stretching
into a wide
smile of pure satisfaction and the Christmas-
morning sensation simply
refused to go away.

‘I’ll go and see Jack tomorrow, see what I can do,’ Loulou
assured her, keeping a straight face. ‘I’ll just say: Hi, Jack. Your poor
cheated-on little wife blew the cash you gave her and now she’d like the same
amount again. This time she might even get
around
to buying some knickers. On second thoughts, why
bother? Who needs
knickers anyway?’

‘
You wouldn’t dare!’ exclaimed Camilla,
appalled. Then she
thought, why not? There
really was no reason why Jack shouldn’t
be shocked. He no longer mattered to her. The children,
however, were another matter. ‘How did he seem when
you
went to see him?’ she asked for the first time, unable to hide the
anxiety in her voice. It was no good, she couldn’t cut him out of her life so
quickly and completely. A husband wasn’t a bad appendix. She still cared about
him. And about Charlotte and Toby, desperately.

‘He was OK,’
said Loulou casually, having felt it unwise to
mention at the time that it had been Roz who had made the
visit. And judging by the look on Camilla’s face it
wasn’t
quite the moment to admit to it
now. ‘He doesn’t deserve it,
but he’s
just about OK. Hey, let’s not spoil a good day talking
about that lower-than-dirt little creep. I’ve got
to get down
stairs and hurl a few insults in the direction of my beloved
customers. You,’ she concluded, circling her index finger in
Camilla’s direction, ‘have fifteen minutes to
change into that
divine little Jasper Conran creation and admire
yourself in the
mirror. Then you come down
and join me, and we’ll watch
how far
Dirty Dicky O’Neill’s eyes pop out of his head when
he clocks you.’

’I’m a fraud,’ Loulou told Christo, her favourite barman,
as she watched him expertly uncork four bottles of Beaujolais. ‘A
bullshitter and a fraud.
How,’
she demanded,
tearing a glossy
leaf from a potted
palm with unnecessary ferocity, ‘do I have
the nerve to stand there and
tell Camilla not to pine over her God-awful husband, when for the last three
days all I’ve been
doing is pining for one
of mine – and he’s even more of a
bastard than hers.’

‘
Which one?’ said Christo calmly, taking the
spiky-edged
frond
of greenery from Loulou’s agitated fingers and dropping
it into the bin behind the bar.

‘
Mackenzie,’ she
admitted, her face the picture of
gloom.
‘The very worst one, of course. You’d think I’d have
the sense to find some better way of spending my
time –
like sitting on a bed of nails
or playing Russian roulette – but
no,
I have to keep thinking about him, all day and all night,
and at the same time put on a brave face for
Camilla. It’s
too much.’

‘
What about Julian?’

‘
Gone to Sweden for a
fortnight. Do you think that’s why
I’ve
started thinking about Mac again?’ Loulou gave him a wry smile. ‘You’re
absolutely right, of course. Celibacy doesn’t agree
with me – it’s just that I don’t think Camilla could cope with it
if I had a man in my bed while she was staying with
me. Seems
a bit heartless, somehow.’

‘
Careful, Lou. If people
could hear you now your reputa
tion
would be in tatters. This crowd,’ he indicated with a nod of
his head the party of Sloanes who regularly
inhabitated
Vampires, ‘would die
laughing if they thought you had a
conscience.’

‘
Oh, sure,’ said Loulou
disdainfully. "They’d wet their
knickers all right. But they aren’t
going to find out, are they?
Because if you
so much as breathed one single word, my darling,
I would garotte you
with your own cheese wire. And don’t think I’m talking about your neck.’

Loulou Marks always maintained that
her earliest memory was
of pointing to a stranger on a train and shouting, ‘Mummy,
look
at that ugly man.’ Her mother,
smacking her so hard that she
hadn’t been
able to sit down for days, had uttered for the first – but by no means the last
– time those immortal words: ‘Loulou, don’t be so
rude.’

It was ironic, she felt, that her hugely successful living
was now made from being as rude as she liked, to as many people as
possible. Insulting them came as naturally to
Loulou as
breathing, and they
cherished her for her ability to come out
with what everyone else longed to say but did not dare. By a
stroke of marvellous good fortune what could have
been a
handicap had turned instead into a wonderful way of making a
living and still having enough left over to satisfy her ludicrously expensive
tastes in cars, clothes . . . and men.

Loulou married Jerry Nash on her nineteenth birthday. The
wedding, held in church, was the whitest her guests
had ever
seen, thanks in part to Celestine Marks’s fond belief that her
daughter was still a virgin. She was also
practical enough to
realize, however,
that the marriage was unlikely to last and
insisted upon at least one church wedding, ‘Because in future
you might only be able to do eet in Registry
offices,
ma petite,
and they are too ‘orrible for words.’

Equally firmly convinced that this was the Love Affair of
all time, and that she and Jerry would live for ever in the most spectacular
married bliss imaginable – what did mothers know, after all? – Loulou happily
went along with Celestine’s plans.
There were
a few anxious moments when Jerry announced that
no way was he going to wear a morning suit, or any suit at all for that
matter; he was a singer in a band and he was going to
wear his best pink lurex jacket with the silver
lapels and
matching drainpipe trousers – or nothing.

The anxiety and arguments lasted
precisely thirty-five min
utes, until Richard Marks drew his prospective son-in-law into
the less heated atmosphere of the kitchen and spoke to him
as
persuasively as he knew how. When they
emerged, Jerry
announced with a
casual shrug that OK, he’d wear the penguin
suit after all, no big deal, and Celestine heaved a sigh of relief
that could almost have been heard in Paris.
Richard, thinking
that £500 was a
small price to pay for his beloved wife’s
happiness, reflected at the same time with deep sadness that
now
he knew precisely what kind of person his daughter was marrying.

The wedding, amazingly, went off
without a hitch. The
marriage itself, however, to no-one’s real surprise, was a
ghastly tangle of hitches from start to finish and lasted
exactly
seven months and three days. When
Loulou returned home
from work one
day and discovered her handsome husband making love on the staircase to a
wanton looking redhead
clutching a ‘Save
the Seals’ collecting tin, she wrenched the
heavy tin from her hand and brought it down on Jerry’s head
so fiercely that he slid out of the woman and down
the stairs
with a series of jolts
which crippled his ardour for weeks.
The
scalp wound, requiring seventeen stitches, was almost
negligible in comparison.