‘Awesome?’ Troy quirked his straight mouth.

‘Scary.’

‘Yeah. Want to sit down?’

There was a wide choice of wicker chairs and top-of-the-range sunbeds (with about twenty different inclines), but ‘This is the one for us.’ Troy seemed amused by a squashy, swinging sofa suspended by ropes from an overhead beam.

After a twinge of fear that the ropes wouldn’t hold our weight (my weight, really. Could you imagine the shame if I clambered aboard, only to yank the hooks out of the beam and send the whole thing crashing to the floor?), I got totally into it. We took an end each, and curled on the cushions, our feet almost touching.

Look at me, I thought, amazed by myself – swinging in the warm night, high above the city, sipping a Martini with a sexy, sexy man.

Yes, now about the ‘sexy, sexy man’. They say that you don’t know how sad you’ve been until you feel happy once more. Similarly, you don’t realize how much you haven’t fancied anyone until it happens again. Troy’s easy grace, his greenish eyes, his very nearness, generated something in me – what I could only describe as readiness.

‘I could get to like this,’ he said softly. From his tone and the accompanying sidelong glance, he wasn’t just talking about the view/frosty-drinks/swinging-sofa set-up. I might have lived a fairly sheltered life, but I’m not a complete ditz.

‘Me too.’ I kept my inflections neutral.

‘You’re sure? You really do feel OK? You know, after those phone calls about your husband?’

‘Fine.’ Well, I felt fine at that precise moment.

He nodded. ‘Cool.’

‘Tell me about your meeting last night.’ Emily had implied that his work was important to Troy, so I wanted to know.

He told me a little about the three projects he was trying to get off the ground, the various setbacks, how hard it was to get finance, and I encouraged and commiserated where appropriate, but it was like we were speaking in code.

If only he’d touch me. The skin on my leg almost tingled with the need for his hand…

‘Is there a Maggie here?’ Someone had stuck their head around the door. ‘Cameron needs ya. His fire has gone out.’

The mood broken, Troy made a regretful face and said, ‘Better go in.’

Back inside, more people had arrived, but there were still only about thirty of them. Cameron beckoned me across the chilly tundra and yelled raucously, ‘Come on baby, light my fire!’

‘Lord,’ I murmured, ‘what have we missed?’ It looked like the high-jinks factor had gone up several gears while we’d been outside. But as soon as I’d fixed the fire and Troy and I had commandeered one of the white-leather sofas, I discovered how mistaken I was. Cameron’s boisterousness was about as rowdy as things got: as parties go, this one was very well-behaved. And as movie stars’ parties go, it was a bitter disappointment.

‘No one’s had their face slapped, there’s been no jiggery-pokery in the hot-tub, not one television has been thrown in the swimming pool,’ I said sadly. And apart from a couple of slender joints doing the rounds, there wasn’t even any obvious drug-taking.

‘Irish, you’re obsessed!’

I shrugged. ‘Just trying to make up for lost time.’

Around the fireplace, weaving in and out in a tight knot, all of the 90210 crew seemed to know each other. And while they were perfectly cordial to Troy and me, they weren’t overly friendly. For once I didn’t care, because Troy was the only person I wanted to talk to. He resumed telling me about his work while I widened my eyes and licked my lips and looked up from under my lashes – and then realized I was sipping from an empty glass. Had possibly been at it for quite some time.

Troy indicated it. ‘Another?’

‘I’ll get them.’

I crossed the vast expanse of whiteness to the kitchen, but as I got there, the door was shut in my face. Behind the door a girl gasped, ‘Do you want everyone to see? And where did you get it’

I paused, my hand frozen on the door knob, as a male voice tempted, ‘Want some?’

‘I can’t! You shouldn’t!’

‘A little isn’t going to hurt.’

‘Jeez, listen to yourself!’

I was afraid to go in. What manner of illegal mood-alterer were they indulging in? Cocaine? Angel dust? Heroin? But my curiosity got too much, so I opened the door – and found the pair of them bent guiltily over a tub of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey. They looked up, a picture of shock, and the girl actually said, ‘This isn’t how it looks.’

Full of glee, I skittered back to Troy and, with my mouth intimately close to his ear, confided what had happened. ‘Not exactly rock and roll, is it?’ I couldn’t stop grinning.

‘No,’ he laughed. ‘This isn’t such a great party, is it? Come on, suck down that drink, I’ll take you home.’

The words were out of my mouth before I’d even known I was going to say them. ‘Whose home?’

Instantly, I dropped my eyes, afraid to look at him. I was shaking with hope, with my own audacity, with dread…

‘Maaaggie,’ he whispered, and cautiously I peeped up again.

His expression was quizzical. He was wondering if he’d misunderstood, then saw that he hadn’t. He laughed – a funny, regretful laugh. ‘Oh, boy.’ He sounded almost weary. With a heart banging with nerves, I watched him stand up and sling an arm towards me.

‘Let’s go.’

23

In his jeep I faced away and stared out of my window, because I couldn’t bear looking at him and not touching him. In silence, he drove too fast. But when we got caught at a red light, I made the mistake of turning and glancing at him, and then his mouth was on mine. I hadn’t known what kind of kiss to expect, because his mouth was hard but he was gentle – but when it happened I was actually shocked by the quality. It wasn’t just my being out of practice that made me think he was an expert kisser. He was teasing, tantalizing and more than a little dirty.

We kissed through three changes of the lights. At the time, I didn’t know that was what was happening, but afterwards I made sense of the noises I’d been faintly aware of – the mad beeping must have been when the lights changed to green and we didn’t move. The sound of acceleration was us being overtaken, then a fresh burst of mad beeping must have been when the next lot pulled up behind us on the red and the lights went to green again.