‘You’re not going?’
‘Nope.’
‘Well, neither am I.’
‘I thought you would say that,’ Cam said, and smiled down at me from his vantage point. I didn’t like that he was above me like this, and I contemplated climbing higher just to make sure that I was on top. Instead, though, I tried a different tactic.
‘If you don’t move, I’m going to have to forcibly remove you,’ I said.
He tilted his head right down, as if he was trying to make direct eye contact with me. I looked up, making sure we did. Making sure he saw how serious I was.
‘Are you always this violent on dates?’
‘What?!’ I spluttered. ‘This isnota date.’
‘But we’ve got moonlight, flowers . . .’ He ran a hand over one of the pretty pink blossoms in the tree. ‘And then of course there’s that undeniable chemistry between us.’
‘Chemistry! You’re delusional.’ I turned my head away and very pointedly aimed my lens at Victor once more. ‘One of us is getting out of this tree, and it’s not going to be me.’
‘Hang on,’ Cam said. ‘Isn’t this one of those tree frogs you’re so fond of?’
‘Cam, shut up. I’m trying to get a photo.’
‘But look,’ he said, sounding gleeful now.
Suddenly a hand appeared right in front of my face, holding a tiny wide-eyed tree frog. It blinked at me once and then started opening its mouth.
‘Oh myGOD, Cam! Put it back!’ I hissed. ‘I promise you, if it gets disturbed, it makes—’
RRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. . .
The frog let out one of its high-pitched screams. And maybe because I was closer to it this time, it sounded louder than before. There was no way to adequately describe the noise really, but it hovered somewhere between a banshee being run over by a steam train and two cats fighting in the middle of the night on a tin roof.
‘What the fuck?!’ Cam startled. The frog began to fall from his hand, and then everything seemed to go into slow motion. With my camera in one hand and the other hand clutching the branch, I was unable to stop it, so I watched in horror as it tumbled through the air, twisting once, twice – rather elegantly, actually, like a diver at the Olympics – and then disappeared into my top. Its cold, sticky fingers landed on my chest, and it stopped screaming.
‘Oh my God, Cam!’ I wanted to kill him right now for fucking up my investigation, because the noise had not gone unnoticed.
‘Did you hear that?’ Victor said.
I froze. The frog froze too, and then . . .
RRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. . .
‘What is it?’ Victor asked, rising from the pool, and then, then, the worst thing happened. The mistress stood up and turned. But because I had a frog down my top and my eardrums were moments away from shattering, I did not have the wherewithal to point my camera in her direction and shoot.
‘Shit!’ I hissed, so pissed off right now.
‘Ow! What the hell was that for?’ Cam rubbed his ankle, the one I’d just pinched as hard as I possibly could.
‘You put an amphibian down my front and made me miss my shot! I thought it would be— Aargh!’ I almost fell out of the tree as the frog went lower, finally settling onto my ribcage. I clenched every muscle in my body. I didn’t want to move in case I set the creature off again.
‘I didn’t mean to,’ Cam said. ‘It jumped.’
‘You dropped it!’
‘Seriously, what was that noise?’ Victor was looking around now,and so was the mistress. It was the perfect moment to get the perfect shot, but of course, I couldn’t.
And then . . . ‘Come on, let’s go inside,’ he said, and with that, they were gone. I had missed my moment, and it was all because of Cam. I twisted my head and glared up at him.
