Against the Tide Read Online Free

sordid details on the way.’
    â€˜Way? Where?’
    She dragged me along the bridge. ‘ To the hospital, silly. I’ve arranged to pick up our friend and take him back to his hotel and you’re coming along to apologise.’
    Why should I apologise to the Dutchman? It was his bloody fault anyway. I jerked her arm back as we reached the gate and pulled her into the rail.
    â€˜What’s wrong, Jack?’ There was concern in her voice now as she looked enquiringly at me.
    I stared out over the beach, seeing only shades of grey, oblivious to the sprawl of near naked bodies and children screeching about on the sand.
    I felt her hand on my cheek. Her voice was soft. ‘I think you’re feeling a little guilty, aren’t you?’
    I sighed and nodded.
    â€˜You’re also realising that you are not as innocent as you were a couple of hours ago.’ Her hand caressed my ear. ‘That was brutal, Jack. Cold, calculated, murderous even.’
    I didn’t respond.
    She turned my head to face her. ‘I think you’ve grown up a bit this afternoon and it frightens me.’
    I stared back. We might only be eighteen but we had shared so much, had been as intimate in body and thought as I believed possible. How could she know me so well when I didn’t really understand myself? I shrugged, helpless for words, desperate for her to change my mood.
    Her light blue irises, also red-rimmed, from plunging fifteen feet underwater, expanded as she smiled. ‘Do you remember when we stood on this bridge before that first party at Saul’s and you made me pour that decent bottle of claret into the sand?’
    I grimaced.
    â€˜Yes, you bastard. I can’t believe I let you. I should have hit you over your thick head with it. And all because you don’t approve of drink.’
    â€˜We didn’t need it. Of course, you didn’t know Saul then. If you had, you would have realised that his parents keep enough alcohol in their apartment to float the Queen Mary. ’
    â€˜I really didn’t understand you then. I’m not much wiser now. Jack Renouf, you are a bloody puzzle.’
    I grinned. She had lifted my mood. ‘Come on then, Florence Nightingale, let’s get this over with.’

4
    Feeling more relaxed, I hugged her, conscious of the soft warmth under her thin dress and the seductive power of her perfume. Sometimes, when we were alone in the house, Caroline raided her stock and amused herself by making me apply eau de cologne and parfume to various intimate parts of her naked body. This testing of my “nose” was one of her favourite games. I usually had difficulty identifying all the ingredients, but I could recognise jasmine and guessed this was her current favourite, Coco. Whatever its composition, it was sufficiently powerful to shift thought processing from my brain to a less inhibited part of my body. Get the Dutchman out of the way, it pleaded.
    She’d left her father’s Bugatti, a 57C drophead coupe, in Roseville Street, just across the main road.
    â€˜Come on, Jack. I’ll make sure he doesn’t eat you.’ She jumped into the scarlet roadster, pressed the starter and had the eight cylinders roaring a fortissimo chorus in bottom C before I could close my door. She dropped the clutch and bounced onto the crown of the road, jerking me back into the cream leather seat.
    I gritted my teeth. The bonnet was long and the front mudguards so sensuously rounded that even I had difficulty seeing the road. She was a good six inches shorter than me and her Ray-Bans, with their rose-coloured lenses, couldn’t have helped as we charged through the empty streets to the General Hospital.
    She pulled up alongside the entrance in Gloucester Street and pointed towards the granite façade. I started to protest but she shoved me out and ordered me to get the “casualty” while making her only use of the rear view mirror so far, to