Jessica Gilmore - Happily Ever After...

‘We are supposed to have been together for a few months. Mad about each other.’ Her body got even more rigid if that was at all possible. Raff suppressed a smile. ‘So, we need to create a relationship full of memories in just one day. Now we can do this the easy way and actually enjoy ourselves or we can endure a torturous afternoon full of monosyllables and long silences.’ His mouth quirked. ‘Now, if we were faking a marriage then the latter would be fine.’

Was that a smile? An infinitesimal relaxation of all those rigid muscles?

‘What’s your favourite colour?’

‘My what?’ That made her move. Her head swung round so fast he thought she might get whiplash.

‘Your favourite colour?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t even...why on earth do you want to know that?’

‘I’ll go first.’ He leant back into the leather seat, enjoying the cold of the steering wheel under his hands, the purr of the engine. ‘Okay, my favourite colour is sea blue, the sea on a perfect sunny day. Favourite food is a good old-fashioned roast dinner, which is the boarding school boy in me, I know, but there are times when just the thought of Yorkshire puddings keeps me going. I didn’t think I was a cat or a dog person but after three days of Mr Simpkins I am definitely veering towards the canine. You?’

He sneaked a look over at his passenger. She was still gripping onto the seat but her knuckles were no longer white. ‘If I’d known there was going to be a quiz I’d have prepared,’ she said, but her voice was less frosty.

It took a few long moments before she spoke again. ‘Okay, green, I think. Spring is my favourite season. I hate it when the trees are bare. I grew up with cats so I’ll stick up for Mr Simpkins. What was the other one? Food? It’s not sophisticated but when I was travelling and eating all this amazing street food I craved cheese sandwiches. My dad’s cheese sandwiches. Home-made bread, cheddar so mature it can’t remember being young and his patented plum chutney.’

‘Just a simple sandwich?’

‘As simple as it gets in my house. Dad’s a foodie.’

‘You went travelling?’ That was unexpected. Maybe they had something in common after all. ‘I can’t exactly visualise you with a backpack! How old were you?’

There was a long pause. ‘Eighteen,’ she said finally.

‘Where did you go?’ As Raff knew all too well, most people jumped at the opportunity to recount every second of their travels. It could be worse than listening to other people’s dreams. Clara Castleton was obviously the exception; her silence was so chilly it was as if he’d asked her to recite The Rime of the Ancient Mariner . Backwards.

‘Thailand to start with,’ she said reluctantly after the pause got too long. ‘Cambodia, Vietnam and then Bali and on to Australia.’ She paused again. ‘I was there for two years.’

Raff shook his head. ‘When I was eighteen I could barely find my own way to university, let alone travel halfway across the world. Your parents must have been worried sick.’

She laughed, a dry hard laugh with no humour in it. ‘I was so sure I was invincible I think I had them fooled too.’

Fooled? Interesting word.

‘I planned for so long I don’t think there was room to worry, really.’ She wasn’t really talking to him, he realised, more lost in the past. ‘My grandfather was in the merchant navy and he had always told me all these stories of places he had been to. I wanted to see it all. Other kids have posters of pop stars on their wall, I had maps and routes and pictures of magical places I wanted to go to. I was babysitting at thirteen, running errands for neighbours and every penny went into my travel fund. I was going to start out in Asia then Australia, New Zealand, on to Japan then South America, finishing off with a Greyhound trip round the States.’

He could picture her. Intent, focused, planning on conquering the world. ‘Did you get to go? Did you see all of those places?’

‘No.’ Her voice was colourless. ‘I had Summer instead.’

‘Hang on.’ He turned and looked at her rigid profile. ‘Did you have your daughter while you were away?’

‘She was born in Australia.’

He whistled softly. ‘That must have been tough. So you cut your adventures short, flew home and became the responsible, capable woman you are today.’ He shook his head. ‘Quite some achievement.’

He thought he was such a tough guy but his adventures were orderly by comparison. He always knew where he was going to sleep that evening even if it was in a sleeping bag in a shared tent; he had a ticket back arranged, plans for a month of surfing and partying organised. He even got a wage, for goodness’ sake. Clara had taken off at an age most people were still figuring out the Tube and had spent three years travelling. Even a pregnancy and a baby hadn’t slowed her down.

When she didn’t answer he turned to look at her; she was looking out of the window but her body was slumped. It wasn’t the posture of someone who had achieved something remarkable. It was more like despair.

‘Are you going to tell me where we are going?’ she asked, straightening and turning to him with a polite smile.

The confidences were obviously at an end.

‘I don’t need to tell you,’ he said as he smoothly turned the car through a pair of metal gates, the only break in a sea of barbed-wire fencing that ran along one side of the road screening off the fields beyond. ‘We’re here.’

‘We’re what?’ Clara twisted in her seat and looked around her, horror on her face as she took in the barbed wire. ‘You are kidnapping me. Where are we? What is this?’

‘ This is one of the premier activity sites in the country.’ Raff flashed her a smile. ‘I hope you like mud.’

* * *

‘You want me to do what?’

Clara wasn’t sure what was worse. She ticked the offending items off on a mental list. Lists usually were soothing, bringing order and meaning.

She wasn’t sure anything could bring meaning to her current situation.

First, the mud. There was certainly a lot of it, all greeny-brown, glutinous and deep. Second, the outfit. All that time spent wondering what to wear, turned out she needed baggy camouflage trousers, desert boots that had been worn by who knew how many other smelly, sweaty, muddy feet and a shapeless T-shirt that was the exact colour of the mud. Yep, it all came back to mud.

Mud that she, Clara Castleton, was supposed to be trampling, running, heck, apparently she was supposed to be crawling in it. On her belly.

Which brought her to number three. Men. Smirking men. Okay, toned, built men, the kind that actually stretched out their T-shirts in all kinds of good ways, who filled out the baggy trousers with bulging thighs, who wore the mud on their faces with aplomb. Men who belonged here as she most definitely did not.

The most annoying of the men, ‘Call me Spiral’, as if that were really his name, began to repeat the instructions in the same loud bark. ‘Run through that trough, climb that rope, go over that bridge, swing across the ravine, crawl under the net, slide...’

‘I heard all of that the first two times.’ Clara folded her arms and glared up at him, deliberately ignoring the fourth and most annoying thing of all: a palpably amused Raff Rafferty. ‘I’m still not clear why.’

‘Because I told you to,’ Spiral said with no hint of irony. ‘Now get your butt over to the starting line.’

‘Come on, Clara.’ Raff was openly grinning. ‘This is supposed to be fun. Where’s your sense of adventure?’

Back in Australia. Left behind with her backpack, her travel journals and her well-thumbed traveller’s guide.