with him. Just the sight of one was enough to swamp her with memories.
Almost without thinking, she reached out and took the mango from Mac and held it to her nose. Breathing in its distinctive smell, she was instantly transported back to their veranda in West Africa. Mac would cut up the mango for her and watch her as she ate it, the juice running down her chin.
‘You eat mangoes the way you make love,’ he would tell her, smiling in a way that made her blood flare, and he would lean across to kiss the stickiness away. ‘I love the way you do that. Everyone else sees just a little bit of you, the particular, precise Georgia, but I know what you’re really like. I know that behind that prim and proper façade, you’re a very naughty girl!’
They always ended up making love when he brought her a mango.
It was the happiest Georgia had ever been. Memories of those times gripped her cruelly now, tightening her chest until she could hardly breathe. She could just stand there dumbly holding the mango, struggling to make her lungs work once more.
Why couldn’t Mac be like Geoffrey, who brought her flowers without fail? They were always lovely flowers, not just a tired old bouquet from a garage forecourt, but nonetheless Georgia never had the sense that Geoffrey had any idea of what she would really like. He brought her flowers because that was the correct thing to do, and Geoffrey was always correct. Sometimes she wished he would surprise her, bring her a shiny conker he had picked up in the street, or a pot of honey, or a book that he thought she would enjoy.
Or a mango.
Why did Mac have to be different? she wondered in despair. Why did he have to choose the one gift that would mean so much, that would unlock so many memories? He had an uncanny ability to get under her skin when she least expected it, when she was certain that she could resist him, when she thought she was prepared.
Georgia’s hands closed around the mango. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said, her voice shaking with the effort to keep it neutral.
‘What’s that?’ said Toby as she stepped back to let Mac inside.
‘This? It’s a mango.’
‘No, that,’ he said impatiently, pointing at the camera around Mac’s neck.
‘It’s my camera,’ said Mac easily, and pulled it from around his neck. ‘Do you want to have a look at it?’
Toby nodded and, to Georgia’s consternation, Mac handed him the camera.
‘Um…do you think that’s a good idea?’ she said meaningfully. The camera was his livelihood, after all, and professional cameras didn’t come cheap.
‘It’s fine,’ said Mac, looping the strap around Toby’s neck. ‘He won’t drop it.’
Toby frowned down at the camera. ‘It doesn’t look like a camera,’ he said suspiciously. ‘It’s not digital.’
‘No,’ Mac agreed solemnly, ‘and you can’t use it to make a phone call, either! This is a camera that just takes pictures.’ He paused. ‘Would you like me to show you how it works?’
Toby nodded again, and Georgia was too pleased to see him interested to object when Mac sat down with him on the sofa and showed him how to look through the camera and use the telescopic lens.
So much for clearing up before her visitors arrived. Mac wouldn’t have noticed if he’d had to wade knee-deep through a rubbish tip to get to the sofa. He was as oblivious as Toby to any mess.
Life must be so much easier if you could just blank out whatever you didn’t want to see, Georgia reflected. She would have loved to have been the kind of person who simply didn’t notice or didn’t care about her surroundings. Sadly, she was obsessive—according to Mac, anyway—about keeping her surroundings clean and tidy, and there was no way she could enjoy her supper with the room looking like this.
Sighing inwardly, Georgia got down on her knees and began to pick up toys while Mac and Toby bent their heads over the camera. She was too used to Mac continually clicking away to be bothered when they began pointing the camera at her and talking about framing a picture. One thing about being married to a photographer, you never got shy when someone got out their Instamatic and started snapping photos. After a while, it was just background noise and you stopped feeling self-conscious in front of a camera.
It was oddly comfortable to be clearing up while the man and the boy sat on the sofa, absorbed in what they were doing. It felt almost normal. Was this what it would have been like if she and Mac had had a family? Georgia wondered.
Wrapped up in her thoughts, she didn’t at first register that Mac was talking to her.
‘Sorry?’ she said, sitting back on her haunches and smoothing a stray hair back from her face.
‘I was just saying that Toby and I could finish tidying up if you want to go and change.’
Mac’s blue eyes held a strange expression as they rested on her, and for some reason Georgia flushed.
‘It’s all right, thanks,’ she said stiffly, aware for the first time that she was still wearing her work clothes. ‘I don’t usually bother to change any more.’
Mac frowned. He had always loved the moment when she would change in the evenings. That was when she would unbutton the crisp, cool Georgia and let the secret Georgia out, the Georgia who ate mangoes in a way that made the breath dry in his throat, the Georgia who was warm and loving and so sensuous that it was hard for him to think clearly when she was near.
‘Why not?’
Georgia shrugged. ‘Oh, the usual reason—no time. There’s just too much to do every evening.’
And there was no one to change for any more, she added to herself as she gathered up some plastic counters that were scattered over the carpet.
Oh, there was Geoffrey, of course, but he inevitably came from work in his suit and, anyway, he would no doubt think that it was practical of her to stay in her work outfit too. Georgia couldn’t imagine how he would react if she were to greet him at the door wearing one of the little numbers she had used to wear for Mac.
But she had been younger then, and everything was different now.
Mac watched her crouching down, piling Toby’s toys into a box, and he felt the old familiar tightening of his chest. Her skirt was tight over her bottom and thighs, and he could see the graceful curve of her spine, the way her silky top rode up slightly as she stretched out.
He had once asked her why she wore such prim clothes instead of dressing like the warm, sexy woman that she really was. ‘Because when I’m with you it’s the only way I can keep any control over what’s happening,’ she had said. ‘With you, everything’s chaos. I don’t know which way up I am when you’re there, and when you’re not I don’t know where you are or what you’re doing. At least if I get up and put on some suitable clothes to go to work, then I feel as if I’ve got some control over what’s happening.’
Poor Georgia; it hadn’t been easy for her, Mac thought with some compunction. She liked everything in its place and firmly under control, and she had never got used to the fact that love just didn’t work like that.
‘Can I take a picture of Georgia?’ Toby asked him, holding the camera reverently.
‘Sure,’ said Mac absently, still thinking about Georgia.
‘Look at me, Georgia!’
Glad to hear him sounding so animated, Georgia looked up dutifully and smiled.
Toby lifted the heavy camera in his thin hands and pointed it at her, then glanced up at Mac. ‘Now?’
‘Well, you could take it now,’ Mac agreed, ‘but she doesn’t really look like Georgia when she’s posing like that, does she? The thing about Georgia is that she’s not an easy person to capture,’ he went on easily, talking to Toby as if he were an interested adult rather than a small boy who