LITMIR.BIZ

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never seen you like this before,’ Fran disagreed immediately. ‘And I’ve known you most of your life! And before you insult me much more, Rosie Nichols—I might just remind you that I’ve flown over at top speed from Dublin, in answer to an urgent request from your mother that I find out exactly what’s wrong with you.’

      ‘My mother asked you to come?’

      ‘She wasn’t interfering, if that’s what you’re thinking. She was just worried, and wanted me to see how you were.’

      Rosie looked at her defiantly. ‘So now you know.’

      Fran shook her head. ‘Oh, no,’ she corrected grimly. ‘I haven’t even started yet! All I know is that I walk into your flat which looks as though a major war has broken out—to find you sitting in a pathetic heap looking gaunt and tear-stained—sobbing bitterly about some mystery man whose name you can’t bring yourself to utter—’

      ‘Sam,’ sniffed Rosie. ‘His name is Sam.’

      ‘Sam!’ echoed Fran with a ghost of a smile. ‘That’s Sam whose paternity you questioned just a minute ago, is it? And does this Sam have a surname?’

      ‘It’s Lockhart.’ Rosie looked at her expectantly. ‘Sam Lockhart.’

      ‘Sam Lockhart.’ Fran considered this. ‘Cute name. Catchy.’

      ‘You haven’t heard of him?’

      ‘No. Should I have done?’

      ‘Maybe not. But he’s rich and gorgeous and those kind of attributes tend to get you known—especially among women.’

      ‘Tell me more.’

      Rosie shrugged her shoulders morosely. ‘He’s a literary agent. The best. They say if Sam takes you on, you’re almost certain to end up living in tax-exile! He’s got an instinctive nose for a best seller!’

      Fran tried not to look too disapproving. ‘And I suppose he’s married?’

      ‘Married? You’re kidding!’ Rosie shook her head so that wild curls spilled untidily around her face. ‘What do you take me for?’

      Fran breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Well, he’s not completely bad, then,’ she said. ‘Married men who play away from home are the worst. And I should know!’ She flicked Rosie another look. ‘Has he ever been married?’

      Rosie shook her head. ‘No, he’s single. Still single,’ she added, and stared down at her chewed fingernails as tears began to splash uninhibitedly onto her hands.

      Fran gave Rosie’s shoulder another squeeze. ‘Want to tell me all about it?’

      ‘I guess,’ said Rosie listlessly.

      ‘How long since you’ve eaten?’

      Rosie shrugged. ‘I had coffee for breakfast—but there’s nothing much in the flat.’

      Resisting the urge to remark that judging by the general air of neglect any food would probably carry a health warning, Fran shook her head. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said gently. ‘I’m taking you out for dinner.’

      Rosie momentarily brightened until she caught sight of herself in the mirror. ‘But I can’t go out looking like this!’

      ‘Too right—you can’t,’ agreed Fran calmly. ‘So go and do something to your hair, slap on some warpaint and for goodness sake, lose those hideous baggy trousers!’

      

      An hour later, they were installed in a booth at ‘Jacko’s!’—a restaurant/bar which had just opened up on the water’s edge at one of London’s less fashionable riverside locations. It had the indefinable buzz of success about it. Fran smiled up at the waitress whose skirt barely covered her underwear and ordered two alien-sounding cocktails from the menu.

      She stared across the table at Rosie whom she had known since they were both fat-faced three-year-olds toddling into school on their first day at Nursery, where Rosie had demonstrated her ability for attracting trouble by losing her teddy bear down the side of a bookcase. And Fran had slipped her small hand in and retrieved it.

      It had set a pattern for their school years. Rosie got herself into a scrape and Fran got her out of it! Since Fran had moved to Dublin five years ago, their paths rarely crossed, but after a few minutes back in her old friend’s company, Fran felt as if they’d never been apart.

      Well, maybe not quite.

      Rosie seemed terribly distracted, jumpy even—but maybe in the circumstances that was understandable. Her face looked harder, too. But Fran told herself that people changed—she had changed herself. She had had to. That was all part of life’s rich tapestry. Or so they said….

      ‘Now tell me,’ she said firmly. ‘Just who Sam Lockhart is—and why you’ve fallen in love with him.’

      ‘Oh, everyone falls in love with him!’ Rosie gave a gloomy shrug. ‘You can’t help yourself.’

      ‘Then it’s a pity I can’t meet him,’ observed Fran. ‘Since that sounds like the sort of challenge it would give me great pleasure to resist!’

      ‘I’d like to see you try!’

      Fran liberated a smooth strand of hair which had somehow become all twisted up in the string of pearls she wore and fixed her friend with a stern expression. ‘In my earlier life as an agony aunt on a well-known Dublin radio station,’ she said, ‘I soon learnt that the easiest way to forget a man is to start thinking of him as a mere mortal and not as a god. Debunk the myth, that’s what I say!’

      Rosie screwed her nose up. ‘Come again?’

      ‘Stop making everything about him seem so wonderful and extraordinary—’

      ‘But it is!’

      Fran shook her head. ‘That’s the wrong way to look at it. Try concentrating on all the bad things about him instead!’

      ‘Like what?’

      ‘Well, I don’t know the man, so I can’t really help you with that. But instead of describing him as, say, utterly unobtainable, tell yourself that he’s arrogant and distant and nobody in their right mind would want to live with him! Right?’

      ‘Er, right,’ said Rosie doubtfully.

      Fran winced as a silver beaker of what looked and smelt like cough medicine was placed in front of her. She took a tentative sip through the straw and nearly shot off the edge of her seat before a dreamy kind of lethargy began to melt her bones. Still, some light an-aesthetic might be just what Rosie needed.

      ‘Drink up,’ she instructed and leaned forward eagerly as she began to slide the drink across the table towards Rosie. ‘And tell me what happened. Like—where did you meet him?’

      Rosie took a quick slug of the cocktail. ‘Remember when I did that stint as a secretary for Gordon-Browne—that big firm of literary agents? Well, Sam was their star player and we got kind of, you know…involved.’

      Fran nodded, thinking how unusually coy Rosie sounded. ‘So how long did it last?’

      ‘Er, not as long as I would have liked.’

      ‘And when did it end?’

      ‘Oh, ages ago now,’ gulped Rosie vaguely. ‘Months and months. Longer, even. Over two years,’ she admitted at last.

      ‘Two years?’ Fran blinked. ‘But surely you should be getting over it by now?’

      ‘Why?’ Rosie sniffed. ‘How long did it take you to get over the breakup of your marriage to Sholto?’

      ‘Oh, no.’ Fran shook her head. ‘We’re here to talk about you, not me. Surely you haven’t been like this since it ended?’

      Rosie shook her head. ‘No,

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