Читать книгу Desert Doctor, Secret Sheikh - Meredith Webber - Страница 9

WHY was she suspicious of him? Because he was far too good-looking to be an aid worker? Did she have preconceived ideas that they all had to be long-haired and wear sandals and not speak like an English prince? As she considered these questions, she stacked all the instruments, sterilised by boiling and now wrapped in paper, on a battered metal tray and carried it out to put it beside the stranger, then suggested Marij empty the bowls of water and bring fresh.

‘That’s some collection,’ Kam said, as Jen unwrapped her treasured instruments and set them on the tray where they could both reach them.

‘Three years of humble begging,’ she joked, but from the way his lips tightened he didn’t think it was at all funny.

Which it probably wasn’t but, then, there wasn’t much to laugh about here, so the man had better loosen up and get used to feeble humour or he’d frown his way into a deep depression.

‘Sutures?’ he asked.

They were in the chest with the dressings—and fortunately she had plenty of them, mainly because they were the first things people pressed on her back at home when she visited hospitals or surgeries, asking for donations.

‘Now, how are we going to work this? Do you want to cut and swab and I’ll stitch or would you prefer to stitch?’

Jen stared in horror at the damage that had been done, not only to the man’s back but to his chest as well. In places the lash, or whatever had been used, had bitten so deeply into his flesh she could see the grey-white bone beneath it.

‘I’ll cut and clean,’ she said, and heard something of the horror she was feeling in the tightly squeezed-out words.

‘He’ll be all right,’ her colleague said, his voice gentle as if he knew she was upset. ‘It looks far, far worse than it really is. And with me to stitch him up, there’ll barely be a scar.’

‘Surgeon, are you?’ Jen teased, though it was unlikely a specialist would be deployed to somewhere like this camp.

‘And why not?’ he parried, leaving Jen to wonder…

He spoke again, but this time to the patient, the slightly guttural words of the local language rolling off his tongue. The man opened bleary eyes then closed them again, and Kam nodded as if satisfied the drug was working.

‘Let’s go,’ he said, and Jen started at the neck and began to cut away the cloth that was embedded in the wounds, preserving what skin she could but needing to debride it where it was too torn to take a suture. Desert sand encrusted the wounds and the blood-hardened fabric, so the job was slow, but piece by piece she removed the foreign material, leaving a clean wound for Kam to stitch.

From there she moved to the wounds just above his buttocks, so she and Kam weren’t jostling each other as they worked, and slowly, painstakingly, they cleansed and cut and stitched until the man’s back resembled a piece of patchwork, sutures criss-crossing it in all directions.

Jen squatted back on her heels and Kam raised his head, tilting it from side to side, shrugging impressively broad shoulders to relieve tension in his neck. For a minute the green eyes met hers but she couldn’t read whatever message they might hold. Pity? Horror? Regret?

Emotion certainly, and she felt a little more kindly towards him. So many doctors, surgeons in particular—and she was pretty sure he must be one—could remain detached from the work they did, believing it was better for all concerned for them to be emotionally uninvolved.

‘Do you want to swap jobs?’ Jen suggested, as Kam roughly taped a huge dressing to the man’s back then tilted him so he was lying on it. They both watched the patient to see if there was any reaction, but as he remained seemingly asleep, they assumed the pethidine was working and he couldn’t feel the pain of the wounds on his back.

‘You’ve been bent over there for over an hour. I can at least move around,’ Jen added.

He glanced at her again.

‘You like sewing?’ he asked.

‘Not really,’ Jen said, wondering how he could make her feel so uncomfortable. He was, after all, just a colleague.

Problem was, of course, she’d never had a colleague who looked like this one…

Or felt any physical reaction to a man for a long time…

She hauled her attention back to the subject under discussion. ‘But I’ve done most of my hospital work in A and E, so I’ve had plenty of practice.’

She was sounding snappish again and knew it was because it niggled her that this man could get so easily under her skin.

Because she was physically attracted to him?

Balderdash! Of course she wasn’t.

‘I’m sure you’d do as good a job as I, but now I’ve begun I’ll finish it.’

And finish it he did, Jen cutting and cleaning, Kam sewing, until all the deepest wounds on the man’s back, chest and legs were stitched, while the less deep ones were neatly dressed.

Jen, finishing first, checked their patient’s blood pressure and pulse again, then studied the readout with trepidation.

‘His blood pressure’s dropping. I saw you examining him all over earlier—there were no deep wounds we’ve missed?’

Kam shook his head.

‘But there’s extensive bruising to his lower back and abdomen, which suggests he might have been kicked. There could be damage to his spleen or kidneys and internal bleeding, which we won’t find without an X-ray or ultrasound.’

‘Do you have a radio in your car? Do you know enough about the health services available locally to know if we could radio for a helicopter to take him out?’

Kam shook his head.

‘I imagine you drove in, camping out in the desert for one night on the way. That’s not because we—I mean the locals—want to put aid workers to as much hardship as they can, but because of the mountains around here. They have temperamental updraughts and downdraughts that can cause tremendous problems to the rotors on a helicopter, so they don’t fly here. Fixed-wing aircraft are a different matter, they fly higher so aren’t affected, but, of course, there’s no handy airfield for even a light plane to use!’

He studied her as if to gauge her reaction to his explanation, but when he spoke again she realised he’d gone back further than the helicopters.

‘You asked about a radio in my car—yes, I do have one, but so should you. One in the car and one for your office or wherever you want to keep it—they’re listed on the inventory you’re given with your supplies.’

Jen smiled at him.

‘The one in the car disappeared within two days of our arrival and the other one a couple of days after that. You can’t dig a hole and bury radios. No matter how well you wrap them, you can’t seal them completely and they tend to stop working when sand gets into their bits.’

She was smiling at him, but Kam couldn’t return the smile, too angered by the artless conversation. He couldn’t believe that things had got so bad people were stealing from an aid organisation, although he imagined these refugees had so little, he could hardly blame them for the thefts.

But how to fix this? How to redress the balance in his country? Could he and his twin achieve what needed to be done in a lifetime? Arun was working in the city, talking to the people there, seeking information about the government and whether, as their father’s influence slipped, corruption had crept in.

Or had the people elected into positions of power only seen the city as their responsibility, ignoring what was happening in the country, ignorant of this camp on the border?

As he and Arun had been, he reminded himself with a feeling of deep shame. He couldn’t speak for his twin, but nothing—neither work and study programmes, nor his father’s orders to keep his nose out of the ruler’s business—excused the way he, as heir, had allowed neglect to hurt his people. And nothing would stop his drive to fix this hurt.

Nothing!

Their patient groaned and Kam brought his mind sharply back to the job in hand.

‘A drop in blood pressure certainly suggests he’s bleeding somewhere. If you’re short of fluid, we should consider whole blood.’

The woman he’d been surprised to find in this place nodded. He’d known she was here, of course, but he’d expected…

What?

Some dowdy female?

OK, not some dowdy female, but definitely not a beauty like this golden woman was. He checked the dusting of freckles again and even in the dimmer light of the tent saw the colour of them.

‘Sorry?’ Checking out her freckles, he’d seen her lips moving and realised she was talking to him.

‘I was just offering to take some blood from him and test it, then maybe find some volunteers willing to be tested,’ Jen suggested.

‘His friends will surely volunteer. Take some blood. You can test it here? You have a kit?’

She nodded.

‘Good,’ Kam said, pleased his mind was back on the job, though the greater job still awaited him. ‘We’ve got him this far, let’s see if we can finish the job. Internal bleeding will sometimes stop, leaking vessels sealing themselves off, but if it doesn’t, without an ultrasound I’d have to open him up and have a look. He’s suffered so much already I wouldn’t like to risk it until he’s much stronger, so let’s wait and see. We’ll have to monitor him closely, of course.’

We’ll have to monitor him? The words echoed in Jen’s head.

The stranger intended staying?

Here?

In her tent?

Of course he intended staying—he was another aid worker, one who was sorely needed, and right now there wasn’t another tent to house him or his clinic.

Unease fluttered like panicking moths in her stomach—or maybe that was hunger, it was well past lunchtime.

She turned her attention back to the job she was supposed to be doing—taking blood.

Marij had returned, having belatedly finished the morning’s TB testing.

‘Can I help?’ she asked, in her soft, gentle voice.

‘Would you type this blood for me?’ Jen asked her, handing her the vial.

‘Of course,’ Marij replied, adding, ‘And then you’ll want volunteers—I will ask around and begin typing them as well.’

Jen turned her attention back to the patient.

‘Shall we ease him back onto his side? And what about antibiotics? I have some but they’re in tablet form. For a start at least, he should be getting them through his drip. And tetanus? Who knows if he’s ever had a tetanus shot, but if it was a horse whip he was hit with, he’ll need one.’

He helped her move the patient back onto his side, propping cushions gently against his injured back to keep him from rolling over.

‘I’ve stuff like that in the car,’ Kam said. ‘Not much because this visit was more a recce to see what was needed, but I’ll go and get what I have.’

Once again suspicion fluttered in Jen’s chest. Would he really undertake a two-day drive just to see what was happening? And then drive back to the city to get what was needed and drive up here again? Six days going back and forth across desert roads that could swallow a car whole?

Or was the flutter discomfort at the thought of the man moving his things in here—moving in himself?

So close that if she woke in the night she might hear him shifting in his sleep, hear him breathing?

But where else could he stay? Until they had another tent, and she’d believe he could muster one when she saw it, he’d have to live and work here. If she put up another rug across the far corner…

She shook her head at her own folly. Whatever it was about this man that was affecting her, it wasn’t going to be stopped by a brightly woven rug hung down between them. The way they blew when the tent sides were rolled up to allow cool air in, another rug would barely provide privacy.

She checked her patient, then looked up as a shadow fell across them. The cause of her concern was standing over them, a large cardboard box in his hands.

Was she staring that he offered a half smile?

The flutters she felt were definitely not suspicion, and all the more worrying because of that.

‘I have some more pethidine,’ he said, such an ordinary conversation, ‘and antibiotics. The blood test?’

‘Marij is checking now.’

Jen climbed carefully to her feet, but even with care she stumbled when she put her weight on a foot that had gone to sleep.

Kam’s hand reached out to steady her, his grip surprisingly strong. She turned to thank him, but the words wouldn’t come, held captive in her throat by something she couldn’t explain.

She stamped her unresponsive foot, and caught his lips curving into a smile.

‘That’s not a sign of a tantrum,’ she assured him, with a tentative smile of her own. ‘The darned thing’s gone to sleep. And so’s my brain. I know you introduced yourself earlier, but did I? My name’s Jenny.’

She held out her hand and watched him take it—saw the tanned skin of his fingers against her own pale flesh, felt warmth and something else—something she didn’t want to put a name to.

‘I knew the Jennifer part, but wondered if you shortened it.’

Jenny removed her hand from his, and tucked it in the pocket of her tunic, out of danger’s way.

‘Jen, Jenny, even, hey, you—I answer to them all,’ she said, trying desperately to sound casual and light-hearted, although her arm where he had touched it, and the fingers he’d briefly held, burned as if they’d been branded.

The patient’s name, they learned, was Akbar, and his blood group was B.

‘Mine’s B,’ Jenny told Kam, who was sitting, cross-legged, by their patient, talking quietly to Lia, Akbar’s wife. ‘Let’s do a cross-match and see if it’s OK for him to have mine.’

Kam studied her for a moment, wondering about this woman he’d found on the border of his country. Wondering if she was the first fair-haired Westerner to ever tread these particular desert sands.

Wondering if he should take her blood…

Take her, as his ancestors might have…

The sudden heat in his body shocked him back to the matter in hand. Of all the times to be distracted by a woman…

‘You need your strength for your job,’ he objected.

It was a token protest and she took it that way.

‘The loss of a couple of pints of blood won’t hurt me,’ she insisted, handing him a syringe with a needle attached so he could draw blood from her forearm for cross-matching. She had pulled off her soiled tunic and now rolled up the sleeve of her shirt so he could access a vein, yet he felt strangely reluctant to move closer to her—to touch her.

He had to move closer—how else could he withdraw some blood?—and if their patient was bleeding internally, and his blood pressure drop suggested he was, he would need blood.

Kam crossed the distance between them in one long stride and took her arm, seeing as he did so pale scars like snail tracks, paler than the lightly tanned skin and puckered here and there.

Without regard to the intrusiveness of the gesture, he ran his forefinger lightly down the longest of them, then looked up into her eyes, knowing she’d read the question in his own.

Defiance was his answer, as clear as if it was written on a whiteboard. Ask me if you dare, she was saying, and though Kam knew he shouldn’t, he couldn’t help himself.

‘Accident?’

She nodded briefly then swabbed the spot where a vein showed blue beneath the fine skin of her inner elbow.

Take the blood, she was saying with the gesture—take the blood and mind your own business. But Kam’s mind was already racing off along a tangent—did the scars explain why such a beautiful woman, and she was beautiful in her golden, glowing way, would hide herself away in a refugee camp on the edge of a little-known country?

Was she hiding only these surface scars or were there deeper ones?

Had she lost someone she loved, leaving scars on her heart?

‘Was it bad?’

She stared at him as if she didn’t understand his question, but a shadow had crossed her face and he had his answer.

Very bad, that shadow told him, while the set of her lips again warned him off further questions.

But his sympathy for her made him gentle as he held her arm and eased the needle into the vein. He watched the vial fill with dark blood, trying to keep his mind on the job—on their patient and what might lie ahead for him, and for himself and Jenny as his doctors—not on snail-track-like scars on a woman’s arm, or the dark shadow that had crossed her face.

Fortunately, the woman—Jenny—recovered her composure and her sensible conversation brought him back to the present.

‘If it works in a cross-match, you can take it directly from me to him, although you’ll have to keep an eye on him for any transfusion reaction because I’ll be lying beside him.’

She smiled as if this were a little joke at her expense, but Kam couldn’t return the smile, his thoughts veering back to the puzzle of why this woman was willing to do so much for people she didn’t know, in an inhospitable place, and with no friends or family to support her.

Had she come to escape her memories?

Her pain?

‘Well?’ she prompted. ‘Are you going to do a cross-match or should I?’

With his mind back on the job, Kam took another vial and drew a little blood from their patient, Jenny acting as nurse, tightening the tourniquet on the man’s arm to bring up a vein then taping a dressing over the small wound. Kam mixed the contents of the two vials, watching anxiously for any sign of clotting, which would tell them the blood samples were not compatible. But the blood didn’t clot and the intrepid woman who puzzled him now produced a cannula and loop of tubing.

‘Let’s go,’ she said, sitting down beside Akbar while one of the nurses who worked with her explained to Akbar’s wife what was happening.

Lia shifted to sit beside Jenny and hold her hand, babbling her thanks for the gift of blood—the gift of life.

‘You need to be higher,’ Kam told the unexpected donor. ‘Are you all right to sit up if we stack pillows behind you?’

‘I’ve two bedrolls behind the partition,’ Jenny told him. ‘I can sit with those behind me to prop me up and that way my arm is higher than Akbar’s and it will feed down into him.’

She half smiled, while the nurse, Aisha, fetched the bedrolls.

‘It will be up to you to check the blood’s going the right way. I don’t want to be taking more of it from the poor man.’

Not only was she here in this desperate situation but she was joking about it. Kam thought back to the women he had studied with, both women from his own land and Western women, but none of them had been anything like this particular female doctor. No fuss, no nonsense, just get on with the job.

Although there was one problem now he thought about it…

‘I don’t think we should run it direct into Akbar. We should measure the amount—both for your sake as a donor and his as the recipient,’ he said, trying to be as efficient as she was at getting on with the job. ‘Do you have a container?’

‘The fluid bag is nearly empty. What if we run my blood into it, a pint at a time, then transfer it across to Akbar? We could fill something else, but at least we know the bag is sterile. And we can time it, so we know how long it takes to fill a bag then do away with that middle stage when he needs more.’

Kam realised he should have thought of these things. Had he become too used to have everything he needed for his work right at his fingertips—too used to modern medical practices—to think laterally?

Setting the questions aside, he did as she’d advised, siting the cannula carefully into Jenny’s arm, feeling the slight resistance as he pushed the needle through her skin then withdrew it carefully from the cannula, leaving the tube in place. He let this fill with blood before closing off the fluid running into Akbar and replacing that tube with the one through which Jenny’s blood was running.

He switched the tubes again and began running the precious red liquid far more slowly into the patient. And he did watch for a reaction, feeling Akbar’s skin, already hot with the beginnings of a fever, probably caused by infection, seeking other signs of transfusion reaction like violent shivering. But Akbar’s body gave no indication that the stranger’s blood was upsetting him. He lay still and barely conscious and hopefully would remain that way for some time, below the level of pain, while antibiotics and the body’s natural defences began to heal his wounds.

‘As if such wounds could ever heal!’ Kam muttered to himself, but his second patient had heard him. ‘To be beaten must be the height of humiliation,’ he added, to explain his thoughts.

‘We can only do so much,’ Jen reminded him, as they sat and watched in case there was a delayed reaction. ‘We can get him physically well, then hope that love and support and his own determination will get him the rest of the way.’

This was too much altogether for Kam—the woman was too good to be true. There had to be a catch, some reason she’d hidden herself out here, hiding her body under all-enveloping clothes and her golden hair under a scarf.

Surely this was taking escape too far!

‘Why are you here?’

In this, his land, such a question was extremely rude, but Kam asked it anyway, wanting to know, although uncomfortable with his curiosity.

‘To run a TB eradication programme,’ she replied, a tiny smile flickering about her lips. ‘We’ve covered that.’

‘But why here? There must be people in your own land who need medical help. Your accent says you’re Australian—isn’t that right?’

She nodded, but her gold-brown eyes looked preoccupied, as if she’d never really thought about answers to his questions before that moment.

‘I do work in the outback at home as well,’ she finally told him. ‘One placement at home, then one overseas.’

She paused, studying him for a moment as if deciding whether she’d elaborate on this answer or not.

What had she seen that she spoke again?

‘I actually like the foreign placements better. At home, I feel a sense of helplessness that I will never be able to do enough, as if my efforts are nothing more than one grain of sand in a wide desert—scarcely seen or felt, and certainly of no significance. But here, and in other places I’ve been—in Africa, in Colombia—I feel whatever I do is helping, even if it’s only in a very small way. And I do particular projects, like this TB programme, that have a beginning and an end.’

This time her smile was wider, and her eyes gleamed as if in offering him a confidence she was conferring a present on him.

‘I look on these trips as my reward.’

Kam saw the smile but her eyes, not her lips, had caught, and held, his attention. Hadn’t someone once said that the eyes were the mirror of the soul? In this woman’s eyes he’d seen compassion, and pain for their patient, and now a gleam that suggested a sense of humour.

Which she’d certainly need out here.

But still he was intrigued. ‘So, working, moving on—that’s what you like. Is it the freedom? The lack of ties to one particular place or person?’

She studied him for a moment, then she nodded.

‘It’s what I like,’ she confirmed.

‘You are a very strange woman.’

Her smile broadened.

‘A very ordinary woman,’ she corrected him. ‘Some people see the things I do as noble or self-sacrificing but, in fact, it’s totally selfish, because I love doing it—love the adventure of going somewhere different, the challenge of meeting goals under sometimes trying circumstances, the fun of learning about another culture, meeting people I would never have met if I’d stayed at home, tucked safely away in a GP practice, seeing people a hundred other doctors could see and listen to and treat.’

Kam was checking Akbar’s pulse as Jenny explained this, but his disbelief registered in a quick shake of his head.

‘And is there no one left behind you who is harmed by your adventures? No one left to worry?’

He turned to look at her, certain she would tell the truth but wanting to watch her face where, he was sure, he’d read hesitation if she chose to avoid his question.

‘My parents are both GPs, in a safe practice, one I might one day join, but although they wouldn’t choose to do what I have done, they live vicariously through my travels. They support me and scrounge equipment and drugs for me, and take in strangers I send to them, people from distant lands who need more medical attention than I can provide. They had a Guatemalan family live with them for six months while local reconstructive surgeons fixed their daughter’s face. She’d been born with a double hare lip and cleft palate.’

Kam shook his head again, unable to find the words to express his surprise, although his own people would take in those in trouble just as easily. But he’d always considered that the way of the desert, born out of need when the support of others might make a difference between life and death.

‘Let’s see if the blood is doing any good. I’ll check his blood pressure.’

The woman’s practical suggestion jolted him as his mind had wandered far from his patient.

‘I keep forgetting we don’t have monitors doing these things for us all the time,’ he admitted

Jenny smiled and shook her head.

‘No such luck. But before they had all these fancy things, doctors managed and so will we.’

Kam returned her smile.

‘Of course we will.’

He watched as she inflated the blood-pressure cuff and they both watched the readout on the small screen of the machine. Akbar’s blood pressure hadn’t dropped any further, but neither had it risen.

‘Let’s give it an hour,’ Kam suggested. ‘Are you feeling all right? Would you like a break from this tent before you give the second pint? A walk or, better still, a cup of tea? What eating arrangements do you have? It seems a long time since I had breakfast at my campsite.’

‘A cup of tea and something to eat is easily fixed,’ Jen said as he put out a hand to help her to her feet.

She took the offered hand reluctantly, no doubt because of the uneasiness and flutters, but she was grateful for it as he steadied her.

‘This way.’

Telling Aisha where she’d be, she led Kam towards the food tent, squaring her shoulders and walking straighter as she recalled his upright posture and the slightly arrogant tilt of his head, wondering again about the blood of desert warriors…

The food tent was set up by a different volunteer aid organisation and stocked with tinned and dried foodstuffs. Most of the refugees collected food from the canteen but cooked and ate within their family groups, but those who had no families now ran the tent as a kind of cafeteria, providing hot water for tea and coffee and meals three times a day.

‘Smells good,’ Kam said as he entered.

‘Stew,’ Jenny explained. ‘Not made with goat but with canned corned beef and dried vegetables. It tastes much better than it sounds.’

‘Or you get very hungry out here in the desert and would eat anything,’ her companion said, and Jen suspected he was teasing her. But would he tease, this stranger with the profile that could have been used as a model for an artist to etch an emperor’s face on an ancient coin?

She had no idea and was slightly concerned that she’d even considered it because teasing, even gentle teasing, felt like personal attention…

The women tending the big kettles and stew pots handed them small glasses of tea and indicated they should sit while the bowls were filled with food.

Jenny lowered herself easily, used by now to this custom of sitting on one leg while the other was propped in front of her to use as an arm rest as she ate.

‘You adapt quickly to local customs?’ Kam said, half-teasing again as he nodded at the position she’d taken up.

‘These people have had thousands of years to work out the best way to sit while eating—why would I want to do otherwise?’

She sipped her strong, sweet tea—the sugar was added as the water boiled—and watched the shadow of a smile pass across his face, then he too sipped at the steaming liquid, raising his head to speak in another tongue to the woman who was putting food in front of him. Jenny knew they were words of thanks and praise because, rather than the guttural sounds of everyday talk, they had the soft, musical notes that, to Jen, always sounded more like spoken poetry than day-to-day language.

‘I may be able to sit properly,’ Jen told him, ‘but no matter how hard I try, I can’t get my “Thank you” to sound like you make it sound. I think it would take a lifetime to learn the Arabic language.’

‘And another lifetime, or two or three, to learn different tribal variations of it,’ Kam told her. ‘I can probably make myself understood to the people of the camp, but every tribe has words that are common only to it. Do you know that in Arabic there are eight hundred words for sword, three hundred for camel and two hundred for snake?’

‘Putting the sword—an instrument of death—at the top of the most useful word list?’

He studied her for a moment then smiled a real smile, one that lit up his rather stern face and revealed strong, even white teeth.

‘Definitely not. They have even more words for love.’

The huskiness was back in his voice, and Jen shivered as a strange sensation feathered down her spine.

She glanced at her companion, hoping her reaction hadn’t been obvious to him, and was pleased to see he’d turned his attention to the woman serving their meals, speaking again, perhaps telling her how good the food smelt.

Another of the women set a bowl of food in front of Jenny and handed her a thin round of bread.

‘Eat,’ she said, then smiled shyly, as if embarrassed by showing off the English word.

Jen returned the compliment by thanking her in Arabic, although she knew her pronunciation was hopeless—especially after hearing Kam’s fluid, rhythmic use of the same words.

They ate, Jen now adept at scooping up the food with her bread, holding it always in her right hand and using pieces of it as easily as she’d use cutlery at home. But as she ate uneasiness crept in, born of not knowing what to make of the stranger who already seemed so at home in the camp.

‘We shall check on our patient then sit outside for a while,’ he decreed, as if picking up on vibes she hadn’t realised she was giving out. ‘Today’s experience has probably made you think of other things that a proper medical clinic will need.’

‘I refuse to think about work while I’m eating,’ Jenny said, wiping the bread around her bowl to soak up the last bits of gravy. ‘Especially as we haven’t had dessert yet.’

As she spoke one of the women approached, a big metal dish of sheep’s milk yoghurt in her arms. She scooped some into Jenny’s bowl, handed her a spoon, then passed her a tin of golden syrup, a carton of which had somehow found its way into the camp’s supplies.

‘Best dessert in the world,’ Jen told Kam, scooping golden syrup onto her yoghurt. ‘Sweet and sour and very yummy. The women here think I’m mad!’

He watched her eat, shaking his head when the woman offered him yoghurt and Jenny urged the golden syrup on him, but she’d only taken a couple of mouthfuls when Rosana appeared, crawling across the floor of the tent and settling herself into Jenny’s lap. Now Jenny shared, spooning most of the treat into Rosana’s mouth, cuddling the little girl and talking to her all the time, although she knew Rosana didn’t understand a word she said.

‘She has no family?’ Kam asked as they left the tent, Rosana once again perched on Jenny’s hip.

‘Not that we can find. In fact, I think she might belong to one of the warring tribes or clans across the border.’

She paused, stopping beneath a spindly juniper tree, knowing questions could be considered rude but intrigued enough to ask anyway.

‘Having lived here, grown up here, do you know enough about these countries to understand the war that is going on over there?’