this March afternoon, a weak winter sun was struggling to stay above the horizon and the hills, still dusted with snow from a cold snap earlier in the week, were reflecting a pinkish glow. It would make a nice picture, thought Georgia morosely.
If only she could find a photographer capable of taking it.
Behind her, she heard the door to her office open. This would be Rose, still struggling to learn the ropes as the Gazette’s secretary, and almost as anxious as Georgia to find a new photographer. She would be wanting to know how the last interview had gone.
‘He seems terribly nice,’ she had whispered to Georgia confidentially before ushering the last candidate in.
Nice he might have been, a talented photographer he most certainly wasn’t.
‘Please tell me that guy wasn’t the best photographer Askerby can come up with,’ Georgia said without turning round.
‘I could tell you that if you want, but then I’d be lying, and you know I’ve never lied to you, Georgia.’
The voice that answered her was far from her secretary’s cut-glass tones. Instead it was warm and amused, with a Scottish lilt that was more a softening of the hard edges than a full-blown accent.
It was a voice Georgia hadn’t heard for four long years. A voice so unexpected and so bizarrely out of place in her dull provincial office that she froze for a moment, certain that she must be imagining things.
Then, very, very slowly, she swivelled her chair round to face her husband.
‘Hello, Georgia,’ he said.
Georgia’s heart, which had lurched into her throat at the sound of his voice, did a series of spectacular somersaults before landing with a sickening thud that left her reeling and breathless.
Mac Henderson, the love of her life. The man she had married. The man who had broken her heart.
The first instinctive surge of joy at the sight of him was rapidly succeeded, much to Georgia’s relief, by a welcome rush of therapeutic anger. It was typical of Mac to turn up when she was least expecting him!
Just when she had managed to convince herself that she was over him.
How dared he come here looking just the same, with the same heart-shaking smile and the same unsettling humour gleaming in his navy-blue eyes, making her senses pirouette and her bones dissolve exactly the same way they always had?
It wasn’t fair.
Georgia took a deep breath and wished she could remember some of those calming yoga exercises she had once tried.
‘Mac,’ she said, hating the way shock had made her voice husky, although, to be fair, it was a miracle she was able to speak at all given the way her heart was carrying on, cavorting around her ribcage like a red setter out of control. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Looking for you.’
Mac looked as if he would have liked to have strolled around, but her office simply wasn’t big enough for him to do more than take a couple of steps in any direction.
There you go, Georgia told herself. Another bonus to add to the view.
In the end, Mac sat down uninvited in the chair recently vacated by the would-be photographer. ‘It took me a little while to track you down,’ he said. ‘You didn’t tell me that you’d left London.’
‘Is there any reason why I should have done?’ asked Georgia coolly.
‘We are married,’ he pointed out.
‘Technically, perhaps,’ she conceded, ‘but we’ve been separated for nearly four years and, since you haven’t made any other attempt to contact me in that time, it didn’t occur to me to keep you informed of my movements.’
Hey, who would have thought she would have been able to come up with a coherent sentence like that? Georgia marvelled. Who needed yoga anyway? She could do this. She could deal with her soon-to-be ex-husband without falling apart or letting the frantic churning get the better of her. Ha!
‘I don’t recall you letting me know whenever you went off to the Middle East or Angola or Liberia or all the other trouble spots you’ve been to over the last few years,’ she added, feeling more confident now.
‘You’ve been keeping track of me?’
The undercurrent of amusement in Mac’s voice made Georgia grit her teeth. He had never really taken her seriously, and it looked as if nothing had changed.
‘I read the papers,’ she said, managing a careless shrug. ‘I see your name under the pictures so I know where you’ve been, that’s all.’
And every time it had been like a knife turning in her heart, knowing that he was in danger, never getting a phone call to say that he was safe, knowing only that he had survived one conflict the next time his photographs of another appeared in the paper.
Of course, Mac had always thrived on risk. His was an odd mixture of recklessness and competence, a confidence bordering on arrogance that he could deal with any obstacle that stood between him and a good picture.
It was what made him a wonderful photographer and a terrible husband. How many nights, Georgia wondered, had she lain awake worrying about where he was and what he was doing, only for him to breeze back, to laugh at her fears and tell her that she should learn to live dangerously, life was so much more fun that way? But it hadn’t been fun for Georgia, just waiting for him to come home. He had never understood how hard it was for her.
She looked across the desk at him now. No, he hadn’t changed. Nobody could call Mac a handsome man, his features were too irregular for that, but he was undeniably attractive, with those dark, lean looks, and that reckless, good-humoured assurance that gave his mobile face its compelling charm.
He was a little thinner now, maybe, a little more battered around the edges, but then, weren’t they all? Georgia thought wryly. You didn’t have to spend your life in wartorn countries to lose your sheen after you hit forty.
He had aged better than she had, she had to acknowledge, but then men always did. Mac’s lines made him look rugged and humorous, hers just made her look tired and tense.
‘Besides,’ she went on, abandoning that depressing line of thought, ‘I am a journalist. It wouldn’t have been that hard to have found you if I’d needed to, which I haven’t until now. I sent the divorce papers care of the Picture Desk at the paper. I presume that’s why you’re here?’
‘Got it in one,’ said Mac, not feeling nearly as casual as he sounded.
Her letter had been forwarded to him in Mozambique. He had been sitting in a bar in Maputo, having collected the mail that had accumulated in his post box while he’d been covering a story up country. He had ordered a beer while he leafed through the letters, opening anything that seemed interesting and leaving the rest until later.
Mac remembered the moment exactly. Remembered frowning slightly at the solicitor’s stamp, turning the envelope over, ripping it open with his thumb. Even at the time he’d thought of Georgia, who would undoubtedly have used a letter opener or a knife to open it
