Chameleon's Shadow

He half-turned to show his uninjured side. She was dressed demurely in navy blue from her neck to below her knees, with her hair twisted up behind her head. He felt goose bumps on the back of his neck as another spurt of adrenalin drenched his system. His first instinct was to look at her hands.

‘I wore it for you,’ she said, reaching up to take the clip from the back of her head. ‘Remember Gattaca? You always said you preferred Uma in uniform.’ She smiled as her blonde hair fell to her shoulders. ‘Does it bring back good memories?’

He didn’t answer.

She pulled a face. ‘You’re such a bear. I thought you’d approve for once. It’s when I showed too much that you used to complain.’ She took another step forward and dropped her shoulder bag on to his chair, eyeing him from under her lids. ‘It’s just a look, Charlie. Image is everything these days. Will Dr Willis like it? You know he’s been writing to me.’

Acland took a breath through his nose to calm himself. ‘He’s a psychiatrist . . . He doesn’t judge people on appearance.’

Her face lit with amusement. ‘Everyone does, Charlie. It’s how the world works.’ She tilted her head to one side to examine him. ‘So what’s wrong with you anyway? You look fine to me.’

‘I want you to go, Jen.’

She ignored him. ‘I can’t, not yet. You haven’t let me tell you how sorry I am.’ She put the husk back into her voice. ‘It was your fault, you know. You never tried to understand how unhappy I was about you going away. I hardly recognized you when you

came back from your desert training in Oman.’

‘The feeling was mutual.’

‘It was good at the beginning.’

Was it? All he could remember now were the fights. ‘I don’t want to do this, Jen.’

‘Please, Charlie,’ she cajoled again. ‘This is really important to me, darling.’

He avoided the trap of asking why. ‘I don’t care.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘No,’ he agreed harshly, ‘but you never did understand the difference between what was real and what wasn’t. This is real.’ He slammed one fist into the other. ‘You come one step closer . . . or try that “darling” crap on me again . . . and I’ll take your head off.’

Her eyes flashed briefly, but whether in annoyance or alarm he couldn’t tell. ‘Why are you being so cruel?’

Acland pressed a finger against his dead socket, where a pain was starting. ‘I’m not. I’m being honest . . . which isn’t a word you’d understand.’ He watched her mouth thin to an unattractive line. ‘Have you run out of money? Is that why I’ve been picked for the treatment again? Maybe you think I’m going to be paid thousands in compensation.’

A line of tears appeared along her lashes and she looked baffled suddenly, as if the visit wasn’t going the way she’d expected. ‘I thought you wanted to see me. Someone keeps phoning and hanging up. I hoped it was you.’

‘No chance. I don’t even call the people I’m fond of.’

‘You never used to be like this.’

‘Like what? Bored?’ He paused. ‘I was always bored. Somewhere along the line I hoped I’d find a real person behind the pathetic pretence, but I never did. Not one I wanted to spend time with at any rate.’

‘Cold,’ she said. ‘You were never cold, Charlie. You might have been easier to live with if you had been.’

‘Don’t delude yourself. Adulation’s the only thing you ever wanted. You were halfway bearable as long as men admired you.’

‘You shouldn’t have been so jealous. They were always going to look . . . You knew that from the moment we met.’

Acland shook his head. ‘Don’t do this,’ he warned.

‘Why not? You were crazy about me. I’ve been worried sick it’s my fault that you ended up in here. Were you thinking about me when your Scimitar got hit?’

He watched her take another step towards him. ‘I swear to God, I will hurt you if you come any closer, Jen. Do you understand that? I don’t give a shit what kind of fantasy you’re in at the moment, but it doesn’t include me.’ He paused. ‘It never did. The woman I liked never really existed.’

She couldn’t or wouldn’t believe him and the teardrops fattened along her lashes in beautiful sorrow. ‘Don’t be unkind to me, Charlie. I’m so unhappy. Can’t we be friends at least?’

She lifted a hand towards his face as if she believed that touch alone could reignite the feelings he’d had for her. His response was so rapid that he caught her wrist and bent it away from him before it even reached shoulder height. ‘Not any more,’ he said icily. ‘I’ve already told you, I’m not going down this route again.’

‘You’re hurting me.’

‘I doubt it.’ He stared at her for a moment, then slowly slid his grip from her wrist to her palm and crushed the bones inside his fist. ‘How about that?’

This time the tears were a genuine expression of pain. ‘God!’ she snapped. ‘You’re breaking my fucking fingers.’

‘That sounds more like the Jen I know.’