Himalayas? Wow, no wonder she looked fit.
She’d begun writing in neat black ink, but she must have lost the pen halfway through the trip and the rest of the pages were written in a mixture of red ballpoint and blunt pencil.
Ryan flicked the book’s pages once more and they fell open in the middle, where she’d wedged post-cards—a Buddhist temple, towering snow capped mountains, Chinese villagers in traditional dress, a breathtaking view down a gorge. He checked the back of each postcard to see if any had been addressed, but they were blank.
Frustrated, he closed the book again.
And decided he wouldn’t read it.
OK, so he was a journalist and journalists were noted for sticking their noses into other people’s business. He’d been doing exactly that in the UK for the past eighteen months—until his recent, rather notorious departure.
Now, he’d come home to regroup, to think about new directions. The last thing he needed was a scavenger hunt, digging through an innocent young woman’s personal journal for pay dirt.
Besides, he’d stood in that taxi queue and looked into her eyes.
And somehow that made a difference.
Anyway…a cycling holiday in China was hardly breaking news.
That settled, he slipped the diary into his pocket and turned his attention to familiar Sydney landmarks. He was almost home.
For Simone, the single best thing about coming home was her lovely modern apartment in Newtown.
She’d invested in this soon after she’d landed her plum job as executive editor of City Girl magazine. Spacious and open-plan, great for parties and handy for the City Girl offices, it suited her lifestyle perfectly.
She loved everything about it, from the lively purple feature wall in the living room and the mezzanine level that housed her home office and bedroom, to the funky retro-style stools lined up at the kitchen counter—a favourite gathering spot for her friends.
Today, however, as she set her key in the lock, she didn’t feel quite the sense of welcome that she’d hoped for. Ever since she’d farewelled Belle and Claire at Hong Kong airport, a vague sense of unease seemed to have taken root inside her.
Silly. She wasn’t going to sink into gloom. All she needed was to kick off the designer sandals she’d splurged on in Hong Kong—gorgeous, but still a tad uncomfortable—and she would make a nice hot cup of tea and reread some of the affirmations she’d written in her diary when she’d felt so fantastic up in the mountains.
Barefoot, she padded across the timber floor to her backpack and she looked down at it, rubbing at her forehead as she tried to remember where she’d packed the diary. It was in one of the outside pockets.
She rolled the pack a little, patting the pockets, to feel their contents. Toiletries in this one. Her camera in this other, a small bottle of French perfume from the duty free and—
No!
A jolt ripped through her as she felt the unmistakable flatness of an empty pocket. Her heart began to race. There shouldn’t be any empty pockets in her pack. She’d crammed her possessions into every available space.
This pocket was where she kept—
Frantically, she checked the other pockets, hoping against hope to find a familiar rectangular shape.
It wasn’t there.
“Oh, no!” Her cry was almost a wail. “I don’t believe it!”
She’d put her diary in this pocket. And it was gone. Stooping closer, she saw that the zip was broken. Her heart jerked erratically as she traced it with her fingers and found an irregular gap in the metal teeth. Fighting a growing sense of panic, she tried to remember when it could have happened. She could distinctly remember seeing the reassuring book-shaped bulge of her diary in this pocket when she’d gone through Customs.
Groaning, she thought of everything she’d written—her faithful descriptions of every point of the journey through China, the scenery, the cycling, the aches and pains, triumphs and fears…
The secrets!
Oh, cringe. What if someone read them?
She hadn’t merely written the outpourings of her own heart, she’d included the secrets that Belle and Claire had shared too. And she’d written down details of the private pact they’d made.
She covered her face with her hands. Panic threatened.
Fighting it, she forced herself to remember everything she’d done at the airport, retraced her steps in her mind…getting through Security, pushing her pack on a trolley through the Arrivals hall, waiting outside, locking eyes with the hot guy in the taxi queue. The tall, smiling guy with the stubble and the amazing dark brown eyes that—
Oh, give it a miss, Simone. As if he’s relevant!
She gave an impatient cry of self-recrimination.
She couldn’t lose her diary. She just couldn’t! Apart from the dire possibility that she was scattering her new friends’ secrets to the four winds, she was writing an article for City Girl about the trip and she needed the notes she’d made.
Thank heavens she’d emailed a fairly comprehensive coverage of her journey through from Hong Kong to her office yesterday, which meant she’d still be able to write the article, even without her diary. It was the personal stuff in there that sent her stomach churning.
And now some stranger might—
She jumped to her feet as she remembered the awful thump when the taxi driver had dumped the pack into the boot of the car. The whole vehicle had rocked with the force of it. Maybe it had fallen out into the boot.
Perhaps her driver had already turned it in to the taxi company’s lost property. She could phone them, ask all their drivers to check their vehicles…offer a reward.
Excited by fresh hope, she rushed to her telephone.
Ryan piled his suitcases, snowboard and laptop in the middle of his living room and looked about him. It felt strange to come home to his flat after so long away.
Professional cleaners had been in and left the place super-tidy and smelling of artificial room freshener and disinfectant. Devoid of character.
Sad truth was, his home didn’t really feel like home without a fine layer of dust over the furniture and a scattering of newspapers, books and at least three dirty coffee mugs.
He yawned again—a jet lag induced yawn so huge he almost cracked his jaw.
He needed a coffee.
Damn. With a groan, he realised that his cupboards were bare. The tenants hadn’t left anything—even the sugar bowl was empty.
To add to his annoyance, his mobile phone rang.
Ryan almost ignored it but, a split-second before it rang out, he relented and answered.
“Hello?”
“So you’re home son.”
“Hi, Dad.” Ryan’s stomach sank. An interrogation from JD the minute he arrived home was the last thing he needed. “I’ve just walked in the door.”
“So, what are your plans now? Now that the London venture’s fallen through.”
Fallen through? The old man had such a sweet turn of phrase—and an incredible capacity for ignoring the facts. As if JD didn’t know that it was his insensitive interference from the other side of the world that had forced Ryan’s resignation.
“Uh—I haven’t made any definite plans