Just Friends (18 page)

Freya’s thoughts drifted off, conjuring up images of how her life should be, or could have been, or might be, until the rattle of cups alerted her to the fact that it was almost midnight. She paid her bill, popped a mint in her mouth to keep herself going, and caught the uptown bus home.

The lights were out in the apartment. To be on the safe side, Freya inserted her key with silent stealth and, once the front door was open, took off her shoes and tucked them under her arm. All was quiet. She tiptoed into the hall, and waited for her eyes to adjust. The living-room door was open. She could make out humps of furniture in the half-dark; a green pinprick light indicated that the stereo had been left on. She was moving forward to turn it off when she was halted by a tiny sound, the merest breath of a sigh. Someone was in the room.

Freya stood still, nerves tingling. Just then a car entered the street. Its approaching headlights cast a fuzzy, sulfurous glow through the curtains. As in a slow-motion dream, Freya made out the erect shapes of wine bottles and guttered candles on the central table, then the dark pools of discarded clothing that formed a trail across the floor, finally the saggy couch where it appeared that some strange, shadowy beast lay sprawled in sleep. There was an orange flash as the car passed, and all became clear. Jack lay with his back to her, naked. She caught a blond spark of tousled hair, the gleam of one smooth shoulder flexed to hold an almost invisible Candace, the tangle of four legs crooked into the sofa’s embrace. Candace’s small, ringed hand rested intimately on the muscled curve of his buttocks.

The light disappeared, eclipsing the coupled figures and leaving Freya blind. But the image remained vivid in her mind. She was aware of her heart urgently beating. It was the surprise, she told herself. Moving as quickly as she dared, almost hurrying, she entered her own room and closed the door.

CHAPTER 12

“Sshhh!” hissed a voice.

Freya, who was standing at the kitchen sink, elbow-deep in dishwater, twisted her head to find Candace glaring at her from the doorway. In the full force of daylight, without makeup and enveloped in Jack’s dressing gown, she looked very young. Her toenails were painted dark plum.

“He’s trying to sleep!” she protested.

Freya hoisted a handful of cutlery out of the water, held it in the air for a few pointed seconds, then dropped the lot onto the steel drainer.

“Who?” she asked, when the jangle had subsided.

“Jack, of course! His head hurts, poor baby. I think he’s sick.”

“Huh! Hangover, more like. I cleared away about ten million bottles. Not to mention all this other rubbish. Anyway, it’s practically afternoon.” Freya added a lid to a pile of pans, which collapsed with a crash.

“You don’t have to do that, you know,” said Candace. “I like cleaning up.”

Freya gave a martyred shrug. “It’s done now.”

“Do you have any orange juice?” Candace asked.

Freya dried her hands on the dishcloth, considering this question. “
I
have orange juice, yes. Jack does not. He likes us to shop separately. That means I shop and he doesn’t. Where’s my coffee, by the way?”

“Oh. Was that
your
. . . ?” Candace’s voice trailed into silence under Freya’s glowering gaze.

“Great! Fantastic!” Freya snapped her wet dishcloth angrily. Then she stalked to the fridge and threw it open. In one swift movement, she grabbed the juice and plonked it on the counter.

“There! To you, Candace, I grant the freedom of the orange juice carton, to do with as you will.”

Candace’s brow wrinkled. “Does that mean I can take some to Jack?”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes,
yes
! God! It’s not as though he can’t afford the stuff. Bloody Jack Madison the bloody Third.”

“The Third?” Candace paused in her search for a glass.

“Ridiculous, isn’t it? You’d think he was royalty. He probably is, down on the ol’ plantation, with the magnolia a-blossomin’ and the bullfrogs a-croakin’ and the Cadillacs a-revvin.’ ”

“Every man likes to be king in his own home. I think that’s nice.”

Freya made a gagging noise.

Candace eyed her suspiciously. “Are you a feminist?”

“If that means being equal to men, of course. Aren’t you?”

Candace thought about this while she poured out the juice. “I have respect for myself as a woman. But men and women are different. I mean, look at our bodies.”

What drivel she talked. Freya folded her arms. “Tell me, Candace, what would you like to do?”

“Be rich and famous.” Candace gave a confident smile. “Shop, travel, develop myself as a person.”

Freya arched an eyebrow. “Ambitious stuff.”

“I think so. What about you?”

Freya had a standard answer to this commonplace inquiry: set up her own gallery, develop artists she had chosen—at
their
pace, not according to the whims of the market, blah blah. But explaining it to this lamebrain was a waste of breath. She cocked her head. “Uh-oh. Was that the Master’s voice?”

Candace scurried away with her precious juice, boobs bouncing, leaving Freya to flick her hair in irritation. The idea of playing piggy-in-the-middle with Jack and Candace all weekend made the blood thrum in her ears. She would make her escape, but not before she’d had a little word with Jack—if he ever got out of bed. Freya decided that now would be a good moment to reorganize the saucepan cupboard.

Earlier, from her vantage point at the sink, Freya had noticed that someone had set out some tatty deck chairs in the backyard. It was a sparkling day, the sky washed to a clear cerulean blue by last night’s rain. Fetching the newspaper and a pile of envelopes from the hall floor, she carried them outside and settled herself in the hot sunshine. She leafed through the post, mostly dull-looking brown jobs apart from a thick, cream envelope addressed to Jack. She turned it over and idly rubbed a thumb across the embossed flap, which proclaimed the sender to be Jack’s father. With any luck, he had decided to disinherit his useless son.

There was one item for her, a large padded envelope redirected from Michael’s address, franked by a London PR firm whose name she recognized. Freya’s face tightened. Tash had never written to her once in all the years she’d lived in New York. If she was doing so now, it would hardly be out of sisterly affection. Freya ripped the envelope open and pulled out a glossy magazine. Good grief!—
Country Life.
She flipped through the pages depicting clipped yew hedges, prize bulls, and luscious English country houses until she found a compliments slip covered in huge scrawly writing:
Daddy said I should send this to you. See p. 51.—T.

Freya pursed her lips and turned to the relevant spot, where she found a full-page color photograph of Tash on the girls-in-pearls page.
Country Life
had always featured a portrait like this—the English middle-class equivalent of a
Playboy
centerfold—which advertised the charms of a well-born or aspirant young lovely, usually on the occasion of her engagement or marriage. No wonder Tash was thrilled. But surely the girls used to wear high-necked frilly blouses and Alice bands, and were snapped in midembrace of a labrador or a cherry tree in blossom, not sprawled half-naked across a red velvet chaise longue.
Country Life
had certainly changed. Freya smoothed the page flat and stared stonily at Tash’s flawless young skin, her greeny-hazel eyes innocently wide, the showy ring oh-so-casually prominent on one perfectly manicured hand. Underneath the portrait was the usual formulaic caption.
Miss Natasha Penrose, 25, only daughter of the late Mr. John Huffington and Mrs. Guy Penrose of Trewennack, Cornwall, is to be married to Roland Swindon-Smythe, only son of Mr. and Mrs. Barry Swindon-Smythe of The Shrubberies, Totteridge Common, Essex.

Reading the announcement in black and white made Freya catch her breath in panic. The wedding was exactly two weeks away, and she had nobody to go with.
What was she going to do?
She slammed the magazine to the ground upside down and picked up today’s newspaper instead, hoping to distract her thoughts.

She was trying to concentrate on a lament for the demise of the formal dining room when Jack stumbled out from the kitchen. He slumped in a chair and put his head in his hands. “Urghh,” he said.

Freya read her paper in icy silence.

“I think I might be dead. No flowers, please.”

Freya ignored him—the cheap, slobbish, cruel, selfish bastard.

He stretched noisily and let out an uninhibited yawn. The silence ticked by. Freya waited. Finally he asked, in a carefully casual voice, “How was your evening?”

“Sensational, thank you.”

“Really?” Jack’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Pure poetry. There’s nothing like a man who worships the ground you walk on—particularly if it’s his own body. Excuse me, his own
hairy
body. Though those handcuffs need some new padding, that I will say.”

Jack was looking at her in alarm. “You’re kidding.”

“Of course, I’m kidding!” Freya jumped to her feet and began thwacking him about the head with her newspaper. “How dare you set me up with a pervert?”

“I didn’t—ow!—set you up. You answered the ad yourself. It was your choice. Stop that!” With mortifying ease, Jack relieved her of the paper and held her at arm’s length. “I don’t get it, Freya. Can’t you even last a week without a man?”

“Look who’s talking!” Freya twisted out of his grasp. “You can’t let even a
day
pass without picking up some woman—however feeble-minded.”

Jack bared his teeth in a taunting smile. “Maybe it’s not their minds that interest me.”

“Where’s the
maybe
in that? No wonder you can’t write anymore, Jack. You’re about as intellectually challenged as a piece of plankton.”

His eyes flickered. “At least I don’t need to scour the lonely-hearts ads.”

They glared at each other.

“I almost forgot.” Freya reached into her shorts pocket. “Last week’s rent. Thank you so much for the privilege.” She tossed a wad of dollar bills in his general direction. The notes separated and fluttered onto the rough grass.

After a pointed pause, Jack bent to pick them up and folded them with exaggerated care. He sagged back in his chair and considered her through eyes narrowed against the sun. “You’re really not going to like yourself when you read my novel,” he told her.

“You can’t put me in your novel. That’s libel.”

Jack’s face clouded over. “Speaking of libel, I had a long talk with Michael yesterday. Someone mutilated his wardrobe. He’s thinking of suing.”

“He wouldn’t dare.”

“Gives the word
lawsuit
a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?”

“Hi, everybody,” chirruped a voice. “I’ve made us all some lemonade.”

Candace tripped out to them with a tray, fully dressed and restored to bandbox perfection—lips glossed, hair smoothed, and no doubt manicured, waxed, depilated, and hygienically sprayed in all problem areas. Freya looked down at her bare legs and scuffed trainers. Time to leave.

“Thank you, Candace.” She took a glass and drained it. “You don’t mind if I borrow Rosinante, do you, Jack?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Rosie who?” Candace frowned suspiciously.

“Rosinante is Jack’s pet bicycle,” said Freya, “and after you, Candace, the thing he loves most in the world. It’s named after Don Quixote’s horse.”

“Oh, right. He was in
The Waltons
, wasn’t he?”

“Come on, Jack.” Freya kicked him, none too gently, on the leg. “It’s in your interest: I’m going to check out some apartments.”

He looked up sharply. “You’re moving out?”

“Are you begging me to stay?”

“Let me know when I can crack open the champagne.”

“Is this your sister?” interrupted Candace. She had picked up the magazine that Freya had stupidly left lying open on the grass.

“Stepsister,” Freya agreed shortly.

“Let’s see.” Jack held out his hand. Obediently, Candace gave him the magazine and draped herself over the back of his chair, her cheek next to his, so that they could read it together.

Jack examined the photograph, and whistled. “I thought you said she was a schoolgirl, Freya.”

“She was. She grew up.”

“I’ll say.”

“Look, Jack!” Candace pointed excitedly. “It says she’s getting married! Isn’t that amazing?”