Fair-Weather Friend. Patricia Scanlan

      Chapter One

      ‘Why do you bother going on holidays with Melissa Harris? She’s such a cow. She only uses you, you know,’ Denise Mason said crossly. She ate some chicken korma and took a sip of white wine.

      Sophie glared at her sister. ‘She’s not that bad!’ she snapped. She dipped a piece of naan bread into her tikka sauce. She was annoyed and did not try to hide it.

      ‘Oh come on, Sophie, she’s a walking cow. She always has been. She drops you like a hot potato as soon as there’s a bloke on the scene. Then you don’t see her for dust until she’s been dumped. When she needs a shoulder to cry on she’s back in double-quick time.’

      Sophie made a face. ‘Stop giving out.’

      ‘I’m not giving out,’ Denise said. ‘I’m just telling you things for your own good. You’re too soft with her. You always have been. It’s time you told her where to get off.

      ‘Remember last year? You were supposed to go on holidays with her. She dropped you at the last minute because she met Mister Wonderful. She took off to Spain with him. What kind of a so-called friend is that?’ Denise pronged a stuffed mushroom and ate it with relish.

      Sophie looked at her younger sister with envy. Denise could eat and drink all round her. She never put on an ounce. Sophie would be up two pounds at least on the scales after this pig-out.

      ‘What happened to Mister Wonderful anyway?’ Denise topped up their wineglasses. ‘I thought they were going back to Spain this year.’

      ‘She found out that he was two-timing her. She’s in bits. Really she is, Denise. I’ve never seen her this bad,’ Sophie said earnestly. ‘She was crazy about Tony. Nuts about him. He was the love of her life.’

      ‘Don’t be daft, Sophie!’ Denise scoffed. ‘How could he be the love of her life? She’s so much in love with herself, there’s no room for anyone else.’

      ‘Oh leave her alone,’ Sophie muttered.

      ‘Well I would have told her where to get off if she had asked me to go on holidays with only a week’s notice. I would have said no,’ Denise retorted, helping herself to some of the aloo saag. ‘She’s using you. Can’t you see that?’

      It’s all right for you, Sophie thought glumly. She studied her bright-eyed, well-groomed, very confident younger sister. Denise had friends to beat the band. Men fell over themselves trying to get a date with her. She breezed through life with not a care in the world. She was very much the woman about town. She worked in the PR department of a large publishing company. At the age of twenty-two, Denise drove her own company car.

      Sophie was two years older. She drove an old Fiesta that she’d had for the last four years. She was a children’s nurse. While she enjoyed her job, she felt that her life lacked the glamour and excitement of her sister’s.

      Her two closest friends had got married within six months of each other. In the last two years she’d had no one to go on holidays with. The idea of going on a singles holiday filled her with dread. So she had taken up the offer of two weeks in Majorca with Melissa Harris – much to her sister’s annoyance.

      Sophie sighed and took a slug of her Australian wine. The Indian meal she’d been looking forward to with Denise was turning into a lecture. The only fights she ever had with Denise were over Melissa Harris. Denise and Melissa had never got on. They never would. It made life very difficult sometimes – like right now. She drank some more wine while Denise kept on and on about what a user Melissa was. She remembered something her father used to say when she was small: ‘The truth always hurts.’ She didn’t like when Denise called Melissa a user. Because if Melissa was a user, Sophie was the one being used. And no one liked to feel they were being used.

      Chapter Two

      She’d known Melissa since her schooldays: blonde, blue-eyed, bubbly and very, very selfish.

      Melissa was the centre of the universe in her own eyes. Or, as Denise cruelly called her, the Queen of the Me, Me, Me Planet. She was an only child, spoilt by doting parents. Melissa swanned through life taking adoration as her due.

      In Sophie, she had the perfect handmaiden. It had been so from that first moment in the playground when Melissa had decided that she preferred Sophie’s little black-velvet bow to the red ribbon that held her own golden pony-tail.

      Sophie had handed over the bow without a peep. She was spellbound by Melissa’s baby-blue eyes. Eyes that had the most perfect long black lashes. The invitation to join Melissa’s gang filled her with joy. The entire class longed to be a member of Melissa’s gang. Only the chosen few were given the honour. And the honour was withdrawn regularly, depending on Melissa’s mood and whim. Sophie would often find herself on the outside of the golden circle until Melissa had need of her services again.

      This was the pattern of their friendship, through childhood, through their teens and while Melissa studied to become a beauty consultant and Sophie was a student nurse. Weeks could go by and Sophie wouldn’t hear a peep from Melissa. Then some crisis would occur. Melissa would arrive at Sophie and Denise’s flat in search of tender loving care and sympathy. She would sob over her latest heartbreak and declare ‘All Men Are Bastards.’

      Tony Jenkins was the most recent addition to the All Men Are Bastard’s list. He and Melissa had been about to take Spain by storm. Sadly, Melissa had discovered him in a steamy clinch with a work-mate