Page 123 of Kiss Me Like You Mean It

I grab my phone and pull up the pictures with a few taps on the National Geographic website. In one of them a leopard stares directly into the lens, as it prowls through the scrub towards the camera. I turn the screen to Phoebe and she huddles over it.

‘Woah!’ Her voice holds an awed note. ‘You took these, Dad? You got this close to them?’

‘Not as close as the picture makes it look.’ Nico comes to stand behind the sofa, looking at the image over my shoulder. His voice is stiff, but Phoebe doesn’t seem to notice. ‘I was on top of a jeep about fifty feet back.’

‘That is so cool.’ Phoebe is still looking through the photos.

‘My favourite was the whales in New Zealand,’ I say, taking the phone back and clicking through to the pictures that I have saved. There’s one that Nico took of an enormous southern right whale, suspended in the endless blue water; next to it a diver swims, like a tiny doll.

Phoebe’s eyes widen. ‘You went in the water with them?’

‘Your dad does all sorts of cool stuff,’ I say. ‘One time he rappelled down a glacier in Iceland. There’s probably not a mountain range he hasn’t climbed all over. And he swam with sharks in Australia.’ I shudder. ‘I have to admit I don’t love those photographs.’

‘Show me!’ Phoebe demands. She reaches over the back of the sofa and grabs Nico’s arm. ‘Dad! Show me the sharks!’

Nico sends an unreadable look my way, and I can only hope I haven’t massively overstepped. Either way, he’s defenceless in the face of Phoebe’s enthusiasm.

‘I’ll grab my laptop,’ he says finally. ‘Hang on.’

While Nico and Phoebe huddle over his computer and he clicks through, showing her different images, telling her about his travels, I try to melt into the background. I pull up some work on my own computer and sit at the kitchen table with a glass of wine, letting their chatter wash over me as I work, losing myself in the numbers. I have plenty to catch up on.

At some point, Nico presses a hand to the back of my neck before he throws together a vegetable stir fry and I watch Phoebe eat it with a feeling of relief. Nico’s no longer the only one worried about getting vegetables into this child. Yesterday I ordered a giant tub of children’s vitamin gummies online that apparently taste like Skittles.

‘If you could take pictures of one animal, which would it be?’ Phoebe asks, slurping noodles into her mouth.

‘Snow leopards,’ Nico says instantly. ‘But it’s basically impossible. They’re extremely endangered. No one sees them in person, they’re like ghosts, but they’ve caught them on camera traps so we know they’re there.’

‘Where did they see them?’

‘A couple of places. Kyrgyzstan would probably be best.’

‘Kyrgyzstan,’ Phoebe rolls the word around in her mouth. ‘Have you been there?’

‘Once.’ Nico digs a fork into his own bowl of noodles. ‘I did a story about the rangers working up in the Tian Shan mountains.’ He pulls up a folder full of photos, of impossible snowy conditions and staggering peaks; of people, wrapped up in winter gear, crossing streams on horseback. It’s all so beautiful it punches the air right out of your chest.

‘Maybe one day you could take me,’ Phoebe says, her eyes still glued to the screen. ‘I would love to have adventures like this.’

Nico’s gaze meets mine over the top of her head. ‘Sure, one day, Bee.’

‘I should have a camera. You could show me how to take pictures, couldn’t you?’

Nico darts me a look. His throat bobs. ‘Yeah. I could show you.’

‘And you’ve done lots of travelling, too, right, Lee?’ Phoebe turns to me.

‘I have, but accountants don’t have as many adventures as photojournalists.’

Nico snorts. ‘Right,’ he says, and I remember how stunned he looked by Charles’s comments yesterday. I often get this reaction when people find out about my work, but honestly, I don’t know why they’re all so surprised. I’m a forensic accountant. I never said my job was boring.

When I pointed this out to Nico last night he scoffed, ‘Okay, Ethan Hunt. Just let me know next time you’re bringing a terrorist organisation to its knees so I can put the kettle on.’

‘Mostly I work in different offices,’ I say now.

‘And where would you go?’ Phoebe asks. ‘If you could go anywhere?’

I think about it. ‘I’ve never seen the Northern Lights. I’d love to go somewhere snowy and quiet and see them. Norway or Iceland maybe.’

‘I’ve never been anywhere but here,’ Phoebe says. ‘Well, and Boston. And New York once.’