'You can, if you want to.'
'That's not what I asked.'
She shifted a little uncomfortably in her seat. 'Not if Amy and I are on our own,' she replied unwillingly. 'She can swim, but the beach drops away quite steeply once you're in the water. I'd be afraid she'd get into difficulties and I couldn't get to her.'
'Right.' Matt was grateful to have got more than a monosyllabic answer at last. 'So-are there no lifeguards?'
Fliss gave him an incredulous look. 'At Cobbleton? It's a fishing village, Mr Quinn. Not Bondi Beach!'
'It's Matt,' he said evenly. Then, 'There are lifeguards all over the place, not just on Bondi Beach.'
'Which I suppose you know all about,' said Fliss shortly, and he raised a modest eyebrow.
'That there are lifeguards all over the place?' he asked innocently. 'Oh, yeah, I-'
'I meant Bondi Beach,' she corrected him, even though Matt was fairly sure she'd known exactly what he was doing. 'I expect you've travelled all over the world.'
'Well, not all,' he said mildly. 'But I have been to Oz. Have you?'
Fliss snorted in disbelief, but once again it was Amy who intervened. 'What's Oz?'
'Australia,' said Matt and Fliss in unison, and then she exchanged a reluctant smile with him. 'People call it Oz because it's easier to say than Australia,' he added for the child's benefit, giving her mother a conciliatory look. 'Bondi Beach is a famous Australian landmark.'
'Oh.'
As Amy absorbed this information, Matt tried again with Fliss. 'I don't know what Diane's told you, but she and I are not engaged. We never have been. Chances are we never will be.'
'Well, it's nothing to do with me,' she said, turning to look out of the window, and for some reason that really annoyed him.
'Yeah, right,' he muttered. 'That's why you've taken a vow of silence, is it? Or was it because I didn't answer my phone? Forgive me, but I thought that was my business, not yours.'
Of course that was unforgivable and he knew it. He didn't need to see the hectic colour that stained her cheeks to know he'd offended her again, and he swore under his breath.
'Do you want to go back?' he demanded, deciding he was too tired of fighting off his own demons to contemplate fighting hers, too. Either she wanted to spend the day with him or she didn't. It was her call.
She said nothing for a few moments and he was already looking for somewhere to turn the car when she said in a low voice, 'Do you?'
Matt did a double take. 'Me?'
'Yes, you,' she murmured unhappily. 'You're right. What you do is not my concern. I had no right to interfere. Particularly as you've been kind enough to offer to take us to the beach.'
Matt shook his head. 'Don't say that.' And when she looked uncomprehendingly at him, he continued, 'It wasn't kind at all. I gatecrashed your outing with Amy, and I'm guessing your father wouldn't have suddenly acquired a use for his car if I hadn't been coming along.'
'You could be right.' Fliss cast a nervous glance over her shoulder as she answered him, but Matt could see Amy in his rear-view mirror and she didn't appear to be listening to them. 'I'm sorry.'
'Hey, I'm used to it.' Matt grimaced. 'The Press went from hanging on every word I spoke when I got back, to writing eulogies about my mental incompetence when I began refusing interviews.'
Fliss looked at him then. 'Are you saying they wrote lies about you?'
Matt pulled a wry face. 'Nothing libellous, I don't think. They have teams of legal experts who pore over every word that's printed to ensure they don't have to pay out a fortune in damages.'
'Then-'
'You have to understand that not everything you read is gospel. So long as there's a germ of truth in there somewhere they can argue that they're justified in reporting the story.' He paused and then went on doggedly. 'Like the fact that I was-well, for want of a better word, traumatised when I got back. That provided endless columns of newsprint, I can tell you.'
Fliss frowned. 'But being traumatised doesn't mean you're mentally incompetent.'
'No.' Matt sighed, his hands tightening on the leather steering wheel. 'But it could be argued that it depends on the degree of trauma, and most people reading the article would accept that. Hell, I'd have accepted it myself if I hadn't had firsthand experience of that kind of grey journalism.'
He saw her bite her lip, and the tightening in his groin caught him unawares. This wasn't what he'd had in mind when he offered to take them to the beach, and it was unsettling to find that she still had that effect on him.
'But you were-traumatised,' she said at last, looking down at her hands. 'Weren't you?'
Matt expelled a weary breath, and told himself he was glad her words had dispelled his moment of madness. 'Oh, yeah,' he said flatly. 'Traumatised, right. A pitiful excuse for a man, that's what I was when I got back.'
Fliss glanced at him. 'It must have been a terrible experience.'
'Yeah.' Matt conceded the point, and then, because he needed someone to understand his dilemma, he went on, 'It was all my own fault, really. I wanted a story and I suppose I never thought they'd imagine I might be a spy.' He grimaced. 'Me? A spy? How ludicrous can you get?'
'Oh, I don't know.' Fliss regarded him thoughtfully. 'I thought you looked-well, different, when I first saw you.'
'Different?' He was wary.
'Sort of-dangerous,' she admitted unwillingly. 'It's your haircut, I think. It's very short.'
'Ah.' Matt raked his nails over his scalp, absorbing that confession. It was kind of reassuring to know he didn't look like the wimp he felt. 'Anyway, that was their excuse for taking me prisoner. And, when I couldn't answer their questions, they-got angry.'
Fliss glanced at Amy then, but he knew she knew exactly what he meant. And he found to his amazement that it was liberating to talk about it. It didn't seem half so terrifying when he was discussing it with her.
'So-how did you get away?' she asked, and he sensed her nervousness in asking the question. After all, if she'd read anything about him she'd know that he'd never discussed his experiences publicly.
'One of the rebel captains arranged for a Jeep to be waiting for me,' he said. And then, with an effort, 'He saved me from a fate worse than death, if you know what I mean.'
'My God!' Fliss stared at him for a moment, and then put out her hand and touched his knee. 'I'm sorry. No wonder you were traumatised when you got home.'
'What's traum'tised?' asked Amy, leaning forward, and Matt wondered how much she'd heard or understood. Not a lot, he guessed, and he was so grateful to Fliss for listening to him and understanding. He had the feeling no other woman of his acquaintance would have reacted so positively to his story.
'Traumatised means depressed,' Fliss said now, glancing at Matt again for his approval. 'Mr Quinn was just telling me about someone who had lies written about them because they were ill.'
'Really?'
Amy sounded only mildly interested, and Matt gave her mother a rueful smile. 'Thanks,' he said. 'For that and for not judging me.' He blew out a breath. 'So-how much further do we have to go?'
Despite its inauspicious beginnings, it was a good day. Matt, who had started out feeling tense and irritable, found himself relaxing completely. Amy had that kind of effect on him, and although Fliss caused a different reaction entirely their combined companionship was exactly what he needed.
With Amy, he could forget everything but how easy it was to please a child, and because she was there, his relationship with Fliss couldn't progress in a way that might have embarrassed both of them. Amy made him wish he had a child of his own, a possibility that seemed exceedingly remote now, but at least he could pretend she was his. And there was no doubt that anyone seeing the three of them together would assume she was.
As Amy had said, Cobbleton was little more than a village on Lyme Bay. A small harbour gave refuge to the handful of fishing boats that still used this stretch of the coast as a mooring, but its main attraction was the unspoilt spread of beach that curved away from the river estuary. Fliss said that the muddy flats to the west of the harbour were rich in bird life, and Matt thought how different it was from the arid sand-dunes that had rolled back from the coast in Abuqara.
After leaving the Land Cruiser on the quay, they spent some time exploring the rocks that edged the harbour. Amy was fascinated by the crabs and other crustaceans Matt turned up, and even Fliss took off her tennis shoes and paddled in the shallows.
Then they climbed back up onto the quay and followed the narrow promenade along to where the seemingly miles of unblemished sand stretched away to limestone cliffs. It was getting hotter all the time as the sun rose higher in the sky and they were all glad to relax for a while on the rug Fliss pulled from her backpack.