Friends and Rivals
Old friends can become the worst of enemies…Perfect escapism for fans of Penny Vincenzi and Jilly Cooper.Cat fears she is past her prime. Her philandering husband, Ivan, who she still loves passionately after twenty years of marriage, leaves her for a younger woman. Devastated, there is only one person left who Cat trusts.Kendall is sure she has it all. But underneath her tough exterior she hides a vulnerability – she is helplessly struggling with an unrequited love. But when Kendall’s need for success consumes her, she won’t let anyone stand in her way.Ava is an innocent, plucked from obscurity and thrown into the deep-end of the glamorous world of fame. When she is pitted against Kendall, the world watches closely, wondering who will survive.As these three women try to navigate a backstabbing world of infamy, desire and fortune, will they be tempted to betray the people they hold dearest?
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TILLY BAGSHAWE
Friends and Rivals
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London, SE1 9GF
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2012
Copyright © Tilly Bagshawe 2012
Tilly Bagshawe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
FIRST EDITION
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Source ISBN: 9780007326532
Ebook Edition © September 2012 ISBN: 9780007341894
Version: 2016-08-31
For my children: Sefi, Zac, Theo and Summer.
CHAPTER ONE
Catriona Charles sucked in her stomach as hard as she could and yanked on the zip of her burgundy velvet dress. It had fitted her perfectly when she’d bought it in Oxford four weeks ago, but now voluptuous folds of flesh seemed to be creeping out everywhere, like excess pastry flopping over the top of a pie dish. Tomorrow, without fail, she would go on a diet. No more Hobnobs. Or cheese. And she would cut out booze for a month. Well, perhaps not a whole month. Two weeks would probably be enough to make a difference.
‘Can I help? Two hands are better than one.’
Ivan Charles, Catriona’s husband of fifteen years, walked up behind her. Pulling the two sides of fabric together, he pulled the zip to the top and fastened the hook and eye.
‘There.’ He smiled triumphantly. ‘You look gorgeous.’
He was right. With her tangle of honey-blonde hair, full, sensual lips and intelligent green eyes, not to mention a pair of breasts that many girls half her age would have given their eye teeth for, at thirty-eight Catriona Charles was still an extremely attractive woman. Admittedly two kids, a fondness for gin and tonic and cheese on toast and a loathing of physical exercise in all its forms had allowed her figure to blossom a little too much in recent years. It would be fair to say Catriona looked better in an evening dress than a bikini. But men had always found her Nigella-esque, just-rolled-out-of-bed look a turn-on, and couldn’t understand Catriona’s own insecurity about her looks.
‘Really?’ she sighed. ‘You’re sure I don’t look like a lump of cookie dough squeezed into a wine bottle?’
Ivan laughed, kissing her on the back of her neck. ‘Mmmm. Cookie dough and cabernet. Two of my favourite things. And here are two more.’ He squeezed her breasts. ‘Happy Birthday to me, eh?’
Tonight was Ivan Charles’s fortieth birthday party, an event that had consumed every waking hour of his wife’s time for the past three months. As co-founder and owner of Jester, a successful music management company, Ivan Charles was one of the most well-connected men in the record business. Ivan’s ‘friends’ were so numerous they could have banded together and formed their own country. Even at Oxford, where he and Catriona had first met, and where Ivan had also met his Jester business partner, Jack Messenger, Ivan was infamous as a bon vivant and all-round party animal. With his model good looks (dark hair, blue eyes, toned rower’s physique) and immense personal charm, he was also well known as a ladies’ man. Hundreds of hearts were broken the day that Ivan Charles walked down the aisle with Catriona Farley. Though the marriage had been stormy at times, they had had two gorgeous kids together and were still going strong the better part of two decades later. Ivan Charles congratulated himself on that. Then again, Ivan Charles congratulated himself on a lot of things for which he was not, in truth, responsible. For all his wit and charisma, beneath the dazzle, Ivan Charles was a deeply arrogant man.
He’s so bloody handsome still, thought Catriona, watching her husband adjust his bow tie and flick a piece of lint from the lapel of his dinner jacket.
