Free Until It's Over by Nicci French Page B

my nose. I could hear the water squelching in my shoes. Owen’s hair was plastered to his skull and his shirt was wet through.
    ‘Dario will have used up all the hot water,’ I said.
    ‘Do you want to get a bus or a cab?’
    ‘Not unless you do.’
    ‘I quite enjoy walking in the rain.’
    We walked in silence, taking care not to touch and not looking at each other but staring ahead at the muddy path, the grey water. I was hot and cold at the same time.
    We went under a bridge and in the half-light, without knowing we were going to, we stopped and kissed urgently, pressed up against the damp wall, water dripping from our hair and running down our cheeks like tears. Our wet clothes clung to us. Then we moved apart and set off along the canal again. Owen hadn’t even let go of his bag full of equipment.
    ‘Do you like being a despatch rider?’ he said.
    ‘Kind of. I don’t want to do it for ever. Who wants to be a despatch rider when they’re sixty? I’ve already been doing it longer than I thought I would. I thought it was just for a few weeks in the summer while I made up my mind what I wanted to do next, and that was a year ago.’
    ‘So why did you continue?’
    ‘Because I never made up my mind what I wanted to do next. I was studying law, you know. That’s how I met Pippa. But I never really knew why I was doing it. I went travelling instead, worked abroad. It’s been fun, but at some point I guess I’ll have to get a grown-up job. It’s odd, isn’t it? I mean, I look at someone like Miles. When I first met him he was radical and dangerous. He was always going on about individual freedom and the way the system imprisons you. But what was I expecting? That Miles should still be chaining himself to trees and Dario should do botched painting jobs and get stoned and I should cycle round London until I drop dead in the saddle? And that we should all live like students in Maitland Road for ever and ever? Maybe that’s why we’re upset about moving. Because it means we have to look at our lives.’
    ‘Maybe.’
    ‘Are we having a conversation?’
    ‘I don’t know. Perhaps not. You’re doing most of the talking: I’m just letting you.’
    ‘Oh. Well, I won’t say anything else, then.’
    But he took me by the wrist, pulled me to a halt again and stared at me in the streaming rain. ‘Listen. You know you said I didn’t even see you. It’s not true. I see you. Here, look at your cheekbones, you could be from Lapland. Your eyes are set wide apart. You’ve got quite a sharp collarbone’ – with one finger, he traced it – ‘and strong arms and a flat stomach. On your shoulders, under your shirt, you’ve got small prominent knots of muscle. But then you’ve got these full breasts and –’
    ‘You’re talking about me as if I wasn’t here. I don’t like it. Stop it.’
    ‘I’d like to photograph you.’
    ‘I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.’
    ‘All the contradictions.’
    ‘Didn’t you hear me? I’m not one of your subjects.’
    ‘A beautiful object, an object of desire.’
    ‘Oh, please.’
    ‘Black-and-white. By a window.’
    ‘I don’t think so.’
    He put his hands on my shoulders and looked at me. ‘I’d like to photograph you, Astrid,’ he said softly. ‘Please?’
    ‘I tell you what. Let me look at your other pictures and then I’ll see.’
    ‘Come on, then.’
    He set off at a stride, and I had to almost run to keep up, the heavy bag bumping against my shins. We got to the house and he took it from me, then helped me out of his sodden jacket. There was the tinny sound of a radio coming from the top floor, but otherwise it seemed empty. We went up the stairs together. He opened the door of his room and looked at me.
    ‘Now?’ I asked, running my hands through my dripping hair and feeling my jeans cling to my legs.
    ‘Unless you don’t want to.’
    ‘Of course I want to,’ I said crossly. ‘I’m just wet through and – oh, never mind. Show