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

Penny immediately sat at his feet adoringly, waiting for scraps.

‘You look terrible, Mum,’ Danny said cheerfully.

‘Would you mind turning the radio down,’ Leonie said in a feeble voice, ‘and make me some tea.’

‘Tea?’ roared Danny wickedly, knowing she was hungover.

Leonie shot him a murderous look. ‘Next time you come home from the Micro Club plastered and I make you drink a pint of water and put you to bed, I’ll remind you how cruel you were to me today.’

‘Only kidding, Mum,’ he said. ‘Tea coming up.’

Outside the kitchen window, she could see Clover standing on the sill, staring in at them with an outraged expression on her feline face. She obviously hadn’t been fed.

‘Feed Penny and Clover, too,’ Leonie added. She got to her feet. ‘I’ve got to make a phone call.’

As she rang Doug, she quailed at the thought of how he might react.

‘I’m sorry, was I awful last night?’ she asked as soon as he picked the phone up, not wanting to know the answer.

Doug laughed heartily. ‘Terrible,’ he agreed. ‘I had to stop you dancing on the table in the Hungry Monk, and as for what you tried to do with the cream from your Irish coffee…Well,’ he said, dead-pan, ‘I don’t think they’ll ever accept a booking from us again.’

‘Oh God,’ she groaned.

‘I’m kidding, you fool. You were fine,’ he said. ‘Apart from the bit…’

Leonie held her breath. He was about to say apart from the bit where you tried to snog me.

Instead, he said, ‘…where I had to watch you stagger up the drive to your front door. The taxi driver and I were taking bets on how long it’d take you to get your door keys out of your handbag. I should have walked up with you,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Leonie with relief. ‘I shouldn’t have had that last Irish coffee. It sent me right over the edge.’

Danny came in with a pot of tea.

‘I have to go. I’ll see you soon,’ she said to Doug. ‘Thanks for last night.’

‘Oh, I forgot to tell you, Mum,’ Danny said, helping himself to one of the chocolate biscuits he’d put on the tray with the tea. ‘The girls phoned this morning, early. They got there safely last night so they rang to say they were fine.’

‘Why didn’t you wake me?’ wailed Leonie.

‘You were asleep,’ protested Danny, injured.

‘I’ll ring them now,’ she said frantically.

‘They’re going out for the day, Mel said,’ Danny pointed out. ‘Fliss is bringing them shopping. To some market or something, I can’t remember exactly. You know Mel, dead excited about shopping.’

‘Did you speak to Abby?’ his mother asked in a small voice.

‘Yeah. She sounded excited too. I’m going out, Mum,’ he added. ‘I’ll probably be late tonight. See you.’

‘See you,’ echoed Leonie sadly.

When Hugh phoned later, she was delighted to hear from him. She’d spent such a lonely day in the house. Penny had done her best to comfort her, shoving her cool wet nose into her mistress’s hand occasionally, saying, I’m here. But Leonie felt so inconsolable that even her beloved Penny couldn’t cheer her up.

Hugh’s phone call, therefore, was welcome. Perhaps he’d rung to tell her there was a change of plan and that they were going out after all.

‘Are you still bringing Jane to the theatre?’ she asked hopefully.

‘Yes,’ Hugh said. ‘She’s so excited about it. Poor love is all cut up about that awful ex-boyfriend of hers.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Leonie said untruthfully. She wished Hugh had cried off from his trip with his daughter. Leonie could have done with some company tonight. But kids had to come first, she thought dully. Except Jane wasn’t a kid.

‘You don’t suppose there’s any way Jane would cope if you cried off tonight and came to see me instead?’ Leonie said daringly.

Hugh sounded horrified. ‘I can’t, Leonie,’ he said in shocked tones. ‘That bastard of a boyfriend was stringing her along for ages, she’s so upset about him. She needs me.’

But what about me? Leonie wanted to cry. I need you too. My daughters have gone and they’re more precious to me than some boyfriend-of-three-weeks is to bloody Jane. But she said nothing.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#ulink_d6f5dee9-3a4d-5a3a-92bf-cc28740481f6) Three months later

Felix’s proposal became the stuff of interviews. Another fact to be sculpted into a media sound-bite. The lovely story of how he’d arrived at her house with fifty bouquets (a smidgen of exaggeration was de rigueur for interviews, Felix explained) and a huge diamond, only to end up waiting outside for hours for his beloved to arrive, whereupon he’d nearly developed hypothermia and had needed half an hour in front of the fire before his teeth had stopped chattering.

Hannah was heartily sick of their life becoming fodder for interviews. At least their Caribbean wedding hadn’t made eight pages in Hello! (although Hannah reckoned it was only because Bill, Felix’s agent, had failed to get what she considered a suitable offer from the magazine), but several Sunday newspapers had featured some of the photos. Hannah had been very critical of herself in the simple ankle-length Ben de Lisi gown with her hair trailing down her back and flowers entwined in it. She’d felt fat and pregnant beside Bill, who turned out to be a chain-smoking, over-the-top Londoner who felt a day was wasted if she hadn’t screamed at someone that they were a ‘fucking idiot!’

Short, thin to the point of emaciation, and with big hair the colour of damson jam, Bill turned more heads than the bride did when she arrived at the beachside wedding in a cream trousersuit with nothing on underneath. Apart from the bouffant hair, she looked very Bianca Jagger.

Hannah, who’d been brought up to believe that it was rude to upstage the bride by wearing white or cream, was furious. She’d felt perfectly dressed beforehand. Her skin was a golden colour and gleamed with a healthy sheen thanks to a silken moisturizer with hints of gold in it.

‘She’s a cow,’ she longed to hiss to somebody as she stood beside the pretty altar which was decked out in all manner of exotic blossoms. But there was nobody to hiss to. They were on St Lucia and the guest list consisted of herself, Felix, Bill, her assistant – a lanky young bloke who practically never spoke even when Bill screamed at him – and the official who was going to marry them.

Hannah would have killed to have just one close friend with her on this special day. Even Gillian from the office would have been welcome: just someone she could talk to normally.

By the time Felix had finished his telling of it, the wedding had become a last-minute decision and they’d simply left their home with just the clothes they were standing up in (which didn’t quite explain Hannah’s exquisite dress that had to be ordered three weeks in advance and altered twice to cope with her ever-growing five-months-pregnant belly) and hopped on a plane to the Caribbean.

Just like the romantic charmer he’s playing in his new series, Felix Andretti couldn’t resist marrying his fiancée, Hannah, in the most idyllic manner possible. Instead of spending months organizing church, flowers and the reception, two months ago Felix whisked brunette Hannah off to St Lucia where they married in a simple beachside ceremony with just two close friends as witnesses.

‘We wanted it to be as simple and pure as possible,’Felix says earnestly, unable to tear his eyes away from his stunning Irish wife. ‘I’m a romantic sort of guy and I’d always thought that when I met the right woman, I’d want to get married immediately with no fuss. Marriage is sacred to me and the idea of marrying outdoors with the ocean and nature all around made sense: you’re at one with nature and the one you love. We were both barefoot on the sand. I’ll never forget it. It was just a wonderful spur-of-the-moment thing.’

The couple spent their honeymoon enjoying lazy days swimming and taking moonlit walks along the same beach where they’d got married, mere steps away from their lovely hotel, the charming Rex St Lucian. Felix even tried his hand at scuba diving while Hannah, who’s pregnant with the couple’s first baby, lounged around enjoying the sunshine.

Hannah could barely cope with reading the glowing report in the magazine. Felix had gone scuba diving all right, leaving her alone with bloody Bill for days on end. As Bill’s notion of having a good time meant knocking back as many rum-based cocktails as possible, she didn’t make a very lucid companion.

Some days, Bill held off drinking long enough to play a quick game of tennis with the hotel’s handsome pro, before ending up in the buffet having the odd lettuce leaf with a bottle of chilled white wine. Hannah, who felt too hot to sunbathe, spent most of her time in the air-conditioned bedroom, looking out at the happy couples beside the pool.

She bet she was the only honeymooner in the place who’d spent most of her time on her own.

On their last day there, she’d begged Felix to forget his scuba diving so they could have one day together, perhaps drive around the island and have lunch somewhere…

‘I’ve paid for today,’ Felix protested. ‘It’d be a waste of money to miss the last dive.’