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

‘Female.’

‘Goodie. I’ll come along.’

‘You can’t.’

Felix pretended to think about this. ‘ “Can’t” isn’t a word I recognize.’

‘I suppose “no” isn’t a word you recognize, either,’ Hannah teased.

He grinned in assent.

The phone rang and Hannah grabbed it. It was David looking for Felix. She passed the receiver over and heard them arrange to meet somewhere else as David was still delayed.

‘I better get going,’ Hannah said sweetly.

‘Can I see you again?’ Felix asked, leaning against the desk, only a few feet away from her. She breathed in his aftershave, feeling drunk already on this heady sensation.

‘Yes. Now, bye.’

‘Do you want a lift?’ he asked.

‘I’m going to take the bus, I left my car at home.’

Felix’s smile was almost feral. ‘Let me drive you in – we can talk on the way. I want to discover everything about you.’

Hannah thought of Harry’s second letter which was burning a hole in her handbag with its pleading for her to answer his previous one. She’d got it that morning and had read it twice. Please agree to see me, it’s important.

Stuff Harry. She needed to live a little.

Swathed in a flowing cerise dress with nails and lips the same vibrant colour, Leonie sailed into Sachs’ bar and tried to look as if she wasn’t feeling self-conscious. She was out of her familiar black plumage and had left off a lot of her normal eye make-up, the combination of which made her feel as if she’d come out half-naked or with her skirt tucked up into her knickers. But none of these people would know that. To them, she had to appear confident and relaxed, a woman about to meet her two new friends and to tell them her thrilling news.

She spotted Emma almost immediately. Jammed into a corner by one of the windows, Emma was mouselike in beige office gear, sipping what had to be mineral water. That’d have to stop, Leonie decided happily as she progressed regally through the bar. She’d left her car at home so she could have a few drinks, and she’d insist Emma went home in a taxi if necessary because she was letting her hair down too. On the phone, Emma had sounded depressed even though she’d done her best to cover it up. Leonie had been convinced for many years that while alcohol couldn’t cure anything, a couple of glasses of wine made the pain fuzzier and more bearable.

‘Emma, love, how nice to see you.’

‘Leonie!’

They hugged warmly and Leonie was relieved to feel that her friend wasn’t quite as sliver-thin as she had been in Egypt. Emma would never be a candidate for Weight Watchers, but at least she’d lost that skeletal look.

‘You look amazing,’ Emma exclaimed. ‘That colour really suits you. Is the dress new?’

‘Old as the hills, nearly as old as I am,’ Leonie revealed. ‘I’ve never had the guts to wear it before, but I’m celebrating…’ She broke off and grinned. ‘Can’t tell you until Hannah gets here. We need a full coven for revelations.’

‘Thank God somebody has good news,’ Emma said, sinking back into the banquette, her body flattening against the back of the seat as if all the energy had been drained out of every muscle.

Leonie took a good look at her. Emma was naturally pale-skinned and even a week in the sweltering Egyptian sun hadn’t done anything more than give her nose and cheekbones a faint dusting of tan. But she looked paler now than Leonie would have expected. After all, they were only back three weeks. She was still quite freckly herself, an effect she helped along with liberal dustings of bronzing powder.

‘What’s up?’ she said fondly, patting Emma’s slender knee.

‘Where do I begin?’ Emma groaned, thinking of worrying over her mother and of how her father’s comments about the loan had been driving her insane with quiet frustration.

‘Not without me, you can’t spill any beans without me,’ came a voice and Hannah appeared, bringing with her several admiring glances and the waiter, who had studiously ignored the other two up till then.

Eyes glittering, Hannah sank into the seat beside Emma and attempted to wipe the enormous dirty great grin off her face. She failed.

‘You’ll never guess what’s just happened, girls!’ Her mouth quivered with excitement and she kept moistening her full bottom lip with her tongue, a nervous tic that was clearly having a terrible effect on the waiter’s equilibrium.

‘Can I get you a drink?’ he said in what sounded like a German accent, trying not to drool.

Hannah turned her glittering toffee-coloured eyes to him and breathed, ‘Yes,’ in a come-to-bed husky drawl. ‘I’ll have a martini with white lemonade, thank you.’

The waiter looked as if the words ‘martini with white lemonade’ were code for ‘Can you bring me round the back of the bar and shag me senseless,’ because he stayed gazing lovingly at Hannah for several moments before Leonie decided she needed to hear whatever exciting thing had happened to Hannah, and that she wouldn’t hear it with him hanging about with his tongue around his knees.

‘I’ll have a glass of white wine and so will you, Emma,’ she said loudly.

Emma didn’t even protest. The waiter loped off.

‘Now,’ Leonie turned on Hannah, ‘if Mel Gibson walked into your office today and asked you personally to show him a couple of love nests, I want his phone number and his vital statistics or we are never going to be friends ever again, got it?’

Hannah giggled like a naughty convent girl caught out playing hooky from Home Ec so she could have a sneaky fag. ‘It’s much, much better than Mel Gibson.’ She beamed at them and began patting her chest as if to still her beating heart.

‘What?’ said Emma, agog.

‘Yeah, what’s better than Mel Gibson?’ demanded Leonie, who’d spent a happy evening with Mel and half a bottle of Lambrusco the night before, courtesy of an old Lethal Weapon movie.

‘Felix Andretti,’ breathed Hannah.

‘Who?’ asked the other two in unison.

‘He’s an actor, the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen.

Older than Brad Pitt, but with that same golden glow to him and, oh, I can’t describe him.’

‘Yes, you bloody can!’ squealed Emma in excitement. ‘The most fun I’ve had since I last met you two was pushing my trolley round Superquinn wondering whether to splurge on steak or buy special-offer pork again. I need glamour in my life, so tell me,’ she commanded, her throaty voice low and vibrating with humour.

‘OK.’

They all scooched up closer on the banquette to hear the lowdown on Felix but had to wait until the waiter dispensed their drinks with agonizing slowness.

‘Thanks,’ they said automatically, willing him to be gone.

‘Is he straight, single, or does he have a mad wife locked in the attic à la Mr Rochester?’ Leonie asked when they were alone again.

Hannah appeared to think about this. ‘You know,’ she said meditatively, ‘I don’t know and,’ she smirked, ‘I don’t care! He’s bloody gorgeous and I am seriously in lust. We are talking drop-dead gorgeous, girls.’

She took a sip of martini but barely tasted it: she was high on excitement and didn’t need alcohol for any buzz.

‘He’s half-Spanish and he’s been living in London for the past few years. He’s making a new TV series in Wick-low for the next six months and he needs a flat. He’s a friend of my boss, although I don’t know from where. I couldn’t imagine two more different people. David is buttoned-up and serious; Felix is exotic, different, a free spirit, a man who doesn’t plan life but faces everything on his own terms,’ she added dreamily, thinking of how Felix had wanted to drop his plans for the evening to take her out. Just like that. He’d been struck by the thunderbolt of attraction the same way she had.