Excerpt of Love & Freedom by Sue Moorcroft

‘Excuse me, you’re burning.’

The man in Honor’s dream, whoever he was, was right – her face, arm and thigh felt as if they were on fire. She’d been dreaming of falling asleep too close to a furnace. Could it be on a boat? Because she could hear seagulls, too. And feel the seasickness.

‘Quit yanking on my arm, you’re making me queasy,’ she tried to protest. But the words clung thick and sticky to her lips.

The voice grew louder. ‘Wakey, wakey. Come on, lady! You’re burning.’

Waves of nausea swelled sweatily up her body as she tried to prise up her heavy eyelids. The sun blazed into her eyes and she scrunched them shut again. ‘Please don’t,’ she whimpered.

The voice was deep, coaxing. ‘Just help me to help you inside.’

She squinted one eye open again as the dark figure of a man bending over her moved around to block the sun. ‘I think I’m sick,’ she whispered as sweat trickled between her breasts. ‘Real sick.’

‘If you weren’t before, you are now,’ the silhouette agreed, cheerfully. He had a cute English accent. She was familiar with the English way of making jokes about serious stuff but she hoped he realised that she really was sick. Desperately. Colours-melting, brain-whirring sick.

What was a great, tall Englishman doing filling her vision, anyway? She groped through her memory.

She was in England …

The whirring in her head became the hiss of the ocean and the furnace became the sun. She was lying on a wooden lounger on a patio overlooking a road and the ocean beyond, with a stranger crouching beside her. And she felt bad.

‘Get up,’ the stranger persisted. ‘You’re being barbequed.’

‘Right.’ It halfway made sense. She made to sit up but cried out. Parts of her had fallen into a furnace! The patio swooshed alarmingly and she clamped a hand to her mouth.

The man jumped up and retreated. ‘Do you need a bathroom?’

She scrunched her eyes and hoped that he would understand that she meant, Yes! Quick! I dare not nod my head or remove my hand to speak.

‘Can you stand?’

‘Mmm …’ Maybe. But when she attempted to drag her feet to the ground black spots danced behind her closed eyelids. She froze.

‘OK, I’ll carry you. You try and keep it all in until we reach the bathroom and I’ll try not to hurt you.’

‘Ah-ah-ah-WOOOH!’ Honor’s eyes flew open as her side burst into flames, taking her mind off her nausea. ‘Careful, for Chrissake, I’m on fire!’

‘I’ll bet. I’m trying not to touch your burns but you’ve got to get indoors.’

She shut her eyes again as the man surged to his feet beneath her with an impressive expulsion of breath, just like a weightlifter. A door opened and the furnace receded. She unscrewed her eyes, almost expecting to see long, white hospital corridors instead of a vaguely familiar house interior. ‘Have I been in a fire?’

She felt a rumble of laughter in his chest. ‘It’s not that bad. I found you asleep in the sun and it looks as if you’ve been there way too long. Even the English sun can burn you once in a while, you know.’

Fresh sweat flooded down her face. She gulped. ‘Bathroom–’

‘Got it. We’re here.’

Just in time.

‘The doctor’s just arrived.’ His voice came muffled through the bathroom door.

So the man was still here. During the misery and pain of delivering her innards to the toilet, Honor had kind of forgotten about him. She held back her hair, sweat leaking down her forehead and behind her ears. And despite flames licking her skin whenever she moved, she was shivering like a frightened puppy. ‘OK,’ she managed.

Cautiously, she inched to her feet, ran water in the basin and washed her face with the tiniest little pats, then swilled out her mouth.

Another rap at the door. ‘Hello? This is Dr Zoë Mayfair. Can you let me in?’

‘It’s not locked.’ Honor hung over the basin, breathing hard. She couldn’t straighten; her right side had been set in hot glue.

And then there was a neat woman in the tiny room with her, flushing the toilet, looking into her face, turning her cautiously to frown sympathetically at her skin. ‘Let’s see if we can get you out of here so that I can examine you. Have you stopped vomiting?’

‘For now.’

‘Martyn, the bedroom’s at the back, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, through here.’

Allowing herself to lean on the dark-jacketed arm of the doctor on one side and – gingerly – the bare arm of the man on the other, which struck almost as hot as her own miserably scarlet limb, Honor weaved to the blue bedroom with white furniture, like a doll’s house, that would be hers for the next four months and where most of her cases stood waiting to be unpacked.

Scared her skin might split, she sort of oozed down on to the edge of the bed.

Dr Mayfair was coolly efficient. ‘Right, Martyn, I don’t think we need you in here. See if you can find a jug to fill with cold water and bring a glass. She needs fluids.’ The door clicked. ‘Poor you.’ Dr Mayfair was all sympathy. ‘The first hot spell of the summer and you have to go and fall asleep in it. The sea breeze makes the sun deadly.’

‘Jetlagged, I think. I didn’t set out to sleep.’

‘No doubt you’re sore.’ Doctorly understatement, like when they said, ‘There will be a scratch,’ and then thrust a massive needle into the heart of one of your joints. ‘Your skin’s quite inflamed and you’ll be feeling dehydrated. Let’s get some fluids into you and something on that blistered skin.