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‘Perhaps they’ll all go home soon.’
Privately, Freya thought it was unlikely, knowing her friends, but it seemed safe to say that she hoped so. She made herself relax into Dan, and was rewarded by an un-curling warmth in her stomach as he began kissing his way along her jaw.
At last! This was what it was supposed to feel like. Just go with the flow. Tightening her arms around his neck, she turned her face towards Dan’s, but just as their lips were about to meet, someone tugged insistently at her sleeve.
‘Freya!’
‘Not now, Lucy,’ she muttered out of the side of her mouth.
‘It’s important.’
Reluctantly, Freya disengaged herself from Dan, who was looking understandably irritable at the interruption. ‘Somebody better be dead,’ she scowled. ‘What is it?’
‘I think the party might be over,’ said Lucy with a grimace, and turned towards the door.
Following her gaze, Freya saw a man in khaki trousers and a creased shirt with a battered bag at his feet. He had a stern, shuttered face, with thick flyaway brows that right then were drawn together in an intimidating frown. He looked very tired.
And very cross.
Freya’s heart did a sickening somersault as his peculiarly penetrating eyes found hers through the crowd, and she leapt away from Dan as if she had been jabbed with a cattle prod.
‘Max,’ she said in a hollow voice.
Hanging onto the kitchen door frame, Freya squinted through her hair at the man who was standing by the kettle. ‘It is you,’ she said in a voice of deep foreboding. ‘I thought it was all just a horrible dream.’
‘Good morning, Freya,’ said Max. ‘It’s lovely to see you, too.’
Freya groped her way over to the table and collapsed into a chair. ‘I think I’m going to die,’ she said simply.
‘Here.’ He put a glass of water and some paracetamol on the table beside her. ‘I’ll make you some tea.’
She screwed up her face as she took the tablets, and then, exhausted by the effort, pillowed her head in her arms so that her newly blonde hair spilled over the table. It felt as if a hammer was being swung around inside her skull.
‘I see you still haven’t learnt to drink in moderation,’ said Max, leaning against the kitchen counter and regarding her with disapproval.
‘I usually do,’ muttered Freya without lifting her poor head. It was true. Ever since the night of Lucy’s twenty-first, she had been careful not to risk another humiliation, but she was in no fit state to introduce that particular subject of conversation. ‘I was nervous last night,’ she said instead. ‘I think I must have drunk more than I realised.’
‘What were you nervous about?’
Very, very carefully, Freya lifted her head to rest her forehead in her palms. There was no way she could explain Dan to Max. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. The noise of the kettle boiling made her wince. ‘It was just something silly,’ she went on feebly, ‘and obviously it wasn’t what I should have been nervous about, which was you turning up without warning! Why didn’t you let me know you were coming home?’
‘It all happened so quickly I didn’t have chance before I left,’ said Max. ‘I rang when I eventually got to Heathrow, but there was no answer, so I assumed you were out. I didn’t know that the only reason no one answered was because nobody could hear the phone ringing over all the noise that was going on here.
‘I’d been travelling for three days by then, and all I wanted was to sleep, so I thought I would just let myself in and leave you a note. I wasn’t best pleased to arrive and find the apartment heaving with strangers and my neighbours all ringing the council to complain about noise pollution,’ he finished sardonically.
‘I can’t remember very much about last night,’ Freya had to confess. ‘I mean, I remember you arriving, of course.’ She could still feel the way her heart had lurched at the sight of him. ‘I remember Lucy arguing, too, and something about sheets…did I make up a bed for you?’ she asked, puzzled in spite of herself.
‘You tried,’ said Max. ‘I have to say that you weren’t much help, what with stumbling on your heels and dropping pillowcases and falling onto the duvet.
‘I’m perfectly capable of making my own bed,’ he added dryly, ‘but you seemed to have gone into hostess overdrive to make up for your evident horror at seeing me. I’d have been quite happy if you’d handed over a towel and pointed me in the right direction, but no! You insisted on coming into the room with me, although you appeared to find the whole business a lot more embarrassing than I did. You kept tugging down your skirt and apologising for the mess.’
‘Oh, God, I’m sorry…’
‘Yes, just like that. I thought you were never going to go.’ Max’s face was quite straight, but Freya was almost sure she detected a gleam of amusement in his pale grey eyes. ‘At one point I wondered whether you were going to insist on putting me to bed and tucking me in,’ he said.
It was all beginning to come back now. Freya clutched at her head as she remembered how horribly embarrassed she had been by the awkwardness of the situation. It was the first time she and Max had been alone together since the night of Lucy’s twenty-first and, as if that hadn’t been bad enough, he had come home to find his immaculate apartment a tip, and the only place for him to sleep was the spare bedroom which she had been using as a wardrobe, and was consequently knee-deep in discarded clothes.
Her nerves, already frayed by the whole business with Dan, had gone to pieces entirely, and she had blundered around, talking too much and obviously making a complete idiot of herself. Freya cringed behind her hair. Please, please, please let her not have done anything really embarrassing, like making another pass at Max! She had a disturbing picture of him unbuttoning his shirt. Had that been last night or six years ago?
‘I hope I didn’t go that far?’ she said nervously.
‘Not quite,’ said Max, ‘but I was reduced to taking my shirt off to get rid of you.’
‘I can see that would have done the trick,’ said Freya, acid edging her voice, but to her annoyance Max’s look of amusement only deepened.
‘Eventually. You just stood there staring at me, with your eyes like saucers, and for a few moments there I thought I might have to strip completely before you got the point, but the penny dropped then and you started to blush and then you bolted.’
Excellent, thought Freya glumly. A sure way to impress him with her sophistication and poise.
She was annoyed to see a smile tugging at the corner of Max’s mouth. ‘If I hadn’t been so tired, your expression would have been funny,’ he said. ‘Talk about covered with confusion!’
‘Glad I’ve provided you with some amusement,’ she said a trifle sullenly.
‘I wasn’t so amused when I got up in the middle of the night to get some water and found you crashed out on the sofa with all lights blazing and the dregs of a martini in a glass that had fallen out of your hand. It was like a scene from a Channel Four docu-drama! I tried to wake you up, but you just kept mumbling something about missing the bus.’
Freya swallowed. Oddly enough, she remembered that bit. ‘I was dreaming about our old biology teacher, Mr Nuttall. He was shouting at me because I was late.’
‘That was me doing the shouting,’ said Max. ‘Not that it got me anywhere. In the end I had to carry you bodily. I’m afraid you just got dumped on the bed, but I wasn’t feeling that strong myself.’
Oh, right. Make her feel fat as well as stupid!
She could dimly remember surfacing at one point to pull her dress off, though, so presumably he hadn’t actually investigated what her mother insisted on calling ‘your lovely womanly figure’.
‘I took your shoes off, but I drew the line at undressing you,’ said Max dryly.
And now he could read her mind. That was all she needed.
‘You needn’t worry,’ he said, misinterpreting her expression. ‘I’m not into necrophilia! But by that stage I was beginning to wish that I’d sent you home with Lucy.’
The kettle had boiled while he’d been talking, and he made a pot of tea while Freya took the opportunity to drop her head back into her folded arms. So far, the morning which had started off so spectacularly badly with possibly the worst hangover of her life wasn’t getting any better. If only she could rewind time, preferably back to the point before she had even heard of a martini, shaken or stirred.
Max poured tea into a mug, added several spoonfuls of sugar, and stirred it before setting it down beside Freya on the table. Turning her head fractionally, she opened one eye to see the mug looming disproportionately large at the odd angle.
‘Go on, drink it,’ said Max. ‘It’ll do you good.’
Lifting her head very cautiously, she took a tentative sip, only to screw up her face. ‘It’s got sugar in it!’
‘Drink it anyway.’
Freya didn’t have the energy to withstand him. The pounding in her head subsided as she drank her tea, staring blankly ahead of her. It was only when she got to the end, and had to admit that she felt a little better that she realised that Max was tidying up the debris of her attempts to make canapés—was it only last night? It felt like a lifetime ago when she had been young and vigorous.
‘I’ll do that,’ she said lamely.
Max glanced over his shoulder at her. ‘I can’t wait until you’re capable of standing up,’ he said. ‘I’m just clearing a space to make some breakfast, anyway. I’m starving.’
‘Breakfast!’ Freya’s stomach heaved at the very thought, and the shadow of a grin flickered across his face.
‘I didn’t spend all last night guzzling cocktails,’ he pointed out. ‘I haven’t eaten since somewhere over the Sahara.’
Freya watched in some dismay as he opened the fridge. His expression told her all she needed to know about what he thought about the contents, but he unearthed some bacon, curling at the edges, and a box of eggs that she had bought as part of healthy eating programme that had never quite materialised. She just hoped that they were still in date. She wouldn’t be very popular if she gave him salmonella on top of everything else.
Max put the frying pan on to heat and began stacking dirty plates and bowls in the dishwasher, careless of the fact that every chink and clatter was like a drill in Freya’s head.
‘What were you and Lucy arguing about last night?’ she asked to distract herself.
‘Lucy was arguing,’ he corrected her. ‘She was objecting loudly and at length to the fact that I selfishly wasn’t prepared to leave the moment I’d arrived and trek across London with her and Steve to spend the night with them.’
He glanced sardonically over his shoulder at Freya. ‘I gather the idea was for me to leave the apartment to you and that journalist who had his tongue down your throat when I arrived. I’m sorry if I spoilt your plans, but I’d been travelling for three days, my flights were delayed all the way along the line, and quite frankly your love life wasn’t high on my priority list right then.’
‘How did you know Dan was a journalist?’ said Freya blankly, latching on to the only thing that she understood.
‘He had the gall to introduce himself while you and Lucy were flapping around trying to get everyone to leave.’ Max loaded the dishwasher with soap and shut it with a bang that made Freya wince. ‘He had no compunction about eavesdropping our conversation, and the next thing I knew he was telling me that he worked for some television company I’ve never heard of and demanding that I tell him everything I could about the coup so he could rush off and file a story on it.’
Freya frowned as she tried to follow this. ‘What coup?’ she asked.
‘God, you really don’t remember anything about last night, do you?’ Max shook his head.
There was a sizzle as he laid two rashers of bacon in the frying pan. ‘For someone who works on a foreign newsdesk you’re remarkably badly informed,’ he said astringently. ‘There’s been unrest in the region for weeks now. I’d have thought you would be expecting me back at any time.’
‘I’ve had other things on my mind recently,’ she said, unwilling to admit that she had no idea which region he was talking about.
‘What, like prats in leather jackets?’
Freya looked at him coldly. ‘What exactly happened?’
‘I’ve been trying to set up a project out there. I’d hoped I’d be able to get more done before the situation blew, but as it was I only just got back to Usutu in time.’
‘Usutu?’ Startled, Freya jerked upright, spilling her tea.
‘The capital of Mbanazere,’ said Max impatiently. ‘Surely you know that?’
‘Of course I do. It’s just…’ She trailed off, one hand to her aching head, unable to explain the weird sense of déjà vu.
It was as if her life had come full circle. Here was Max, back from the same country, with the same tanned skin, the same light eyes, the same competent hands. And here she was, with the same ability to humiliate herself in front of him. Six years, and nothing had changed.
‘I didn’t realise that was where you had been,’ she finished lamely. ‘It’s quite a coincidence, really. I was talking about Usutu only last night.’
‘To your friend with the hide of a rhinoceros, no doubt,’ said Max, a crisp edge to his voice. ‘For someone who’s being posted out there as correspondent, he doesn’t know much about the country. He was pestering me with inane questions about the situation there while people were leaving, and you were still pressing martinis on the rest of us.
‘Not that there was much I could tell him,’ he went on. ‘I was up country when the coup happened. The first I heard about it was when I went in to town to talk to the provincial governor, and everyone was shouting and waving their arms around. There were soldiers patrolling the streets, and I was ordered onto a plane forthwith. The RAF airlifted a whole lot of us and…well, here I am.’
CHAPTER THREE
YES, here he was. Watching his economical movements, Freya was taken aback by how familiar he seemed. It was as if she’d watched him making breakfast a thousand times. Surely it ought to feel a bit more bizarre to be sitting here in her towelling robe, nursing her hangover and discussing the political situation in Africa? A bit less…right?
She could just imagine Max finding himself caught up in a coup, calmly and quietly assessing the situation while chaos surged around him. Shouting and arm waving wasn’t his style at all. He was one of those quietly calm and capable types that never got excited about anything—which could be, and usually was, utterly infuriating, but there were times—and let’s face it, finding yourself in the middle of a rebellion would be one of them—when that air of calm competence would come in very handy.
‘Couldn’t you have stayed?’ she asked, absently stirring the dregs of her tea.
‘Not without being a nuisance.’ Max turned his bacon over. ‘It’s not as if I’m a medic. I can’t do anything useful while the country is in a state of upheaval, so the sensible course of action was to come home, concentrate on raising funds for the project at this end, and go back as soon as things have settled down.’
The sensible course of action. How typical of Max. Freya could only think of one occasion when he hadn’t taken that, and a hint of colour stole up her cheeks at the memory. Did Max remember?
‘How long will that be?’ she asked hastily.
He shrugged. ‘It’s hard to tell. A month? Six weeks? Maybe longer.’
‘A month?’ Freya couldn’t hide her dismay. She looked around the kitchen regretfully. She really liked this flat. ‘I supposed I’d better find somewhere else to live,’ she sighed.
There was a pause. ‘Have you got anywhere to go?’ asked Max.
‘I could stay with a friend in the meantime,’ she said, thinking of Pel.
His expression hardened. ‘That journalist you were draped around last night?’
‘Dan?’ Freya was taken aback. ‘No, I don’t know him that well.’
‘You could have fooled me!’
‘I suppose I could ask him,’ she said slowly. Perhaps she should ask him? With an effort, Freya reminded herself of her mission. What better way to consolidate her relationship with Dan than by moving in with him for the few weeks he had left?
What relationship, Freya? she asked herself. He might have seemed keen last night, but she could hardly turn up on his doorstep with a spotted handkerchief over her shoulder on the basis of a grope after a few too many martinis all round.
‘There’s no need to bother.’ Max poked irritably at the bacon in the frying pan. ‘You can stay here.’
‘But what about you?’
‘This flat ought to be big enough for both of us. It’s only for a few weeks, and I’m not likely to be in that much.’ He hesitated. ‘Lucy said that you were having some financial problems,’ he said after a moment. ‘That was why I agreed to let you stay here while I was overseas. Lucy’s always been good at emotional blackmail!’
Freya was mortified. ‘I didn’t know she’d twisted your arm. She told me you wanted someone living here for security.’
‘Is it true?’
‘Is what true?’
‘That you’re short of money?’
She tried to shrug. ‘Oh, well, you know what it’s like,’ she said as airily as she could. ‘I’ve just got rather a lot of financial commitments at the moment.’
