Suze just looked at her.
Zoe’s chin came up another ten degrees. ‘So?’ she challenged. ‘You don’t really think I can’t handle him? Do you? Me?’
Suze put her head on one side. ‘How long have we been friends?’
‘Nineteen years,’ said Zoe, literally.
‘Then believe me. You really, really can’t handle Jay Christopher.’
Performance Zoe snorted. She had a wide repertoire of dismissive noises.
‘I know you. I know Jay Christopher.’ Suze shook her head wisely. ‘Take my advice. You don’t want to go there.’
‘And why not?’
‘Don’t forget—I know all your ex-boyfriends, Zo.’
Even Performance Zoe was silenced.
Suze shook off her unaccustomed seriousness. ‘Come on. The night is young. We’ve got some serious partying to get in before dawn.’
She was not wrong. And Zoe was the life and soul of it. She danced with Megabyte Man, and Lauren’s boring accountant, and Alastair, whom she had made miserable five months ago, and who now had a brilliant French girlfriend. She danced on her own. She draped her arms over the shoulders of her sister Artemis and Suze and did an untidy high- kicking routine.
As the sky began to lighten only the long-distance party animals were still there.
‘Come on,’ said Zoe, finding a fast song about a rodeo cowboy. ‘Line-dance.’
They lined up and went into the rapid routine that they had worked out last Christmas. Amid raucous insults and much giggling, they managed to keep up for a bit. But in the end too many of them went right while the others went left. Finally Harry did a sideways jump into Suze and the whole line staggered. The music raced away from them. They ended up in heap on the floor, laughing.
‘Great party,’ said the stragglers, tumbling out into the grey morning.
By morning, though, there were only six people left in the shabby kitchen. Hermann, who was Suze’s current favourite, sat on the corner of the scrubbed pine table, plucking at a guitar and singing softly. He was waiting for Suze to take him home to bed and everyone knew it.
Zoe’s younger sister, Artemis, clutched her boyfriend sleepily round the waist as he systematically loaded empty bottles into a cardboard box. From time to time Ed put an absent hand behind his back and patted her hip encouragingly.
Suze and Zoe had bagged up all the food remains in three black sacks and were now loading the dishwasher with the last of the glasses.
This was after Suze had taken Harry on one side and briefed him tersely about his sister’s imminent employment prospects.
‘She really needs this job,’ she ended fiercely.
Harry might be only seventeen but he was a realist. He nodded slowly.
‘Yup. And not just for the money. She needs to do something for herself. And something to stop Mum thinking she only has to call and Zoe will be there. Okay, Suze. Leave it to me.’
Thereafter Harry wandered among the debris, theoretically helping. In practice he was eating any food that he decided there was no room in the fridge for.
‘You’ll be sick,’ said Zoe, matter-of-factly.
Harry grinned. ‘I’m seventeen. My digestion is at peak performance.’
‘It was our best party ever,’ said Suze with satisfaction. ‘Did you get to see Jay, Hermann? Hermann was at college with Jay,’ she explained to Zoe. ‘That’s how I got a nibble at the Culp and Christopher account in the first place.’
‘I saw him.’ Suze’s boyfriend executed a rippling final chord and put the guitar away. ‘Nice of him to come.’
‘Why shouldn’t he?’ demanded Suze, bridling.
Hermann was peaceful. ‘He’s running with the great and the good these days. Not a lot of time for simple socialising.’
Zoe sniffed. She was not surprised, somehow. The Mogul Prince had that look of a man who could hardly bring himself to bother with other people.
‘Don’t scare Zoe,’ Suze warned. ‘She’s going to work for him on Monday.’
‘I’m not scared. I was not intending to make friends with the man,’ Zoe said crisply.
Artemis’s Ed laughed. ‘You can’t scare Zoe. One flash of those big brown eyes and men just roll over with their paws in the air—don’t they Zo?’