Fire Hawk by Geoffrey Archer

exposing the frown on her otherwise smooth brow. Her grey eyes registered shock as they took in the marks on Sam’s chest. Being told he’d been maltreated was one thing, seeing the results quite another.
    â€˜God . . .’ She covered her mouth with a hand. ‘Oh you poor man. What have they done to you?’
    Sam’s mind was doing somersaults trying to work out why she was here. There’d be no simple reason. There never was with Chrissie.
    â€˜But this is outrageous,’ she murmured, moving intothe room. Her eyes were angry now. She turned the pink-painted child’s chair round and put it hard against the edge of the bed. She sat, gently taking hold of his hands. As she gaped at his scars, Sam’s eyes lingered on her mouth – a mouth that had tasted every inch of him. ‘They
burned
you.’
    â€˜You sound so surprised,’ he mocked. ‘They
do
that in Iraq.’
    â€˜Yes . . .’ Her voice tailed away.
    â€˜Anyway, it looks worse than it is,’ he assured her, uncomfortable at the fuss she was making. He tried to see beyond those cool eyes of hers for some small sign that she might have changed her mind again, that she’d come here to tell him she wanted him back. ‘Good to see you,’ he mouthed.
    â€˜You too.’ She squeezed his hands, blinking back tears.
    â€˜How come you’re here?’ She didn’t seem about to volunteer the information.
    â€˜They sent me on the plane with Salah Khalil. To make sure the hand-over went okay.’
    Official visit then. Not personal.
    â€˜They gave me strict orders not to contact you of course,’ she confided, ‘but sod that. I had to check you were all right.’ Her gaze kept returning to his scars. ‘But you’re not, are you? You’re not all right.’
    â€˜I’m fine. A few scratches, that’s all. I’ll put on a shirt.’
    â€˜Oh, Sam. Don’t be so damned
English.
They tortured you for God’s sake.’ She detached her hands from his and clasped them on her lap as if not entirely trusting them. ‘Will you tell me about it?’
    â€˜No. I don’t think that’d be much fun for either of us.’
    She bit her lip. ‘But are you okay – you know – inside?’
    â€˜Getting better every second.’ He reached out and rested his hand on her knee.
    She was a tactile woman with a body she’d always liked him to touch. Her legs were bare now. Always werein summer. Only in the winter had there been tights to remove. But touching something he couldn’t have any more was a fool’s game. He returned his hand to his lap.
    â€˜I really was about to get dressed,’ he told her. ‘Quentin said there’s food in the fridge.’
    â€˜You must be starved.’
    It felt odd being alone with Chrissie in a bedroom, now that the rules had changed. For five years a great deal of their time together had been spent lying down, and despite his present debilitated state and the impractical narrowness of the child’s divan, it was hard to shut his mind to the idea that they could make love here. And she? What was
she
thinking? He couldn’t tell. The old signals were muted.
    â€˜Clothes . . .’ Chrissie jerked her eyes away from him. ‘There’s a suitcase in the corner. Is it yours?’
    â€˜Good heavens!’ He hadn’t noticed it before. ‘Last time I saw that was in the Rashid Hotel.’
    He pulled his knees up ready to swing his feet off the bed and Chrissie backed the chair away to give him room. As his soles took his weight on the floor, pain shot through his bandaged shins.
    â€˜Shit,’ he winced, dropping back onto the edge of the bed.
    â€˜I saw that, you idiot!’ She screwed up her face as if the pain were hers. ‘You’re far from all right. What did they do to you, Sam? What happened to your legs? Tell me.’
    â€˜Oh I don’t know,