Читать книгу The Sun At Midnight - Sandra Field - Страница 5

KATHRIN stood still, a rock digging into her heel. Jud was wearing a dark blue parka, a haversack thrown over one shoulder, and something in his posture made her heart skip a beat. Once, when he had been fourteen or fifteen, he had liked to hunt; and just so had she seen him waiting, statue-still in the woods, for his prey.

The coward in her, that part that subconsciously had hoped she would never see any of the Leighton men again, wanted to scurry up the slope and vanish into the sauna. But Kathrin was twenty-four now, not seventeen, and cutting through the turmoil in her breast was a clear, pure flame of anger. Earlier in the evening she had likened this place to heaven. She had been happy. But Jud, who had invaded her heaven, had by his very presence despoiled her hap-piness.

Neither hurrying nor bothering to disguise the fact that she had seen him, she straightened, her body a smooth interplay of pale curves against the dark waters of the lake. Her nudity scarcely bothered her; as a child, had she not swum naked with Jud in the lake on his father’s estate time and again and thought nothing of it? ‘You’re breaking the rules,’ she said crisply. ‘The men don’t come near the sauna when Pam and I are here.’

‘I’ve always broken the rules,’ he drawled. ‘You should know that better than anyone.’

‘Until they sent you to prison for it,’ she flashed. ‘You’ve never grown up, have you, Jud?’

He tensed; to Kathrin, it was as though he had raised a loaded gun to his shoulder. Clipping off his words, he said, ‘Don’t you dare tell me what I’m like! You know nothing of what’s happened to me the last few years. Nothing.’

‘And whose fault is that?’

‘Oh, you have your share of the blame,’ Jud said viciously. ‘Don’t play the innocent with me, Kit.’

Kathrin shivered, feeling the cold invade her flesh and the stones bite into the soles of her feet. He had become a stranger, she thought, an accusatory, angry stranger. Yet he was worse than a stranger. For hidden in the man’s body was the memory of the boy she had known, who had laughed with her and taught her to climb trees and fish for trout in the brook. ‘We know nothing of each other’s lives,’ she said tightly. ‘I’m not sure we ever did.’

Then, because she could not bear to prolong a conversation that seemed the very opposite of communication, she began wading to shore, moving with a grace that came naturally to her; and the whole time Jud watched her. Once she had climbed the rocky steps to the sauna door she was hidden by the wooden screen. Crouching low, she stepped inside.

Swathed in a towel, Pam was waiting for her. ‘You actually got in the—what’s wrong?’

Cursing her giveaway features, Kathrin said, ‘Stay behind the screen when you go outside—Jud’s out there.’

Pam scowled. ‘Garry must have forgotten to tell him.’

‘Garry shouldn’t have to. Spying on us like that, it’s loathsome!’

‘It could have been an honest mistake, Kathrin.’

‘Sure—muskoxen can fly.’

‘You’ve really got it in for this guy.’

Her body was tingling from her swim and perhaps that was what shocked Kathrin into indiscretion. ‘I trusted him, Pam! I would have trusted him with my life. And all along he was acting a lie, stealing from his own father.’

‘Maybe he didn’t do it.’

‘They proved it in court,’ Kathrin said shortly. ‘And besides, he admitted it, I told you that. We’d better get out of here, the others are waiting for their turn.’

She and Pam got dressed behind the screen, then walked back to the camp together. Jud was nowhere to be seen. Pam said, when they reached the kitchen, ‘Come on in and I’ll stoke up the stove. We’ll make hot chocolate while the men are getting cleaned up.’

Kathrin wanted nothing more than to hide away in her own little hut. But her hair was wet and it was extravagant to light her own stove when the kitchen was so warm. ‘OK, but I won’t stay long,’ she said.

To her great relief only Garry and Karl were in the kitchen; once they had gone, she began brushing out her hair, and by the time she had finished her cocoa and helped Pam clean up the supper dishes it was dry. ‘I’m going to get out of here,’ she said. ‘I haven’t got the energy to face Jud again tonight. ‘Night, Pam, and thanks for listening.’

The road between the two rows of tents and buildings was empty. Kathrin hurried across it and into her own hut. She pulled both the outer and the inner doors tight shut, and for the first time since she had come here wished she could lock them. After drawing the curtains across the windows, she hooked the room’s only chair under the doorknob. If Jud made up his mind he was coming in, it would not stop him; but it did make her feel a little safer.

It was well past midnight. She should go to bed.

She prowled around the room, sorting her dirty clothes, putting her notes and camera equipment on the desk, then changing into her fleece pyjamas. Finally she put dark plastic refuse bags over the windows to give at least an illusion of darkness. She did this only rarely, for usually she had no problem getting to sleep; but tonight, she knew, was different.

In the artificial gloom Kathrin lay flat on her back, staring up at the roof of the hut. Consciously she tried to relax her muscles one by one, starting at her toes and working up to her head. But, when she had finished, her fists were still clenched at her sides and her neck corded with tension.

Jud’s going to knock on the door. And if he does, I have nothing to say to him. Nothing. I want him to get on the first plane out of here and disappear from my life as thoroughly as he did seven years ago.

Because I’m frightened of him.

Her eyes widened a fraction. That was it, of course. She was frightened. Not for anything did she want to plunge back into all the pain and confusion of her love for Ivor, or the horror of Jud’s trial, or the dreadful day when she and her mother had left Thorndean. The past was over. She could not bear to live through it again.

From the direction of the sauna she heard men’s voices in a jocular chorus that grew louder and more distinct. The kitchen door opened and shut. Pam called something to Garry.

But no one knocked on her door.

* * *

In the morning Kathrin woke suddenly, with the sensation of having been dragged too rapidly from the depths of an ice-cold lake up into the air. Then the sound that had woken her came again: a peremptory rap on her door. She sat up, her heart racing, not sure whether she was awake or dreaming, and called out uncertainly, ‘Hello?’

‘Kit? I need to talk to you.’

The knob was turning on the inner door. ‘Go away!’ she cried.

Jud pushed against the panels and the chair that she had rammed under the knob scraped against the floorboards. ‘Open the door,’ he demanded. ‘I want to talk about our plans for the muskoxen.’

The chair clattered sideways to the floor, the door swung open, and Jud strode into the room, which immediately seemed to shrink. After he had closed the door behind him, he picked up the chair, straddling it and resting his arms on its curved back. He looked large, immovable, and—once again—angry.

Kathrin leaped out of the bunk and stood at bay, her cheeks still flushed with sleep, her hair a chestnut tangle on her shoulders; and perhaps if she had been fully awake she would not have spoken so hastily. ‘You’ve got one hell of a nerve,’ she seethed. ‘Bursting in here like a common crimin—’

As she broke off in mid-sentence, horrified by her choice of words, Jud snarled, ‘In your eyes that’s all I am, isn’t it? A common criminal.’

Striving for some semblance of dignity, which was difficult when she was clad in baggy pyjamas, Kathrin said, ‘I shouldn’t have said that—but you did wake me up and you did burst in uninvited. Jud, we can talk at breakfast once I’ve had a cup of coffee. Not that there’s anything to say. Because we don’t have any plans. I’m going back to the valley—you’re not coming with me.’

‘That’s not what Garry said yesterday afternoon.’

‘It’s what I say!’

‘Oh? I wasn’t under the impression that you ran the camp.’

Her breast rising and falling under her fleece top, Kathrin fumed, ‘I didn’t invite you up here, it should be entirely obvious that I don’t want you here, and there’s no way I’m heading out into the tundra with you. Have you got that straight? Now will you please get out of here so I can get dressed?’

Jud gave her a leisurely survey. ‘I won’t see anything I didn’t see last night.’

Like a hare startled by a wolf, she froze, every nerve taut, and again was aware of fear. ‘You know what? I don’t like what you’ve become,’ she said in a small, clear voice. ‘I never used to be afraid of you and now I am. So just leave, will you? Garry’s around somewhere, and he’ll tell you that you’re not going out with me.’ Unwisely she added, ‘He’s changed his mind since yesterday.’

‘Now why would he have done that, darling Kit? Because you’ve chosen to inform him that I’m an ex-convict?’ Jud asked silkily. ‘But he already knows that, you see, and I don’t think it’ll make him change his mind.’

‘Don’t call me darling! And he’ll change his mind for safety reasons. It must have been embarrassingly clear to everyone last night that you and I can’t stand the sight of each other. This is the Arctic—one of the most unforgiving environments in the world. It would be stupid to send us out together. Stupid and risky.’

To her fury Jud laughed. ‘You always were quick-witted in a crunch. That hasn’t changed.’ Then he went on with an air of calm reason that infuriated her, ‘However, much as I hate to disappoint you, Garry isn’t going to change his mind. It’s very simple. I need to photograph muskoxen. You know where the herd is. Therefore we’re going out together.’ He raised one brow in mockery. ‘But if you’d rather discuss our plans in public in the kitchen, that’s OK with me...by the way, you’ll never make it to the pages of Vogue magazine with those pyjamas.’

His eyes drifted down her legs, hidden by the thick green pile of her pyjama bottoms. Then suddenly his gaze sharpened. He got up from the chair and crossed the room, standing so close to her that she could see the individual stitches in his sweater. ‘That rug,’ he said, the tone of his voice altogether different. ‘I remember it—your mother made it, didn’t she?’

Kathrin fought the urge to step back. ‘Yes. The year you finished high school.’

Jud dropped to his knees, and unwillingly she looked down on his bent head. His hair was just the same, she thought, exactly as it had been since he was a small boy. She had always loved the ravens who nested in the tall beeches at Thorndean, admiring their adaptability and their fierce independence; and Jud’s hair had the same blue-black sheen as a raven’s wing. His fingers—the long, flexible fingers that she remembered so well—were caressing the blue strands of cloth interwoven in the rug. ‘My dad gave me that shirt,’ he said quietly. ‘I wore it until it was nearly falling apart.’

The words came out in spite of her. ‘You tore it the day you fell down the ravine. My mother mended it for you.’

‘Yeah...’ He glanced up, his eyes a much deeper blue than the faded fabric, and for the first time his face was unguarded and open, the face of the Jud she had always known. Kathrin’s breath caught in her throat. She said loudly, ‘Ivor’s cashmere sweater is part of the rug as well.’

As if prison bars had slammed shut, Jud’s face changed. He stood up, his gaze trained on hers. ‘I think you fell in love with Ivor when you were in the cradle,’ he said with a total lack of emotion. ‘So why didn’t you marry him, Kit?’

With all the dignity she could muster she answered, ‘I don’t want to talk about Ivor. The breakfast bell’s going to ring any minute and I’m not ready—it’s not fair to keep Pam waiting.’

‘You’ve got it wrong,’ Jud said with a softness that rippled with menace. ‘It’s due time we talked about the past, you and I. About Ivor and my father and all that happened seven years ago. But not now. Not before breakfast. In that, at least, you’re right.’ He smiled at her, a smile every bit as menacing as his voice, and turned back to the door. But as he opened it, he looked at her over his shoulder. ‘You don’t think it’s coincidence that I turned up here do you, Kit?’ he said, and closed the door gently behind him.

Kathrin’s bare toes curled into the softness of the rug. With Jud gone, the room had resumed its normal proportions. Yet the silence within the four board walls echoed and pulsed with his presence, and with a sick feeling in her heart she knew that everything had changed. For she had not for one instant doubted the claim he had made on his way out of the door. Jud had indeed come here seeking her out. And he would not go away until he had achieved his purpose. Whatever that purpose might be.

With a raucous clang the breakfast bell split the silence. All her movements mechanical, Kathrin got dressed, not even noticing the small pleasures of a newly folded shirt and clean socks. Pulling on a pair of leather mukluks, she grabbed her jacket from the hook and left the hut.

It was a beautiful day, the breeze from the plateau tinged with real warmth. She’d do a wash this morning, she thought, and ask Pam to take it in for her. That way she could set off to find the muskoxen after lunch. Without Jud.

‘Kathrin! Got a minute?’

A wrench and an oil can in one hand, Garry was emerging from the white-painted building that housed the generator. She smiled at him, happy to see his bearded, pleasant face. No surprises with Garry, no hidden depths. ‘Isn’t it a wonderful day?’ she called, walking to meet him.

‘Supposed to stay like this until the weekend. Not that I ever trust the weather reports.’ He replaced the wrench in his metal tool box, which was sitting on the bench outside the hut. Then, without finesse, he plunged into what he had to say. ‘Pam told me about you and Jud. But it’s no go, Kathrin. Jud’s prepared to underwrite one whole research programme for us, and you know what that means.’

Kathrin’s heart sank. The research station received only minimal government support, depending on funds from universities and private donors. With all the cutbacks in recent years, the donors were becoming more and more crucial to the station’s survival. ‘He can’t have that much money,’ she said sharply.

‘He’s already given me a certified cheque—he made a small fortune on that prison movie he produced.’ At Kathrin’s look of mystification Garry went on, ‘You must have seen it, it came out a couple of years ago and did phenomenally well in the States.’

‘No, I never did.’ She frowned in thought. ‘That would have been the year I was taking honours and working part-time, I either had my nose buried in a textbook or I was trying to catch up on my sleep.’

‘Look, I know this is awkward for you,’ Garry said. ‘But in the interests of the station, I think you should be able to ignore any personal differences. All Jud wants is some shots of muskoxen. You’re the logical person to go out with him.’

She did not feel logical. She felt trapped and rebellious. ‘What does he want photos of muskoxen for?’

‘His next book will—’

Floundering in a sea of unknowns, Kathrin sputtered, ‘I didn’t know he was a writer.’

‘Well, you haven’t seen him for years, have you?’ Garry said patiently. ‘His first book, on west coast grizzlies, is due out next month. I saw the advance copy—some inspired photography and a really excellent text; the man knows his stuff. He’s even willing to plug the station in this Arctic book—so we sure can’t afford to antagonise him.’

As a boy Jud had always been fiddling with cameras; that at least was familiar territory. ‘All right, I get the message,’ she snapped. ‘I’ll take him out there and I’ll find him a herd of muskoxen if we have to walk thirty miles. But I’ll only be as polite to him as he is to me. And I won’t nursemaid him.’

Garry clapped her on the shoulder, and not until she saw the relief in his face did she realise he had half expected her to refuse. ‘Great!’ he said heartily. ‘He’ll carry all his own gear, and I’m sure he won’t be any trouble to you. Apparently he camped out in the Rockies for the better part of a year doing his first book—you won’t have to nursemaid him.’ He plunked the oil can beside the tool box. ‘Let’s go for breakfast. Pam’s making bacon and eggs.’

Every piece of information Kathrin was gathering about Jud only served to confuse her more and more. The Jud she had known when she was fifteen had certainly had the skills for wilderness camping. But the man who had cold-bloodedly stolen from his father and then spent four years in prison? How could that man have survived in the awesome silence of the mountains, alone and thrown upon his own resources?

Unhappily she trailed behind Garry to the kitchen. Inside, Jud and Karl were bent over a topographical map, Karl explaining the layout of the beach ridges, lakes and plateaux of the Carstairs lowland in his careful English. Turning her back on them, Kathrin helped herself to an orange and began peeling it. The delicious smell of frying bacon filled the kitchen. As Calvin offered her a freshly baked muffin and as she bit into the first sweet, juicy segment of orange, her spirits began to revive. She would hike as fast as she could to the herd. Once there, she would do her work and Jud could do his—after all, he was used to being alone. And she would not discuss with him anything that she didn’t want to.

Which, she thought, mischievously, could mean a very silent trip.

The muffin had blueberries in it and was warm enough to melt the butter she had lathered on it. After rinsing her hands at the sink, Kathrin cut some of Pam’s homemade bread, put the slices between two metal racks, and went over to the stove to toast them. ‘Did you sleep well?’ Pam asked.

‘Fine,’ Kathrin said warmly, sensing Pam was worried about the next few days. In a clear voice she added, ‘I’ll be leaving again this afternoon. As Jud’s donating money to the station, I’m duty bound to find him a herd of mus-koxen.’

‘Charmingly put,’ Jud said from directly behind her. ‘What time?’

Hoping her start of surprise hadn’t shown, Kathrin turned the rack to cook the other side of the bread. ‘About four,’ she said, not looking at him. ‘It’ll be at least a three-hour hike, maybe more if they’ve moved further up the valley. Pam and I will look after the food.’

‘I’ll be ready,’ Jud said.

There was a note in his voice that sent a shiver down her spine. She had no reason to be afraid, she thought stoutly. Once or twice a day she checked in with Garry on the portable radio; and if Jud’s company became intolerable, she’d simply come back to camp and leave him out there. ‘Wear rubber boots and bring your own tent,’ she said coolly.

‘Yes, ma’am.’

Her cheeks flushed from more than the heat of the stove, Kathrin accepted a heaped plate of bacon, eggs and hashbrowns from Pam and went to sit down beside Calvin, who was regaling anyone who would listen with his latest findings on the role of blue-green algae in the ecology of the Arctic lowlands. Despite his loudly expressed interest in women, Kathrin often suspected Calvin was more interested in the convoluted sex lives of algae than the rather predictable amatory activities of humans. Listening with one ear, she tackled her food with gusto and kept a wary eye on Jud, who was talking to Pam by the stove. Now that she was over the initial shock of seeing Jud again, she was going to manage the next four days just fine, she thought optimistically. She was a grown woman—she could handle a dozen Juds.

This mood stayed with Kathrin through the day, a very busy day. She washed her clothes and hung them on the line between the storage hut and the kitchen, she brought her notes up to date, and she carefully accumulated everything she would need out on the tundra, knowing from experience that what she forgot she had to do without. By now, she had loading her backpack down to an art. At three forty-five she zipped up the last compartment and hefted the pack to check its weight. Not bad. She’d carried heavier.

Now to find Jud.

But first she halted in front of her mirror, pulling her hair out of its ponytail and brushing its shining weight back from her face. Nimbly she started braiding it, having discovered this was the simplest way to look after it when she was camping; and all the while her eyes looked back at her.

Her features were long-familiar and taken for granted: straight brows, straight nose dusted with freckles, level brown eyes. In repose her face was like a good drawing, the lines strong and sure. However, when lit by emotion it was transformed to a vivid beauty, elusive enough that she tended to discount it.

She was wearing a turquoise turtleneck under a wool sweater softly patterned in turquoise, mauves and browns, a favourite combination of hers in which she knew she looked well. Her hooded jacket was as dark a brown as her eyes; her corduroy trousers were also dark brown, tucked into high rubber boots. Tiny gold earrings shaped like seagulls twinkled in her lobes.

After fastening her braid, Kathrin brushed on lip gloss and put it in the pocket of her jacket. I’m delaying the inevitable, she thought. I don’t want to go out there and face Jud.

Quickly she stooped, lifting her pack on to one of the bunks and then swinging it in place on her back. Binoculars, gloves, notebook, pencil. She was ready.

She took one last, steadying look around the hut before going outside. Jud was standing in the road waiting for her, his face, tanned, unsmiling, giving nothing away. The sun gleamed in his hair while his eyes were a distillation of all the blue of the sky. With a jolt of surprise Kathrin realised that Pam was right. Jud was a very handsome man.

She stopped in her tracks. More than handsome. He exuded a highly charged masculine energy of which she was sure he was unaware, coupled with an air of utter self-containment: an intriguing paradox that bore no relation to the Jud she had grown up with. It was as though, she thought slowly, she were suddenly seeing him for the first time.

He said caustically, ‘It’s too late to change your mind.’

She tossed her head. ‘I said I’d take you to the muskoxen and I will.’ In a surge of adrenalin she added, ‘I’m the one who jumped the ravine—remember?’ The ravine was on the far boundary of Thorndean, an outcrop of granite where ferns grew lush and green, and water dripped mournfully in the murky shadows among the rocks. It had long been a haunt of the ravens. ‘The summer I was twelve you dared me to jump across it—and I did.’

‘I never thought you would.’ A reluctant smile tugged at Jud’s lips. ‘I was crazy to dare you and you were crazy to do it...that was the day I tore my shirt.’

He had also scraped the skin from his ribs and she had been the one to smooth on antibiotic ointment that she had stolen from her mother’s medicine cabinet; as if it were yesterday she could see his teeth gritted against the pain. She said tersely, ‘Let’s go. I want to find the herd before we stop to eat.’

‘Can’t handle the memories, Kit?’ he jeered.

Exasperated, she said, ‘You have a choice here, Jud—you can stand talking to thin air or you can follow me.’

Suiting action to word, Kathrin set off past the radio shack for the nearest rock ridge. Soon her boots were crunching among loose stones and shell fragments, and her stride had settled into its natural rhythm; although Jud’s longer stride was right beside her, the tension of his presence lessened as she filled her lungs with the crisp, pure air. This was where she wanted to be. Perhaps it didn’t matter who was with her as long as she could inhabit this immensity of space.

He said casually, ‘Karl was saying this whole area was under the sea not that long ago.’

‘That’s right. The weight of the ice cap pressed the land down. But as the ice melted, the land rose. You can see a whole series of beach ridges ahead of us.’

‘So tell me about the blue-green algae of which Calvin is so enamoured.’

She laughed almost naturally and described their role in the slow evolution of the Arctic soil, finding Jud’s questions intelligent and his own knowledge considerable. They descended the first ridge and skirted a lake. A pair of loons flew overhead. Jud spotted a phalarope, Kathrin a sandpiper; and their boots brushed the tiny Arctic flowers, glossy golden buttercups and purple-striped campion.

For the next hour they climbed steadily towards the plateau, beyond which lay the valley where the muskoxen roamed. At about six o’clock Kathrin said breathlessly, ‘We should fill our water bottles at this stream. And let’s take a short break.’ Loosening the straps, she lowered her pack to the ground.

The stream gurgled out of the hillside between rocks carpeted with green and scarlet mosses. Chewing on some trail mix, Jud said reflectively, ‘Colour leaps out at you here, doesn’t it? The flowers and mosses are so vivid, so full of life.’

She had often noticed the same thing. She said eagerly, ‘I think it’s because at first glance the Arctic offers a kind of sensory deprivation—dun-coloured tundra, grey rocks, and the white of last year’s snow. Even the sky’s pale blue, as though the ice cap has sapped it of all its strength. So the flowers make straight for the heart.’

‘You love it here.’

She nodded. ‘I feel as though I’ve come home...I don’t know why.’

His eyes fixed on hers, Jud said, ‘It’s a land pared to the bone. No euphemisms possible—only truth.’

She knew instantly that he had shifted from the landscape to the personal. For a moment she looked around her at the vast sweep of land and sky, recognising that her anger early that morning now seemed petty and unworthy of her. She said gravely, ‘Jud, seven years ago my world turned upside down. I’ve done the best I can since then, in my own way, to deal with that. But I really don’t want to talk about it...please.’

He was hunkered down very close to her, the breeze ruffling his hair. ‘You think I stole that money.’

‘I know you did. You confessed, didn’t you?’

‘Ivor made the phone call, Kit.’

‘He couldn’t have—I was with him at the time.’

‘You were in love with him.’

‘I wouldn’t have lied, Jud!’

‘You did lie.’ As she made a sudden move, he stayed her with one hand on the sleeve of her jacket. ‘You were young and vulnerable and very much in love...perhaps it was inevitable that you supported Ivor over me.’ A harsh edge to his voice, he added, ‘I just need to know the truth, that’s all.’

There was a scar across his knuckles, a scar white as bone. Staring down at it, because she could not bear the force of his gaze, Kathrin said, ‘How did you hurt yourself?’

‘In prison—I was on a labour gang for a while,’ he said impatiently. ‘Kit, the truth...surely this place deserves the truth.’

When she looked up, her eyes were deep, troubled pools of darkness. ‘I’ve told you the truth. Just as I told it at the trial.’

In total frustration Jud picked up a chunk of granite, banging it so hard against a boulder that chips flew; the noise seemed a violation of the unfathomable silence of the tundra. ‘I thought better of you than this,’ he said.

In a clumsy movement Kathrin scrambled to her feet. ‘You’re proving my point—this is just why I don’t want to talk about what happened,’ she cried. ‘What’s the use? It’s over and done with. Finished.’

He stood up as well, balancing his weight on the rocks. ‘I could have photographed muskoxen on lots of other islands in the Arctic. I came here because I saw your name on the roster of scientists at the camp...I always figured you’d end up somewhere like this.’

‘Then maybe you’d be better off going to one of the other islands,’ she said steadily.

‘I’m staying here.’ He paused, his eyes narrowed. ‘There’s something else I should tell you—some time in the next week or so, Ivor will be coming here, too.’

Kathrin’s heart gave a great lurch in her breast. ‘What did you say?’

His face as immobile as if it had been carved from stone, Jud repeated, ‘Ivor will be visiting the camp in the next few days—he pilots the company helicopter.’

‘No!’ She took two steps backwards over the uneven ground, all the horror of that last meeting with Ivor invading her as if the intervening years had never happened. ‘Not Ivor—not here.’

‘You’re still in love with him,’ Jud accused savagely. ‘For God’s sake, how can you be so blind?’

Scarcely hearing him, Kathrin whispered, ‘Tell me you’re joking, that this is some kind of cruel game. This isn’t a place Ivor would choose to be; he’s not like you and me—why would he come here?’

‘To make money—why else does Ivor go anywhere? Mining, Kit. Uranium and silver. That’s why Ivor’s coming here.’

Her heart was pounding as if she had run all the way from the camp. ‘I never want to see him again,’ she said raggedly.

‘Too bad. Garry told me you’ll be one of the people Ivor will be interviewing. The effect on muskoxen of overhead flights and survey crews,’ he finished mockingly.

Standing as he was on the rocks, Jud towered over her: a man hardened beyond belief. ‘You’re out for revenge, aren’t you?’ Kathrin faltered. ‘That’s what your game is—revenge.’

‘Truth. Not revenge. There’s a big difference. And—believe me—it’s no game.’

She had no answer for him, no reserves to draw upon. In her overwrought state the panorama that only minutes ago had been the harbinger of tranquillity now seemed bleak and inimical, no more home than, ultimately, Thorndean had been. Seeking refuge in action, she hauled on her backpack, turned her back on Jud and headed up the slope as fast as she could.