Five minutes passed. Mind you, the housekeeper did like to talk, and I’d encouraged him, to practise my French. Florian probably needed rescuing. I thought I heard a man’s voice as well as my lover’s, but this damned house was so big they could have been hosting a troop of boy scouts in the hallway and I wouldn’t have been able to hear. As I was contemplating going to join the party, the front door slammed. Good, I’d get my man back. Shouldering on my towelling robe, I trotted downstairs.

  “Flor, I’ve decided our evening stroll can wait. I’ve had a much better…”

  The remainder of the sentence dried on my tongue as a dazzling fireball of colour scorched through my mind. Orange flames mushroomed out from it, growing, growing, growing, filling my senses with a wicked smell, blasting me with heat, revelling in every single vile shade of that vile, putrid colour. I cringed with fear, swaying against the banister as, like a living thing, the fireball changed shape, flattening, elongating, crinkling into a smile, a victory smile. Knowing the battle was already won.

  Screwing my eyes tight, I tried to escape its path. As if I ever could. Towering above me, in all its scorching orange glory, it hurled yellow to one side as if she weighed nothing at all, it stomped over sweet silver, almost as a casual afterthought. My beloved green cowered in my arms, a trembling shrunken ball, defeated before it had even faced the intruder.

  Yes, the beach walk would be postponed. As would sex. Indefinitely, if our unexpected visitor had any say in it. He wasn’t one for wasting time in frivolities, such as skimming stones and aimless meanders with one’s hand warming in another. Or painting flowers and hearts on faces. Not when there were important deals to be done and filthy lucre to be made.

  And falling stupidly in love was the height of frivolity, in his book.

  CHAPTER 20

  FLORIAN

  I took an instant dislike to the man. It would have happened anyway, even if he didn’t serve as a big, arrogant reminder Charles belonged to another life elsewhere that didn’t include me. Marcus represented everything I loathed about a particular breed of rich, foreign tourist, from his salmon-pink knee-length shorts and the exuberant chest hair poking from his crisp linen shirt to the oversized gold Rolex spanning his oversized wrist. A childish urge gripped me to knock the ubiquitous Ray-Bans from atop his thinning sandy hair and crunch them underfoot. Just for the hell of it.

  People like him were the reason the corner shop stocked more hundred-euro bottles of champagne than tins of lager, the reason a young local family like the one Jerome was building couldn’t afford their own place. And despite bonjour and merci and une bière, s’il vous plait universally recognised as the most basic of French vocabulary, he was also the sort of man who greeted restaurant staff with a booming hello, so the entire restaurant knew someone special had arrived, and then demanded the most expensive wine on the list, just because he could.

  I had the impression the loathing was mutual. And annoyingly, he was taller than me, fully dressed, and not daubed in face paint. On the upside, most of what he said flew over my head, because his French was on a par with my English. So at least I didn’t have to make small talk with the connard. Like the shrewd businessman I’d been assured he was, he processed the scene in front of him within seconds—two half-dressed blokes covered in warpaint—and jumped to all the correct conclusions. Amused, he snorted like a pig, so sadly, I couldn’t add rampant homophobia to his list of failings.

  “What did he say?” I demanded to Charles after we’d been introduced. Marcus had pumped my hand as though he was determined to wring every last drop of juice from my flesh. I couldn’t make out how Charles felt about him pitching up without notice. His face had turned ashen as he’d greeted his old friend, but then he’d fixed his mouth into a smile for all the back slaps and the hetero, masculine bullshit that followed. I wondered which colours loomed in his mind, whether silver and green were holding on. I had a feeling not; anxiety painted his taut features as clearly as my delicate flowers.

  Marcus was supposed to be arriving next week, Charles explained, but a very important new client was demanding a deal to be closed this week and so he’d left the wife and kids and nanny in the villa in the Dordogne and hotfooted it over here. To discuss this oh-so-special client with the fragile man I’d hoped to hold onto a little longer.

  “Marcus says that I must be on the mend if I’ve got the energy to be ‘frolicking about with the locals’.”

  “But not mended,” I pointed out. “Not yet. There’s a difference.”

  Charles didn’t answer because Marcus was saying something else; whatever it was must have been droll because my lover let out a little laugh, although I didn’t think it quite reached his eyes, and then they had another round of stupid man hugs and Marcus said something else funny, and all of a sudden I felt very alone, underdressed and out of place and like I didn’t want to be there anymore.

  “I’ll… er… get this washed off and put some clothes on,” I muttered, resisting the urge to just charge out of the front door. But only because I’d seen the anxiety. Marcus was his oldest friend, but leaving my vulnerable lover alone with this overbearing man? It felt like an enormous mistake.

  I wiped the last traces of the beautiful flowers from my skin. Oh fucking merde. As if that wasn’t symbolic of everything I already knew. Charles joined me in the bathroom.

  “Don’t go, Florian.” His chin rested on my shoulder; worried grey eyes locked onto mine in the mirror. We’d snapped a very different version of this photo an hour ago, colourful, joyous, and carefree. Before and after shots. I’d have whiplash from the speed with which the tables had turned. I threw him a regretful smile.

  “It’s okay. Honestly. I need to check on Papi anyhow. You and Marcus must have lots you need to discuss.”

  “Can I phone you later? I’d come over but obviously Marcus is staying the night.”

  “Of course. You never have to ask.”

  Stepping to the side, I cupped his pale face between my palms, my head brimming with so much I needed to say but having no right to say any of it. Because when push came to shove, what was I? Who was I? A summer fling. A cinq à sept distraction for a burnt-out businessman. We’d known each other six weeks—the man waiting for him to return downstairs had known him forever. And no, I didn’t think he was back to full health, but where were my qualifications in psychiatric medicine? Or in anything, come to that? Who was I to determine that Charles was unfit to return to work? I peddled salt, not pills.

  I slid a finger up the contour of his cheek and over the flowers I’d painted there, lingering on the silver and green stars dotted between them, already a little smudged, a little blurred at the edges.

  “Close your eyes, Charles. Tell me what colours you see. Right now. Now Marcus is here.”

  “Please don’t ask me that. It’s not fair.”

  Which was no answer at all but told me everything.

  CHAPTER 21

  CHARLES

  Marcus had landed our biggest client yet. As I cracked open a bottle of bubbly, he was almost quivering with excitement. My offer of a cup of tea was brushed aside.

  “Nice-looking boy.”

  Florian had slipped out via the back door and now we sat opposite one another across the vast kitchen island. I’d scrubbed my face clean, hurrying, and trying to ignore the whirlpool of orange circling my head. I sipped at the champagne, only pretending to drink, nausea pooling in my belly with every acidic drop.

  Never very far out of reach, Marcus’s laptop squatted like a toad between us. The expression on his florid face was amused. “I always fancied you might be that way inclined.” He saluted me with his champagne flute. “Whatever floats your boat, old chap. Chapeau, as the frogs like to say. Cheers. Here’s to us.”

  And just like that, my dear Florian, and everything pure and good he represented was dismissed.

  Life was a game, one Marcus played to win. A bottomless pot of coffee soon replaced the showy champagne, my paints and brushes swept aside to make way for boxes of papers that spilled out across the table and onto the floor. Not long after, three more laptops stood to attention between us; what space remained turned into a mobile office littered with post-it notes.

  Marcus hadn’t been exaggerating; the deal was huge, daring even, spectacular in its arrogance. The one person with the sheer audacity to pull it off was him, and the one person capable of joining the dots was me. His clever fingers flew over the keyboards as we got down to it.

  Day turned to night, and, like putting on an ugly worn pair of slippers, I slid into my usual role. Nit-picking for flaws, pre-empting every ruffle in the plan, revelling in the complex black and white numbers, shuffling them around as if they were nothing more than a series of particularly challenging sudokus.

  “It’s going to happen because we’re gonna make it happen,” Marcus repeated every time I threw in a spanner. And then we’d spare a second to grin at each other, co-conspirators against the rest of the world before ripping up the rules we didn’t like and rewriting some new ones. Contracts, figures, proposals, and projections began to stack up. And zeros. Did I mention the number of fucking zeros? Like big fat ostrich eggs. Rows and rows of them, all in a line.

  And therein lay the craziest part of all; Marcus didn’t give two hoots about the money. He never had done, not really. Not once he had enough to keep the wife in handbags and the kids in posh schools. And neither had I. My share sat in the bank, accumulating interest, which was a total misnomer; it held no interest for me whatsoever. At most, the money was an easy measure of progress, a gold medal to pin on our chests, a door to the winner’s enclosure. Another notch on our bedposts. The thrill of being the first to the kill was where the real excitement lay. Hunting it down, galloping out ahead of the pack. Leaving the rest in our dust.

  As darkness thickened, my belly settled down and orange relaxed into a seat on the back burner. After all, what did I have to be anxious about? Marcus was my oldest friend; he cared about me. He’d visited me in hospital when I was sick. I trusted him. It was the shock of him turning up on my doorstep, that was all. He’d soon stop me if he felt we were pushing things too far.

  Green had gone walkabout too, which isn’t to say my mind became a blank canvas, because new colours took over, filling the gap. Black and white settled in for the long-term, clapping me a warm welcome back, their regular rhythmic applause swelling and cheering me on as neat rows and columns stacked up. My old friend navy joined in too, with its sharp angles and no nonsense blockiness, telling me we were close to winning. I hadn’t fully explained navy to Florian; I couldn’t explain it myself. Progress and order, or discipline perhaps, was the closest I came to it, like the colour of a strict schoolteacher. Neither friend nor foe. And as dawn lifted its head to welcome in a new day, on our fine navy steeds we cantered on, never turning around to see if forest green or, God forbid, buttery yellow were keeping up.

  And my fragile, shimmering silver? It never left the starting blocks.

  CHAPTER 22

  FLORIAN

  “You’re going back, aren’t you? He persuaded you.”

  I cycled over to Charles’s house with the intention of playing it cool. Of congratulating him on the big deal then waiting to see where it left us. Before employing a whole host of underhand tactics to remind him what he’d be missing, orbiting around pleasuring his dick with my mouth.

  But the acrid stink of bleach and freshly mopped floors put paid to that. As did Charles’s pale pinched face and new grey shadows cupping his red-rimmed eyes.

  “He didn’t need to persuade me. The ramifications of securing this client are huge. Our company needs me. There are parts to our business that I do better than anyone.”

  “He told you that, did he?”

  “Yes, because it’s true! I’m the details man and Marcus is the personality. I’ve explained that. It’s how we’ve built it up to be so successful.”

  The brief glimpse I’d had of Marcus’s personality had not been to my taste. “But you’re not ready to go back to work. You said so yourself.”

  Should I mention the floors? They were getting pretty difficult to ignore. “What about the nightmares?” I demanded instead. “The doctors told you to take at least three months. You’ve only had eight weeks.”

  He waved me away. “They give the same standard advice to everyone. And last night, I didn’t have a single nightmare.”

  His eyes slid away from mine. Coffee cups were piled high in the sink. Over his shoulder, papers lay scattered everywhere, covering the sofas, the low table, the huge island in the kitchen. As if someone had charged through the house with a leaf blower. And he was deathly pale. Shaky too, from the caffeine. And dressed in yesterday’s rumpled shirt. Oh, fucking merde.

  “You haven’t slept, have you, Charles?” I pressed my hand into his. “Have you worked all night?”

  He pushed me away. “Yes, but it’s fine. I can sleep later. We had time-sensitive stuff we needed to finish. And we got it done. And it was great, brilliant, I felt like my old self, like I had a purpose. Like someone needed me.”

  I need you, I wanted to tell him, but he was already turning away, folding his arms then scratching the scruff on his chin, pulling at his wrinkled collar. Jittery.

  “And I used to have nightmares even before any of this happened.”

  “Really?” It was the first I’d heard of it.

  “Well, yes. Occasionally. Not as bad, but yes, if I was stressed with work and…”

  “Exactly! Stressed with work. Which is how you are going to be about a week from now if Marcus gets his way!”

  I’d raised my voice and begun pacing. The headache that had started up behind my eyes last night, as I tossed and turned alone, throbbed at my temple. I rubbed at it tiredly.

  “Listen to me, Florian.” Charles dragged me by the hand down to the sofa. He pushed a heap of papers onto the floor. “I know you’re worried, but Marcus and I have talked about things. He’s not going to overload me. It will just be this case, this one big client, and then I’ll come back for a rest. It will be a month at the most.” He brought our joined hands to his mouth and kissed my knuckles. “Honestly. I’ll be fine.”

  Mon dieu, how I wanted to believe him. “What we’ve had here is special, Flor,” I heard him say. “And we can keep having it. I want to keep having it, if you do. I’ll just… I’ll just be travelling a bit between here and London. But this won’t be the end.”

  I think we were both trying to convince ourselves that was true. Charles talked some more, listing all the ways in which Marcus and the business were going to make concessions for him and I nodded and said nothing, storing everything about him away in my head for when he’d no longer be here. How his eyes narrowed when he iterated a point, how he waved his hand around—almost like a true Gaul—to accentuate it. How he tripped over our awkward vowels, the damned cute way he attempted but failed to roll his ‘r’s like a native.

  And when his gaze turned anxious and flicked to the corners of the room? Seeing shadows that weren’t there? I pretended I didn’t notice. Just like I pretended he wasn’t wearing yesterday’s clothes and his passport wasn’t parked beside his wallet on the granite island. And that for more than a week now, an empty blister pack of pills next to the sink in his bathroom hadn’t been replaced with a fresh one.

  The suitcase in the hallway, however, was difficult to ignore.

  “When is your flight?”

  “Marcus booked me onto one leaving Bordeaux tonight. Getting into London late. We have all day tomorrow with the client’s representatives.”

  A sudden weariness swept through my bones. We were finished. Not even another full day and night.

  “Come to bed with me, Florian,” Charles urged, his tired eyes so fucking beseeching. “I’m all packed. We still have the afternoon.”

  I should have declined and said goodbye then and there. Made an excuse; the rains had stopped, I had salt to harvest, days to catch up on. I should never even have returned today. I should have left us laughing in each other’s arms, with silver and green painted flowers on our cheeks and stars in our eyes. But I guess I was a masochistic sucker for punishment.

  He led me to the bedroom where we undressed side by side, awkwardly, almost shyly, as if it were the first time. I kissed him and he kissed me back, already sensing his clever mind was elsewhere. And yet, I was young and in love, and his slender pale body was so fucking perfect that my dick demanded its thing regardless. I pushed him backwards until he lay on the pillows. We kissed some more as I settled between his legs.

  “I’d finally got around to asking you if we could do this properly.” His eyes skittered away from mine. “Typical.”

  “We have been doing it properly.” I pressed my lips to his neck, breathing him in. “If we never did anything more it would be enough.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  More kissing. I’d still feel the same way about him if we’d never gone beyond that. His mouth opened up to me like it always did, slackening so eagerly. There was something about the way Charles melted into my kiss, as though he was hanging on, that it grounded and fed him, gave him the strength to push the shadows aside.

  I moved on top, gently grinding my hips, lost in a space somewhere between getting off and finding comfort. Truth be told, I was doing my level best not to throw a childish tantrum and scream that he was an idiot. That he was putting not only what we had at risk, but his health too, every minute of precious sanity he’d clawed back. Every step forward along the path of coming to terms with his grief.