Free When Good Friends Go Bad by Ellie Campbell Page B

that it dawned on Jen there was still a missing element to the night's tales.
    'No, Jennifer, put that away.' Georgina handed back Jen's cash and stood up. 'It's my pleasure but I truthfully have to leave. I'm late as it is.' She'd excused herself earlier to make a call on her mobile.
    'Next one's on me,' Meg volunteered. 'If you don't mind pizza in my hovel.'
    'Not so fast.' As the waiter returned Georgina's credit card, Jen playfully snatched it up, preventing her escape. 'You haven't told us one single thing about this hubby of yours. Now I'm positive he must be a crack addict or a drug dealer – which is it?'
    Then Georgina really did look flustered.
    'Neither. He's . . .' she started and suddenly stopped.
    Jen saw Meg's eyes widen in astonishment as she looked over Jen's shoulder towards the door. Georgina had stiffened, surprise, anger and, oddest of all, guilt flashing across her face all at once. There was no avoiding it, Jen had to turn to look.
    A sledgehammer slammed her in the solar plexus.
    His hair was collar-length and wavier, swept back handsomely from his prominent cheekbones. His eyes seemed darker, more velvety-brown than Jen remembered, but still as soulful and unfathomable as those of a Native American shaman. He was broader and more muscular. A man, a grownup man, no longer the boy she once loved. Recovering from his frozen position in the doorway, he walked over to them and placed a proprietorial hand on Georgina's shoulder, bending to brush her cheek with his lips.
    'So this is your business meeting,' he said softly. 'I wouldn't have come in, but you were taking ages.'
    At first it made no sense. It was like seeing a ghost conjured by a Victorian medium, as if all their reminiscing had acted as an Ouija board, three witches summoning a spirit from the past. How did he . . .? Who told him . . .? But as he straightened up, Jen saw Georgina's face, sort of crumpled in on itself, the swift assessing spark as Meg looked from the other two to Jen, and the sickening knowledge supplied a second blow, crushing her ribcage this time.
    Oh God! Meg was standing now and he was kissing her, a big smack on her upturned cheek. Then he let go of her shoulders and it was Jen's turn.
    'Come on then, Titch.' He stepped towards her and smiled. 'Give us a hug.'
    The arms that encircled Jen's gave out an electrical charge so powerful that if she hadn't been rooted to the floor in shock, she might have been thrown right across the room.
    Starkey! Starkey was Georgina's husband. Starkey was the father of Georgina's unborn baby.
    And then she knew how deeply she'd been betrayed.

Chapter 6
    It was Clover who first brought Aiden Kenton Starkson into all their lives. She found him working at a petrol station and what caught her attention as she paid was not his long dark hair, pulled back in a ponytail, his discreet gold earring or his Byronic good looks – all the more striking because in those days he only wore black – but the book of e.e. cummings poetry he was poring over. A short conversation revealed that 'Starkey' was a poet, a lover of Kerouac and Yeats, who considered Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and Leonard Cohen to be the greatest writers of any generation. So in typical Clover fashion she brought him home to be her latest collaborator.
    Everyone loved Starkey. Herb, who liked to label people in a way that made it hard to tell if he was serious, introduced him as "the coolest cat on the planet" to the stream of artists and performers who flowed through their purple front door, patting Starkey's shoulder in an avuncular way.
    Starkey was nineteen, a few months younger than Meg's brother, Mace. Soon he was one of a revolving crowd of characters who regularly shared Clover's candle-lit pot-luck dinners in which brown rice, tofu, almond butter and all kinds of pulses, beans and grains crossed Jen's path for the first time. Only Meg, complaining about all the hangers-on, seemed less than enamoured, declaring herself 'totally