The Honeymoon Prize

‘What commitments?’ asked Max. ‘You’ve got no mortgage, no kids, no car. You haven’t even got a dog!’

‘I’ve got a pet credit card,’ she said, but he was un-amused.

He cracked an egg into the frying pan. ‘Don’t you think it’s time you sorted out your finances?’ he asked disapprovingly.

‘You sound like my father,’ said Freya sullenly. ‘Not to mention Pel. As it happens, I am trying to sort them out,’ she told him, ‘which is why I was very grateful when Lucy said that I could live here and look after the flat for you while you were away in lieu of rent.’

Max turned his bacon over. He didn’t say anything, but Freya knew that he was thinking of the state of his living room.

‘I really have been looking after it,’ she said with a defensive edge to her voice. ‘I know it’s a mess now, but I’ll clear it all up in a minute, I promise. It’s not usually like this.’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ said Max, lifting the bacon and egg onto a plate and carrying it over to the table. Freya averted her eyes as he sat down. She wasn’t ready to even look at food yet.

Reaching for a piece of toast, he buttered it briskly. ‘In the circumstances, I think it would be easiest if we both stayed here,’ he said. ‘I don’t want Lucy bending my ear about throwing you out onto the street, and as you obviously can’t afford to find somewhere else, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t live in my own flat, sharing seems to be the obvious solution. It’s up to you,’ he went on as Freya, forgetting the delicate state of her stomach, stared at him in surprise. ‘If you’d rather move out, I’d quite understand.’

‘Oh, no,’ she said hastily. ‘I’d like to stay…’

Her voice trailed off hesitantly, and Max cocked an eyebrow as he applied himself to his breakfast. ‘But?’ he prompted.

‘Nothing.’

He sighed. ‘Come on, Freya. Spit it out.’

‘Well…you don’t think that it might be a bit…you know…?’

‘A bit what?’ he asked irritably.

‘A bit…awkward.’

Max was rapidly losing patience. ‘What would be awkward?’

‘Us living together. I mean, I know we wouldn’t be living together, at least not in the way people usually mean when they say living together, but still…’

Freya floundered and lost herself in the middle of her sentence, horribly aware of Max’s cool grey gaze on her flushed face. Instinctively, she knuckled the traces of mascara from under her eyes, and wished she’d thought to wash her face or at least comb her hair before she had to face him.

‘You think I might not be able to keep my hands off you, is that it?’

The lurking amusement in his voice was enough to make Freya lift her chin, a spark of defiance in her green eyes.

‘It wouldn’t be for the first time,’ she retorted.

There was a tiny pause. ‘So that’s it,’ said Max. To Freya’s fury, he went back to his breakfast, as if they were discussing nothing of more moment than the prospect of rain, or the possibility of a Cabinet reshuffle. ‘You want to know whether it’ll be awkward sharing the flat because we once slept together?’

‘No…well, yes…’ She flushed, twisting the mug between her hands. Why did he always have to make her feel so stupid?

‘Freya, that was years ago,’ he said. ‘We agreed at the time that it was a mistake, that it was late and neither of us was thinking clearly. As I remember, you were the one who pointed out that it didn’t mean anything, and if it didn’t mean anything then, why should it mean anything now? It’s not as if either of us have spent the last five years thinking about what happened that night.’

Six years, thought Freya, and speak for yourself.

‘A simple “no” would have done as an answer to my question,’ she said sulkily. How could he sit there calmly eating his bacon and eggs like that?

‘Does the fact that we went to bed once bother you?’

‘Of course not!’

‘Right, so it doesn’t bother you, and it doesn’t bother me,’ he said crisply. ‘It’s not going to be awkward, then, is it?’

Freya wanted to take his fork and poke it up his nose. ‘All right, you’ve made your point,’ she muttered, holding her sore head. She wished she had never mentioned it.

‘To be honest, I’m surprised you even remember that night,’ said Max.

She bridled. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, you were very tired and…overwrought,’ he said, choosing his words carefully.

‘Why not come right out with it, Max, and say that I was quite drunk?’ she said tartly.

‘That too,’ he agreed with one of his sardonic looks. ‘Look, all I’m trying to say is that you were very upset about your boyfriend that evening, and I thought that your feelings for him would actually have been more important to you than anything that happened between us. And since you never made any mention of it until now, and on the few occasions I’ve seen you there was always some man or other hanging around you, I just assumed that you’d forgotten all about it. End of story.’

Freya’s jaw dropped. Hang on, what men? Shouldn’t she have noticed if there had been any hanging around her? It was true that Lucy was always telling her that she didn’t read the signals, but surely even she would have noticed if she had had the constant string of boyfriends in tow that Max had implied!

‘I didn’t—’ she began, only to stop abruptly before she could tell Max that he had completely misunderstood.

What was she going to do? Admit that there hadn’t been anyone serious since the night they had spent together? It would sound as if she had never got over him! Absolute nonsense of course, but try convincing Max, with his oh-so-logical, two-plus-two-equals-four approach, of that. Freya cringed inwardly at how close she had come to making a complete fool of herself. She might not know who the mysterious men Max thought clustered around her were, but he had inadvertently offered an escape route for her pride. She didn’t get many breaks when Max was around, so she might as well make the most of it.

‘Oh, yes…right,’ she said, nodding as if she had a clue what he was talking about.

Max got up to make himself some more toast.

‘We’ve established that it won’t be awkward living together, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be incredibly irritating,’ he said briskly.

‘In what way?’ asked Freya, glad to be off the subject of that one encounter.

‘For a start, we’re clearly incompatible on the tidiness front.’ He slammed the toaster down. ‘You may be happy living in a tip, but I prefer a little more order in my surroundings.’

Order—another typically Max word, like ‘sensible’ or ‘logical’! Freya was tempted to say that the obsessive desire to impose order was merely a manifestation of a subconscious sense of inadequacy, but on reflection, and bearing in mind that she didn’t have anywhere else to go, she kept it to herself. He was such an engineer sometimes, though!

‘There was a party here last night,’ she pointed out instead. ‘There’s no such thing as a tidy party.’

‘In the bedrooms too? It looks as if the entire contents of Top Shop are strewn all over the floor! I dare say you haven’t heard of it, but I understand that there’s a very useful little gadget called a coat hanger that you can get hold of nowadays,’ he added nastily.

‘I was running late,’ said Freya with dignity. ‘I couldn’t decide what to wear.’

‘So you threw everything on the floor?’

‘You’ve never seen a woman get ready for a party, have you?’

‘Look, Freya, how you set about the incredibly difficult task of deciding what to put on every morning is nothing to me. Do what you like in your own room. I’m merely suggesting that we establish some ground rules for those areas like the kitchen and the living room that we’re going to have to share.’