Читать книгу Sleepless Nights - ANNE WEALE - Страница 6

CHAPTER ONE

‘IF YOU meet a truly gorgeous guy out there and he starts coming on strong, don’t back off.’

Giving Sarah her final pep talk, her best friend Naomi went on, ‘Life isn’t a dress rehearsal. You’ve got this fantastic chance to break out of the cage. Make the most of it. Around here men to die for are thin on the ground...non-existent would be more accurate.’

Taking Sarah’s agreement for granted, Naomi continued, ‘In Nepal there’s a better supply...or there was the year I was there. Real men like uncomfortable places...oceans and jungles and mountains. When did you last see a ten-out-of-ten in a shopping mall? Never... or hardly ever. They’re like any other rare species. If you want to get close to them, you have to go to their habitat... and it’s not where you and I are spending our lives, that’s for sure,’ she added, with a crack of ironic laughter.

Forty-eight hours later, while the airbus droned through the night sky, over mountains and deserts, Sarah was thinking about Naomi’s theory that most people spent their lives caged by forces and circumstances beyond their control. Sometimes their conditions were miserable and they were very unhappy. Sometimes the cages were comfortable, even luxurious but, despite that, lifestyles they couldn’t escape and which often didn’t fulfil their real needs.

Naomi’s and Sarah’s cages were somewhere between those extremes. Their lives weren’t the way they would have liked them to be. Unable to change them, they made the best of them. Until, suddenly and unexpectedly, the door of Sarah’s cage had opened.

Now here she was, flying free in an unfamiliar environment that would become more exotic as the adventure progressed.

For two weeks she was on her own, free of all her usual responsibilities...free to be her real self...whoever that real self was.

The woman in the seat next to hers was asleep. From their conversation during dinner, Sarah knew that her neighbour was an off-duty air stewardess for whom flying round the world to glamorous destinations was an everyday routine.

Sarah had never been anywhere glamorous. She was too excited to close her eyes for a moment. They had boarded the aircraft at ten o’clock. Dinner had been served at midnight. After watching both the in-flight movies, she spent the rest of the night reading a guidebook until dawn came up and breakfast was served. Soon after breakfast they landed at Doha, a place that until very recently she had never even heard of.

The stewardess sitting next to her, who worked for an Arab airline and lived at Doha, was looking forward to relaxing in the bath at her apartment in the city. For Sarah it would be another five hours’ flying time before she reached her destination. Meanwhile the next ninety minutes would be spent in the airport’s transit lounge.

After saying goodbye and thank you to the cabin crew lined up by the door, Sarah stepped out into the dazzling sunlight of a Middle Eastern morning.

Yesterday, in England, it had been cold and wet, a foretaste of approaching winter. Here, in Qatar, an oil-rich desert state on the Persian Gulf, even at this early hour it was already as warm as a summer heatwave in Europe.

Her only luggage was a small backpack. When it had been through the security X-ray machine, she slung it over one shoulder and went in search of the women’s room. She wanted a more leisurely freshen-up than had been possible with so many passengers waiting outside the aircraft’s cramped washroom.

Her reflection in the mirror behind the hand basins was startlingly different from the image she was accustomed to seeing in her bedroom mirror at home. Bulldozed into changing her hair colour as well as its style, and advised what to wear and what to pack by Naomi, who had also lent her some clothes, Sarah wasn’t yet used to her new image. Or to the feel of the trekking boots on her feet.

She had worn them for part of every day for the past month. But they still felt heavy and clumpy. And what could look more incongruous than a pair of thick-soled boots below the swirling hem of an ankle-length floral skirt in vivid Impressionist colours?

Naomi had assured her that where Sarah was going such an outfit was commonplace. No one would look twice at it, let alone stare in astonishment.

Uncrushable, easily washable long skirts had replaced the thick tweed skirts preferred by the intrepid Victorian lady travellers of a hundred years earlier.

On her top half Sarah was wearing a long-sleeved cotton shirt. Under it was a T-shirt belonging to her friend. Embroidered on the chest was the name of a mountainous route Naomi had trekked with a boyfriend during her gap year between school and college.

Sarah took off both shirts. If any Arab ladies came into the washroom, she hoped it wouldn’t offend them to see her stripped down to her comfortable sports bra. Already she had been in transit for a total of twelve hours on her body clock. A proper wash would refresh her for the second stage of the journey.

Fifteen minutes later, wearing only the faded blue T-shirt and feeling surprisingly wide awake despite her sleepless night, she returned to the lounge. Several important-looking Arabs in immaculately-laundered white robes and traditional red and white head-dresses were walking about, but most people were in western dress ranging from business suits to clean or scruffy jeans.

Sarah found the departure gate for her next flight and looked for a vacant seat near it. As she sat down she was aware of her fellow travellers looking her over with the speculative curiosity of people expecting to spend the next week or two in the company of strangers.

Only one person wasn’t eyeing her. The man in the seat directly opposite hers was deep in a book.

With a bookworm’s instinctive interest in other people’s choice of reading, Sarah tried to make out the title. That he was reading rather than gawking at her earned him points in her estimation.

Then she noticed he had other things beside the book to recommend him. Tall, broad-shouldered and long-legged, he was wearing a khaki shirt and trousers with reinforced knees and lots of extra zipped pockets. As he had no luggage with him, apart from a plastic bag from the duty free shop at Heathrow airport, she concluded he was carrying all his vital belongings on his person, with most of his baggage going in the aircraft’s hold, to be reclaimed when they landed.

His lean and muscular build suggested he might be a climber heading for the snow-bound peaks of the Himalaya. Mountaineering and trekking were two of the reasons why foreigners visited the kingdom of Nepal and its romantic-sounding capital, Kathmandu.

Sarah had already noticed that most of the male transit passengers were in need of a shave. But not the man with the book. As darkly-tanned as those of a desert Arab, his cheeks and chin showed no trace of stubble. Everything about him looked spruce from the polished sheen of his boots to the scrubbed-clean fingernails on the strong brown hand holding the paperback.

He looked, she thought, as if he would smell good. Not from expensive lotions, but in the natural way that clean babies and sun-dried laundry smelled good.

As she was thinking this, and noting the way his thick black hair sprang from a high broad forehead, he glanced up and caught her studying him.

Her instinct was to look away but she found that she couldn’t. Something about the steely grey gaze focused on her made it impossible to avert her eyes. For several seconds their glances seemed to be locked. Then, a slight smile curling his mouth, he looked her over as closely and appreciatively as she had inspected him.

‘If you meet a truly gorgeous guy out there...’ The memory of Naomi’s advice echoed in Sarah’s mind.

It was actually the memory of her friend’s salty humour, rather than the admonition, that made her begin to smile. Then with a mental ‘Why not?’ she gave him her friendliest beam before sharing it with some of the people sitting alongside him.

All of them responded with smiles or nods. In fact her initiative seemed to act as an ice-breaker. First the woman next to her asked which tour group she was with and then all the people around them began chatting to each other. All except the man with the book. He continued reading.

When the flight to Kathmandu was called, Neal Kennedy went on reading. Long experience of air travel had taught him not to join the first rush to the departure gate. Even though the shuttle buses on Arab airports were exceptionally spacious, the first two or three buses would be crowded, the last one half-empty. The trip across the tarmac to the aircraft would offer a chance to talk to the attractive woman opposite.

But when he closed the book and looked up, he was surprised to find she had already gone through. Judging by her outfit, he had taken her for someone who knew the ropes as well as he did. Travelling in boots was one of the hallmarks of the wised-up trekker. Any other equipment that went astray in transit was replaceable. A worn-in pair of top quality boots wasn’t.

He had noticed her when they came off the flight from London. She had been ahead of him at the security check. He’d watched her walking away towards the washrooms and liked her back view. But maybe seen from the front...

Then he’d forgotten about her until, a while later, he’d glanced up and found her looking him over. Her front view had confirmed his earlier impression of a figure that matched up to everything he liked about women’s bodies. Slim but not too slim, all the parts well-proportioned and set off by a graceful posture. Probably influenced by his mother, a leading osteopath, he had a built-in aversion to people who abused their bones by slouching and slumping.

The woman in the colourful skirt wasn’t a beauty or even outstandingly pretty. But she had intelligent brown eyes and an irresistible smile of real warmth. He remembered from way back his father telling him that girls with brains in their heads and generous natures were the ones to look out for.

Aged about sixteen then, he hadn’t paid much attention. What do parents know about life? was a fairly standard teenage attitude.

In the intervening twenty years he’d learned that his parents were two of the sanest, wisest people he was ever likely to meet. He and his brother and sisters had grown up with the increasingly rare advantage of parents who loved each other and had the kind of marriage that would last as long as they lived.

Between their generation and his, western society had undergone a cultural earthquake. Values and lifestyles had changed. Many people, including himself, thought marriage was on the way out. These days his brother Chris’s disastrous marriage seemed more typical than his parents’. Observing his brother’s experience and its aftermath, Neal had decided he wasn’t going down that road.

He had five nephews and nieces and numerous godchildren. He didn’t need children of his own. Nor did he need a wife in the housekeeper-cum-nurse-cum-social secretary sense of the term.

The practicalities of life he could manage by himself, probably more efficiently than many of today’s domestically unskilled career women. His mother had raised her sons as well as her daughters on the precept that every adult human being should be able to do their own laundry and cook simple meals.

The only place Neal needed a woman was between the sheets. Even in his twenties he had never been a stud, learning early that relationships which lasted a while, and included some mental rapport as well as physical harmony, were preferable to casual one-nighters. That said, life was about enjoying oneself. If, when he reached Kathmandu, the right kind of woman made it clear she was available, what red-blooded male would prefer to sleep on his own on holiday?

For the second lap of the flight Sarah had requested a window seat on the port side of the plane. Naomi had said this would give her a wonderful view of the Himalaya on the approach to Kathmandu.

When she reached her row, she found a small plump woman in traditional Nepalese costume already occupying the seat that should have been hers. Had she been a European, Sarah might have pointed out the window seat had been allocated to her. But with her minimal grasp of Nepali she let it go, stowing her pack in the overhead locker before sitting down in the centre of the three seats on the left side of the left-hand aisle.

Some time later, among the last to board, the man with the book came strolling along the aisle. After folding his tall frame into the empty seat next to Sarah’s, he turned to her and said, ‘Hi!’

‘Hi!’ Suddenly Sarah was glad the Nepalese woman had commandeered the window seat.

The man beside her leaned forward, put his palms together, inclined his head and said something to the woman by the window. Her face wreathed in smiles, her drop earrings bobbing, she responded.

‘Was that Nepali you were speaking?’ Sarah asked him.

‘Yes...but I don’t speak it well. Just enough to get by and make the right polite noises.’ Feeling around for the ends of his seat belt, he fastened the clasp across his flat stomach and settled his shoulders comfortably against the back rest. ‘As we’re going to be elbow to elbow until late afternoon, shall we introduce ourselves? I’m Neal Kennedy.’

‘Sarah Anderson.’

‘Going trekking?’

She nodded. ‘Are you?’

‘Not this time.’ He looked sideways at the emblems machine-embroidered on her T-shirt: three snow-capped peaks surrounded by a double ring of stitching with the name and date of Naomi’s trek between them in a contrasting colour. ‘Like you, I’ve been coming to Nepal for a long time, but not always doing the same thing. This time I’m involved with the Everest Marathon.’

Sarah knew she ought to explain the shirt wasn’t hers. But somehow she didn’t want to...not yet. From the books she had read about trekking, it was clear that the people who did the hard mutes, carrying heavy packs in the company of other seasoned trekkers, were inclined to disdain the groups of tourists who, with all the hard slog done for them by porters, had only to cover the ground on the less exacting routes.

Neal Kennedy looked as tough as they came. She didn’t want to put him off her right at the start of their acquaintance. Instead of admitting this was her first time, she said, ‘Are you a runner? I thought they were usually shorter and more slightly built.’

‘They come in all sizes,’ he said. ‘But no, I’m not one of them. I’m going to report the event. I’m a journalist. What do you do?’

‘I work with computers.’ Already firmly decided to forget her everyday life until she returned to England, she didn’t elaborate. ‘Are you a freelance?’

His smile warmed his rather hard eyes. ‘You obviously don’t read The Journal. I’m one of its columnists...and I do some TV and radio.’

The only newspaper Sarah saw regularly, although she seldom read it, was the scandal-stuffed tabloid her mother took. Sarah herself kept up with world events through an Internet news service. But she was aware that The Journal was one of England’s most respected and independent broadsheets, read by the movers and shakers, the people who mattered. It followed that Neal must be one of the stars of his profession, even if he didn’t look at all like her idea of a top journalist.

‘I must look out for your column when I get home,’ she said, returning his smile.

At close quarters, the parting of her lips and the glimpse of her perfect teeth gave Neal a buzz. He wondered how many men had kissed that passionate mouth and if one had kissed her goodbye at Heathrow last night. The fact that she was alone wasn’t conclusive. Even his parents sometimes went on trips separately.

He had already noticed that, although Sarah was wearing several decorative silver rings, her wedding ring finger was bare. Most of the women he knew who had live-in lovers wore a dress ring on that finger to indicate they were in a relationship. Not that being in a relationship necessarily stopped them from having a fling on the side if they felt so inclined and the chance came up.

Neal preferred to stay out of entanglements with other men’s girlfriends. Seven or eight years ago a bored and unsatisfied wife had figured in his love life, but her husband had been having affairs of his own for years and couldn’t complain at being cuckolded. Neal hadn’t repeated the experience. There were more than enough unattached females around to make poaching other guys’ women a pointless exercise.

He knew that his determination to steer clear of a serious relationship troubled his parents who wanted him settled down with a wife and family. But he’d managed to avoid losing his heart this far and now was out of the danger zone when the drive to reproduce was at its most powerful, persuading people that what were basically chemical reactions were emotions that would last.

Sitting next to Sarah Anderson, strongly aware of the curves filling out her souvenir T-sheet and the slim thighs outlined by the soft folds of her skirt, he felt the beginnings of arousal. Sensibly, she wasn’t wearing one of the heavy cloying scents some women thought seductive but which could be overpowering in confined spaces like aeroplanes. The only fragrance he could catch came from her freshly washed ash blonde hair. The big brown eyes suggested that by nature she was a brunette. But the dye job was subtle, not brassy, and suited her creamy skin. In general he preferred long hair. Hers was cropped boyishly short, possibly styled for the trek. A pair of dramatic silver earrings were set off by her long graceful neck.

The plane was starting to taxi towards the runway. As she turned her head to look out of the window, he wondered how she’d react if he leaned over and put his mouth to her nape by a charming little flat brown beauty spot.

He had no intention of doing it...not yet. But it amused him to speculate how she would take it. Although it was rare for physical attraction not to be mutual, women’s responses depended on lots of other factors.

‘When are you starting your trek?’ he asked.

‘Not till Tuesday. After a long flight, a couple of days to relax is a good idea, don’t you think? When does the Marathon start?’

‘In two weeks, but some of the people will be arriving ahead of time. Kathmandu is a place where I’m always happy to spend time...even though it’s changed a lot since you and I first came out.’

His assumption that she shared his familiarity with the city was curiously warming, Sarah found. How she wished it were true. There had been a time when it might have been. With Samarkand and Darjeeling, Kathmandu had been a name ringing with magic for her since she was in her teens. There had been many others and by now she might have seen them all if it hadn’t been for... Her mind shied away from the thought.

The aircraft was taking off. It was smaller than the previous one and not as full. When the pre-lunch drinks trolley came round and Sarah asked for a gin and tonic, the stewardess explained apologetically that this was a ‘dry’ flight.

‘Just the tonic, then, please.’

Neal had the same but asked for two extra glasses. Why became clear a little later when the trolley had moved on and he bent down to retrieve the plastic carrier shoved under the sheet in front of him when he sat down.

‘My laptop and my liquor supply,’ he explained, showing her its contents, a black portable computer and a half bottle of gin.

‘Aren’t you afraid your laptop will be damaged without proper protection?’

‘It’s a lot less likely to be stolen. Those fancy padded bags that businessmen flaunt are like women’s handbags. They shout a message to thieves—“Here it is...come and get it!” I noticed in the airport that you had a small shoulder bag as well as your backpack. I bet you’re not carrying anything vital in it.’

‘No, I’m not,’ she agreed. Naomi had given her a zipped cotton bag on a loop which went over her belt. The bag slipped under her skirt and lay snugly against the side of her tummy. It held most of her money, her credit card and a copy of her passport.

Neal filled both the extra glasses with a generous measure of gin, placed one on her tray and topped it up with tonic. Then he did the same with his. ‘Om mani padme hum,’ he said, raising his glass.

She didn’t have to ask him what the words meant. They were a Buddhist mantra meaning ‘The jewel at the heart of the lotus’. She was interested in Buddhism, having a personal reason for hoping that death was not an end but, as Buddhists believed, the threshold of another lifetime on the long journey to enlightenment.

Neal didn’t miss the expression that flickered across her face. He wondered if she disapproved of him using the mantra as a toast. Or if the words had reminded her of something she didn’t want to remember.

During lunch he tried to draw her out about her job. But she didn’t want to be drawn and he turned the conversation to books, his yardstick for judging whether a woman would be an interesting companion when they weren’t making love.

Sarah scored high. She had read every travel book he mentioned and some he had missed. It turned out they had both recently re-read James Hilton’s Lost Horizon, a big best-seller in the Thirties and one of the few novels to put a new word, Shangri-la, into the language.

‘My grandfather gave it to me for my twelfth birthday,’ said Neal. ‘When did you first read it?’

Her lovely smile lit up her face. ‘The Christmas before my fifteenth birthday. I used to spend my pocket money in a second-hand bookshop. Mr King, the old man who owned it, gave me Lost Horizon as a present because I was the youngest of his “regulars”.’ Her smile faded, replaced by a look of remembered anguish. “He died of bronchitis that winter and the shop never reopened. I missed him terribly.’

After a pause, she added, ‘When I discussed the book with him, Mr King said there might really be a place like Shangri-la...a secret valley in the mountains where people lived to great ages and were fulfilled and contented. For a while I believed him. But if such a place had existed, it would have been seen by now on a satellite photograph. Still, it’s a lovely idea.’

‘My grandfather says that Shangri-la does exist,’ said Neal. ‘But not as it is in the book...a mysterious, inaccessible place somewhere on the great plateau of central Asia. According to him Shangri-la’s in the mind. It’s possible for everyone to find it, but not many do.’

‘How old is your grandfather?’

‘Ninety next year, but still amazingly active and up to date... spends a lot of his time surfing the Web and e-mailing other old men whose minds are still in good shape.’

She laughed. ‘Good for him.’

But she didn’t volunteer any information about her family, he noticed. Given the smallest encouragement, most people talked non-stop about themselves. A recent example had been the elderly woman who had sat next to him on the Underground from central London to the airport. Starting from a comment about the size of his pack, she had gone on to tell him the medical details of her husband’s last illness followed by a detailed character assassination of her only son’s second wife.

In contrast to that woman’s garrulity, Sarah was telling him nothing about her family background. There had to be a reason for her unusual reserve.

After lunch, the Nepalese woman turned to Sarah and murmured, ‘Penny.’

It wasn’t hard to guess what she meant. Sarah turned to Neal. ‘My neighbour wants to go to the washroom.’

He rose, stepping into the aisle, and she followed. While the Nepalese woman went to the nearest bathroom, they stayed on their feet, glad to stand up for a while.

‘I wonder if that’s the limit of her English vocabulary... Pepsi and penny?’ said Sarah, remembering the woman’s response when the stewardess had asked if she wanted a drink before lunch. ‘My grasp of Nepali isn’t much better...only about ten words.’

‘Nowadays not many tourists bother to mug up any,’ Neal said dryly. ‘I always try to learn a smattering of the language before I go somewhere new.’

Looming over her in the narrow space between the rows of seats, he seemed even taller and broader than he’d looked when she first saw him. It was unusual, she thought, to find physical power allied to an intellectual turn of mind. It turned out the book she had seen him reading was a collection of essays by Edmund Burke.

Shortly after they resumed their seats, a small child, aged about three and of indeterminate sex, started running up and down the aisle. After a while it suddenly lost its bearings and began to howl, ‘Dadee...Dadee...’

Perhaps the toddler’s father was catching up on some lost sleep and wasn’t aware that his offspring was in a panic. Daddy failed to materialise and all the cabin crew seemed to be taking a break.

As Sarah heard the wails coming closer to where she was sitting, she was about to leap up when Neal forestalled her. Scooping the little thing up and holding it under its armpits, he started to walk down the aisle, saying something quietly reassuring and holding it aloft.

Sarah moved into his seat to watch him. thinking inconsequentially that he looked very good from the rear, wide shoulders tapering down to narrow male hips and a taut and sexy backside.

Then, far down near the front of the cabin, she saw him restoring the child to its parent. Quickly she returned to her own seat, faintly surprised that he alone, of all the people in the nearby aisle seats, had taken action to stop the frightened bawling. For the first time it struck her that he might be married with children of his own.

‘You dealt with that very expertly,’ she said, when he came back.

‘I have a nephew that size.’ After a pause he added, ‘My preference is for children you can hand back to their parents when you’ve had enough of them. Journalism and domesticity don’t go well together.’

‘I suppose not,’ she agreed, wondering if that was a warning. If so, it was bordering on arrogance to consider one necessary at this stage of their acquaintance.

On the other hand he was definitely as close to Naomi’s mythical ten-out-of-ten gorgeous male as she was ever likely to meet. Maybe experience had taught him to make it plain from the outset that anything he had to offer would be strictly short term and no strings.

The movie was followed by afternoon tea. Sarah’s first intimation that they were approaching Nepal was when the woman beside her leant forward to peer out of the window. This meant that Sarah could see very little which was terribly disappointing. Had she had the window seat herself, she would have made a point of keeping well back to allow her neighbours to share the first sight of the famous mountains. Still, it was the little woman’s country they were approaching, she reminded herself, and who had more right to gaze on those amazing summits than a returning Nepalese?

Perhaps Neal sensed her frustration. He touched the woman’s arm, speaking to her in a way that sounded far more fluent than the polite noises he had claimed were his limit. After that she pulled back and they were all able to see the Abode of Snows, which was what Himalaya meant, gleaming like white cake icing in the late afternoon sunlight.

When that distant view of the great peaks changed to a close-up view of the green hills surrounding the Kathmandu valley, Sarah knew the excitement she would have felt at being close to the point of meeting her trekking companions was tempered by reluctance to say goodbye to her present travelling companion.

Neal, aware of the fact that she hadn’t slept between London and Doha, said suddenly, ‘Tonight you’ll be tired before you’re halfway through dinner, but how about meeting tomorrow night?’

‘I’d like to...but it could be difficult. Could I call you in the morning?’

‘Sure...I’ll give you my number.’ He produced a pad of Post-it notes from one of his many pockets and a pen from another. After scribbling some details, he peeled off a note and handed it to her. ‘Make it before nine, will you? I have a lot to do tomorrow.’

Sarah decided to say, ‘I hope I can make it. I’d like to.’ ‘I’d like it too...very much. I’ve enjoyed talking to you.’

The subtext implied by the smile that accompanied this statement made her insides turn over. But was she mad even to think of taking this further? It was all very well for Naomi to lecture her about not backing off, but Sarah’s every instinct told her that, in this instance, her friend’s advice could be dangerous.

They were inside the airport when he touched her for the first time.

Naomi had told Sarah that everyone on incoming flights had to join one of two line-ups. Sarah had obtained her visa before coming but would still need to have it checked. Neal had told her he preferred to buy his visa on arrival. After that everyone had to buy some Nepalese money from an exchange desk because it was not obtainable outside the kingdom.

When they came to the parting of the ways, Neal held out his hand, taking her smaller fingers in a firm but not crushing grip. The contact sent an electric reaction right up to her armpit.

‘Until tomorrow night.’ He obviously took it for granted that nothing was going to stand in the way of their date.

His assurance irked her a little, but she let it pass. ‘Goodbye, Neal.’ Turning away, she knew that, if she had any sense, in the morning she would ring him and tell him she couldn’t make it.

She needed a man in her life, had needed one for a long time. But for all kinds of reasons, she didn’t need a man like Neal Kennedy.

From what she had already learned about him—not to mention all he didn’t yet know about her—they were wrong for each other in every possible way.