Read Harm's Way for Free Online Page B

impatience in my stomach. What next? To distract herself from the man’s looks, Beth had moved quickly to the bar: one last drink. Waiting for the barman to notice her, unable to resist another glance, she had turned to find this vision standing directly behind her.
    â€˜Do we know each other?’ he’d asked in a slightly aggressive manner.
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜So what’s with the staring?’ He broke into a smile, not waiting for an answer. ‘They’re going to kick us out in a minute. Come and have a last dance.’
    â€˜So I followed them on to the dance floor,’ Beth continued with slow satisfaction, reaching for a tissue, moistening the edge with her tongue and moving it gently along the mascara-ingrained creases beneath her left eye, ‘and I’m thinking: why the heck are all good-looking men gay?’
    That was the rudest Beth got: heck; my initial impulse not to swear in front of her had been right.
    Somewhere in the next hour, she went on, time had speeded up. The Arab had left, and it emerged that his ‘beautiful friend’ –
quelle surprise
– was not gay at all. Beth had asked him back to the flat for a nightcap which still stood, untouched, on the coffee table, and after a kiss and an adolescent fumble the pair had fallen asleep on – but not in, she took care to specify – her bed. She’d woken up, less than half an hour ago, cursing the ineffectual blind for allowing the sun to stream in, just in time to hear the catch on the front door click as he let himself out.
    â€˜You just missed him,’ she concluded. ‘But my God, Anna, I wish you’d seen him. And do you know what the worst part is? I didn’t get his number and I can’t even remember his name.’
    With a theatrical muffled cry she disappeared into a quilted ball of duvet.
    *    *    *
    Beth wasn’t keen on one-night stands. She’d spent most of her twenties trying to be like other girls – who themselves tried to be like men – unsuccessfully attempting bravado comments like: ‘I don’t care if he doesn’t call. I just needed some sex,’ before hunching with embarrassment at the sound of her own words. Now Beth was pleased that the evening’s outcome had been fairly innocent. It meant that she could replay the night’s events without any sense of having compromised herself. On the few occasions she’d actually slept with a virtual stranger and never heard from him again, far from being able to shrug it off, she’d been left feeling brittle and ashamed. More than her Catholic upbringing, it was the result of a natural desire to be honest about her own emotions.
    â€˜Wasn’t he something, Stephen?’ she shouted into his room, where a pair of anonymous women’s legs were just visible through the open door. There was a pause long enough for us to think he hadn’t heard before the weary reply, ‘How the hell should I know, Beth?’
    â€˜Ugh, that’s such a cop out,’ she muttered to me.
    At this point I stopped listening, bored by the topic of a faceless clubber Beth would doubtless never set eyes on again, and slightly dismayed at seeing the woman I admired beyond all others behave like a naïve young girl for the first time. In her I had observed and sought to emulate the self-assurance, elegance and intelligence of a grown woman. This feeble brand of a would-be youthful sensuality had no place in my perception of her.
    Later, of course, I told her what she wanted to hear.
    â€˜Of course you’ll see him again. Paris is such a small place; just think of all the people you and I keep spotting everywhere. Tell me about Héléne?’
    Héléne was the most famous drag queen in Paris, who spent her time flitting from club to club, stealing garnishes from barmen and throwing straws at bad dancers. Beth laughed grudgingly, like a child emerging