Lovers' Lies. Daphne Clair

one hundred and fifty miles long... three hundred thousand workers...’

      Hundreds of tourists of various nationalities milled about, climbing the worn steps and squinting at the farther reaches of the wall where a shifting tide of people thinned as it receded into the distance.

      A hand on the hard stone parapet, Felicia gazed at the desolate, rock-strewn countryside. She’d read the figure, but none of them had prepared her for the feeling of actually being here—for the sense of the toiling of time, of generations that had lived and died and loved and been forgotten since the building of the wall had begun.

      ‘And this is only a remnant,’ Joshua’s voice said beside her. ‘Pretty impressive, isn’t it?’

      ‘Awesome,’ Felicia agreed. She had to force herself to look at him, the sound of his voice bringing back a vivid memory of that brief, unexpected kiss last night.

      Not quite meeting his eyes, she gave him a quick smile and moved to merge into the group following Jen along the top of the wall.

      She had the feeling that he remained staring after her for a few seconds before he joined them, but by that time she was walking with Maggie, successfully ignoring him.

      Suzette unwittingly assisted her to do so for the rest of the day, attaching herself to Joshua’s side and making sure that whatever attention he could spare from sightseeing was directed to her. Felicia ought to have been grateful. Instead she found herself harbouring uncharitable thoughts about both of them—Suzette for her blatant man-chasing, and Joshua because of his air of amused tolerance. Patronising, she labelled it caustically.

      It occurred to her that she was being a dog in the manger, and the thought only made her more irritated. Her muddled feelings were a hangover, she had decided last night, gazing into the sleepless darkness of her room, residual emotion from her early adolescence, when she’d thought Joshua was the handsomest, most romantic man on earth.

      Face it, she told herself brutally as she changed for dinner back at the hotel after their return from the Great Wall. He was your first crush, your puppy-love, and despite everything that happened, somewhere deep down traces of those feelings are still buried in your subconscious.

      That was why she had found his casual kiss last night so disturbing. At thirteen she’d at least had enough sense to know that a grown man like Joshua Tagget wasn’t going to be interested in a barely pubescent girl. She had been happy to abet his love affair with Genevieve—a form of transference, she now supposed.

      Had he ever divined her own feelings—that excruciating blend of half-understood, heavily romanticised sexual awakening and blind hero-worship? God, she hoped not! She grew hot at the thought, suddenly reverting to uncomfortable adolescent self-consciousness.

      Tonight everyone was dining in the hotel because they were scheduled to attend a performance of acrobatics afterwards in the city. Safety in numbers, Felicia promised herself. She needn’t share a table with Joshua again.

      Dead wrong, as it turned out. When she entered the dining room it was to find nearly all her tour companions gathered around two large tables, and Maggie saving her a seat. Which left two at Felicia’s other side empty. Those were the only chairs available when Joshua and Suzette entered together a little later, and Felicia watched with a sense of inevitability as he seated his companion and then took the chair next to hers.

      ‘Hi,’ he said in her ear.

      Felicia half turned her head. ‘Hi,’ she acknowledged, and returned to studying the menu in front of her.

      ‘Why don’t we order a selection of dishes for the table?’ someone suggested. ‘We can all share, and have a taste of everything.’

      After a minimum of discussion the plan was approved, and the menus removed.

      The meal became a friendly free-for-all of passing, tasting, dipping and enthusiastic recommendations. Chopsticks were wielded with varying degrees of expertise and success, and as Felicia dexterously transferred a few pork balls from the serving dish to her plate Joshua commented, ‘You’re pretty damn good at that.’ It had taken him several attempts to get a firm grip on one of the sauce-covered morsels.

      ‘I often eat in Chinese restaurants.’ She turned to Maggie. ‘Would you like some of these?’

      ‘If you’ll kindly get them for me,’ Maggie replied, waving her own chopsticks. ‘I still haven’t got the hang of these danged things.’

      One of the children in the party, sitting on the other side of Maggie, piped up, ‘You’re holding them wrong. See, try like this!’

      It was all very relaxed and sometimes hilarious. ‘Group bonding,’ Joshua murmured once, slanting a glance towards Felicia. ‘How about it?’

      ‘What?’ She had to look at him, finding his eyes darker than usual, questioning her. Curious, perhaps.

      ‘There was more than one wall out there today,’ he said quietly, his voice covered by a burst of laughter from across the table as someone accidentally dropped a prawn into their drink. ‘And this one’s still intact.’

      ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’ Felicia looked down at her plate, toying with a grey, semi-transparent slice of sea cucumber and wondering if she really needed to eat it.

      ‘We’re all going to be together for a while, and a friendly atmosphere can help things along considerably. I thought last night...’

      ‘What did you think?’ she asked, more sharply than she meant to.

      He was looking at her with a baffled expression. ‘Was it the kiss?’ he asked bluntly. ‘Should I apologise?’

      It had hardly been anything to make a fuss about, except for its unexpected effect on her. ‘That’s not necessary,’ she said hastily. ‘As kisses go, it scarcely rated, after all.’

      A tight grin came and went on his mouth. ‘Is that meant to be an insult?’

      ‘I don’t go around insulting perfect strangers.’

      His brows twitched. ‘Yow! A double whammy.’ He glanced round the table. ‘Look, it was an impulse, a nice way to end the evening, I thought. And...’

      ‘And?’ She looked up at him in challenge.

      ‘And... I wanted to know whether you’d reciprocate. It seemed to me I had reason to hope for it. If I offended you, I’m sorry.’

      ‘I’d forgotten all about it,’ she assured him with spurious earnestness. ‘It was totally unmemorable.’ And she turned away to speak to Maggie.

      She could feel him seething beside her, even as his deep voice answered something that Suzette said. Well, OK, she thought defiantly. He’d asked for it, and he’d got it—in spades. That should ensure that he stayed away from her for the rest of the trip. Only she wished she didn’t feel so sick, as if she’d just done something peculiarly horrible.

      Within days the tour group had developed a camaraderie that boded well for the rest of their time together. They’d visited temples and gardens, and most of them had ventured to the Chinese department stores and the street markets.

      Joshua seemed popular, although when the group was taken to the Friendship Store where foreigners were encouraged to buy souvenirs, he had instead gone off somewhere on his own. Even Suzette didn’t know where.

      They were flown to Xian to visit the famous terracotta army and other archaeological sites, and travelled by rail and road to Qingdao on the Yellow Sea, through vast areas of cultivations and scattered pink-walled villages. Water buffalo plodded patiently along dusty raised roads by narrow canals, and in some places it seemed that the countryside had been unchanged for centuries.

      Qingdao dispelled that feeling. A sleepy fishing village until only a hundred years ago, it was now a sprawling, traffic-ridden, skyscraping metropolis that Jen called ‘... a small city... only seven million people.’

      Coming from a country