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Freya rolled her eyes.
‘Great. Freya enjoys having lunch with you,’ Jolene said, not helping matters, in Freya’s view.
‘She does?’
‘Yes, she told me herself.’
‘Jolene!’
‘I’m only repeating what you told me,’ she said with a naughty grin.
Freya slowly turned around to find Tarek staring at her. ‘Ignore her. She’s just playing around.’
Although Jolene was already heading to the door, she had overheard the comment. ‘I’m not.’
Tarek said, ‘Why don’t I take you to lunch for a change?’
Freya looked at him in surprise. ‘But you don’t know Cambridge.’
Tarek smiled. ‘Oh, but I do. How do you think I’ve been spending my evenings? Sitting in a room staring at four walls?’
Freya hadn’t thought of that. ‘All right.’ It crossed her mind that, like Jolene, she could be meeting her significant other for lunch. That would be a way out of lunch with Tarek. So, why wasn’t she texting Theo?
Freya’s phone stayed in her back pocket. ‘Okay – it’s a date.’
Tarek raised his eyebrows.
Freya backtracked. ‘What I meant to say was it’s a lunch date.’ She frowned. That hadn’t come out right, either.
In front of her, one of the ladies who worked at the museum must have overheard. She turned around and looked at them. Freya said to her, ‘It’s a work day – isn’t it? So I’m taking Tarek with me to lunch.’
Tarek intervened. ‘Actually, I am taking Freya to lunch.’
Freya grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the door, wishing he hadn’t said that. As they stepped out of the museum, she caught the other women in a little huddle around the door, casting glances over their shoulders at them as they walked down the street.
Freya sighed and turned to Tarek. ‘Well, where are we going?’
‘It’s a surprise.’
‘I don’t like surprises,’ murmured Freya. Her dad and that woman called Wendy came to mind. And her mum. A question still on Freya’s mind. Had her mum found out about Wendy? And was she going to tell her mum about those trips out with her dad at the weekends? That whenever he had taken her swimming, they had stopped off at the park on the way home, and that sometimes, perhaps once a month, she had met a girl her own age, and had played with her while her dad chatted to some woman? She hadn’t thought about those Saturdays for years, but the memories were flooding back.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Tarek asked, shifting her mind back to the present.
Freya shook her head. ‘There’s nothing to talk about.’ She changed the subject as they walked down the street. ‘We’ve only got an hour. This place had better not be far.’
‘It isn’t,’ he said, still not telling her the big surprise. But he quickened his pace.
Chapter 29
They walked from the museum towards the canal, where rows of gondolas bobbed up and down on the water and young men and women touted for business, offering boat rides along the River Cam. However, Tarek and Freya didn’t continue to the river, but turned left, walking along a wide street with cafés and shops on the right and the impressive King’s College on their left, where most tourists headed for a photo opportunity by the lawns in front of the stunning honey-coloured façade.
Freya weaved between the tourists as she walked along with Tarek. She glanced at him, taking in his tall slim frame, skinny blue jeans, trainers, blue sweatshirt and jacket that was too thin for the weather. His hands were thrust into his jean pockets and his shoulders were hunched as he walked. He wasn’t dressed for the British weather, and was obviously cold. She doubted he even owned an overcoat, or a hat, scarf and gloves.
Freya, on the other hand, was wearing a long, quilted coat, a bobble hat, gloves and a long, cosy woollen scarf. She unwound the scarf from her neck, zipped her up coat to her chin, and turned to Tarek. ‘Here.’
He looked at her, dropped his eyes to the scarf, and shook his head.
‘I know it’s pink, but it’s better than nothing.’
