The Honeymoon Prize Page 10

  He looked up with a brief smile. ‘Sorry, I tend to go into lecture mode when I talk about what we do. The only thing you really need to know is that it’s an extensive project, and although it’s had the support of the government in the past, they haven’t got any money to make it happen. So we’re approaching various international development agencies.’ He reached for some bread and cheese.

  ‘They offer financial support, but they want a precise breakdown of the costs involved, and that means a detailed survey before we can get anything underway. I was in the middle of doing that when the coup got in the way and, because I hadn’t finished, I haven’t got accurate figures. We’re having to base them on a similar project we did in Tanzania,’ he explained, handing Freya a budget sheet. ‘That’s what we need to check now.’

  It didn’t take long to go through them, with Max reading out a figure and Freya checking it against her sheet. ‘Thanks,’ he said when they had finished, and he stretched his arms behind his head. ‘You were right, that was much quicker with two.’

  Freya had been thinking about what he’d told her. ‘How can you be sure that the project will still go ahead now that there’s a new government?’

  ‘We can’t be. I’ll need to go back and start applying for official permissions all over again, and there’s no point in doing that until the dust settles. My guess is that the new government will be sensitive about anyone with any association with the old regime at first, but I think they’ll see the advantages of the project in the end.

  ‘It’s frustrating not to be able to finish my survey, though,’ Max went on, lowering his arms with a slight frown. ‘They’ll be keen to get tourism going again as soon as they can, but they only let you have a two-week visitor’s visa at the moment, and I’m reluctant to spend money going backwards and forwards masquerading as a tourist. Things are tight enough at the moment as it is.’

  Freya looked at the piles of paper on the table. ‘So that’s why this report is important? To get enough money to see the project through?’

  Max laughed, startling her as he always did with the suddenness of his smile and the way it lightened his quiet face. ‘If only! No, this grant we’re applying for will only be enough to cover the initial costs. It’s a constant battle to fund relatively small-scale projects like ours. That’s why Kate is working so hard on fundraising and publicity at the moment.’

  Ah, yes, Kate. For a few minutes there, Freya had forgotten Kate.

  ‘She’s doing a great job, but it’s hard trying to raise awareness. Basic engineering schemes like ours don’t tug on people’s heartstrings in the same way as relief efforts after a disaster. We can’t produce pictures of starving children, just of hard-working communities trying to make the best of their lives and improving their conditions through their own efforts.’ Max sounded bitter. ‘It’s not headline-grabbing stuff, is it? But if anyone can get our funding organised, it’s Kate.’

  He half-smiled. ‘She specialises in turning hopeless causes into huge successes.’

  Freya fiddled with her fingernails, apparently absorbed in pushing back her cuticles.

  ‘Lucy says that you met in Tanzania.’

  Max looked surprised. ‘I didn’t know Lucy knew anything about Kate. But, yes, she’s right. Kate and I were out there for a couple of years together.’

  ‘She seems very nice,’ Freya made herself say.

  ‘Oh, Kate’s a very special lady,’ he said, and there was no mistaking the affection in his voice. ‘She’s one of the most genuine people I’ve ever met. Very intelligent, very committed, completely natural. And she’s got guts. I love that about her. She never gives up.’

  How to make you feel utterly inadequate in a few easy sentences, thought Freya glumly. She couldn’t imagine anyone saying that about her. She gave up almost as soon as she’d begun. Her career, if you could call her random assortment of jobs that. Her diet, the gym…she had never stuck at anything.

  Depressed, Freya finished the last bit of cheese. She didn’t want to hear any more about how special Kate was.

  ‘If you get the funding, will you go out to Mbanazere to oversee the project?’ she asked, trying not to change the subject too deliberately.

  ‘I hope so. I love it out there,’ said Max, the normally guarded expression alight with warmth. ‘Usutu’s just a big, dirty city like any other, but I spend most of my time up country. I like the villages. I like lying in the dark and listening to the sounds of the bush and waking with the dawn. I miss it when I’m here,’ he confessed, looking at Freya but not seeing her, seeing somewhere quite different. ‘It’s so quiet there.’

  ‘It sounds wonderful,’ said Freya, meaning it.

  ‘It’s not all good,’ he said. ‘Nothing works, and when you’re trapped in the bureaucracy you think you’re never going to get out, and sometimes it’s so hot and oppressive it’s hard to breathe.’

  ‘There’s always Wularu beach,’ she said, and his eyes narrowed in surprise.

  ‘How do you know about Wularu?’ he asked, puzzled. ‘Did Lucy tell you that, too?’

  ‘No, you did.’ Freya couldn’t look at him. She pushed a breadcrumb around her plate with a finger. ‘You told me about it that night…after Lucy’s twenty-first,’ she added with difficulty.

  The silence pooled between them, vibrating with memories. Was he remembering the uncanny intimacy of that night? Freya wondered. Was he thinking about how easily they had talked in a way they had never talked before, about that moment the conversation had dried, about what had happened next…?

  ‘Oh, yes, that night,’ said Max, his voice empty of expression.

  Freya’s throat was dry and she moistened her lips. ‘You said that when the heat was unbearable, you’d go to the coast and stay in a little hotel right by the beach. You said that when the sand got too hot to walk on, you would sit in the shade and they would bring you beer and a crab mayonnaise sandwich.’ She mustered a smile. ‘I always liked the sound of those sandwiches.’

  ‘They were very good. They still are.’

  There was another long silence.

  What had possessed her to mention that night? Freya wondered wildly. Now she had unleashed a torrent of memories, of his hands exploring her, unlocking her, of the touch of him and the taste of him and the feel of him inside her, of the soaring, screaming excitement, all spilling unstoppably between them and jangling in the air.

  Her green eyes skittered to his and then frantically away, but it was as if something stronger was dragging them inexorably back again. Their gazes locked with a kind of inevitability, and Freya’s bones ached with remembering as she stared helplessly into the peculiar, penetrating lightness of Max’s eyes.

  It was Max who looked away first, Max who broke the silence by clearing his throat.

  ‘The hotel is still there,’ he said, and his voice sounded so normal it was shocking. ‘I’ll let you have the address. If you go out to see Dan, you might like to stay there.’

  Freya had almost forgotten Dan. It was a funny thing how she could remember so much about that night with Max all those years ago, and yet forget important things about the present, like Dan and Kate and the fact that she had already decided that Max meant no more to her than a brother.

  ‘That sounds great,’ she said dully, pushing back her chair and gathering up the plates. ‘I’ll let you get on with your introduction.’

  What was wrong with her? Freya wondered desperately. Dan Freer, every woman’s fantasy, had kissed her, really kissed her—her, Freya King! She should be swinging round lampposts, giddy with lust and excitement, and boring everyone to tears with endless analyses of what Dan had said and Dan had done.

  Instead, she found herself lying awake, listening to the creaks from Max’s room, straining for the sound of footsteps, trying to work out whether it was one set or two. Was that Kate’s voice she could hear, or just the radio?

  She felt edgy and unsettled. It wasn’t even as if Max was being particularly nice to her. I
f anything, he was brusquer than before on the few occasions they came face to face, but generally he seemed to be making an effort to avoid her.

  Which was a relief, Freya told herself.

  At least she had no time to think about things during the day. There were long spells at work when nothing much seemed to be happening, and they filled the paper with political profiles and scientific scare stories, and then, like now, it was as if the world existed in a series of crises, disasters and upheavals. Governments crashed, scandals were exposed, revolutions succeeded or failed. The stakes were raised as peace talks teetered on the brink, and epidemics threatened. The climate was in a ferocious mood, with floods and fire and earthquakes to match the political instability around the globe.

  Dan was in his element, criss-crossing the continent. He reported from the depths of the jungle in Zambia, then went straight on to South Africa and Angola. He was in Nigeria after that, then across to Ethiopia and westwards again to Sierra Leone. Freya gave up predicting where he would ring from, but whenever he called and whatever the circumstances, he was as charming and as chatty as ever.

  It was impossible not to respond to the warmth in his voice, especially when Max was so distant and withdrawn, and when Dan finally told her that he had settled for the time being in Usutu and urged her again to visit whenever she could, Freya found herself promising that she would.

  Nearly three weeks after Dan had left, the phone rang on Freya’s desk. ‘Newsdesk,’ she said as she picked it up.

  ‘Is that Freya King?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘My name’s Emma Carter, and I’m calling from Dream Wedding. I suppose you can guess why I’m calling?’

  Freya looked at the receiver blankly. ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘About our honeymoon competition?’ Emma prompted, evidently a little daunted by her response.

  ‘Oh, the competition!’ It was all coming back in a rush. She had been so busy that she hadn’t given it a thought. ‘Oh, yes, of course.’

  ‘I’m delighted to tell you that you and your fiancé have won first prize,’ said Emma. ‘I’ve got two tickets to Usutu on the twenty-seventh of June, plus a voucher for a fort-night’s stay in the Ocean View hotel in Wularu for you and Max right here! Congratulations!’

  ‘Now what am I going to do?’ Freya demanded later that day, having summoned Pel and Lucy to an emergency meeting in their favourite bar.

  They stared at her. ‘What do you mean, what are you going to do?’ said Pel. ‘It’s obvious. You’re going to take the prize!’

  ‘But she wants to come and interview me and Max on Saturday morning!’

  ‘So? You just tell her that Max couldn’t be there—say he’s got a crisis in the office or something—and graciously accept the ticket on his behalf. Easy.’

  ‘How am I going to get Max out of the house, though?’

  ‘I’ll ask him to come and have a look at my dry rot,’ suggested Pel.

  ‘Oh, that’ll make him rush out of the house!’

  ‘Well, we’ll think of something.’ He waved the problem aside. ‘The point is that you’ve won the ticket and can go out to Africa so Dan Freer can have his wicked way with you at last. Why aren’t you over the moon?’

  Yes, why wasn’t she?

  ‘I am over the moon,’ said Freya, but she sounded more fretful than excited. ‘I’m just worried about pulling it off. This Emma person wants to borrow a photograph of the two of us together as well. Apparently they thought it was such a romantic story, they want to do a big piece on us with pictures and everything.’

  ‘Ooh, I’ve had a good idea about that,’ said Lucy.

  Freya regarded her warily. Over the years she had learnt to be rather distrustful of Lucy’s good ideas. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’ll invite you and Max and Pel and Marco to a dinner party. We’ll say everyone has to dress smartly, so it looks as if we’re at your engagement party or something. I’m sure we could think of some reason to take some photos. It shouldn’t be too hard to get one of the two of you smiling together without it looking too obvious.’

  ‘Won’t you have to invite Kate if you’re inviting Max?’ Freya made herself ask.

  ‘I don’t see why. He’s never introduced her to me as his girlfriend, so how am I expected to know about her?’

  Good point. Freya perked up a bit. Maybe Kate wasn’t that serious after all?

  ‘I suppose it could work…’

  ‘Of course it’ll work!’ said Lucy indignantly.

  Freya bit her lip. Pel was right. She ought to be deliriously excited, but still she kept finding objections. ‘What if Max sees the article?’

  ‘I can’t see him browsing through Dream Wedding, can you?’

  No, Freya had to admit that it seemed very unlikely. ‘Do you think I should tell him what I’ve done?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ said Lucy firmly. ‘We don’t want him coming over all moral. You know what he’s like!

  ‘This is your big chance, Freya,’ she urged. ‘You said you wanted an affair with Dan, he’s invited you to stay, and now you’ve got a free ticket out to Africa…How much more encouragement do you need? You can’t throw it all up because of a few scruples about Max. You can always offer him the other ticket, if you must, but wait until you’ve got it in your hot little hand. If Dream Wedding get wind of the fact that it’s not a real honeymoon they’ll give the prize to someone else, and you don’t want that, do you?’

  ‘No,’ said Freya obediently.

  She didn’t, she insisted to herself as she made her way home. She wanted to go to Africa, and she wanted Dan. Dan who was so warm and so friendly and so attractive. Dan would laugh if he knew what she was planning to do. He would think it showed spirit.

  Only Max would look down his nose. Freya could imagine him rolling his eyes and telling Kate about her pathetic pursuit of Dan. It was all right for Kate. Kate was genuine, Kate was intelligent, Kate had guts. She never gave up.

  Freya always gave up. Well, this time she wouldn’t, she vowed. She was going to go to Africa, whatever it took!

  Freya was ridiculously nervous before Lucy’s dinner party. She knew that it was silly. It was just dinner with her closest friends and her friend’s brother. What was alarming about that? But whenever she thought about the reason for it, and what Max would say if he knew why they were so keen to take a photograph of him with her, her stomach clenched.

  She wished she hadn’t let Lucy and Pel talk her into this dinner. It wasn’t even as if Max would enjoy it.

  ‘What’s so special about Wednesday?’ he had demanded after his sister had ordered him to dinner and told him that it was a strictly black tie affair.

  ‘She just likes everyone to look smart,’ Freya had said vaguely, and Max snorted.

  ‘That’s good, given that she spent her entire adolescence in camouflage pants!’

  ‘We’re not adolescents any more,’ she said, and green eyes met pale grey for a moment before Max turned away.

  ‘I guess not,’ he said.

  Now Freya was dithering in her room. She couldn’t decide whether to put her hair up or leave it loose. Up would make her look more poised, she thought, but whenever she twisted it back and secured it with a clasp, half of her hair would slither out and swing back around her face again. She regarded her reflection dubiously. Jennifer Aniston could carry it off, but on her the style just looked messy.

  ‘Freya!’ Max called from the living room. ‘The taxi’s waiting downstairs.’

  ‘Coming!’

  She would have to leave her hair as it was. She was wearing her red dress again. She had taken it to the dry cleaner’s after its disastrous wetting the night Dan left, and it seemed to have recovered. Really, she was getting a surprising amount of wear out of it, she reflected. The shoes were paying their way, too. Most of the expensive pairs she bought ended up chucked in the back of the wardrobe after being worn once, but these were now on their third outing. A mere thirty pounds a time, Freya
worked out. This was the first time she had been able to face them since their trek through the rain. Her blisters had only just recovered, and she inserted her feet into them gingerly.

  ‘Freya!’

  ‘I’m coming!’

  Freya hated to be hurried. Flustered, she picked up her bag—the same one Max had driven her all the way out to Heathrow to collect—and made her way along to the living room, where Max was waiting impatiently for her in his dinner jacket.

  What was it about men and dinner jackets? Freya thought involuntarily. In spite of his irritated expression, Max looked taller, leaner, disconcertingly, even dangerously, attractive, and the breath leaked out of her.

  He had worn a dinner jacket the night of Lucy’s twenty-first, too. She could see him now, sitting on the shabby sofa while she drank glass after glass of water. He’d taken off his jacket, and his bow tie had dangled round his neck. He’d been just back from Africa, lean and tanned, and the whiteness of his shirt had been dazzling against his brown skin. Freya could remember laying her hand against his chest, feeling the steely strength of his body through the fine material.

  She swallowed. ‘I’ll just get a bottle of wine.’

  ‘Well, hurry up,’ said Max testily, clearly untroubled by any such disturbing memories. ‘We’re going to be late!’

  ‘Freya, you look fab!’ Lucy greeted her with a big hug and huge wink when they arrived. ‘Doesn’t she look beautiful?’ she demanded, turning to her brother.

  ‘Very nice,’ said Max curtly.

  He was still cross about the fact that they were ten minutes late and extremely irritated with Freya for suggesting in the taxi that his obsession with time-keeping was a classic sign of an anally retentive personality, one that was certainly not shared by his sister who was chronically late for everything.

  Obviously his grudging ‘very nice’ was the best she was going to get. Given their squabble in the taxi, Freya thought she was probably lucky to get even that, but he didn’t have to make it sound quite so much as if Lucy had a gun to his head, did he?