Chapter 14
Cammy
The potato tortillas, chicken croquettes, albondigas, pintxos and large carafe of sangria had barely hit the table when Josie morphed into Agatha Christie on an inquisitive day.
‘So what do we really know about her though?’ she pondered, doing her best Poirot.
Val laughed and Cammy tried not to. ‘Christ Almighty, Josie, you need to give it a rest.’
‘I can’t,’ she wittered, digging a fork into one of the meatballs.
‘Since they banned smoking in public places, and I cut down to one pack a day, I need to keep my mind distracted and my mouth busy. Anyway, Cameron…’ she sometimes liked to use his full name when she was attempting to take the moral high ground, ‘all this comes from a place of love. And a burning desire to keep you out of the divorce courts in a year’s time. ’
‘Josie, she’s great. Her mum and dad are nice.’
‘What about her friends? Who are they? Do we know any of them?’
It wasn’t such an outlandish question. Josie had worked in La Femme, L’Homme for over a decade and built up relationships with just about everyone who shopped there and in the beauty salon next door.
Val worked part time in Sun, Sea, Ski, the shop on the other side of CAMDEN, and struck up friendships with loads of the regulars.
In the grand scheme of city centre life, it wouldn’t have been particularly unusual for them to know someone, who knew someone, who knew someone, who knew Lila.
In fact, given their interrogation skills and a gossip database that rivalled the amount of information held by Interpol, it was pretty surprising that they didn’t.
Cammy shrugged. ‘She doesn’t actually have a lot of mates…’
Josie’s head flew up like a meerkat in heat. ‘What? Why? What’s wrong with her?’
Cammy had refused the sangria – determined to keep a clear mind for the day ahead, but he lifted Val’s glass and took one sip, for medicinal purposes. As much as he adored her, Josie was giving him a headache and a growing pain in the arse.
‘Nothing. You know what it’s like. Her mum says girls have always been jealous of her, so she’s never really built up a big circle of pals.’
He saw Josie and Val ponder that one for a minute, but he refused to admit that it was strange.
No girlfriends popping in for a cuppa, no late night calls to a pal to chat about her day, no group outings or weekend trips.
Okay maybe it was a tad… unusual, and even before she spoke, he knew Val, a woman who constantly surrounded herself with friends and family, would pick up on it.
‘That might be the case, my love,’ Val said, always a bit more reasonable than Special Agent Josie, ‘but to be honest, it’s a bit strange. No pals at all?’
He went for a white lie to divert her concern.
‘I’m sure she has, but we’ve been a bit wrapped up in each other since we met.
’ There was some truth in that. In the six months they’d been together, they spent most nights going out for dinner, or chilling at home with a movie – at least, that was on the nights that Lila didn’t have spin, or boxercise, or personal training sessions.
She’d had loads of those lately – said it was because she wanted to look great in a bikini if they went off somewhere tropical in the post-Christmas lull in January.
That’s why the friends thing had never really fazed him. He just thought they were doing that thing a couple does when they first fall in love, where they want to spend all their time together. Usually naked. Nothing wrong with that. Understandable, actually.
Before he’d gone over to LA, he’d been a die-hard founding member of the party scene in the city – out every night with an ever-evolving group of party people.
He’d gone back to that for a few weeks when he first got home and he just felt…
past it. Out of place. He’d soon realised he was getting too old for all that carry-on, so after twelve hours a day in the shop, six days a week, chilling out with Lila suited him just fine.
In fact, he felt really lucky to have found someone who felt the same way he did.
‘She’s just so busy being madly in love with me that she’s let her friends slip a little over the last few months,’ he added for good measure.
Josie snorted. ‘She’s not too busy to post twenty photographs a day on that Facegram.’
‘Instagram. Or Facebook. I’ll explain it to you again later,’ Val said, sagely, sounding like she was so up on these things she had Zuckerberg on her friends and family list.
‘Well, whatever. I’ve never known a grown woman who needs that many photos of herself.’
Okay, so she had a point. And yes, he’d thought it strange at first that she detailed every aspect of her life online, but so what?
She enjoyed it. It was a hobby, and she got a buzz from the interaction.
He had zero interest in Facebook or Instagram or any of the social media sites, but if Lila enjoyed them, where was the harm?
Cammy was about to issue an irritated rebuttal when Josie followed the criticism up with… ‘Although… wouldn’t have minded that in my day. It would be good to have photographic evidence of how I looked before I went grey, developed wrinkles and my baps headed south.’
A woman at the next table froze, unsure if she really had just overheard that correctly. Couldn’t have. Not from that elderly lady.
‘Val, please change the subject and get her off my case,’ Cammy pleaded, still laughing. ‘World politics. Religion. Brexit. Wrestling. Anything at all. I beg you.’
Val knocked back the last of her vino before she spoke. ‘I’d love to help, but you know it would take a bigger force than me to make it stop.’
Josie ignored them, filling up her glass, then Val’s. Cammy stuck to water, fearful that they would deploy a back-up plan to get him so pissed he’d crash out before he could propose.
‘Previous boyfriends, then?’ Josie continued the interrogation.
‘Erm…. Well… ah… No one serious.’ He immediately realised he should have known better than to try to bluff that one out in front of women with lie detection sensors that went off like car alarms at the first hint of a fib.
He immediately cracked and surrendered the truth.
‘Right, so you’re not going to like it and don’t judge her… ’
‘Of course we won’t, love’ said Val, as she and Josie pursed their lips, judgemental heads on, ready and waiting.
‘She had a long-term relationship before she met me. Over six years.’
He tried to leave it at that. Stop there. He even picked up his fork and dug it into the last chunk of tortilla, before the heat of their steely stares forced him to abandon the idea.
‘Okay, so the guy she was seeing was married.’
Josie practically started a Mexican wave. ‘I knew it. I knew there was something. Sometimes you just need to dig deep, don’t you Val?’
Val, in fairness, was looking more concerned than outraged.
‘But I’m not judging, son,’ Josie added, serious again.
‘And neither am I,’ Cammy said pointedly. ‘Would be a bit hypocritical, wouldn’t it?’
They all knew what he was referring to. Years ago, when Mel’s first marriage broke up and he told her he was in love with her, they both acknowledged that there was a connection between them that went further than friendship.
But then, before they could take it much further than a kiss, she’d found out he’d been having an affair with a married woman all along and backed off.
That kind of stuff didn’t fly with Mel. After everything she’d been through with her husband, she hated cheats and she hated liars.
Especially when she discovered that he was the liar who’d been sleeping with Suze, the woman who’d been Mel’s sister in law and best friend for years, and they’d both been covering it up.
Yep, he’d been having a long term, meaningless fling with a member of Mel’s family.
There was no coming back from that. Instead, devastated that he’d blown it, he’d taken off to LA and put it all behind him.
Some might find it weird that he now owned a shop next door to Suze’s salon, and they were still good friends, neither of them ever mentioning their misguided affair, but that was just life.
They were all adults and it was a long time ago.
Although… the tortilla got stuck somewhere above his stomach as he acknowledged that, even now Mel was nothing more than a memory, he still missed everything about her.
Most of all he missed her friendship. The same went for Stacey.
She had been his best mate in L.A., before he’d developed deeper feelings for her.
Those emotions had long returned to something platonic, but the deep bonds they’d formed as friends for ten years still remained.
A thought struck him – did he have that kind of friendship with Lila?
He immediately realised the comparison was unfair.
He’d known Lila for six months. She was beautiful, they’d fallen madly in love, had a great time together, and she’d made coming back to Scotland and starting all over again so much better than he’d ever thought it could be.
Okay, so they didn’t have that deep friendship bond, but they had so much more.
Jesus, why was he even thinking this stuff? Bloody Josie! She was getting into his head and it was driving him nuts.
He dived back into the conversation. ‘So… Lila had an affair, I had an affair, now we’ve both learned from our mistakes. Maybe we are pretty well suited after all, eh Josie?’
Josie didn’t answer, just topped up her sangria glass again.
He’d been looking forward to tonight so much, but the sheen was definitely starting to wear off.
Lila had sounded a bit subdued on the phone too.
She was usually well up for a night out and a nice dinner somewhere flash, but she’d been more than a bit reluctant, even now that her mum and dad were coming.
Or maybe he was just reading too much into it because Josie was deploying her mind-warping tactics on him.