Coconuts and Wonderbras by Lynda Renham

seen red. How dare he come into my kitchen for tea and cake and talk to her. Jamie had just reached his car when I had called him back and said with more confidence than I felt,
        ‘Book my flight. I am going to Cambodia. How soon can I leave?’
    Of course Jamie’s face had lit up while Toby’s had dropped. I instantly regretted it. Maybe I should have given Toby a chance to explain himself. Instead, I demanded that he leave and threw the sponge cake at him. To give him his due he had attempted to explain but I wouldn’t listen. What am I doing flying to Cambodia and just before Christmas too? Someone is bound to blow up the plane. They do that sort of thing at Christmas time don’t they? That would be just my luck.
        ‘Can’t you fly out after Christmas? Maybe do a story on the fashion of Cambodia? After all, I imagine it is very exotic there,’ I ask hopefully, feeling my own tears well up.
        ‘What sodding fashion. Libs, you are a clown. Oh fuck a duck, I wish you weren’t going. I will miss you.’ She leans towards me awkwardly and we hug tightly.
    I tuck my arm into Issy’s and shiver. At least I will get some sunshine and who knows maybe I will meet someone. After all, stranger things have happened.
     
     

 
     
     
    Chapter Ten
       
        Alex walks towards me and for some stupid reason I blush. I quickly recheck the hotel address and pop it into my bag along with the address of the village that mother had said must be visited.
        ‘It sounds glorious, and the silk shawls they make are astounding. Promise to bring me one back and take lots of photos. It’s in the middle of nowhere so you can escape old Bryant although God knows why you would want to,’ she had said on the phone.
    Looking at his stiff arrogant back as he speaks to a security guard, I can think of a hundred reasons why I would want to escape him. I watch as he finally extradites himself from several admirers and strolls towards me, or should I say swaggers. This man brings out the worst in me. He drops a rucksack at my feet and stares wide-eyed at my two large suitcases. He lifts his steely blue eyes to meet mine.
        ‘Hello,’ I say.
        ‘It really is sensible when visiting a country like Cambodia to travel light,’ he says in a cool voice.
    Here we go.
        ‘A country like what exactly?’ I snap, revealing my hand luggage from behind my back.
    He sighs.
        ‘We’re entering a country where there is an uprising. I’m not popular with the government there and there may be situations where we may have to move quickly. We won’t have hours for you to pack each time we do.’
    He watches as I struggle and heave to get the cases up to the counter. After minutes of panting and heaving and giving myself a hernia, he gently lifts them for me. Without effort he plonks them onto the conveyer belt.
        ‘Now, if this were a life and death situation you wouldn’t get away would you?’ he says in that arrogant voice which I am growing to detest. ‘In a hostile conflict situation you would never make it.’
    Is he intense or what? He moves closer to hand over his passport and I feel my heart quicken as the fresh clean smell of him reaches my nostrils.
        ‘Well thank God I put my machine guns in there then,’ I snap. ‘I’ll just shoot everyone if they get in my way.’
    The check-in clerk stares at me with her hand hovering over my cases. Oh shit. I hand her my passport with my sweetest smile.
        ‘Did you pack your suitcases yourself?’ she asks suspiciously.
    I nod. It’s all going well so far I don’t think.
        ‘Yes, even the machine guns,’ I say jokingly, attempting to ease some tension.
    Bryant sighs. Her expression doesn’t change but her eyes flick from me to Alex Bryant, where it hovers for longer than it should and then back again.
        ‘I will need to get security to check your bags madam.’
        ‘No really, there is no need. It was