When Good Friends Go Bad (29 page)

Totnes receded into the distance as they cruised along the road. From nowhere, Meg said, 'You know they had a humdinger of a fight last night. She was practically screaming at him when I came back from the shower. And I'm positive she went out after we were in bed. I heard her coming back in and when I went to the loo, she was throwing up in her bathroom.'

'You said already.'

'You want to know what I think?'

'Not really.'

Meg looked at her in surprise and Jen kept her face stony. 'I don't really care for gossip,' she said loftily. 'Or people telling lies.'

'Lies?' Meg wrinkled her nose. 'You mean like telling Yvonne Spitz that Graham Furrow married Phyllis Ifold, that kind of lie?'

Jen felt her temper rise. She was ready to have it out with Meg, once and for all.

'That was just a bit of fun and you know it. No, I mean . . .' She cursed as her phone started to ring, snatching it up from beside the gearstick.

'Jen,' Ollie said in a calming tone that immediately got her heart racing, 'it's Chloe. Now she's totally fine, so don't freak out but . . .'

Jen stood outside Saul's ground-floor flat, jiggling the set of car keys in her hand. When her first two rings went unanswered she put her hand on the buzzer and kept it there.

Finally it opened. Ollie was in front of her, beaming away, and immediately her back bristled.

'Jen, you're early.'

'I got here as soon as I could.'

'I told you not to hurry. Chloe's . . .'

'Mummee!' Chloe squeezed past Ollie and raced towards her.

'Darling!' Jen gasped as she caught sight of her daughter's thin wiry wrist held in a sling – in a cast. Jen dropped to the ground and flung her arms around her.

'Ouch!' Chloe squealed.

'Oh God, sorry.' Jen recoiled. 'Does it hurt?'

'Not much. The doctor gave me a sticker and some red liquorice shoelaces for being brave. Look, he signed the plaster as well.'

Ollie had explained on the phone it was a bike accident, but he never said how bad. Never said it was . . .

'Broken?' She glared at him.

'A greenstick fracture,' he said simply.

'Isn't that the same as a break? How the hell could you let . . .' She paused as she caught Chloe's expression. 'Sweetheart, can you fetch your things?'

'But Mu-um . . .' she wailed, looking beseechingly at her dad.

'We've just rented a DVD,' explained Ollie.

'Can't I finish it, Mummy?' Chloe pleaded. 'Or you could come in and watch it with us? It's got Johnny Depp starring. Saul's got Quality Street.'

'Johnny Depp
and
Quality Street, whit whoo!' Jen tried not to be the big black raincloud at her daughter's parade but inwardly she was incensed. 'I hope it's a PG.' It was a jab at Ollie, the irresponsible parent.

'No, it's Spawn of Satan meets Freddy on Elm Street.' Ollie gave her a vicious smile. 'You can come in, you know.' He held the door open, glancing at a figure walking through the hall. 'Oy, Saul. Here. Meet my wife – er . . . ex-wife,' he quickly corrected.

'I know him,' she hissed. 'Who do you think takes Chloe to football when you're away?'

'Hi, there.' Saul came to the doorstep and held out his hand, the one without the lager in it. His hair was carrot, a riot of springy curls over an amiable squashy face. This was the first time she'd met him away from the football field and, to her jaded eyes, hypersensitive and on full mother alert, his entire appearance shrieked loafer, deadbeat, slob, from his holey-kneed tracksuit bottoms to his old striped shirt with half the buttons missing, exposing a large amount of curly ginger chest hair. Was that even decent in front of a child not your own?

She shuddered, imagining what the rest of his bachelor pad looked like – probably hadn't been cleaned in years, sofa with springs sticking out, futon on the disgusting carpet.

'Good to see you again.' He gulped from his can. 'Heard loads about you.'

'All bad, I bet.' Jen was only too aware how Ollie would have described her – moody, uptight, critical bitch would probably cover it – but had to shake hands.

'Come in.' Saul scratched his chest sleepily. 'We're getting a Chinese takeaway.'

Well, at least they weren't cooking in what she already pictured as a rat-infested haven for bacteria. She wanted to tell Chloe to be sure to wash her hands.

'Or I'll just drop Chloe back later?' Ollie suggested.

'What time later?' She fidgeted anxiously, hardly paying attention. She was too busy imagining the potential photos in the forthcoming custody battle if she were forced to pull Chloe away from this pit of neglect. Saul's kitchen – mice nibbling pizza crusts left on the counters, ants marching over unwashed plates. Main exhibits would be Chloe's plaster cast and Saul's presumably filthy sleeping bag. And she'd be the picture of perfect parenthood, wearing a little Jaeger suit, in velvet perhaps.

'When the film's over?' Ollie gave her a strange look. Saul poked Chloe in the ribs making her giggle.
Get your filthy paws off my daughter,
she wanted to shriek.

She began shaking her head, suddenly feeling ganged-up against. 'I'm tired, very tired. I'll call you.'

'How was your weekend away? Did you find what you were looking for?'

'Did I find . . .' She backed away. 'No. I'll speak to you later.'

By the time she got home she was in a foul mood, dropping her bag and Feo's lead on the floor, stooping to pick up the letters on the mat. More Christmas cards. The guilt trips were on a faster, more convenient schedule than the Huntsleigh-to-London commuter trains. She hadn't been able to bring herself to send any yet, and each one that arrived addressed to 'Jen and Ollie' or 'Ollie, Jen and Chloe', came with a little stab to the heart. What was she supposed to do? Tell everyone, 'I'm not buying cards this year as my money's going for goats in Africa'? Or bury their new marital status in the midst of one of those round-robin letters everyone hates?
'Our new refrigerator has twice the freezer capacity of the old one, though since Ollie's divorced me he'll no longer be dipping into it. More excitingly, Chloe's showing great promise after her initial struggles with science . . .'

She put the kettle on and opened the first envelope with a small kitchen knife.

'Happy Christmas,' it read. 'Your Saturday newspaper girl.'

She put it to one side and slit open another and another, still fuming at Ollie. How dare he! He knew she was picking up Chloe, why hadn't she simply marched in there and demanded her daughter come home?

Because she'd have been unpopular. Probably have had to drag Chloe screaming, broken arm and all, into the car.

The last envelope contained a letter rather than a card. By the time she'd finished reading it she was livid beyond belief. She flicked through her mobile and pressed a number.

'She's still watching
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.'
Ollie sounded like he was eating. Chomping on his chow mein, no doubt. 'It won't be over for at least another hour.'

'I wasn't calling about that,' Jen blustered. 'Hagard's written to me . . . us. The Radcliffes haven't got their lease extension sorted and their buyers are now saying they're not signing contracts until it's done.'

'If only the law was like Scotland.' Now he sounded like he was slurping beer, not a care in the world. He was such a kid sometimes. It infuriated her when she had so much on her mind she could hardly think straight. She should never have left this weekend. If she'd stayed home Chloe would still be in one piece. And maybe the house sale wouldn't be in danger of falling apart. The Radcliffes' buyers could drop out. The market could tank still further and then where would they be? Stuck in some kind of housing purgatory? She couldn't take this limbo. She was desperate to move on.

'Why does everyone keep saying that? We don't live in sodding Scotland, so who cares what their bloody laws are!'

'I'll talk to Hagard tomorrow. He seemed to have his act together last time I spoke.'

'And when was that?' Her voice lashed sarcasm. 'Because he's bleeding useless now.'

'Jen,' Ollie said edgily, 'what's going on? Why are you so angry? I thought we said . . .'

'Those were the old rules.' Jen couldn't remove the hostility from her voice. 'Chloe's alone with you five minutes and she has a dreadful accident. Where the fuck were you when she was breaking her arm, were you even paying attention?' She knew she was getting carried away, all her earlier resolutions forgotten, but anger made her irrational. 'And then to let me find out like that. How in buggery am I supposed to trust you next time?'

'Look now,' Ollie's tone hardened, 'I didn't tell you how bad it was because I didn't want you driving home upset. I knew you'd go apeshit about the scrambling . . .'

'You mean it was the
scrambling bike?'
Jen pushed her fist against her head. 'You let Chloe go
scrambling
when the ground's frozen solid?' She started pacing, holding the phone so tight her knuckles were white. 'Why didn't you just shove her into a cement post? It would probably have been less lethal.'

'I couldn't talk her out of it,' Ollie replied, raising his voice. 'We can't all be bloody perfect.'

'You're not supposed to
talk her out of it.
You're the parent. You make the rules. And what about the concert?'

'What concert?'

'The one she's supposed to play her violin in this Friday.' Jen said in a biting tone. 'The one she's lacerated her fingers for the last three months practising for.'

'Hey, it happened,' he said flatly. 'I don't need lectures from you.'

'Well you need them from somebody. I'm just curious, Ollie.' Her voice turned glacial. 'When are you going to start acting like a grown-up?'

'Maybe,' his voice matched hers in strength and ferocity, 'when you stop acting like my ninety-year-old puritan
fucking
aunt!'

'Fuck off!' She slammed the phone down.

Someone was knocking on the door. She opened it to Santa Claus clanging a bell on her doorstep. His white beard parted to reveal red lips.

'Ho ho ho,' he chortled.

'And you can fuck off too!' The door shuddered under the impact.

'It's a bloody disaster,' Aiden announced as Georgina deposited her suitcase in the hall and followed him into her home office. He had their production manager and a couple of designers to back him up, wringing their hands, their faces nervous and apologetic. Poor things dragged down to Berkshire on a Sunday. It was bad enough coming back from Devon with all the rail-service disruptions.

'Someone leaked the prelim sketches for the new Georgie Gi collection on the Internet. Brian here found out by accident. There'll be shoddy imitations showing up in the high street in a matter of days. We'll have to postpone the launch.'

Georgina felt her heart hammer, her knees go weak. Georgie Gi was her new young-fashion line, aimed at teens. They had enormous amounts of time and money invested in the project. The PR department had spent months whipping the press up into a frenzy, teasing them that the new unveiling would be big beyond belief. And now there'd be nothing to show. They couldn't make a splash with styles already on sale in bargain-basement stores. The implications were horrendous.

'How could that happen?' She threw her briefcase on her desk. 'Those sketches weren't supposed to leave this office.' She started to rattle off instructions. 'Call an emergency meeting for first thing tomorrow morning, everyone involved in Georgie Gi to attend. We need to find out how bad this is, if there's anything we can salvage, and come up with some plausible story if we need to delay. And Aiden, I want you to talk to everyone who had access to those sketches, find out who sold us out. I want their desk cleared by lunchtime.'

'Will do,' Aiden said. 'But that's not all, I'm afraid. The Heal's people aren't happy. They're being very nice about it but their chief buyer called me confidentially this morning to say that on reflection they were disappointed in the designs we presented. They were hoping for something more distinctive.'

'I told you they were substandard!' Georgina whirled on him. 'You had no business presenting that putrid mediocre crap and passing it off as Giordani.'

'I had no . . .' Aiden bit his lip, his face white with anger. 'Brian, guys, would you give us a minute alone?'

The production manager and the designers scuttled out, almost pathetically eager to flee the scene.

'To begin with,' he was visibly trying to force himself to stay calm, 'I did nothing that you . . .'

'You pushed me into it!' Georgina screamed. 'You harassed me and coerced me and called a bloody meeting with the buyers without my consent. I'm never doing that again. From now on if I don't like it it doesn't go out. You have no clue, Aiden. You can't just force creativity.'

'No,
you
have no clue,' he said with a vehemence that shocked her. 'I've been a part of Giordani from the start and you treat me as if I'm the bloody coffee boy. I'm the one who keeps this company running while you play the part of the misunderstood genius. You can't keep these big companies waiting while our one and only creative source indulges in her thirteenth nervous breakdown. There's no room for prima donna hysterics in business. It doesn't work that way.'

'Well, it certainly doesn't work
your
way, does it?' she lashed back, leaning forward, hands planted on her desk. 'I told you we were taking on too many projects, there's a limit to what I can do. And last I looked the company was still called Giordani, not Aiden Starkson. I'm the boss and don't you forget it.'

'How could I when you never let me for a second?' He paced across the room. 'Or anyone else. You've got those poor designers so petrified they're scared to lift a pencil, because anyone who submits an idea gets their head chopped off. Oh I agree no one can match you when you're on form, but when was the last time you were on form? If you can't pull it together we might as well accept one of those buyout offers, cash it all in and move to the Caribbean. Before the whole thing goes down the toilet and there's nothing left to sell.'

'Oh yes, you'd love that, wouldn't you? Bail out. Take the money and run.'

'Let me point out,' Aiden gritted his teeth, 'you haven't come up with anything you're happy with for months now. We're at a critical stage in our development, we're too high-profile to depend on a single person's creativity, especially when that one person seems to be veering between hysteria and total block. I've told you before you should focus your energies on the haute couture lines – that's the attention-grabbing stuff – and let the rest of us handle the minor shit . . .'

'It's not minor shit to me!' Georgina screeched back. 'Damn it, Aiden, if you had your way Giordani would be in the Pound Shop, flaunting cartoon duvet covers, polyester pillowcases, and a line of fluffy children's slippers.'

'At least we'd be doing something. You know damn well the Giordani name's hot right now.' Aiden wasn't backing down. 'You could scribble those initials on a tea towel and people would snap them up, but it won't last for ever. The public's fickle. They're tightening their belts right now. Businesses are going down like flies, unemployment rising as fast. If you drop the ball now, by the time you pick it up again the world will have moved on. No one will even remember Giordani once meant something. And frankly I don't know that I'll care. I'm sick of your megalomaniac attitude and the shitty way you treat people.'