Red Notice

17

Delphine had put her hair in a loose ponytail and worn a tunic dress in jade green silk for her first date with Tom.

‘You look absolutely stunning,’ Moira had said, as she stood in front of the mirror, checking her own hair. ‘But might you not be a little… over-dressed? You don’t know where he’s taking you, do you?’ They both heard the throaty sound of a motorbike engine outside. ‘Or how you’re going to get there…’

Delphine went to answer the door, and found Tom wearing his usual jeans, T-shirt and leather jacket.

‘You look fantastic,’ he said, then sheepishly held out a motorcycle helmet to her. ‘Er, did I forget to mention I’d be picking you up on my bike?’

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I get motion sickness in cars.’

Tom wasn’t sure if she was just trying to be nice. He drank up every detail of her happy, smiling face.

‘And I used to ride a moped all the time in Nice.’

‘Um… I’m afraid Hereford isn’t the South of France.’

She flashed him a dazzling smile. ‘That’s true in so many more ways than you can imagine.’

‘You’re not wrong,’ he said. ‘But right now I’m just worried about the temperature.’

‘Shall I change?’

He shook his head. ‘Wear my jacket over your dress. I’ll be fine in my T-shirt — it’s a warm night, by Hereford standards anyway.’

She slid onto the pillion seat of Tom’s new BMW GS1200, leaned into his back and put her arms around him as he twisted the throttle, gunned the engine and pulled out of the car park. As he accelerated, weaving the bike through the sparse evening traffic, she clung tightly to him, feeling the hard muscle of his body against her arms and chest.

He took her to a gastro-pub in Fownhope, a village a few minutes outside town. The knowing look the waiter gave him as he showed them to a corner table suggested to Delphine that she wasn’t the first girl he’d taken there.

She’d expected him to dominate the conversation, spinning yarns of countries he’d seen and battles he’d fought. After all, wasn’t that what soldiers did? But she was wrong. As they talked over dinner, she was surprised to find that he was attentive and interested in her, asking her a string of questions about herself and her life before she’d come to Hereford.

After a while she began to wonder if it reflected genuine interest in her or was more a tactic to stop her asking him too much about his own life.

‘You’re not very forthcoming about yourself, are you, Tom?’

‘I guess it’s the way all of us are,’ he said. ‘Everything we do at work is on a need-to-know basis — if you don’t need to know, then you don’t get told.’

Delphine smiled. ‘I wasn’t planning to torture you and I don’t want to know any state secrets. I’m just interested in you. But if you don’t want to tell me, or you’re too shy… though I’d find that hard to believe…’

Tom’s discomfort was already showing. Delphine momentarily glimpsed the little boy hiding inside the man. ‘I thought resistance to interrogation was something you had to learn for work, not for when you’re out with a friend.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Just a friend?’

‘For the moment, yes. Later on, well… who knows? But what’s that English phrase? Let’s not run before we can walk?’

She’d been determined not to sleep with him that first time. Not because of any old-fashioned morality — she wasn’t saving herself for her wedding night — she just didn’t want to be another notch on a regimental bedpost. But at the end of the evening it had seemed the most natural thing in the world to go back to his house with him. It wasn’t even discussed: they both knew that was the way it was going to be.

That had been eighteen months ago and they’d been going out together ever since, though she was sometimes uncertain if she knew him any better now than she had on that first date.

After they’d been seeing each other for about four months, Tom had called her at work. ‘I have to go to my parents’ house at the weekend. It’s their wedding anniversary. You can come too, if you like.’

‘You don’t sound very keen on either the idea of the anniversary or of me coming with you,’ she’d said.

‘No, I really want you to. If I sound uncertain, I guess it’s just because I’m not sure how much you’ll enjoy it.’

‘Well,’ she had said, with a smile in her voice, ‘it will satisfy my curiosity at least.’