Perfect Strangers

‘Yeah, like you care,’ she scoffed.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I mean don’t go pretending to be some great crusader fighting for justice when you’ve just sniffed an exclusive – my exclusive, in fact.’

‘Oh come on, Ruth, it’s not just your story, is it? Everyone’s been writing about Watson. You’ve just found a slightly different angle.’

Ruth could barely believe her ears.

&nb

sp; ‘Bullshit, David!’ she snapped. ‘If it was only a “slightly different angle”, you wouldn’t be so desperate to swipe it from under my nose.’

‘Why not let me have it?’ His tone softened, but she realised he was just changing tack. ‘Don’t you want me to get off the business pages? It would be good for me. Good for us.’

‘Good for us is if I keep my job in London. And the only way I’ve got a chance of doing that is if I keep generating stories between now and September. I need to hold on to the escort story, David. It’s my back-up.’

‘Which you might never need!’

She roared with frustration.

‘Ruth Boden is only ever interested in what Ruth Boden is doing,’ continued David evenly. ‘But if we are going to make this work, us work, you are going to have to start thinking about someone other than yourself.’

Her mind was reeling; she knew the argument was escalating out of control. She knew that she should stop it right there, but the touchpaper had been lit and she felt incapable of stopping the situation from exploding.

‘I’m not listening to this,’ she said, standing up and fuming.

‘Domestic bliss,’ he muttered as his knife and fork clattered noisily to the plate.

‘You were the one who suggested it.’

She could hear herself, like an echo in the background, and it was a voice she did not recognise. Spiteful, unhappy and destructive. Stop this, Ruth. Stop this, she ordered herself, but pride and anger would not let her.

‘Maybe you should go back to your own flat tonight,’ David suggested.

‘That’s exactly what I was thinking,’ she said, slamming the kitchen door behind her and feeling suddenly overwhelmingly sad.

19

‘What’s the matter?’

Sophie couldn’t help smiling as she stepped on to the platform at the Gare de Nord.

‘Nothing,’ she said, swinging her bag on to her shoulder. ‘Nothing at all.’

She didn’t just feel safer on French soil; she felt liberated. She was in Paris, and she felt free. For the first time in her life, she had no responsibilities, nowhere to be – in fact, right at this moment no one apart from Josh knew where she was. At the back of her mind, she knew that her world had fallen apart and that her life was in danger. The two and a half hours on the Eurostar had been nerve-fraying hell – she had been convinced that she was going to be attacked or arrested at any moment – but now she was here in the City of Light, Sophie was overwhelmed with relief and something more: a sense of adventure, perhaps? She had been travelling in Australia and Asia, but she had never been to Paris before, and she felt thrilled at the whole, well, Frenchness of it all. The chatter of passers-by, the echoing announcements over the tannoy, even the clothes on the women seemed more sophisticated somehow.

‘Wait here a minute,’ said Josh, pulling his mobile out of his pocket. ‘I’ve got to make some calls.’

‘You’ve brought your mobile?’

‘It’s Christopher’s. On loan. Mine’s on the boat.’

She nodded. ‘With the passport.’

‘Which I need to get back,’ he mused. ‘We got through passport control this time, but who knows how easy it might be next time.’

‘What were you planning? A world tour?’ she frowned.