Cathy Kelly 6-Book Collection: Someone Like You, What She Wants, Just Between Us, Best of Friends, Always and Forever, Past Secrets

‘Just a minute,’ said Sharon, struggling with mascara that promised lashes like Cindy Crawford’s.

‘Right. I’ll phone my mum,’ Nicole replied. Using the office phone saved her from spending too much on the mobile.

She slipped back into the office where Ms Sinclair was still at her desk tidying up. Nicole immediately crouched down and crept along behind the desks until she reached her own. She took the phone down and wriggled into the space underneath where she’d be safe from detection. Sinclair would kill her for using the phone for personal purposes. At least during office hours, you could always pretend you were on a work call. It was annoying that Sinclair hated her so much. It wasn’t that Nicole didn’t work hard: she did. But Sinclair didn’t understand that Nicole could finish her work more quickly than most people in the department, and then she got bored. She couldn’t help the practical jokes, they helped pass the time.

Her mother answered on the first ring. ‘Hello love,’ she said to Nicole’s whispered hello.

‘Hi Mum,’ hissed Nicole.

‘I can’t hear you,’ said Sandra Turner in her soft, breathy voice. ‘Speak up love.’

‘I can’t,’ hissed Nicole. ‘I’m at work.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Sandra vaguely. There was a pause.

There were always pauses in conversations with Nicole’s mother.

‘I’m going out for a bit tonight, Mum. That’s OK, isn’t it. I know you’ve got Bingo but Gran’s coming over for a few hours, isn’t she?’

‘I suppose. She didn’t phone.’

Another pause.

‘Shall I check if she’s coming over, Mum?’ Nicole volunteered. ‘We can’t leave Pammy on her own and she hates bingo.’

‘OK. You do that. Oh, the doorbell. I’ll get it.’

Nicole heard the phone drop and then her grandmother’s voice with the strong accent that was a strange hybrid of Cockney and Irish even after fifty years in London. A few minutes passed before her mother picked up the phone again. ‘Your gran’s here so I’m going out. See you later.’

She hung up before Nicole even had a chance to speak to her grandmother to ask what time she was staying until. Slowly, Nicole put down the receiver. She was glad her grandmother was there: it gave her a chance to have a night out without worrying about Pammy. She needed someone looking after her and sometimes, even though Nicole hated to admit it, her mother wasn’t up to it.

She crept back the same route to the office door where Sharon was waiting for her, all done up now and reeking of Eternity.

‘Let’s hit the pub, babes,’ Nicole said brightly.

The Red Parrot in Camden was not Dickie Vernon’s idea of a nice venue. It was a young people’s pub for a start, full of computer games, with lots of different coloured condoms in the dispenser in the loos and very loud karaoke. But in his job as a talent scout, Dickie had been in lots of headache-inducing places. Not that he ever said he was a talent scout. No, he was a manager, or so he told people to impress them. It was a great pity that his greatest find, the golden-voiced Missy McLoughlin, hadn’t had the balls for the music business. She was something else that girl. If she’d made it, he’d have been home and dry for life. Fifteen per cent of millions, he’d been sure of it. No more sitting around horrible old clubs looking for the next Celine Dion. The independent record label had been so interested until he’d got greedy and asked for more money. He wouldn’t make that mistake again. When they backed off at his increasingly outrageous demands, Missy’s nerve had failed her and she was now the proud mother of a toddler, lived in an Aberdeen semi and sang at weddings and funerals.

Dickie was back to managing the Val Brothers, a barber shop quartet, and taking care of the affairs of a country and western girl singer whose only resemblance to the successful Nashville ladies was her big, blonde hair. Anyone listening to her murdering ‘Jolene’ would immediately start looking for cotton wool for their ears. Still, she looked the part and that was half the battle, wasn’t it?

His trip to the Red Parrot was to meet up with a small record shop owner who was going to introduce him to a teenage rock band who were all still at school. The record shop guy was late and Dickie, bored rigid now he’d done the crossword in the Daily Star, was sinking whiskies. The karaoke machine was switched on and two drunk rugby playing types were howling their way through ‘Purple Haze’. Jimi Hendrix would turn in his grave, Dickie thought.

It was definitely a stag party. There were around thirty lads, all plastered, and one with a blow up rubber doll on his lap. The stag himself, stupid git. Dickie looked away and ordered another whisky. It was half nine, he’d give the record shop owner another half an hour and he was gone.

He blanked out the dreadful singing from the stag night people who were performing one dreadful rendition after another. A curvaceous brunette wearing spray-on jeans and a clingy red top sat at the table next to his. Dickie admired the way her small waist made her bum look curvier. She turned round and smiled at him. Dickie smiled back, giving her the full works, gleaming capped teeth and the Jack the lad cheeky grin that had been working since he was fifteen, a good twenty-five years before. The brunette winked at him.

He might stay a bit longer after all.

The strains of the old Al Green hit, ‘Let’s Stay Together’, drifted out from the karaoke machine and Dickie didn’t notice. He was considering asking the brunette if she wanted a drink when the vocals started. Two voices were singing, one flat and terrible, the other husky and rich. The husky voice penetrated the room, soaring above the music.

Dickie stared, the brunette forgotten. There, on the Red Parrot dais, stood a tall dark-skinned girl belting out this incredible noise. She was young, maybe twenty. But that voice: throaty and full of age, experience and sex. She sang like a world-weary divorcée who’d had it up to here with drink, drugs and men. Life in the very fast lane. If he hadn’t seen her for himself, Dickie would have sworn blind the singer was at least forty and a chain smoker with tired, hard eyes. Her voice resonated with experience, sex, excitement and power.

And incredibly, it was coming from a young, slim girl with an unlined little face that reminded him of a cat’s, slanting eyes and a profile like an Indian princess. Watching that tiny little face transported as she sang, Dickie felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. He’d found her. His star. His ticket out of here.

‘I haven’t seen you here before,’ said the brunette flirtatiously.

‘Wouldn’t be seen dead here normally,’ Dickie said flatly and went back to watching Nicole Turner. The brunette flounced off.

When the song ended, the audience applauded loudly and Nicole and Sharon bowed happily.

‘Sing another one,’ roared Bacardi King.

‘You sing on your own, Nicole,’ urged Sharon. ‘You’re so much better than me.’

‘No,’ insisted Nicole. ‘You’ve got to stay.’

Normally, the sound of ‘The Power of Love’ at a karaoke session promised the sort of drunken howling that put you in mind of dogs at the full moon but not the way Nicole sang it. Dickie smiled beatifically as her lovely voice reached every high note, swelling where the song demanded it and fading down to gentleness at exactly the right moments. He watched her, mesmerized. He had to talk to her.

She was perfect, made to be a star. But he’d had too much to drink and probably looked more than a little worse for wear. He’d just hit the men’s loos for a minute and make himself respectable, then he’d approach her. After all, who’d believe he was a top-flight manager if he looked seedy and pissed. It would only take a minute.

Nicole flopped onto a seat and fanned herself with the cocktail menu. She felt exhilarated and tired. Now that the fun of the evening was over, she thought she might go home. Duty called, the way it always did. It was half ten and Gran liked to be in her own bed by eleven, come what may. Who knew if Mum was home yet.

The stag night boys were playing a drunken party game that involved discussing your wildest dreams.

Nicole was beside the groom-to-be, who was now wearing a pirate’s hat and eye patch. The blow up doll was sitting on his other side and had a pair of black lacy knickers on her head. The stag put an arm around Nicole and grinned drunkenly at her. With her little cat’s face glowing from the lights and her eyes glittering from her singing triumph, she looked stunning.

‘What would you really want if you could have anything in the whole world?’ he said, pulling Nicole closer to him and breathing in the scent of her hot, slender body, a musky scent mingled with Sharon’s Eternity.

Nicole smiled wryly. She knew what he was thinking: the stag wasn’t ready for the night to end yet. He was getting married in two days and yearned for one last wild fling to finish off his days of bachelorhood. Nicole was mildly amused that he’d even dreamed that she’d be up for it. He absolutely wasn’t her type and he was roaringly drunk. What a plonker.

‘Go on,’ he crooned, obviously thinking he was onto a good thing. ‘What would you like?’

‘I’d love a place of my own,’ she said suddenly. ‘My own flat where I could come and go as I liked and didn’t need to be there for anyone, total freedom.’

‘Wayhay!’ roared the groom. ‘I’ve got my own place and we could go back there now, I’ve got drink and everything…’

‘That’s not what I meant, you toe rag,’ Nicole said, calmly emptying the remains of her beer all over him. She’d had enough to drink.

He squealed with horror and Nicole daintily leaped up from the seat beside him, blew him a kiss and then tapped Sharon on the arm. ‘I’m outta here,’ she said, ignoring the furiously mouthing groom.

Dickie Vernon came out of the men’s room, looking much more together, much more like a successful manager of incredible talent. Thank God they still sold those mini toothbrush and toothpaste combos in toilet dispensers. Slicking back his dark hair, he made his way over to the stag party and looked around for the young, dark girl. But she was gone.

Nicole locked the front door and pulled over the curtain that kept the draught from blowing straight up the stairs. 12a Belton Gardens was a great place for draughts. Sometimes, the winter wind whistled from the front door right through the flat and out the back door again, making the kitchen and the narrow hall no-go areas. Nicole had tried draught excluder but it kept falling off so she’d bought a big curtain for over the front door instead. If only her mother would remember to draw it.

She walked into the small cosy sitting room where her mother was sitting on the old flowery couch wrapped up in a tartan blanket and watching a late night film. A mug of tea sat in front of her and she had a bowl of popcorn on her lap.

‘Hello love,’ she said, not taking her eyes off the screen.

‘Hi Mum,’ Nicole said, sitting on the faded pink armchair beside the fire. Her mother’s collection of china pigs glared down at her from the mantelpiece, alongside several scented candles which Nicole was always in mortal terror would set the place alight.