Marriage Reunited

‘He seemed so nice,’ said Rose. ‘I thought he was absolutely charming.’ Her voice dropped as she leant forward to whisper confidentially, ‘And very attractive!’

Georgia couldn’t help smiling at her tone. In spite of the disastrous end to her own marriage, Rose was very concerned about her boss’s single state. She thought Georgia needed help bringing up Toby.

Georgia thought so too.

But Mac wasn’t the man to help her. Toby needed a father figure, someone kind and steady like Geoffrey, not someone like Mac, who had never really grown up himself.

Toby, come and pick up some of these toys, please!’

Georgia sighed as she stooped to retrieve a sock from the living room floor. It had been a shock to realise just how much mess one small boy could generate.

She had thought no one could be messier than Mac, whose habit of carelessly discarding clothes wherever he happened to take them off had driven her mad when they were married, but Toby was even worse. His bedroom floor was carpeted with cards, small plastic figures, bits of paper, crayons, books, unidentified and probably broken pieces of toys, and a good deal else that Georgia preferred not to think about too closely.

Picking up a ball of what looked suspiciously like discarded chewing gum, she grimaced in disgust.

‘Toby!’ Her voice went up in spite of herself. She tried so hard to be patient and loving, but after a long day at work, with only a few minutes to prepare dinner for Geoffrey, let alone think about how she was going to deal with her soon-to-be ex-husband, it was a huge effort not to snap.

‘There’s someone coming to the door,’ said Toby, which at least proved that he wasn’t deaf. Ever anxious for an excuse to avoid tidying up, he was peering out of the window at the front of the house. He was wearing pyjamas and, having ignored her request to use a comb, his damp hair stuck out spikily in different directions.

‘It’ll just be someone delivering junk mail, I expect,’ said Georgia, forcing herself to stay calm. Nothing was gained by losing her temper. Toby just withdrew even further into his shell.

‘He’s got a cool motorbike,’ Toby commented, without leaving his vantage point at the window.

Georgia frowned slightly. Junk mail wasn’t usually delivered by motorbike. Miss Sibley at number twenty-three often pushed newsletters for the local neighbourhood watch through the door at this sort of time, but she didn’t ride a motorbike and, if she did, it certainly wouldn’t be one Toby would describe as cool.

Curious, she went over to join Toby at the window. Sure enough, a motorbike was propped on its stand in the road outside the gate. It was a mean-looking machine, black and gleaming and very powerful, and something stirred inside Georgia. She knew only one person likely to ride a bike like that.

A sense of foreboding gripped her as the owner of the bike, hidden by the porch, rang the doorbell, and her frown deepened with suspicion. There was something awfully familiar about the arrogance of that ring.

‘Who is it?’ asked Toby.

Nobody could call Toby a beautiful child. He was thin and gap-toothed, with big ears and an expression that was usually sullen, but when he looked up at her, like now, with implicit trust that she would know the answer to everything, Georgia would feel her heart constrict.

‘I don’t know who it is,’ she told him. But I’ve got a pretty good idea, she added mentally. ‘We’d better go and see.’

He followed her out into the hall and lurked behind her as she opened the door. Sure enough, there stood Mac, in faded jeans, a white T-shirt and his battered old leather jacket, camera slung as always around his neck. Not to put too fine a point on it, he looked gorgeous. His dark hair was ruffled where he had pulled off his helmet, and his blue eyes were warm with a smile that Georgia had to physically steel herself to resist.

‘You’re early,’ she said brusquely. ‘I said eight o’clock, and it’s not even seven-thirty yet.’

‘I thought it would be nice to meet Toby before he went to bed,’ said Mac, completely unfazed by the hostile welcome, and he winked at Toby who was watching him with a wary expression.

‘Who are you?’ asked Toby, which seemed a fair enough question.

‘This is Mac,’ said Georgia quickly as Mac opened his mouth to answer. Life was complicated enough for Toby without trying to fathom his aunt’s exact marital status. There was no need for him to know that she and Mac had been married.

Were still married, fool that she was. Why on earth hadn’t she followed through with the divorce when they had first separated?

‘I knew him a long time ago,’ she said to Toby, trying to keep her explanation of this strange man’s arrival as simple as possible. ‘It was a real surprise when he turned up in Askerby, so I thought it would be nice if he came to dinner.’

Georgia had a nasty feeling that she was babbling, but Mac’s presence on the doorstep was ridiculously disturbing.

He didn’t look disturbed, of course. He looked utterly at ease, as always, with that good-humoured assurance that had taken him through more dangerous situations than Georgia cared to think about.

‘Hi, Toby,’ he said casually, but wisely made no move to get any closer or to engage him in conversation.

Toby was very wary of strangers and hated being overwhelmed by attention. It had taken him a long time to accept Georgia, and even now she still had to handle him with care. Geoffrey’s laborious attempts at conversation were met with monosyllables at most. More worryingly, he didn’t seem to be any more forthcoming at school, and he was slow to make friends.

Mac turned back to Georgia and produced a mango from his pocket with a flourish. ‘For you,’ he said, holding it in his outstretched palm, and Georgia’s breath snared in her throat.

It was just a fruit. A beautiful piece of fruit, plump and juicy, its skin blushing from pinkish-green to ripe red, but still just a fruit, and not even that rare. You could even buy mangoes in Askerby nowadays, if you were lucky.

But for Georgia mangoes meant so much more than a exotic edge to a fruit salad. Mangoes meant long, hot tropical nights, creaking ceiling fans and eerie yips and yowls in the darkness beyond the veranda. Mangoes meant Mac. She had never eaten one until he had cut one carefully into almost-cubes so that she could bend back the skin and eat the fragrant orange flesh easily, and for her the taste would forever be associated with him. Just the sight of one was enough to swamp her with memories.

Almost without thinking, she reached out and took the mango from Mac and held it to her nose. Breathing in its distinctive smell, she was instantly transported back to their veranda in West Africa. Mac would cut up the mango for her and watch her as she ate it, the juice running down her chin.

‘You eat mangoes the way you make love,’ he would tell her, smiling in a way that made her blood flare, and he would lean across to kiss the stickiness away. ‘I love the way you do that. Everyone else sees just a little bit of you, the particular, precise Georgia, but I know what you’re really like. I know that behind that prim and proper façade, you’re a very naughty girl!’

They always ended up making love when he brought her a mango.

It was the happiest Georgia had ever been. Memories of those times gripped her cruelly now, tightening her chest until she could hardly breathe. She could just stand there dumbly holding the mango, struggling to make her lungs work once more.

Why couldn’t Mac be like Geoffrey, who brought her flowers without fail? They were always lovely flowers, not just a tired old bouquet from a garage forecourt, but nonetheless Georgia never had the sense that Geoffrey had any idea of what she would really like. He brought her flowers because that was the correct thing to do, and Geoffrey was always correct. Sometimes she wished he would surprise her, bring her a shiny conker he had picked up in the street, or a pot of honey, or a book that he thought she would enjoy.

Or a mango.

Why did Mac have to be different? she wondered in despair. Why did he have to choose the one gift that would mean so much, that would unlock so many memories? He had an uncanny ability to get under her skin when she least expected it, when she was certain that she could resist him, when she thought she was prepared.

Georgia’s hands closed around the mango. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said, her voice shaking with the effort to keep it neutral.

‘What’s that?’ said Toby as she stepped back to let Mac inside.

‘This? It’s a mango.’

‘No, that,’ he said impatiently, pointing at the camera around Mac’s neck.

‘It’s my camera,’ said Mac easily, and pulled it from around his neck. ‘Do you want to have a look at it?’

Toby nodded and, to Georgia’s consternation, Mac handed him the camera.

‘Um…do you think that’s a good idea?’ she said meaningfully. The camera was his livelihood, after all, and professional cameras didn’t come cheap.

‘It’s fine,’ said Mac, looping the strap around Toby’s neck. ‘He won’t drop it.’

Toby frowned down at the camera. ‘It doesn’t look like a camera,’ he said suspiciously. ‘It’s not digital.’

‘No,’ Mac agreed solemnly, ‘and you can’t use it to make a phone call, either! This is a camera that just takes pictures.’ He paused. ‘Would you like me to show you how it works?’

Toby nodded again, and Georgia was too pleased to see him interested to object when Mac sat down with him on the sofa and showed him how to look through the camera and use the telescopic lens.

So much for clearing up before her visitors arrived. Mac wouldn’t have noticed if he’d had to wade knee-deep through a rubbish tip to get to the sofa. He was as oblivious as Toby to any mess.

Life must be so much easier if you could just blank out whatever you didn’t want to see, Georgia reflected. She would have loved to have been the kind of person who simply didn’t notice or didn’t care about her surroundings. Sadly, she was obsessive—according to Mac, anyway—about keeping her surroundings clean and tidy, and there was no way she could enjoy her supper with the room looking like this.

Sighing inwardly, Georgia got down on her knees and began to pick up toys while Mac and Toby bent their heads over the camera. She was too used to Mac continually clicking away to be bothered when they began pointing the camera at her and talking about framing a picture. One thing about being married to a photographer, you never got shy when someone got out their Instamatic and started snapping photos. After a while, it was just background noise and you stopped feeling self-conscious in front of a camera.

It was oddly comfortable to be clearing up while the man and the boy sat on the sofa, absorbed in what they were doing. It felt almost normal. Was this what it would have been like if she and Mac had had a family? Georgia wondered.

Wrapped up in her thoughts, she didn’t at first register that Mac was talking to her.

‘Sorry?’ she said, sitting back on her haunches and smoothing a stray hair back from her face.

‘I was just saying that Toby and I could finish tidying up if you want to go and change.’

Mac’s blue eyes held a strange expression as they rested on her, and for some reason Georgia flushed.

‘It’s all right, thanks,’ she said stiffly, aware for the first time that she was still wearing her work clothes. ‘I don’t usually bother to change any more.’

Mac frowned. He had always loved the moment when she would change in the evenings. That was when she would unbutton the crisp, cool Georgia and let the secret Georgia out, the Georgia who ate mangoes in a way that made the breath dry in his throat, the Georgia who was warm and loving and so sensuous that it was hard for him to think clearly when she was near.

‘Why not?’

Georgia shrugged. ‘Oh, the usual reason—no time. There’s just too much to do every evening.’

And there was no one to change for any more, she added to herself as she gathered up some plastic counters that were scattered over the carpet.

Oh, there was Geoffrey, of course, but he inevitably came from work in his suit and, anyway, he would no doubt think that it was practical of her to stay in her work outfit too. Georgia couldn’t imagine how he would react if she were to greet him at the door wearing one of the little numbers she had used to wear for Mac.

But she had been younger then, and everything was different now.

Mac watched her crouching down, piling Toby’s toys into a box, and he felt the old familiar tightening of his chest. Her skirt was tight over her bottom and thighs, and he could see the graceful curve of her spine, the way her silky top rode up slightly as she stretched out.

He had once asked her why she wore such prim clothes instead of dressing like the warm, sexy woman that she really was. ‘Because when I’m with you it’s the only way I can keep any control over what’s happening,’ she had said. ‘With you, everything’s chaos. I don’t know which way up I am when you’re there, and when you’re not I don’t know where you are or what you’re doing. At least if I get up and put on some suitable clothes to go to work, then I feel as if I’ve got some control over what’s happening.’

Poor Georgia; it hadn’t been easy for her, Mac thought with some compunction. She liked everything in its place and firmly under control, and she had never got used to the fact that love just didn’t work like that.

‘Can I take a picture of Georgia?’ Toby asked him, holding the camera reverently.

‘Sure,’ said Mac absently, still thinking about Georgia.

‘Look at me, Georgia!’

Glad to hear him sounding so animated, Georgia looked up dutifully and smiled.

Toby lifted the heavy camera in his thin hands and pointed it at her, then glanced up at Mac. ‘Now?’

‘Well, you could take it now,’ Mac agreed, ‘but she doesn’t really look like Georgia when she’s posing like that, does she? The thing about Georgia is that she’s not an easy person to capture,’ he went on easily, talking to Toby as if he were an interested adult rather than a small boy who simply wanted to press a button. ‘You’ve got to think of it like hunting a wild animal. You have to be very quiet and wait until she’s forgotten that you’re there with a camera, and then—snap!—you can catch her unawares.’

Toby was listening intently to his advice, although Georgia was sure that he had no idea what Mac was talking about. She did, though. Catching her unawares, the way he had done today, was what Mac had always done best.

Well, he wasn’t going to capture her this time.

Over Toby’s head, she met Mac’s amused navy-blue gaze, her own eyes bright with unspoken challenge, and the space between them was suddenly charged with an electric tension that sparked and sizzled alarmingly.

It was interrupted by the ring of the doorbell. ‘That’ll be Geoffrey.’ Georgia leapt to her feet in relief. ‘Toby, can you just finish putting away the last of the toys?’ she asked, without much hope that he would oblige.

Toby heaved a sigh. ‘Geoffrey’s Georgia’s boyfriend,’ she heard him mutter glumly to Mac as she headed for the door. ‘He’s boring.’

Georgia suppressed an equally heavy sigh. She wished Toby would accept Geoffrey. He might not be fun or have a ridiculously expensive camera for Toby to fiddle with, but he was a nice man and very kind, quite apart from being the only friend they had at the moment.

She wished he wasn’t standing on the other side of the door, though.

It was bad enough with Mac here, making her feel edgy and hassled, without having to deal with the two of them together. Dinner was shaping up to be its usual disaster, too. What Georgia really wanted was for both of them to disappear so that she could put Toby to bed and collapse on to the sofa with a stiff gin.

Still, it was too late for that now. Pinning a suitably bright smile to her face, she opened the front door.

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