to the back of her hand and she licked it up. ‘Waste not, want not.’
‘Mmm.’ He sounded a bit distracted. He cleared his throat. ‘You were going to tell me what you learned?’
‘Oh, that. Well, lots of things. The nutritional value of red seaweed. That wind in the palm trees sounds like rain on a corrugated-iron roof and it breaks your heart when it isn’t. That counting fish is really boring when you do it every day. That people tell you something is adventurous when it’s really just hot and dirty.’
‘Ah.’
‘And also,’ said Bella loudly, ‘that I’m not very brave. So here’s to the stars and equatorial fish stocks! I hope they’re very happy, but I’m not going back.’
And then, to her own surprise, she began to cry.
Silk Shirt coped surprisingly well. He didn’t say everything would look better in the morning like Lottie would have, or that she’d change her mind when she thought about the importance of the work, like Francis Don had, in their last, vituperative exchange. He took her glass away from her – Bella resisted but he pointed out that it was empty, so in the end she let it go – and put an arm round her, and drew her against his shoulder, and let her weep it out. He would probably even have produced a handkerchief, but she had one tucked into her watch strap under one long blue sleeve, so she was spared that indignity, at least.
‘I thought it’d be all right when I got home. But it isn’t. I’m cold. The magazines are full of people I don’t know. My mother’s much too busy running a Charity Ball to have me home …’ She ran out of voice and blew her nose hard.
‘Bummer,’ was all he said.
But she had the feeling that he knew what she was talking about. It steadied her.
She drew a long sigh. ‘Yes, but I didn’t belong on the island, either. I’ll miss the children in the village. Some of the people. But that awful knowing I’d been a gullible idiot … and everyone else knowing it, too … that was the pits.’
He sat very still. She sniffed, and straightened the handkerchief that she could barely see, folding it and folding it, corner to corner, in her absorption. She had a huge urge to tell someone the whole sorry story.
‘The trouble was, a man I respected basically did a con job on me. It took me too long to recognise it and a whole lot longer to admit it. But that’s the truth. And that hurts, you know?’
He hugged her a bit closer. ‘Yes, I know. Been there.’
‘I mean, if he’d said, “Come and help out; we’ve got no money, so we live on rich kids doing work experience,” that would have been fair. That would have been the truth. But he spun me this big line about what a valuable researcher I was, and how I could make all the difference, and he said he would make sure I got a real job at the end of it. When all he wanted was someone to count bloody fish.’ Her voice rose. ‘I don’t even like fish.’
‘I can see that one would go off them.’
Bella’s head reared up. ‘Are you laughing at me again?’ she said suspiciously.
‘Maybe a little.’ He tucked a tumbling strand of blonde hair behind her ear.
She relaxed back against his shoulder again. ‘You know, I don’t feel quite real. Not here. Not there. It’s like I’m a character walking through other people’s dreams. When they wake up, I’ll disappear. Pffft!’ She clicked her fingers. She had to have three goes at it but she managed it in the end. ‘Pffft!’ she said again, pleased. She peered up at him in the darkness. ‘Does that sound weird?’
‘It sounds as if it’s time I got you home.’
But Bella was on another tack entirely. ‘Are you an actor?’
‘Good heavens, where did that come from?’
‘The voice … Wonderful warm voice.’
‘You know, I’d be really flattered if you weren’t slurring your words,’ he said, shifting her. ‘Come along, Dream Girl.’
‘I know. You’re a psychiatrist.’
‘Why on earth …?’
‘You ask really good questions and then you listen.’
‘Oh, yes, I listen all right,’ he said. ‘It’s about the only thing I do.’
‘Well, you’re very good at it,’ Bella told him. ‘Very, very, very good.’ She snuggled into his shoulder.
‘Oh, no. You can’t go to sleep here. On your feet, Dream Girl. You’ve got a home to go to, and it’s time