‘It’s not bad,’ I reply. Amazing the difference being warm and dry can make.
The room is now quite cosy, even with our drying clothes draped over two of the chairs in front of the fire, and we’re both sitting on our folded travel towels, a barrier against the cold of the floor.
I tear open the silver sachets of dehydrated food and tip in some of the hot water from the billy, my hand wrapped in a jumper, which is the next best thing to an oven glove.
‘What do you reckon it is?’ asks Tom as I hand him one.
‘No idea and I don’t actually care.’
‘Me neither.’
He takes a mouthful. ‘I think it’s dried mouse bollocks, which have had a passing acquaintance with a teaspoon of tomato puree.’
I snort out a laugh and take a taste. ‘I think it’s supposed to be chilli con carne and rice.’
‘I think the manufacturers should be taken out and shot. But I’m so bloody hungry I don’t care. I guess the manufacturers are relying on that to save them.’
‘I’ve tasted worse,’ I say glibly but I realise I’ve made a mistake when in the candlelight I can see Tom studying me.
‘Have you?’ he asks. ‘Really?’ He watches me as I lift another forkful into my mouth.
I shrug my shoulders, really not wanting to talk about how I cobbled together some pretty strange combinations when I was younger.
I duck my head and the crackle of the fire fills the silence. I watch the flames leap in a mesmerising dance, primeval and reassuring, grateful for the heat.
‘If you could eat anything right now, what would you choose?’ he asks, swallowing down another mouthful of his food.
‘Smoked salmon and a cream cheese bagel,’ I say without hesitation. Ever since I first had one, they’ve been my idea of absolute luxury. When I’m feeling flush I treat myself to a pack of smoked salmon and a tub of Philadelphia and have it for breakfast.
‘Nice and simple,’ he observes.
‘That’s me,’ I reply. ‘Cheap date.’
‘You don’t complain, do you?’ he says suddenly.
‘What?’
‘You don’t complain. Not at all. I said it the other day but we hadn’t been through much hardship, but today … I’ve not heard you moan or whine once. Not about the weather conditions, or your foot, which obviously hurts, or being hungry or cold. Nothing.’
I don’t like the direction of this conversation. It’s sounds like he’s making a virtue out of something I’m not comfortable with. Talking about it will expose too much of me. The me I keep hidden.
I shrug again.
‘You do that a lot, too,’ he says.
This time I roll my eyes. ‘Maybe I just don’t want to talk about things. Same as you.’
‘I talk about things.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘You’re talking about the sex thing again.’
‘I wasn’t, but now you bring it up, why did you pretend you didn’t know who I was in Barcelona?’
Now it’s his turn to be silent. I wait it out.
‘I don’t know. It was a shock to see you. It’s not like it meant anything. It was a one-off.’
‘Given it happened nearly a year ago, I think I got that.’
‘But I’m sorry about that day. I was in a shitty mood and I took it out on you and the dickhead we insured.’
‘The lying sack of shit?’
‘Fuck. Yes, not my finest hour.’
‘I think we were both in shitty moods.’ I’m not about to confess why my mood was so shitty. That I’d been fantasising for months about meeting him again and it had been a big fat disappointment.
‘Although,’ I add, ‘you could have apologised to Mr Lopez.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it made you look unprofessional. Weren’t you embarrassed that he heard you?’
‘You think I care what he thought?’
I stare at him. That genuinely hadn’t occurred to me. I’d have been mortified.
