AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He was the one being unprofessional. There was no way that he would have accused someone of that if they didn’t have a shared past. It was unforgivable for him to say that to Meena. ‘I didn’t mean it and I’m sorry,’ he added. ‘That was indefensible. I know you’re a professional.’
‘Good,’ she said, uncrossing her arms and returning her gaze to the laptop, typing in a password and clicking through login screens. ‘And thank you. Because annoying me isn’t going to get this finished any faster, you know. I’ve told you that before.’
‘I know. I should have listened. It’s just, the last time we spoke...’
She took a deep breath and he saw her brace herself.
‘Last time we spoke was very awkward,’ she confirmed. ‘We spoke about stuff from the past that probably should have stayed there. I’d prefer it if we didn’t speak about it again.’
‘Fine by me.’
Perfect by him, in fact, he thought, letting out a long, relieved breath. He had never wanted to talk about it in the first place. He never would have if she hadn’t pushed him so hard. Now that it was out there, the best thing that they could both do was ignore it and push it back into the sealed box where it belonged.
But he was surprised, nonetheless. Because Meena was the one who had pushed and pushed him to reveal their past—and, now that she knew, she had decided she wasn’t interested any more? The last thing that he wanted was to rake over it all again, but he couldn’t deny that he was surprised that she had dropped the subject entirely.
Maybe it was him, he mused. He had been giving off signals that he wasn’t good for her from the moment that he had met her. He couldn’t blame her for taking notice of them and deciding to wipe their relationship from her memory—voluntarily this time.
Meena talked him through the report from their last dive and her updated plans for the reef off Le Bijou. He couldn’t fault her work. Her research was precise, and her plans for the project detailed and thorough. As far as he could see, the only remaining question mark over the permits were these bloody turtles.
‘Will you definitely see the turtles hatch tonight?’ he asked her when they reached the end of the report.
‘I’ve learned not to get too hung up on “definitely”,’ she replied, annoyingly obtuse.
‘Okay, do you think that you will see them tonight, then?’
She shrugged. ‘I hope so. But I hoped that last night too.’
‘You were on Le Bijou last night?’
‘I camped on the beach,’ she said. Her words sparked a host of memories, of the night that they had camped out, their two blankets on the sand doing less to keep them warm than the heat of one another’s bodies. They’d made a small fire, eaten sticky mangoes and then watched the stars appear one by one in the sky.
‘What?’ Meena asked, and he knew that some of what he had been remembering must have shown on his face.
‘It’s nothing,’ he said quickly, trying to cover his tracks. Cover his feelings.
‘A memory?’ she asked.
He hesitated. She was the one who had said they should leave the past where it was. But he had promised not to lie to her.
‘Yes.’ Monosyllables were safest.
‘Ours?’
He nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Le Bijou?’
‘Yes, Le Bijou.’ He cracked; holding these memories himself was too much of a responsibility. She had shared in the making of them, and she was as entitled to them as he was. He could talk about Le Bijou without talking about how he had felt for her. He could give her something without giving her everything. ‘We spent the night there,’ he said simply, leaving out the details.
Meena looked thoughtful.
‘We went there a lot?’ she asked.
He could have ignored the question. He had promised not to lie; he hadn’t promised always to answer every question. But the look on he
r face, the eagerness for new information, meant that he couldn’t deny her.
‘Yes,’ he said eventually. ‘We went there a lot.’
