Dolphin-san: Hey there, sorry for the wait, but I've had a lot going on at school lately. I've had three bloody section tests this last week! Thank God for the holiday.

Anyway, hope you enjoy this next chapter.

Chapter 21

Hiro's new flat, in Maida Vale, was situated on the third floor of a modern apartment block set in landscaped gardens. The flat itself was small but adequate, and had been recently redecorated in shades of creams and greens that were only faintly reminiscent of municipal toilets.

'This is great, I love it,' Ray enthused as he was given the full guided tour. It wasn't strictly true, he much preferred old buildings to new ones, but what else could you say when someone was proudly showing you around their new home?

And this was Hiro's new home, so Ray would grow to love it.

'Really?' Hiro put his arm around Ray. 'I know it's not huge, but it has its advantages. No Adrian for a start.'

Ray kissed him. Adrian meant well, but privacy – or rather lack of it – had been an increasing problem recently. The other evening, back at Adrian's house, things had been progressing nicely in a bedroom direction when Adrian had arrived home unexpectedly with a crowd of his friends from the pub. Discovering Hiro and Ray sitting bolt upright on the sofa, taking in at a glance Ray's pink cheeks and wrongly done-up shirt, he had waved a four-pack of lagers and yelled, 'Oops, coitus interruptus! Hey, don't mind us, feel free to carry on. We were going to watch the football but we can always watch you two instead.'

Ray blushed just thinking about it. Oh yes, the prospect of total privacy had a lot going for it.



'No Adrian,' Ray agreed happily, 'just us.' He kissed Hiro again, sliding his hands longingly under his rugby shirt. 'I don't think I've seen the bedroom yet.'

Hiro stroked Ray's hair.

'We're going to do this properly. There's no rush, we've got all the time in the world. Look, it's only seven o'clock,' Hiro showed Ray his watch, 'and you've been at work all day. You must be starving. I thought we'd go out and get something to eat first. Then, when we come back . . . well, you can see the bedroom.' Hiro grinned. 'It's Sunday tomorrow, no need to get up. If we want to, we can spend the whole day in bed. And I think I should warn you now, I'll definitely want to.'

'Except I promised Florence I'd decorate that room,' groaned Ray.

'Put it off.'

'I can't. She had the paint delivered today.'

'I thought you said this guy wasn't moving in for another week.'

'He isn't, but Florence really wants the room done tomorrow. Otherwise the smell of paint will still –'

'Don't let her boss you around,' Hiro interrupted impatiently. 'She can't make you do it. What is she, some kind of slave-driver? Just tell her tomorrow isn't convenient.'

'Florence isn't a slave driver, she just wants the job finished. And I promised I'd do it. I don't want to let her down.'

Hiro frowned, not bothering to conceal his irritation.

'I wanted us to spend the day together.'

'But we can!'

'In bed,' Hiro said pointedly. 'Not painting bloody walls.'

There was a horrible silence.

'Oh God,' Ray wailed suddenly. 'We're having our first argument. Today of all days!'

Hiro's expression softened at once.

'No we aren't.'

'I'm sorry!'

'Don't be.' Hiro didn't want to argue either. 'I'm disappointed, that's all. I wanted our first day in the flat to be special.' Taking Ray's face between his hands, Hiro slowly kissed him. 'You don't know how much I've looked forward to this.'

'I'm not hungry,' Ray murmured against Hiro's warm mouth. 'I don't want to go out to dinner.'

Hiro, who was starving, said, 'We can order something later.'

'Do you hate me?'

'No.' Hiro's lips brushed Ray's neck. 'I love you.'

It was true. He hadn't meant to meet someone so soon after Max, but it had happened. He had found Ray and he didn't want to lose him.

Hiro felt Ray shudder in his arms.

'You do?'

'I do.'

Ray closed his eyes. This had been definitely worth waiting for. And to think that he had tried to get out of Elizabeth Turnbull's hideous fund-raising party. He had only gone in the end because Florence had insisted and he'd thought it might turn up a marriage-minded man, with I-love-Mothercare signs in his eyes, for Bev.

'We don't have to wait until later, do we?' Ray's embarrassingly out-of-practice fingers fumbled with the top button of Hiro's jeans. 'I think I'd like to see the bedroom now.'

'We've waited this long,' Hiro teased. 'Are you sure you wouldn't rather leave it until next weekend?'

Ray unfastened a couple more buttons. They were in the hallway now, and he was easing Hiro in the direction of the closed door that hadn't yet been opened.

'Oh, I'm sure.'

His hand landed on the door handle. The door opened and he began to reel Hiro inside.

Oops.

A lot of clattering ensued.

'Junk cupboard,' Hiro murmured, pulling Ray out again. 'Wrong door.'

'I bet Mata Hari never had problems like this. She didn't have Adrian and his friends to deal with, either.' Ray unfastened the final button on Hiro's jeans. He leaned on the handle of the last door, nudging it open with his hip. 'They aren't in here, are they?'

'Better not be,' said Hiro.

Reeling back home at eight o'clock the next morning, light-headed from lack of sleep, Ray only hoped he didn't look as bow-legged as he felt.

Oh, what a blissful night.

'No need to ask if you enjoyed yourself,' said Florence with her customary lack of discretion. Her eyes bright with laughter, she handed Ray a mug of strong coffee. 'Go anywhere nice?'

Ray tried hard to look demure.

'Just a quiet evening in.'

'Not too quiet, I hope. That's the problem with these modern flats, the walls are so thin you can't unscrew a bottle of aspirin without the neighbours asking if your headache's better.'

Demure clearly wasn't working. Ray slurped his coffee and grinned.

'I didn't have a headache last night.'

'You had a couple of phone calls.' Expertly reversing her chair, Florence reached for the message pad. 'Your friend Bev rang, wondering what you're up to today. Said she might pop over later and give you a hand.'

Ray didn't get his hopes up; Bev's hands were too perfectly manicured to be of any practical use. Sunday was traditionally Bev's day to be at a bit of a loose end, that was all. Bev's idea of being helpful would be lounging about gossiping and every so often pointing at a hard-to-reach corner and saying knowledgeably, 'Missed a bit.'

'Okay. Who else rang?'

'Kai Hiwatari.' Florence held the pad at arms length in an attempt to bring the scribbled message into some kind of focus. 'He has to fly to New York tomorrow, so he wondered if you could do the interview this afternoon.'

'Dangling from a step-ladder, with a paint brush clenched between my teeth? Oh yes, lovely.' About to roll his eyes, Ray shot her a suspicious look. 'I hope you said no.'

'I did not, I said it would be fine.' Florence was unrepentant. 'Today's the only time they can manage it and you've out them off twice already. Anyway, I told them to come over at five, so you should be finished by then.'

'Five? But I've already arranged to meet Hiro at six!' Honestly, this was so unfair. Was Kai Hiwatari's mission in life to spoil all his fun?

'Absence makes the heart grow fonder.' Florence shrugged with irritating lack of concern. 'Ring him, tell him you'll see him at eight.'

'Missed a bit,' said Bev, too busy flipping through one of the Sunday supplements to even point an acrylic false nail in the appropriate direction. Instead, she wriggled her eyebrows and nodded at a remote section of wall high above the door frame. 'See? It's gone all blotchy.'

'It's all going blotchy,' Ray grumbled. He leaned back on his ladder, rubbing his aching spine. 'I'm going to have to do two coats.'

'There's a piece here about the best places to go to meet men.' Bev sat up on the dust-sheet-covered bed, sending half a dozen Sunday Times sections slithering to the floor. 'It says health farms are good.' She looked up, interested. 'I've never been to a health farm.'

'The only men you'd meet there would be overweight, stressed-out business men who've been warned by their doctors that if they don't lose six stone they'll be dead by Christmas.' Ray blinked as a spray of crocus-yellow emulsion ricocheted off the roller into his eyes. 'And they'd all be going cold turkey because they'd had their mobile phones and laptops confiscated.'

'True,' sighed Bev. 'I can't bear men who twitch.' She read on down the list. 'How about car maintenance?'

'Full of women desperate to meet men,' Ray said briskly. 'And no real man would ever go because it would be too unmacho for words.'

'Kite flying!' Bev exclaimed, jabbing the page. 'That's how you met thingy! Well, it certainly worked for you.'

Ray tried to imagine Bev, in her high heels, teetering up Parliament Hill, struggling to keep her hair in place with one hand and clinging for dear life to the handle of a somersaulting kite with the other.

Still, Thingy was a good name for Kai Hiwatari.

'I didn't so much meet him,' Ray protested, 'as hurl abuse at him.'

'I could hurl abuse.' Bev looked indignant. 'I'm great at that. I haven't always worked at Takao's place, you know. I was once a doctor's receptionist.'

Splat, a dollop of paint slid off the end of Ray's roller and landed on the top of his head. This was worse than being dive-bombed by pigeons in Trafalgar Square.



Only yellower.

'My legs ache, my arms ache, my back aches.'

'Oh, stop being so neurotic. Take a couple of painkillers and stop moaning. You can't see the doctor until a week on Tuesday and that's final.'

Amazed, Ray swung round.

'What?'

'That's me being a doctor's receptionist.' Bev was smug. 'Told you I was good.'

'But I do ache.'

'I don't see why. You've only done half a ceiling and one wall.'

And spent most of the night having rampant, muscle-wrenching nonstop sex, thought Ray semi-guiltily. Still, better not mention that.

'I thought you came here to help me.' He tried a spot of wheedling.

'I am helping you, I'm keeping you company.'

Great.

'You could keep me company up this ladder.'



'I get dizzy on ladders. And I'm allergic to paint.' Cosily, Bev snuggled up with the News of the World. 'If I got any on me I'd go as blotchy as your wall.'

'I wouldn't mind.'

'I would. Anyway, I'm doing my bit later, aren't I? Making you look presentable for the TV cameras.'

As soon as Bev had heard that Kai Hiwatari was coming round, she had instantly volunteered to make Ray look good.

'Nothing outrageous,' Ray warned her now. 'A bit of eyeshadow, a bit of mouse in my hair, that's all. Not too much foundation.'

Especially the last; Bev had a tendency to get a bit carried away when it came to foundation.

'Don't panic, you'll look great.' Leaning over, Bev smugly patted her handbag, bulging with every hair and face cosmetic known to Harrods Beauty Hall.

'Okay, but easy on the foundation.'

'Believe me,' Bev's tone was soothing, 'right now you need all the help you can get.'

'You're not my friend.'

'I am your friend, I'm just being honest.'

'If you were really my friend,' Ray said sorrowfully, 'you'd get off your big lazy bum and make me a chocolate spread sandwich and a banana milkshake.'

Ray was jabbing paint into a corner of plaster coving when the door swung open behind him. He heard the satisfying clunk of china against glass.

'I take it all back, Bev, you don't have a big lazy bum, and you're definitely my friend.

'That's really kind,' said an unfamiliar, male, voice, 'but actually, I'm not Bev.'

Ray let out a snort of laughter and swung round. Blonde, pretty, curvy, loose shirt over stretchy trousers . . .

'Max, right?'

'Right.' Max grinned and held up the plate. 'Chocolate spread sandwich, right?'

'Hooray. Coming right down.' Ray dropped the brush messily into the pot of paint and leapt off the ladder. 'I'm Ray, by the way.'

'I guessed.'

'I'd shake hands, but I'm all painty.'

'I spoke to Florence on the phone earlier,' Max explained. 'She told me what you were doing. I've come to help.'

'Oh no, I couldn't let you do that!' Ray gestured vaguely in the direction of Max's stomach.

'I'm pregnant, not paralysed from the chest down. This is a great colour.' Having briefly admired the repainted wall, Max began to climb the ladder. 'Go on, have a rest. Eat your sandwich and drink your milkshake.'

Enchanted by this order and all in favour of a spot of cosseting, Ray grinned at Max.

'You sound like a father already.'

Dolphin-san: Wee! Max meets Ray, so fun. Mm, I love banana milkshakes. Happy Easter, everyone!