Behaving Like Adults by Anna Maxted Read Free Book Online

fees and insurance and fuel and steam cleans. He might decide to invoice me. Not that I care about that, it’s more the lie.’
    â€˜What lie?’ said Claudia. ‘Holly, Nige did all the lying, you just turned up. Do me a favour, stop analysing and askhim to the party. We’ve got more serious things to worry about. Like what to wear.’ She swung her elegant legs off the desk and muttered, ‘It’s casual, God help me.’
    I gave in and invited Stuart.
    On the night of the party, Nick skulked about like a vulture waiting for an antelope to peg it. He knew Stuart was picking me up and was itching to answer the door in a proprietorial way. I was far too tired to do anything but let him. Fortunately I’d had the foresight to explain Nick’s status and mental age to Stuart. After a short, shocked silence, he’d been extremely understanding.
    Nick’s feelings were, I decided, the least of my worries. In the end, Nige had convinced me to hire a room at his club. (The amusing thing about Nige’s club was that it was decorated to look about 250 years old yet it had been established for all of seven months. I couldn’t see the pinstriped young fogeys who lolled in its brown leather sofas without thinking, ‘But my dear chaps, eight months ago you didn’t
have
a club’. It makes me ache, how badly we all want to belong.) I still wasn’t sure it was the best venue for a party.
    â€˜This is a cracking party venue,’ said Stuart, nodding as we stepped into the cold marble reception. ‘I like it. Nice choice, Hol. You’ve got an instinct. That’s why you run a successful business.’
    Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nick bristle. So there, I thought. Nick’s behaviour so far that night had been disgraceful. He’d done all he could to cause trouble. He’d begun by asking Stuart to give him a lift to the party and gone on to blurt, accidentally on purpose, that I owned Girl Meets Boy.
That
was a nerve-shredding moment. Like sticking the last of your rent in a fruit machine and watching your destiny spin. But Stuart had recovered admirably. As I embarked on a speedy damage limitation exercise, his scowl became a smile that spread wide across his face.
    â€˜Well, Holly, a powerful woman like you, choosing
me
. I’m chuffed as a rat,’ he kept saying. ‘I’m chuffed as a rat.’
    I prayed that was a good thing.
    Stuart, Nick and I trooped meekly up the wide curling staircase, past a string of stern ancestral portraits – presumably secured last week from Sotheby’s – to the top floor. Oh, now this was special. A high-ceilinged room with huge French shuttered windows, blood red walls, a stone fireplace in which flickered a real fire, a glass chandelier, gilt mirrors, genteelly battered chaise longues and grand bow-legged chairs. If it weren’t for Missy Elliot grinding out orders from the stereo, I’d have felt bad for not wearing a bustle. Nige and Claw surged from the stately gloom in a joyful wave.
    â€˜It’s fine. He knows,’ I mouthed, behind Stuart’s broad back.
    Nige took this as a cue to start talking. ‘Well, Hollyberry, what do you think, isn’t it
so
fab? Isn’t it
gorge
? Roy in the kitchen says we’re going to have nibbles coming out of our ears. And there’s shedloads of booze, stacks of it. And the bar’s through those doors. No one’ll want to be the first to arrive, the vile shame of looking too eager, so I reckon we’ve got one hour max to get off our heads before the proles turn up, no offence Stuart.’ All lavishly accessorised with hand movements.
    Stuart bobbed his head at the ‘no offence’ comment. I smiled and said, ‘It’s fantastic.’ Apologies to the community but the first time I met Nige I thought he was gay. He didn’t seem like a heterosexual male, he was so . . . friendly. When I