the distance.
‘What am I supposed to be looking at?’ Charlie asked.
‘The mountain. See the face?’
‘The mountain face?’
‘No, an actual face. It looks like it’s got a face.’
‘I can’t see anything. What, you mean like eyes, nose, mouth?’
‘And eyebrows, and I can see an ear, I think. Can’t you see it?’
‘No.’ Charlie tried not to sound cross. ‘I can’t see a face in the mountain. Is it attractive?’
‘It’s got to be a trick of the light, but . . . I wonder whether it’ll change as the sun moves. It must be something to do with the shadows cast by the rocky ridges.’
Charlie stared for a long time, but no face made itself apparent to her. Stupidly, she felt left out. Simon and his boat had floated to the other side of the pool. Might as well do a few lengths, she decided, keep herself fit. She resolved not to panic from now on when she saw Domingo coming her way, even if she did have a startlingly clear image in her mind of him ambushing her and Simon with the words, ‘Phone, England,’ waving his mobile in the air.
‘Charlie?’
‘Mm?’
‘What would you do if . . . ?’ Simon shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said.
‘What would I do if what?’
‘Never mind. Forget it.’
‘I can’t forget it, and you know I can’t,’ she said. ‘Tell me.’
‘There’s nothing to tell.’
‘Tell me!’
What would you do if I asked you for a divorce? What would you do if I said I wanted us to sleep in separate rooms?
‘I’m imagining bad things here. Do you want to put me out of my misery?’
‘It’s nothing bad,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing to do with you and me.’
Meaning that if it was something relating to the two of them it would, by necessity, be bad?
Stop creating problems where none exist, Zailer.
Charlie swore under her breath. She knew she was about to spend at least the next two hours trying to make him tell her, and she knew she would fail.
‘You’ve got to go,’ Olivia told Gibbs, pressing her hands against his ribcage. For the past hour she’d been trying to push him out of her bed, but he was stronger than she was, and resisting.
‘No, I haven’t.’ He was lying on his back, arms folded behind his head.
‘Yes, you have! We’ve got to start pretending not to be wicked Godless degenerates. If we start now, it won’t take too long for it to become convincing – we might believe it by this evening if we’re lucky.’ Gibbs almost smiled, but didn’t move. It was two o’clock in the afternoon, according to Olivia’s phone. Her hotel room was as dark as it had been when they’d stumbled in here twelve hours ago. The black-out blinds and thick curtains were more serious about the preservation of night than any window-dressings Olivia had ever previously encountered, and had joined forces against the daylight.
‘Don’t you have to get home at some point? Haven’t you got a life, plans, a curfew? I’ve got all three.’ She gave up pushing. It wasn’t going to work, and it was hurting her hands.
Gibbs rolled onto his side so that he was facing her. It was funny: though she called him Chris, she could only think of him as Gibbs, which was what Simon called him. Would that change? Silently, she reprimanded herself for thinking about him in the future tense. She needed to pull herself together, but how could she, with him lying next to her, radiating heat?
‘Trying to get rid of me?’ he asked.
‘Yes, but . . . not in a bad way.’
‘Is there a good way?’
‘Of course. There are loads. There’s the self-sacrificing “cut me loose and save yourself while you still can” good way, and there’s . . .’ Olivia stopped, remembering that he’d compared her to a Sunday colour supplement, and his reason for doing so. ‘We’ve got to be out by three o’clock,’ she said briskly, to disguise her embarrassment. ‘I can’t ring and ask for another extension.’
‘What are the other good ways?’ Gibbs asked. Could he really be interested?
She couldn’t tell him the truth. She’d just had sex with him, three times. If ever a situation called for the opposite of the truth, this was surely it.
‘I’m going nowhere unless you tell me,’ he threatened.
‘For God’s sake! All right, then, maybe this’ll do the trick where trying to push you out of bed failed. Another good way is: I need you to go so that I can spend the rest of