Best of Fiona Harper. Fiona Harper

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      I didn’t know why I liked Nicholas so much. Apart from the obvious looks-like-a-Greek-god, has-piles-of-cash thing. It was more than that. I never usually let guys get to me this way. Adam was right. Normally I was the one pulling all the strings. But there was something about Nicholas that had called out to me right from the start. I had a feeling he might be the elusive cupcake that would assuage my nagging hunger and satisfy all my sweet-toothed desires.

      The stinging got worse. I looked at my shoes. Beautiful red peep-toe creations. But even they made me sad, and I didn’t even really know why.

      Maybe Nan was right. Maybe something was ticking inside me. I was almost thirty, after all. But, seeing as I was…well, me, I was obviously going for the full-fledged meltdown rather than the polite tick-tock in the background of my life. Nan always says I can’t do anything unless I make a production out of it.

      Adam shuffled closer on the sofa, so his arm was touching mine. He leaned down to try and see into my eyes, and nudged me. ‘Coreen…?’

      My bottom lip slid forward. ‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe I am too much for Nicholas Chatterton-Jones.’ I shrugged and tipped my head slightly to look at him. ‘It’s a moot point now, anyway. I found out a couple of days ago that Nicholas might be off the market soon. There are rumours about a possible new girlfriend.’

      Adam gave me a lopsided smile. ‘That’s never stopped you before.’

      I punched him on the arm. ‘That makes me sound awful! I’ve never actually stolen a man away from anyone. I can’t help it if they take one look at me and realise I’m the one they can’t live without.’

      Adam pressed his lips together and nodded sagely. ‘That’s what I love about you—your matchless modesty.’

      I punched him again. And then I smiled. How did he do that?

      He put up his fists and nudged me on the shoulder with one of them. ‘So? Who’s this girlfriend? Do you think you can take her?’

      I swatted his hand away, but he kept jabbing me gently on the upper arm, the way boxers did when they warmed up with one of those swinging punch bags.

      ‘I’m going to take you down in a minute, if you don’t cut that out!’ I said, laughing.

      The devilish twinkle was back. ‘Promises, promises,’ he said.

      ‘It’s that awful Louisa Fanshawe,’ I said, not rising to the bait. And if we were talking fisticuffs, I probably could take her. She was another one of those willowy sorts who’d blow away in a stiff breeze. I wouldn’t risk breaking a nail on her, though, so she was safe on that count.

      ‘Oh, yes. I’ve heard how awful she is,’ Adam replied. ‘All that charity work…visiting sick children in hospital and campaigning for the homeless. It’s positively disgusting.’

      I jabbed him in the ribs with my elbow. He was supposed to be on my side, so why was he practically bouncing up and down? What had he to be so happy about? I decided to direct my ire at the absent Louisa.

      ‘When she’s not swanning up and down a catwalk for some pretentious designer,’ I pointed out.

      I thought about Louisa Fanshawe and her stick-like limbs and big doleful eyes. She wasn’t exactly pretty, but I’d allow for the fact she was striking—in that understated, slightly duck-faced way some high fashion models were. The women on Nicholas’s arm always looked frighteningly similar. Duck-faced and stick-thin was obviously his type.

      I sighed again. Louisa was the less Adam had been talking about. I looked down at my chest. Less wasn’t something I had a lot of. I was doomed.

      I was about to point this out to Adam, but when I looked up at him he was paying an inordinate amount of attention to the last of the prawn toasts. I think he felt me looking at him, because he offered me the foil tray. I shook my head. ‘You have it.’

      He demolished it in one bite, and then turned to look me straight in the eyes. ‘Like I said…’ The seriousness there made my pulse kick. ‘The guy’s an idiot.’

      I felt a smile start somewhere deep in my chest and work its way up to my mouth. ‘I love you, Best Bud,’ I said, and wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him close.

      For a long time he was silent and he just held me, soothing me with the rhythmic warmth of his breath on my neck. Then the inhaling and exhaling stopped. Seconds and seconds seemed to drag past before it started again, and when the next breath came there were words floating on it.

      ‘It’s hard not to,’ he whispered into my neck.

      And then I hit him again.

      CHAPTER THREE

      The Very Thought of You

      Coreen’s Confessions

      No. 3—You’d think that someone as vain as I am would enjoy looking in the mirror, but sometimes I just can’t face it.

      I CONTINUED to mope around for the next few days, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought that maybe Nan was right about something ticking inside me.

      Of course I didn’t tell Nan that I might be on the verge of getting serious with someone when I visited her the following Sunday. She’d have had me up at the church to book a date so fast my head would’ve spun. Baby steps. Just thinking about being with one man for a considerable chunk of time was about as far as I wanted to go at present.

      No, when I visited Nan we did what we always did—ate roast dinner, drank tea, and planed to watch an old black-and-white movie on the telly. After lunch I observed a further ritual. I went into the spare bedroom, opened the rickety wardrobe, and looked at all the dresses hanging there in their clear plastic covers.

      They had been my mother’s. She’d died about ten years earlier, in a shabby little bed and breakfast in Blackpool, killed silently, invisibly and senselessly by a faulty boiler spurting carbon monoxide. And when she hadn’t turned up to go on stage that night at the club they’d just slotted another singer into the bill and carried on. It shouldn’t be that easy to replace someone, should it? People ought be remembered for their unique qualities, even if the choices they made in life weren’t ones you respected, or even understood.

      As I did most weeks, I pulled out just one of Mum’s stage dresses and studied it more closely. This one was all shoulder pads and sequins, probably from around the time she’d met my dad. I could imagine Mum, her big Joan Collins-style hair stiff with half a can of hairspray, singing a soft rock ballad into a microphone, her eyes closed and her heart on her sleeve. She’d had a lovely voice. I had a few cassette tapes at home, but I didn’t play them much—too scared they’d warp or wear out.

      Her voice had been rich and husky, able to catch every nuance of emotion in a song, whether she was belting it out or making the audience hang on every note. By rights she should have had more success than she did. And maybe she would have done if she’d put all the energy she’d wasted trailing round the country after my father into her career instead.

      Despite my love of vintage, I never tried on these clothes. The eighties weren’t my thing, for a start. I knew the dresses would probably fit, but I didn’t want to look in the mirror and see my mother staring back at me. I didn’t want to see that same broken hopelessness in my eyes.

      ‘Go on—take them down to that shop of yours and get a few quid for them,’ Nan said from behind me.

      I hadn’t heard her come in the room. I shook my head, carefully put the dress in its place on the rail and shut the wardrobe door. Nan gave me a sympathetic smile.

      ‘Cuppa? And that Dirk Bogarde film starts in a few minutes.’

      I shook off the sadness that had