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

‘Hannah, it’s your mother. I know it’s last minute, but can Stuart and Pam stay with you for the weekend?’

‘What?’ said Hannah crossly, furious that it wasn’t Felix phoning her and just as furious at the thought of having her brother and his wife to stay with her for the weekend. The flat was much too small for guests and, what’s more, she and Pam didn’t get on. Mind you, neither did she and Stuart. ‘Last minute isn’t the word. Why couldn’t they have asked me before now? And why are you phoning, Mum? Has Stuart lost the use of his dialling finger?’ she added sarcastically. Her brother was their mother’s pet and she did everything for him.

‘Don’t fly off the handle, would you, Hannah,’ her mother said, unperturbed. ‘They’re up for a wedding and the arrangements for the hotel didn’t work out. It’s the least you can do. They’ll be up by ten tonight, and Pam says not to bother cooking.’

Hannah snorted. She’d had no intention of doing any such thing.

She drove home in a rage. The flat was immaculate as always, although after a weekend of Stuart, it’d doubtless be a tip. Hannah left fresh sheets and a duvet cover on top of the spare-room bed but didn’t change the bedclothes – her brother could do that. She wasn’t running a damned hotel. In fact, that was probably why Stuart was coming there. Too mean to pay for a hotel, she guessed accurately.

She cooked an omelette for herself and watched television, simmering away at the thought of both her inconsiderate brother and Felix. Why go to all the bother of chatting her up and pretending to be crazy about her if he had no intention of ever seeing her again? What was the point? Hannah didn’t get it. Was the chat-up a type of sport? Did handsome guys keep scoreboards on flirting so they could gauge how irresistible they were? Probably. She had a mental vision of Felix boasting about how he’d made ‘this girl in the estate agent’s drool for me! I tell you, lads, she was eating out of my hand.’

Stuart and Pam arrived at half eleven, waking Hannah who’d fallen asleep in front of the telly after watching Frasier.

‘Thought you’d be out on a Friday night,’ said Stuart, dumping a giant suitcase on to the floor and prowling around the flat speculatively.

‘How could I be out if I was waiting for you pair?’ demanded Hannah, immediately irritated.

‘You could have left a key with the neighbours,’ he said.

‘You could have booked into a hotel,’ Hannah suggested.

Pam, used to the way her husband and his sister got on, made her way to the kitchen and put the kettle on.

‘Do make yourselves at home,’ sniped Hannah, furious at how her sister-in-law had blithely made herself at home without asking permission.

‘We will,’ said Pam, a self-satisfied woman who was oblivious to all subtle and not-so-subtle innuendo.

‘Nice place,’ Stuart said, throwing himself on to the couch and testing how springy it was. ‘Got yourself a man yet?’

Hannah remembered why she and Stuart had fought like cat and dog as children. Although they looked alike – he was tall with dark hair and eyes the same colour as his sister – they were utterly unalike on the inside. Stuart was lazy, careless and, as he proudly put it, ‘spoke his mind’. In Hannah’s book, that meant he was blunt verging on rude. They brought out the worst in each other. She thought he was one of life’s takers, while Stuart clearly thought his sister was an uptight cow. When she’d been working for the Triumph Hotel, Stuart had thought nothing of asking for comped rooms for all his pals on wild stag nights, yet if she asked him to have a look at her car – as he was a mechanic – he’d procrastinate until she got angry and paid someone else to do it.

‘Yes, I do have a man, Stuart,’ she snapped. ‘He’s an actor, but he’s away,’ she lied. ‘There are sheets in the spare room, towels in the hotpress and I’m going to bed. Good night.’

‘Don’t you want tea?’ asked Pam, appearing at the door of the kitchen with a pot of tea and a big packet of biscuits on a tray.

‘No.’

At least they went off early the next morning, after a lot of arguing in the bathroom about who’d steamed up the mirror, and Pam complaining that Stuart never said she looked nice in anything.

Hannah, awake but remaining in bed in case she had to get involved, could hear everything through the thin walls of the flat.

‘I got this hat specially for the wedding,’ Pam roared at Stuart. ‘The least you could do is say that it’s nice.’

‘It’s not!’ yelled Stuart. ‘You can’t wear a red hat with red hair. You look stupid.’

When they’d banged the door loudly on the way out, Hannah finally relaxed. She got up, made herself a cup of coffee and planned her day. Grocery shopping, the gym and a trip to the cinema with Leonie and the twins tonight. It was only then she remembered that she had forgotten to give Stuart and Pam a key to the flat. Tough bananas, she thought grimly. She’d be out until at least eleven and if they wanted to get in before that, they could go hang. Serve them right for being too mean to pay for a hotel bedroom.

She got home at half eleven, tired but relaxed. Mel and Abby had been so funny that she hadn’t been able to be miserable. Watching them checking out good-looking blokes in the cinema had been much more fun than watching the movie. When she got to the top of the stairs in the house, Pam and Stuart were sitting outside her flat door looking furious.

‘How did you get in?’ asked Hannah, not pleased that any of the other tenants had let them in.

‘Never mind that,’ snarled Stuart, who was obviously plastered. ‘Why the hell didn’t you give us a key so we could get in? Or why couldn’t you be here to let us in?’

‘I was out with my boyfriend,’ Hannah said sweetly, ‘and I didn’t think you’d be home so early. The free bar ended, did it?’

She let them in and Stuart immediately threw himself on to the couch, shoes and all, and went to sleep. His drunken snores reverberated about the flat and Hannah looked at him with disgust.

‘I don’t know why you stay with him,’ she said to Pam, staring at her brother’s prone figure. ‘He’s a drunk, like his father.’

‘He’s not, he’s nothing like your father,’ Pam protested.

‘Isn’t he?’ said Hannah bitterly. ‘He’s just the same, if you ask me: useless and bone idle. I’m amazed he’s still going to work. I thought he’d have you earning it all by now, with him only venturing out to the bookies.’

‘Stuart doesn’t gamble any more and he isn’t a big drinker,’ Pam protested. ‘We were at a wedding, after all. I can’t remember the last time he got drunk. Just because you’ve got a hang-up about your father, don’t tar Stuart with the same brush.’

‘I don’t,’ snapped Hannah. ‘I merely see Stuart heading the same way. Like father like son.’

‘What about like mother like daughter?’ said Pam pointedly.

Hannah whirled round. ‘I am not like my mother. I refuse to be tied to some useless lump of a man who’s good for nothing.’

‘What was Harry?’ asked Pam nastily.

Hannah’s lip wobbled. That was below the belt.

‘You’re the one who keeps going for useless lumps of men,’ her sister-in-law continued mercilessly. ‘At least Stuart married me,’ she sniffed. She pulled a protesting Stuart from the couch and dragged him into the spare bedroom, leaving Hannah furious and upset behind her.

She didn’t fall for useless men, she didn’t. She’d been unlucky. That was all. Pam didn’t know what she was talking about. If Hannah had been married to someone as unmotivated as Stuart, she wouldn’t have boasted about it. Honestly, some women thought that wedding rings were the be all and end all of life. How stupid could you get?

Tired from two nights tossing and turning, thinking about what Pam had said, Hannah overslept on Monday and woke up to hear the news at eight.

‘Shit, shit, shit,’ she groaned, dragging herself out of bed, knowing she wouldn’t have time to wash her hair. She showered quickly, threw on the first thing she came to in her wardrobe – a plain brown dress that really only looked good with washed, fluffy hair and plenty of make-up – and was out the door in fifteen minutes. She brushed on some eyeshadow and lipstick at traffic lights and cursed for not having time to do her hair. She hated greasy roots.

‘Had a nice weekend, Hannah?’ asked Gillian loudly, looking at her watch pointedly as Hannah burst through the office door at ten past nine.

Hannah sniffed in reply. She refused to get riled by Gillian.

She grabbed a cup of coffee and sat at her desk, trying to sort her brain out. She’d been so distracted on Thursday and Friday thinking about Felix that she really was behind with work. By half ten, she’d only managed to drink half of her coffee. Ravenous after having no breakfast, she rushed over to the percolator hoping to get a fresh cup and maybe a biscuit. The percolator was empty and so was the biscuit tin. Weary, hungry and miserable, Hannah felt like crying. The whole world was against her.

Her phone rang and she marched back to her desk to pick it up.

‘What are you doing tonight, Ms Campbell?’ purred Felix.

Hannah nearly dropped the phone with shock.

‘Er…nothing,’ she said, too astonished to revert to her make-him-suffer plan.

‘Good. Would you like to go to the theatre with me? We could have a little supper afterwards.’