Page 85 of Secret Paths

My eyes feel heavy.

“This is not dick time,” I murmur.

“No,” Peter says.

“You are not disappointed?”

“I am full of cottage pie and personal growth. I could not perform under these conditions.”

A laugh escapes me, tired and low.

Peter’s hand tightens around mine.

I turn onto my side, facing him. He turns too, careful, as if one wrong movement might break the rules neither of us has mentioned for hours.

His arm comes around me.

I let it.

For a while, I stay stiff enough to pretend I am merely testing the arrangement. Then his hand settles between my shoulder blades, warm and steady, and my body makes its own decision.

I move closer.

Peter’s chin rests lightly against my hair.

Neither of us says anything.

I listen to his breathing slow. Mine follows.

The last thing I think before sleep takes me is that this was not what I invited him over for.

And I am not sorry.

Chapter 9

Peter

“This is unacceptable.”

I wake with a dead arm, a stiff neck and Mandy leaning over me like a woman about to deliver bad news in a consulting room.

For several seconds, I have no idea where I am.

The ceiling is wrong. The pillow smells faintly of lavender and Mandy’s shampoo. My belt is digging into my hip because I am, for reasons that return to me in a slow and deeply inconvenient order, fully dressed on top of her duvet.

Cottage pie.

Wine.

Nairobi.

Karim apologising to an entire aircraft in three languages.

Mandy’s hand in mine.

Her moving closer.

Me telling myself I would leave in five minutes, then treating five minutes as an ambitious opening offer.