Free Good at Games by Jill Mansell Page A

“Cat, hey, cat, come on in now, puss puss puss.”
    â€œYour ex-husband,” Harry remarked.
    â€œEr, yes.” The ex-husband who didn’t even have a cat.
    Jaz peered across at the car, did an oh-so-surprised double take—good job he’d never yearned to be an actor, thought Suzy—and shouted across, “Hey, Suze, is that you? Coming over for a drink?”
    â€œA drink? I thought he didn’t drink.” Harry sounded startled.
    â€œHe doesn’t. I do.” Suzy knew exactly what Jaz was up to.
    â€œHey, come on,” said Jaz. “It’s early. Just one drink.”
    â€œAre you and he still…?”
    â€œNo,” said Suzy, “we’re not.”
    â€œBoth of you,” Jaz called out easily. “I meant both of you.”
    â€œDo you want to?” said Suzy.
    Harry hesitated, then shrugged. Casually.
    â€œOK. Why not?”
    Suzy smiled to herself. It worked every time. Nobody turned down the opportunity to meet Jaz.
    â€œThe bad news is,” she told Harry, “you’ll have to meet Celeste too.”
    * * *
    Celeste, Jaz’s girlfriend, was the bane of Suzy’s life. With her short white-blond hair, huge china-blue eyes, and dinky size-six figure, she had that irritating Barbie-doll look about her—and an even more irritating habit of constantly reminding other people how dinky and fragile she was.
    Suzy, who liked being a long-legged, curvy size twelve, was tired of Celeste’s endless derogatory comments regarding her weight. She couldn’t understand what Jaz—who in the past had always had such excellent taste in women—possibly saw in her.
    Well, that wasn’t strictly true. She did know. Because Celeste had a trump card she played to the hilt. She might spend her life bitching about Fee and Suzy, and she might teeter around in fluffy mules with completely ludicrous satin bows in her hair, but she was also—cue that card!—a recovering alcoholic, just like Jaz.
    And Jaz had apparently convinced himself that Celeste had saved his life. Now, as far as he was concerned, she was his talisman, his lucky charm.
    When actually, as Suzy so often pointed out to him, Celeste was nothing but amazingly self-centered, a gold digger, and a total pain in the neck.
    * * *
    â€œWe met at an AA meeting,” Celeste told Harry, as if he didn’t already know. The whole planet, Suzy thought wearily, must have heard this story by now. “I just walked in, and there was Jaz. Not that I even recognized him at the time, I was in such a state. I’d only been sober for a couple of days. I was going through hell. After the meeting, I just broke down and cried in the street—I was that close to running into the nearest pub. But Jaz saw me crying and came over. He got me through the crisis.” She nodded for emphasis, and the massive pink bow on top of her head bobbed around like a pair of rabbit’s ears. “We talked all night. It was like there was this incredible connection between us. I mean, Jaz had been sober for almost four months, but he was still struggling too. If it hadn’t been for him, I know I’d have started drinking again. And he feels the same way about me. We supported each other, Harry, d’you see? Whenever one of us weakened, the other had to be strong. And we did it, didn’t we, darling?” Her wide blue gaze fixed lovingly on Jaz. “We saved each other’s lives.”
    It was the loving look that got Suzy most of all. Whenever she saw it—which was, sadly, often —she had an overwhelming urge to stick two fingers in her mouth and make loud gagging noises. Why was it that other women could see through Celeste in a flash, yet men fell for her nauseating charms every time?
    Lucille wouldn’t be taken in for a moment , Suzy thought with pride. If she were here now, she’d see Celeste for the celebrity-hungry bimbo she is. She watched Harry