Lovers and Liars by Sally Beauman

myself.’ Across
    4he yard the taxi-driver leaned on his horn. ‘Damn.’ Pascal glanced er his shoulder. ‘He’s getting impatient, I’d better go. And Wd better hurry, if you want to go through the clippings on wthorne. The files will be a foot thick. So… ‘ He turned to
    ce at her. ‘What shall we do? Would you like to meet later? we have dinner tonight?’
    ‘No, not toni
    ght. I’m going out tonight. Let’s make a start in
    1he morning. Call me then. You’ve got the numberT
    She stopped. Another memory had come back. For an instant felt on her skin the heat of a Beirut summer. Sometimes, when was working, Pascal would be away all night. If he was, he
    I-.ays called her hotel first thing in the morning. He always ed at eight. She always picked up on the first ring. That was
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    their ritual. Darling, can you come over now? I got the pictures. It’s all right. I’m safe. She turned away. These memories hurt.
    Pascal hesitated, as if about to say more, then moved off to the waiting cab. Over his shoulder, from a few yards off, he said, ‘I’ll call in the morning. I’ll call at eight.’
    Inside her little Beetle it was cold. The seats felt damp. Gini switched on the windscreen wipers. She watched the cab pull away, then disappear through the gates. She switched off the car engine. Water rattled against the car roof. The windscreen became a blur. She slumped against the steering wheel, and covered her face.
    She felt tense with the effort of concealment. If she had known she was to meet him, then she would have coped so much better, she thought. It was hard to be greeted by him as an acquaintance, a virtual stranger, yet if she had had time she could have prepared for that.
    She straightened, started the engine once more and looked out across this prison-yard place. It was twelve years since Beirut, and five since the last occasion, the only other occasion, when they had met. Sitting outside a caf6 on a wide Paris boulevard on the left bank. It had been a day of bright sunshine, the light dazzled in the street. And she had not been alone, she had been with another journalist, an Englishman much older than herself. Her affair with him had been uneasy and quarrelsome from the first; the visit to Paris had not improved things. They had spent much of the previous night arguing, and all of the morning. As she sat outside the caf6, she was trying to blot out the stream of accusations that came from her left. She had been thinking: In a moment, I’ll just stand up and leave. Then I’ll never need to see him again. And she looked away, up the boulevard, with its plane trees, watching the passing people, and her eyes focused on a single family group.
    They were walking towards her at a leisurely pace, a tall darkhaired man, a darkhaired woman, and their child. The man had his arms around the woman’s shoulders; the woman was pushing a buggy with a little girl in it. The child was laughing, and waving her fists. She looked about two years old, Gini thought. It was their ease, their evident contentment, which drew her eye. She watched them approach, the little girl was wearing a bright blue frock, a little pinafore - and then she realized. It was Pascal who was laughing at something this woman had just said to him. It was Pascal who took one of her hands, and swung it, and increased his
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    pace. It was Pascal, who stopped just a few yards away, turned to her, said something, and kissed her upturned face.
    The shock was acute. She had known that he was married; Yshe had heard he had a child; until that moment she had not understood what she had lost.
    She had looked away quickly, and bent her head. She told herself that he would not notice her, and that if he did, he would walk on by, but he did not. He stopped, hesitated, and then he spoke.
    4,’,,;’ She did not want to remember the scene after that. The stiff introductions, the meaningless exchanges, the fixed and glassy smiles. The air eddied with