LITMIR.BIZ

      TWO

      Twenty-six hours later Trig collected their bags and herded Lena out of Ataturk airport space and into a rusty, pale blue taxi. No fuss, no big deal made about Lena’s slow and steady walking pace, and she was grateful for that. Grateful too that Trig had chosen to accompany her.

      ‘Where to?’ asked the driver in perfectly serviceable English as he opened the boot and swung their luggage into it, smoothly cataloguing them as foreigners and English-speaking ones at that. The street kids here could do much the same. Pick a German out of a crowd. An American. The English. Apparently it had something to do with shoes.

      ‘The Best Southern Presidential Hotel near the Grand Bazaar,’ Lena told the driver. ‘And can you do something else for us? Can you take us past the Blue Mosque on the way there?’

      ‘Madam, it would be my uttermost pleasure to do that for you,’ announced the beaming driver. ‘This is your first visit to our magnificent city, no? You and your husband must also journey to Topkapi Sarayi and Ayasofya. And the Bazaar of course. My cousin sells silk carpets there. I shall inform him of your imminent arrival and he shall treat you like family. Here.’ The driver turned towards them, waving a small cardboard square. ‘My cousin’s business card. His shop is situated along Sahaflar Caddesi. It is a street of many sharks. Many sharks, but not my cousin. Tell him Yasar Sahin sent you. This is me. I have written it on the card for you already.’

      Trig took the card from the driver in silence, probably in the hope that the driver would turn around and drive. Lena grinned. Trig had a weakness for carpets and rugs and wall hangings and tapestries. She had no idea why.

      ‘You know you want one,’ she murmured.

      ‘Don’t you dare mention jewellery,’ he murmured back, but Yasar Sahin heard him.

      ‘Are you looking for gold?’ Another card appeared in the driver’s nimble fingers. ‘Silver? This man is my brother and his jewellery will make your wife weep.’

      ‘I don’t want her to weep,’ said Trig but he took that card too. He didn’t mention that Lena wasn’t his wife.

      ‘Are you hungry?’ asked the driver. ‘On this road is my favourite kebab stand. Best in the city.’

      ‘Another brother?’ asked Lena.

      ‘Twin,’ said the driver and Lena laughed.

      They didn’t get the kebabs, they saw the Blue Mosque at dusk and they arrived at the hotel without mishap.

      Trig tipped well because Lena was still smiling. He got Yasar’s personal business card for his trouble. ‘Because I am also a tour guide and fixer,’ said Yasar.

      ‘Fixer?’

      ‘Problem solver.’

      Of course he was.

      The hotel Lena had chosen to stay in was mid-range and well located. She’d told the check-in clerk that Trig was her husband, who’d joined her on the trip unexpectedly, and the clerk had added Trig’s details to the booking without so much as a murmur.

      ‘You sure about this?’ he murmured as the clerk went to fetch their door cards.

      ‘Why? You want another room?’

      He didn’t know.

      ‘It’s a twin room. Two beds.’

      Still one room though.

      And boy were quarters snug.

      Trig eyed the short distance between the two beds with misgivings. They’d weathered plenty, he and Lena. Sharing a hotel room was not on the list.

      He put her bag on the rack at the end of the bed farthest away from the door. Lena inspected the bathroom and proclaimed it satisfactory, because she’d wanted one with a spa bath and got it. Next thing he knew, the bath taps were on and Lena was rummaging through her belongings for fresh clothes.

      ‘You want to shower while the bath is running?’ she asked him. ‘Because—fair warning—when I get in the bath I am not going to want to get out.’

      ‘You’re sore?’

      ‘I just want to work the kinks out.’

      ‘Right.’ Trig cleared his throat and opened his bag, staring down at the mess of clothes he hadn’t bothered to fold, and tried not to think about Lena, naked in a bath not ten feet away from him. ‘So...okay, yeah. I can shower now.’ He grabbed at a faded pair of jeans and an equally well-worn T-shirt and then paused. ‘Where do you want to go for dinner?’ This could, conceivably, affect his choice of T-shirt.

      ‘I’m all in favour of room service, provided the menu looks good. And it’s not because I don’t want to walk anywhere,’ she added defensively. ‘Room service for dinner this evening has always been part of the plan.’

      Far be it from him to mess with the plan. He eyeballed the distance between the beds again. ‘Is it just me or is this room kind of small?’

      ‘Maybe if you’d stop growing...’

      ‘I have.’ Okay, so he was extra tall and his shoulders were broad. For the most part, he was good with it. ‘You just think I should have stopped sooner.’ He eyed his little double bed with misgivings. ‘That’s not a double bed. It’s a miniature double bed.’

      ‘Princess.’

      ‘Are we bickering?’ he asked. ‘Because Poppy tells me she’s heartily sick of our bickering. I thought I might give it up for Lent.’

      ‘It’s not Lent,’ Lena informed him. ‘Besides, I like bickering with you. Makes me feel all comfortable and peachy-normal.’

      Trig snorted. At sixteen, bickering with Lena had been his first line of defence against anyone discovering just how infatuated he was with her. He was still gone on her, no question. But these days the bickering got old fast.

      He found his toiletries bag and stalked into the bathroom, only to find that that room was the size of a bath mat and that the spa was filling ever so slowly—a sneaky deterrent to filling it at all. Instead of four walls, the bathroom had two walls, a side door and one of those shuttered, half-walls dividing it from the main room. Trig reached for the shutters.

      She-who-bickered would of a certainty want them shut.

      He eyed the bathroom door and the floor mat in its way. He could shut that at the last minute. Never let it be said that Adrian Sinclair had more than a regular dislike for small spaces. Just don’t ever put him in a submarine.

      ‘Hey, Trig.’ Lena’s voice floated through the door. ‘Five things you never wanted to be. And don’t say, “Your babysitter”.’

      Never wanted to be in love with my best friend’s sister, he thought darkly. Especially since she’d never once given him the slightest encouragement.

      ‘I never wanted to be a motor mechanic,’ he said instead.

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