Free Through a Camel's Eye by Dorothy Johnston Page A

didn’t want to tell her about the debacle over the trailer, but he made himself get it over with.
    Anthea listened in silence. When Chris had finished, she bit the inside of her cheek and frowned.
    â€˜But if Frank knew he was innocent, why go to all that trouble?’
    The same question had been in Chris’s mind too, as he pictured shards of wood floating out to sea.
    â€˜Frank told me the hairs weren’t Riza’s. He was angry when I didn’t believe him.’
    Anthea said, ‘Everyone’s speculating about who killed Margaret Benton. You should hear the theories.’
    Chris put his head in his hands and muttered between them, ‘Spare me.’
    The spaghetti sauce smelt good. Once Anthea had got over her surprise at asking Chris to share it, it seemed a lucky chance, a pleasant kind of omen, that she’d bought enough ingredients for two.
    Anthea poured wine, glad she’d had the foresight to put a bottle in the fridge.
    â€˜Cheers,’ she said, serving with a small show of ceremony, wondering if Chris would notice that she had two of everything - two good glasses, deep bowls for the fettuccini, salad plates, linen serviettes she’d only just unpacked.
    Chris fell on his dinner and began shovelling it in.
    He looked up at Anthea’s quizzical expression.
    â€˜Sorry,’ he said, wiping his mouth. ‘I - it’s good.’
    â€˜I’m glad you like it. And don’t be.’
    They ate without speaking for a while, Anthea finding the silence restful rather than a gap needing to be filled. She reflected that Graeme would have expected her to entertain him - while she was cooking, while they were eating, and after the meal. She would have prepared jokes, amusing anecdotes about the town and its inhabitants. She would have rehearsed them, and been anxious that they should go down well. Suddenly, she missed Graeme dreadfully. It was impossible that they’d come to this lack of contact, this nothing.
    Chris leant back in his chair. Anthea noticed that he’d hardly touched his wine. She refilled the carafe of water she’d put on the table and he drank some of that.
    She was aware of every move Chris made, aware for the first time of the masculine weight and heft of him, the growl his chair made as he scraped it back, sounds she was sure he scarcely heard himself.
    They washed up together, Anthea absorbed by a new sensitivity towards her boss as a man. She felt certain that any change in her behaviour towards him would cause them both discomfort. Not that she intended to behave differently; but signals were given and received whether or not the exchange was intentional.
    Chris was an odd mixture, which Anthea hadn’t come across before, of sensitivity and ignorance where women were concerned. She found herself revising her initial impression, which was that for her boss never to have married, or even to have had a long-term relationship - she suspected this was so, without really knowing - meant that there was something wrong with him. Weeks of having kept her ears open for gossip about past girlfriends had not netted her a single name.
    Anthea stared intently, over the automatic movements of her fingers, at neutral or grey areas she had not previously thought it worth her while to contemplate.
    She thought that Chris was too close to the townspeople, and that was why he felt inadequate and anxious now. He’d grown used to behaving like a mother hen, shepherding his flock and keeping them out of danger, when even fools knew that danger had a habit of rearing up and clobbering you, even in a boring country town.
    After Chris had left, Anthea grabbed her torch, glad he hadn’t overstayed his welcome. She climbed the cliff path with a greedy sense of anticipation, as though the pleasures to be gained there - salt wind in her hair, calls of the night birds - answered a need as physical as hunger. She was getting to know the path, where bulbous