‘Oh, hello, would it be possible to book . . .’ began
Camilla,
but the female voice on the other
end of the line continued
without pausing.
‘This is Roz Vallender. I’m not at home at the moment but
if you’d like me to call you back,’ said Roz’s silkily persuasive
recorded voice, ‘do please leave your name and
number after
the tone. Thank you.’
Standing silent and unnoticed in the shadowy doorway, Roz
saw Camilla’s expression freeze and guessed instantly what had happened.
Obscurely, she had almost known that it would and now she experienced a
shuddering jolt of remorse.
Chapter 4
Camilla never knew afterwards what
made her do it. At the
time,
however, it had seemed there was simply no other choice.
Some part of her mind was telling her: Your life is
changing .. .
in a couple of minutes
you’ll go completely to pieces . . . but in
the meantime, just before that starts, do something that will
hurt
him back.
And although she had always been
uncritically adoring of
her husband, Camilla knew that humiliation would do the trick
far more effectively than tears or recriminations.
As if still frozen in a dream she moved past Roz,
murmuring ‘Excuse me’ as if she were a stranger in a lift. Back into the
sitting-room and to the dinner guests so unsuspecting. Smiling
absently at Loulou who was curled up like a
leather-clad kitten
on the settee, Camilla crossed to the low coffee
table and picked
up her wine glass. As she
sipped the ice-cold Sancerre she
heard
the sitting-room door click shut and from the corner of
her eye glimpsed
Roz’s slender outline.
So she’s wondering what I’m going to
do, thought Camilla
with a smile. It was
rather exciting, in a weird kind of way. She
felt
detached, as if she were just another onlooker or a member
of an
audience.
There was Jack, laughing too loudly at one of his own
jokes
and surreptitiously eyeing Loulou’s
stocking-clad legs. He
looked so handsome and successful and so very
sure of himself that Camilla wondered for a brief moment whether what she
planned to do was fair. Then she remembered
afresh that in just
a few moments, when this dreamlike numbness wore
off, she would have to face up to the worst event of her life.
Replacing her wine glass carefully on
the table she clasped
her hands
around the large, fat white bowl of bronze and cream chrysanthemums and lifted
it into her arms. Jack shot her an
impatient
glance, clearly thinking that she was starting to clear
up in the hope
that their guests might take the hint and leave.
Put them down, he mouthed at her and
Camilla smiled at
him for the last time.
‘
No,’ she said in a
clear, carrying voice. ‘You have them, darling.’ And the contents of the bowl,
a sudden bright tidal
wave of chrysanthemum petals and feathery leaves
and at least three pints of water, flew straight into Jack’s handsome face.
It was the most outrageous gesture she had ever made in
her life and it gave her the most gloriously satisfying sensation she had ever
known. The stunned expressions on the faces of their guests and the incredibly
sudden silence – broken only by the sound of water dripping steadily on to the
floor – was sheer perfection. She wanted to laugh aloud at the absurdity of it
all.
But at the same time she realized that
she was just as likely
to burst
into tears and that now was the moment to escape.
‘
Thank you all for a
most memorable evening,’ she an
nounced in a voice that was amazingly
calm. ‘And now if you would excuse me, I think I shall leave.’
The frosty pavement glittered beneath
the street lamps and to
keep her mind occupied Camilla counted each pool of light as
she walked. Seven street lamps. No
sound other than the
rhythmic click of her own high heels as she headed down
Marson Road towards the common. There would be no lights
there, only trees, but it seemed as good a place
as any to be
aiming for.
‘You were terrific, by the way.’ The voice scarcely
startled Camilla at all, despite the fact that she hadn’t realized she was
being followed. It was Loulou, barefoot and
silent, who had
chased after her and
now she felt tears of gratitude welling up
at the thought that someone
had cared enough to do so.
‘You’ll freeze,’ said Camilla uncertainly, eyeing the
blonde girl’s paper-thin gold top, and Loulou grinned.
‘
Well, you certainly
won’t. Margaret Jameson’s doing her
nut
back there because you walked off with her bit of rabbit.’
She touched
Camilla’s arm, feeling the softness of the mink fur beneath her hand.
‘
Is that why you came
after me?’ said Camilla, saddened.
‘To take her coat back?’
Loulou gripped her arm tightly, pulling her to a halt and
then impulsively flinging her arms around her. It was like hugging a
large, unhappy animal. Camilla’s eyes reminded her
of next
door’s spaniel and now that she had stopped walking her entire
body was beginning to droop with defeat.
‘You idiot, of course not,’ she said gently, trying not to
shiver
as the freezing night air shot down
the back of her shirt. ‘I
spoke to
Roz. She told me all about it. Your husband got what
he deserved and if you hadn’t got there first, Roz
probably
would have done the same
thing herself. She didn’t know, you
see.’
Amazed that she was still able to
speak so calmly, despite
the hot tears trickling down her cheeks, Camilla said, ‘It’s odd.
It never occurred to me to take it out
on her. Whatever else
Jack’s done to me, I’d always thought that at least he was faithful.
And now that I know he hasn’t even been that . . . I can’t
cope . . . everything’s spoilt.’ Her voice cracking, rising as she
fought for control, she said, ‘Oh, Lou, what on
earth am I going
to
do?’
Loulou considered the problem as
rapidly as only a bare
footed,
scantily clad female on the verge of hypothermia could. Her shoes she had
abandoned in the hallway of Camilla’s house,
but
she had her handbag with her. Camilla had nothing but a
stolen fur coat.
‘
Do you want to go back, sweetie?’
‘I can’t. I
really, really can’t.’
‘
Then that’s settled,’ said Loulou briskly, though
her eyes
were kind. ‘You must come and stay with me.’
Chapter 5
In the weeks that followed, Camilla
came to realize how lucky
she was to have been taken in by Loulou, whose irreverent
humour and down-to-earth attitudes did far more good than
the
quiet sympathy and exaggerated concern
she might have
received from anyone else.
‘I’m giving you a week to be really, really upset in,’
Loulou had cheerfully informed her the morning after the fateful dinner
party. ‘And that’s pretty generous because I only
ever allow
myself four days. So, for the next week you can be as
miserable as you like, drink as much as you like and cry buckets. But after
that you have to be cheerful again – why waste
your precious
time grieving over a man who isn’t worth it, after all?’
And while
Camilla had obediently taken her old-new friend’s advice, Loulou discovered for
the first time what it was like to look after someone else, to be in the
position to help them, and
she adored every
minute of it. Like a well-meaning but
hopelessly incompetent nanny, she
attempted to cook appetizing
meals for
Camilla, working on the assumption that since
Camilla was overweight, food would bring her the most comfort.
And since she refused to order food from her
excellent
restaurant, feeling that it
was mainly the thought that counted
and
that Camilla would appreciate it more if Loulou did it
herself, the meals were so appalling that they
were almost funny.
Loulou, whose restaurant featured in all the good
food guides, was incapable of cooking even a potato.
‘
Lovely,’ said Camilla, struggling manfully with burnt
cauliflower and a cheese soufflé the consistency of a place mat.
‘
If you’re going to get
on in life,’ Loulou told her sternly,
‘you really must stop being so
polite. This food is hideous, and
you know
it and I know it, so why don’t we just chuck it in the
bin and open an
enormous bottle of Chablis instead?’
In
that first
week, Camilla appreciated afterwards, she had
consumed
more alcohol than she usually drank in a year. It
helped to blur the edges of her grief, to make the
future seem
not quite so black and best of all it put her to sleep
faster than
Pentothal. As yet, she had made
no plans for the future,
concentrating
solely instead on the realization that her
marriage was over. Other women, she knew, were able to
accept their husband’s flings and infidelities but
never for a
moment did it cross her
mind to do the same. Maybe, if it
hadn’t been Roz, if Jack had had an
affair with some unknown
secretary, it might
just have been bearable. But it
had
been
Roz, and as a result their marriage was obliterated. Her
children, their children . . . she couldn’t even
think about them
just yet, beyond
wondering how Jack would have explained
her sudden disappearance from their lives. Though it horrified
her
to feel so little, she was simply too numb, too wounded at present to do
otherwise.
But she had plenty of time in which to allow her tears and
jumbled thoughts to come to the surface. For
all Loulou’s air
of fragility, she
worked punishing hours in the wine bar,
sometimes fourteen or fifteen hours a day, and although she would pop up
to her flat above the premises every couple of
hours or so to check on Camilla, fry her an inedible snack or
regale
her with snippets of the wickedest gossip, Camilla was alone for the vast
majority of the time.
‘
Come down and join us
whenever you want,’ Loulou urged
on the fifth day, but Camilla backed
off in alarm.
‘I’d be the spectre at the feast,’ she protested. ‘Just
listen to them.’ From the flat they could hear a regular hum of music and
voices punctuated with screams of laughter. Just the thought of joining them
made her shudder.
Loulou pulled a face at her
customers, through the living-
room floor, then leapt up from her position on the leather sofa
and ran over to give Camilla a hug that enveloped her in a
cloud of Chanel.
‘
I know, I know.
Bloody
people – how dare they have fun
whilst
you’re going through hell? But just remember, Cami.
At a rough guess I’d estimate that eighty per cent
of that
crowd downstairs have been
through something similar once
in
their lives. Most of them are divorced, at
least
once, and
even those who are married aren’t necessarily
happy. I know
it’s no comfort to you
at the moment but
no-one
goes, through
life without getting hurt. And those that do,’ she added
paradoxically, with a dismissive gesture of her
slender hands, ‘are such God awful shits that the rest of us wouldn’t want to
be
like them anyway.’
‘Like Jack,’ said Camilla, shredding an amber rosebud
which
had unaccountably found its way out of
its silver vase and into
her restless fingers. Loulou vigorously shook
her head.
‘No! OK, he’s a shit, but I’ll bet you he’s as miserable
as sin
right now. The difference between the
two of you is that he
deserves it and
you don’t, but what you have to do is to come
out on top. You’ve got two more days of feeling sorry for
yourself, Cami, then it’s time to get going with
the old rehab. In
a year’s time I
guarantee,’
she thumped the
coffee table now for emphasis, making their wine glasses shudder, ‘that you’ll be
able to face Jack and feel sorry for the bastard. You’re going to win this one
and I’m going to help you do it.’