‘We can come…’ Sally began.
‘Sally love, I need this time alone,’ Virginia interrupted. ‘I really do. Please make Dominic see that, you know I can’t tell him myself.’
‘I know. He only wants to help,’ Sally said quietly. ‘We all do.’
Virginia shrugged. ‘Nobody can help me but myself.’
Nicole Turner looked as if she was working – for once. Her dark head was bent over her desk and there was no tell-tale grin on her impish face which would have been a sure sign that she was telling jokes with her next-door neighbour, the equally feckless Sharon Wilson.
From her position at the top of the room, Ms Sinclair, claims department supervisor, narrowed her eyes as she looked at the bane of her life. Nicole Turner could look demure and hardworking even when she was secretly planning some prank that would cause uproar in the busiest department of the London headquarters of Copperplate Insurance. Like that time she’d rigged the big clock behind Ms Sinclair’s desk so it was half an hour early, meaning that everyone left for lunch at half twelve instead of one.
Naturally, Nicole had switched the clock back during lunchtime, so that when everyone arrived back at two, they’d actually had an hour and a half for lunch. In Ms Sinclair’s eyes, this was a sacking offence but she had no proof that Nicole was responsible so nothing could be done. And the section head pointed out that Nicole’s work was always excellent, so there were no grounds for firing her.
You had to watch her all the time, Ms Sinclair decided darkly. It was a task she relished.
At her desk at the back of the room, Sharon Wilson’s phone rang and she picked it up.
‘Hello, claims department,’ she trilled.
‘Is that old bitch still watching me like a hawk?’ asked Nicole, who was less than three feet away but who knew that clerical staff talking without actually being attached to their phones were in for a big black mark from Ms Sinclair.
Sharon peeked up the room. ‘Yes. Actually, she’s really staring at you now.’
‘Shit.’
Out of the corner of her eye, Sharon could see Nicole stand up and search through some files on her desk, her brow furrowed as if she’d been asked a sticky question by a customer and needed to check it out. Nicole located the big Copperplate Insurance manual and sighed theatrically as though her greatest wish in the entire world had been granted because she’d found the manual. She flicked through the pages and stopped in the middle.
‘Ms Wilson,’ she said now in her best placate-the-customer voice, ‘I’m afraid we won’t be able to cover your claim for the deer running out onto the road and flattening your Mini Cooper…’
Sharon giggled and had to hide behind her computer so nobody could see her.
‘You see, Ms Wilson, we happen to know that you were down the Three Crowns public house on the night in question and had seventeen pints of best bitter, before you climbed into the driver’s seat and drove home, with your boyfriend in the seat behind you attempting to remove your brassiere; a feat not recommended in the Rules of the Road handbook. Therefore, we feel unable to cough up the twenty-seven thousand pounds you feel entitled to. We will be, however, paying for plastic surgery for the deer, alright?’
Sharon giggled some more.
‘Seriously.’ Nicole had switched into her normal voice although to any onlooker, her expression was as grave as if she was on company business. ‘I’ve just got an e-mail from my pal Bacardi King. One of his friends is getting married and the stag party’s in the Red Parrot tonight and if you’re interested, we can go.’
‘To a stag party on a Thursday?’ said Sharon dubiously.
Nicole allowed herself to smile. ‘Ms Sin-Free-Zone-Clair isn’t in tomorrow so we can be as hungover as skunks and nobody will mind. And all Bacardi’s female friends are going. Having men only at stags is very old fashioned.’
‘OK,’ said Sharon, who adored Nicole and who felt that in the three years she’d worked with her, her own social life had improved no end. Nicole hung up and returned to her e-mail.
‘Hi B-King, love to hit Red Parrot with u. Is dressing up part of plan? Haven’t dressed up since I went to hallowe’en night party as a mummy – all rolled up in loo roll taken from the last pub. The bouncers in the night-club didn’t see the funny side of it, for some reason. Said I could be charged with robbing loo paper! No sense of humour. See u at 8.
Nicole.
Thursdays were perfect for going out. Her gran came over on a Thursday, so Nicole didn’t have to worry about who was going to be babysitting five-year-old Pammy.
At six o’clock on the nail, Nicole got up from her desk, dragged her backpack from underneath it and stalked off to the loos on her gravity-defying knee-high boots, regardless of the fierce glares from Ms Sinclair.
Sharon watched her friend enviously. Nicole just didn’t care about what people thought. Nicole never got embarrassed when she went to buy her round and found she didn’t have enough cash, and she’d just laughed the day they’d been running for the bus and she fell into a puddle of water, with at least thirty people watching. Sharon would have been puce with embarrassment. Nicole groaned good humouredly because the entire front of her skintight jeans were damp.
‘I’ll look like I wet myself,’ she said, ‘and we haven’t even had a drink yet!’
At five past six, having delayed for a few minutes because that way, it looked as if she was so engrossed in her work that she hadn’t noticed the time, Sharon gave her desk a cursory bit of tidying and rushed to the loos. Nicole was there, having a forbidden cigarette before she put on the minuscule amount of make-up she wore.
That was another reason to be jealous of her best friend, Sharon thought with a resigned sigh as she compared their reflections in the mirror. Nicole was so beautiful. Her café au lait skin glowed no matter how exhausted she was, and the tigerish amber eyes with their feline tilt at the outer edges dominated her triangular little face. Her concession to make-up was lots of glossy lipstick because her mouth, inherited from her mother instead of from her Indian father, was on the small side.
Her hair was her one vanity: she spent a fortune on conditioning treatments and shine products and it hung in a long, glossy curtain down her back. Even her body obeyed her. Tall, and slender as a reed, she had fantastic legs that looked scarily long in the black PVC mini-skirt she’d just changed into.
But Nicole was just about the best friend in the entire universe, which meant you couldn’t be jealous of her.
‘Want a fag?’ Nicole asked now in her husky voice.
Sharon took one, lit it and went into a cubicle to pee. They weren’t supposed to smoke in the loos but if Nicole could do it, so could she.
‘Are you up for karaoke tonight?’ Nicole said, pulling off her cream work jumper and wriggling into a small pink T-shirt with glittery stars emblazoned all over the front.
From behind the toilet door, Sharon groaned. ‘You know I can’t sing and I’m not making a fool of myself in front of all those guys at the stag night.’
‘Oh come on,’ Nicole begged. She needed someone to get up and sing with her or she’d feel stupid doing it. She hated show offs. Nicole adored singing and had been exercising her raw husky voice in private since she’d been a child. She often wrote her own songs but it was only for fun. Singing publicly was another matter. There was nothing worse than people who thought they were Kiri Te Kanawa getting up at family parties and sounding like a collection of drunken crows. Nicole couldn’t bear that. But since, at