Lovers' Lies

‘If I’d wanted conversation I’d have gone to dinner with the crowd. I’ve had a very pleasant evening.’

They came to another corner and Felicia blindly changed direction, heading—she hoped—towards the hotel. Simple courtesy demanded that she say she had also enjoyed the evening. But for her it had been too emotionally charged.

She quickened her pace, and suddenly the road disappeared into an unlit alleyway. She stopped abruptly, and felt Joshua’s presence at her back, not quite touching her. ‘We’ve taken a wrong turning,’ she said.

‘Maybe.’

‘We’ll have to go back to the main road.’

As she made to retrace their steps, he stopped her with a hand on her arm. ‘But there’s light through there, and another road, see?’

She peered into the dimness, and saw at the end of the alley people passing back and forth, and a road with traffic, bicycles.

‘Never go back,’ Joshua suggested, ‘unless there’s no other way out.’

Felicia shrugged. There was something to be said, she grudgingly supposed, for having a male companion. Sensible women automatically avoided lonely, dark streets. She let him lead her forward.

One side of the alley was lined with dozens of bicycles standing silent and gleaming side by side in the gloom. On the other side were closed back doors.

Then quite quickly the alleyway emerged into a broad street, and she recognised that they were close to the hotel.

When they reentered the lobby a few minutes later it seemed very bright and spacious.

‘A nightcap?’ Joshua suggested. ‘The bar’s still open.’

‘Not for me,’ Felicia decided. ‘Thank you for your company.’ She had to get away from him to sort out the confusion of her feelings.

Joshua ignored the hand she held out. ‘I don’t want to drink alone. I’ll be going up to bed too. Tomorrow it’s the Great Wall, isn’t it? Stamina may be required.’

There weren’t many people about and they had the elevator to themselves. When the doors slid open at Felicia’s floor, Joshua surprised her by taking her shoulders and turning her gently but firmly to face him.

She hardly had time to register the taut, questioning look on his face, the deep light in his tigerish eyes, before he bent his head and pressed a warm, insistent, exploratory kiss against her mouth.

Taken unawares, she felt her lips quiver and part under his before she could stop herself.

Then she was free, and he had raised a hand to hold the door for her. She stepped back, staring at him, and heard him say, ‘Good night, Felicia,’ before the doors closed and she was left blinking at the bright red arrow above her.

‘... the only man-made structure visible from outer space.’

Felicia stood on the Great Wall, only half listening to the rapid-fire statistics Jen was giving the group huddled around her. ‘Two thousand, one hundred and fifty miles long... three hundred thousand workers...’

Hundreds of tourists of various nationalities milled about, climbing the worn steps and squinting at the farther reaches of the wall where a shifting tide of people thinned as it receded into the distance.

A hand on the hard stone parapet, Felicia gazed at the desolate, rock-strewn countryside. She’d read the figure, but none of them had prepared her for the feeling of actually being here—for the sense of the toiling of time, of generations that had lived and died and loved and been forgotten since the building of the wall had begun.

‘And this is only a remnant,’ Joshua’s voice said beside her. ‘Pretty impressive, isn’t it?’

‘Awesome,’ Felicia agreed. She had to force herself to look at him, the sound of his voice bringing back a vivid memory of that brief, unexpected kiss last night.

Not quite meeting his eyes, she gave him a quick smile and moved to merge into the group following Jen along the top of the wall.

She had the feeling that he remained staring after her for a few seconds before he joined them, but by that time she was walking with Maggie, successfully ignoring him.

Suzette unwittingly assisted her to do so for the rest of the day, attaching herself to Joshua’s side and making sure that whatever attention he could spare from sightseeing was directed to her. Felicia ought to have been grateful. Instead she found herself harbouring uncharitable thoughts about both of them—Suzette for her blatant man-chasing, and Joshua because of his air of amused tolerance. Patronising, she labelled it caustically.

It occurred to her that she was being a dog in the manger, and the thought only made her more irritated. Her muddled feelings were a hangover, she had decided last night, gazing into the sleepless darkness of her room, residual emotion from her early adolescence, when she’d thought Joshua was the handsomest, most romantic man on earth.

Face it, she told herself brutally as she changed for dinner back at the hotel after their return from the Great Wall. He was your first crush, your puppy-love, and despite everything that happened, somewhere deep down traces of those feelings are still buried in your subconscious.

That was why she had found his casual kiss last night so disturbing. At thirteen she’d at least had enough sense to know that a grown man like Joshua Tagget wasn’t going to be interested in a barely pubescent girl. She had been happy to abet his love affair with Genevieve—a form of transference, she now supposed.

Had he ever divined her own feelings—that excruciating blend of half-understood, heavily romanticised sexual awakening and blind hero-worship? God, she hoped not! She grew hot at the thought, suddenly reverting to uncomfortable adolescent self-consciousness.

Tonight everyone was dining in the hotel because they were scheduled to attend a performance of acrobatics afterwards in the city. Safety in numbers, Felicia promised herself. She needn’t share a table with Joshua again.

Dead wrong, as it turned out. When she entered the dining room it was to find nearly all her tour companions gathered around two large tables, and Maggie saving her a seat. Which left two at Felicia’s other side empty. Those were the only chairs available when Joshua and Suzette entered together a little later, and Felicia watched with a sense of inevitability as he seated his companion and then took the chair next to hers.

‘Hi,’ he said in her ear.

Felicia half turned her head. ‘Hi,’ she acknowledged, and returned to studying the menu in front of her.

‘Why don’t we order a selection of dishes for the table?’ someone suggested. ‘We can all share, and have a taste of everything.’

After a minimum of discussion the plan was approved, and the menus removed.

The meal became a friendly free-for-all of passing, tasting, dipping and enthusiastic recommendations. Chopsticks were wielded with varying degrees of expertise and success, and as Felicia dexterously transferred a few pork balls from the serving dish to her plate Joshua commented, ‘You’re pretty damn good at that.’ It had taken him several attempts to get a firm grip on one of the sauce-covered morsels.

‘I often eat in Chinese restaurants.’ She turned to Maggie. ‘Would you like some of these?’

‘If you’ll kindly get them for me,’ Maggie replied, waving her own chopsticks. ‘I still haven’t got the hang of these danged things.’

One of the children in the party, sitting on the other side of Maggie, piped up, ‘You’re holding them wrong. See, try like this!’

It was all very relaxed and sometimes hilarious. ‘Group bonding,’ Joshua murmured once, slanting a glance towards Felicia. ‘How about it?’

‘What?’ She had to look at him, finding his eyes darker than usual, questioning her. Curious, perhaps.

‘There was more than one wall out there today,’ he said quietly, his voice covered by a burst of laughter from across the table as someone accidentally dropped a prawn into their drink. ‘And this one’s still intact.’

‘I’m not sure what you mean.’ Felicia looked down at her plate, toying with a grey, semi-transparent slice of sea cucumber and wondering if she really needed to eat it.

‘We’re all going to be together for a while, and a friendly atmosphere can help things along considerably. I thought last night...’

‘What did you think?’ she asked, more sharply than she meant to.

He was looking at her with a baffled expression. ‘Was it the kiss?’ he asked bluntly. ‘Should I apologise?’

It had hardly been anything to make a fuss about, except for its unexpected effect on her. ‘That’s not necessary,’ she said hastily. ‘As kisses go, it scarcely rated, after all.’