AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘It got worse. When I wouldn’t talk to the press, they spoke to the director of the clinic, and he said that what I’d done was culturally insensitive. They went to town with that and started printing all kinds of lies. That I’d sent her to the city to fend for herself, that I was involved in a prostitution racket even. There were groups of men outside the house, shouting and throwing things. Someone poured…’ She choked on the remembered smell. ‘You don’t want to know what they poured through the kitchen window.’
He was shaking his head in disbelief. ‘And they drove you out.’
‘I wanted to stay and explain, but the director came to the house after about a week. Gave me two hours to pack, and then drove me to Dhaka and put me on a plane.’ She shrugged miserably. ‘Maybe there was nothing to explain. I have no idea what happened to Ayesha. Maybe I just made things worse for her, I’ll never know.’
‘You tried, Thea. You saw a young girl, suffering terribly and you helped her. If the people who bullied you won’t let you be proud of yourself for that, then let me be proud for you. Because I am. More than I can say.’
The sincerity in his voice seemed to drown out all those other voices. She wound her arms around his shoulders, yanking him roughly towards her. She heard his sharp, exhaled breath and then felt him holding her, gently at first and then hard and tight. She knew from the tremble of his body that he was weeping silently.
This was her safe place. It was the one she’d been looking for all this time. It was the place that she could finally cry. When there was no more strength left for tears they just held each other.
‘Did you know that I’m going back?’ Just saying it made it seem a little less challenging.
‘Back? Where?’
‘To Asia. You know that Michael put a condition on my leading the TB team?’
He nodded. ‘I heard something about it. You’re writing a paper on the work.’
‘I’m presenting it. At a conference. It’s in India.’
‘The one in September?’
She’d been trying not to think about it, but suddenly it all seemed real. ‘Maybe I’ll think of a way to get out of it. Break my leg and miss my plane?’ She grinned, but it didn’t seem like much of a joke.
Lucas wasn’t smiling. ‘Maybe you need to go.’
‘Maybe I do. I don’t want to, though.’
‘I’m booked to go to that conference. I don’t have my flights yet so maybe we could travel out there together.’
A faint echo of the last time that she’d hoped to meet Lucas at the airport made her shiver.
But if she couldn’t find an excuse to get out of going, then this actually didn’t seem like too bad an option. At least there would be someone she knew there. ‘Okay. If I go.’
Lucas narrowed his eyes, as if h
e was about to press the point, but seemed to realise that Thea didn’t want to talk any more. ‘Think about it. Where are your jeans?’
‘I left them in Ava’s room when I changed to go out. Why?’
‘Go and put them on.’
CHAPTER TEN
LUCAS, AS USUAL, had managed to get things exactly right. A gesture that was somewhere between spending the night together and letting her go home. He caught her hand and led her across the lawn, which stretched across from the back of both his house and his parents’ house next door.
‘Where are we going?’ she whispered into the darkness. Not that she really cared, she would have gone anywhere with him at this moment.
‘Remember the tree house?’
‘The one that your dad built for you and Sam? That you nearly fell out of that time…’ They’d sneaked outside, at two in the morning, climbed the tree and Lucas had laid a blanket down on the wooden platform. Hidden from view, they’d curled up together, listening to the sounds of the night and the rustle of the leaves over their heads.
‘I didn’t fall; I was trying to get out of the way of your elbows. Anyway, it’s undergone something of an upgrade since then.’
He stopped at the foot of the oak tree, next to a pile of large floor cushions and a box, which he must have carried out there while she’d been upstairs. Lucas tested his weight on the sturdy framework that ran up the side of the trunk, and disappeared up into the branches.
‘Pass me the box.’ His hand appeared, reaching down, and Thea held the box up over her head, feeling him lift it out of her hands. A moment of stillness, there in the dark, and then light glimmered from the branches.
