enough for myself. Or at least pretend to be.’
‘Yes.’ Jackson sighed. ‘Exactly like that. It can be good to be enough for yourself, as long as you know when to drop the defences. That’s Dad’s trouble. He never knew. Through all those love affairs he had to be the one in control.’
They looked at each other, sharing the same curious expression.
‘We’ve known each other for six years,’ he said. ‘And we’ve never shared this before.’
‘It was never the right time before,’ she said.
‘Yes. And when the right time comes, you know. And you have to take it because it may never come again. I think you’re the only person I could ever talk to about Dad, and how tense I feel about what I’ve inherited of his nature.’
‘You can’t help what you were born with. And you’re not as bad as he is.’
‘Thanks. I treasure that.’ He added wryly, ‘And a gift for getting your own way can be useful. But sometimes it makes me wonder about myself. I’ve got a bad side.’
‘So have we all,’ she said. ‘Don’t be hard on yourself.’
‘That’s nice of you, but my bad side is worse than you know. And you know plenty, after the harm I did you.’
‘But you didn’t do it on purpose. You made an incautious remark. You couldn’t predict what Dan would do. It was a mistake, but I’ve made plenty of those myself. Let’s draw a line under it.’
He stared. ‘You’ve really forgiven me?’
‘There’s nothing to forgive. You might have been a bit clumsy—’
‘Clumsy, stupid, idiotic, thoughtless—’ he supplied.
‘If you say so. But you weren’t spiteful. You’re not capable of spite.’
‘That’s kinder than I deserve.’
His voice was heavy and she knew he was still deeply troubled—not only by their past hostility but by the burdens Amos had loaded onto him when he was too young to bear them.
He dropped his head, fixing his gaze on the ground. She knew a deep and worrying instinct to protect him. Dazzling, self-confident Jackson had never seemed in need of anyone’s protection before, but this was a new man—one he’d revealed to her and perhaps to nobody else. He trusted her. He’d said so, and had proved it by showing his vulnerable side.
In another moment she would have reached out and taken him in her arms, offering him all the comfort she could, but a warning sounded in her head. That way lay danger. The faint, flickering attraction between them might revive at any time. The memory of his lips brushing hers warned her not to take the risk.
Yet who else was there to help him? His obnoxious father? The women who came and went but never seemed to get really close to his life or his heart?
She could have cursed the malign fate that had given such insight to her—the one person who didn’t dare use it, and yet who wanted to use it with all her heart. It was alarming how much she wanted that.
She ventured to reach out and touch his shoulder.
‘Jackson—’
He raised his head and their eyes met. For a brief moment she saw him defenceless, without the mask that she now realised he wore so easily.
‘What is it, Freya?’ he whispered.
She drew a trembling breath. Another moment and she would have thrown caution to the winds. But alarm came to her aid, forcing her to speak common sense words.
‘Let’s put it in the past,’ she said. ‘We’ve always been good friends and we’re not going to let anything spoil it.’
‘Right,’ he said, and the mask was in place again. ‘Good friends it is—just like always.’
‘Always have been, always will be.’
They shook hands.
‘Oh, look,’ she said. ‘It’s there.’
The great pyramid loomed gloriously above them, golden in the fast growing light, full of promise for the day to come.
‘Yes, it’s there,’ he said. ‘It could be there for ever.’
‘When we’re not here any more—in a thousand years.’
They sat in silence for a while. At last they rose and wandered back into the hotel. It was time for the day to begin.
* * *
At breakfast Amos was in good spirits.
‘I’m beginning to find Ancient Egypt fascinating,’ Freya told him. ‘This place we’re going to today—’
‘The Giza Necropolis,’ Amos put in.
‘Yes, the place with all those pyramids. Will I see Tutankhamun’s tomb?’
‘No, that’s not here,’ Amos said. ‘He’s further down the Nile, in the Valley of the Kings. But it’s quite near Edfu, so you can see him when we go there.’
‘So who is in the Giza Necropolis?’ Freya asked.
‘Khentkaus the First,’ Amos said.
‘Who was he?’
‘Not he—she,’ Jackson said. ‘We don’t know very much about her—even who she really was. There are a thousand stories that she was the daughter of one pharaoh and the wife of another—maybe two others. She might have reigned in her own right—or maybe not. Or perhaps she was the mother of two pharaohs and the regent of one. All we know for sure is that she must have been someone important for her tomb to be located here, among kings. Apart from that she’s a woman of mystery.’
‘I thought Cleopatra was the great woman of mystery,’ Freya observed.
‘In a sense,’ Jackson agreed. ‘But we know so much about Cleopatra that there’s less mystery to enjoy. Khentkaus hides behind a fog of ambiguity.’
‘Ah, yes, that sounds far more fun,’ Freya agreed.
‘Definitely.’
They shared a nod.
‘Time we were going,’ Larry said.
Of the journey out to the Giza Necropolis she gazed, entranced, out of the window.
‘Where’s Khentkaus?’ she asked.
‘Her pyramid is just a ruin,’ Jackson said. ‘There’s very little to see. We’ll do a final shoot today and bid her goodbye.’
No sooner had they arrived than Larry summoned Jackson, saying, ‘We’ve got a problem.’
‘He
