Liz Fielding - Wedded in a Whirlwind

While she was still trying to gather herself to say something, anything, he saved her from making a total fool of herself and saying that out loud.

‘You said you had a phone,’ he prompted casually. As if nothing had happened. ‘I don’t suppose, by any chance, it’s the kind that takes photographs?’

Nothing had happened, she reminded herself. He was just trying to keep her from thinking about the situation they were in and she responded with a positively flippant, ‘Don’t they all?’ Then, ‘Why? Do you want a souvenir? Pictures to sell to the tabloids.’

‘Would the tabloids be that interested?’

Pictures of Miranda Grenville, one-time society hostess, adviser to the Prime Minister, now businesswomen in her own right, filthy and dishevelled in an underground hell? Oh, yes, they’d love those. But clearly he hadn’t a clue who she was and she was happy to leave it that way.

‘There’s always a market for human interest stories,’ she told him as she dug the phone out of her bag, wiped it dry on the sleeve of her shirt and turned it on for the first time since she’d arrived in Cordillera. It lit up, then beeped. ‘I’ve got messages,’ she said.

‘They’ll keep,’ Jago replied, taking it from her. ‘This is more important. Shut your eyes.’

‘Why? What are you-’ A bright flash wiped out all the night sight she’d slowly built up. ‘Idiot!’

‘I told you to shut your eyes,’ He said, looking at the image on the screen for a moment before turning slightly. ‘And again,’ he said.

This time she didn’t hesitate as she caught on to what he was doing. With the camera in her cellphone he could take pictures, use them to ‘see’ exactly what the situation was, maybe find a way out. Or at least locate anything that might be of use to them.

He stared at the third image for so long that she leaned forward to see what held his attention.

‘What’s that?’ she asked, after a moment staring at the picture and trying to make sense of the vast piece of stone that was lying at a broken angle from the floor to the roof.

‘The eagle.’

‘The one that was part of the ceiling?’ she asked, shocked. To see something that huge just tossed aside was chilling.

‘I climbed up part of the way just now,’ Jago said. The screen lit up the tip of his finger, a short clean nail, as he pointed at the photograph. ‘There’s a shaft that leads directly out to the forest, but I couldn’t find a way through. It may be blocked with debris. Or the eagle might have fallen across it.’ ‘Oh.’

He took another photograph, and then another. It seemed forever before he grunted with something like satisfaction. ‘Keep it pointed that way so that I know how far I’ve got,’ he said, carefully handing her the phone. ‘I’ll be right back.’

She looked at the photograph, trying to work out what had got him so excited. Had he seen some prospect of escape? No matter how hard she stared, all she could see was a jumble of stone piled almost to the roof.

She heard him pulling at it, the rattle as smaller stones moved. ‘Be careful!’ Then, letting out a breath of relief as he made his way back to her, ‘What was it? What did you see?’

‘The handle of a trowel,’ he said, passing it to her. It was one of those fine trowels that archaeologists used to scrape away the layers of soil. Pitifully small, but better than nothing. ‘Put it in your bag. Did you put the brandy in there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Put the strap over your head so you don’t get parted from it again. There are bound to be more aftershocks.’

He used the same take it or leave it tone with which he’d told her to close her eyes and her first reaction to any kind of order had always been to ignore it. This time, however, she didn’t hesitate, putting the trowel in her bag, placing the strap over her head.

And she didn’t speak again until he’d painstakingly photographed all three hundred and sixty degrees of what remained of the temple. Kept her bottom lip firmly clamped between her teeth, containing her impatience as he carefully examined each image, instead fixing her gaze on the dark angles and planes of his face in the shadowy light from the small screen. Watching for the slightest sign that he’d found some way out.

Without a word he stopped looking, then turned his attention to the roof and carried on taking photographs.

She did her best to smother a pathetic whimper but he must have heard her because, without pausing in what he was doing, he reached out, found her hand in the faint light from the screen.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

‘Well?’ she asked, unable to contain herself when, finally, he stopped, looked through all the images and still said nothing.

‘Is this you?’ he asked.

‘What?’

She leaned forward and realised that he’d found the pictures taken at the christening. She’d taken a picture of Belle holding Minette.

‘No. That’s my sister-in-law. I was godmother to her baby last week.’

‘Why do I think I know her?’

‘I couldn’t say,’ she replied, unwilling to add glamour to her sister-in-law by telling him that, until recently, she had been the nation’s breakfast television sweetheart. ‘Maybe you’ve a thing for voluptuous women?’

‘If I have, believe me I’m over it. What about this?’ he asked, flipping on to the next picture.

‘That’s Daisy. She’s my assistant. My sister-in-law’s sister. It was a joint christening and I was godmother to her little boy too.’

‘So where’s number three?’

‘Three?’

‘Doesn’t everything come in threes? Wishes? Disasters? Babies…’

‘Not in this family,’ she said sharply.

‘That would be the family you’re taking a break from?’

Had she really said that? To this total stranger. Except that when a man had kissed you-twice-he could hardly be described as a stranger. Even when you didn’t know what he looked like. Anything about him. Except that he knew when to be tough and when to be gentle. And when a girl needed a hand to hold in the dark.

Maybe that was enough.

‘The same family whose photographs you carry about with you?’

‘It’s…complicated.’

‘Families usually are,’ he said with feeling.

‘What about you? Will your family be glued to the twenty-four hour news channels? Or flying out to help in the search?’

‘It’s unlikely. They have no idea I’m in Cordillera.’

‘Really? I assumed you’d been here for quite a while.’

‘Nearly five years.’

‘Oh.’

‘We’re not what you could call close.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s my choice.’

‘Right.’ Then, ‘Mine don’t know, either. Where I am.’

‘You said.’

She had said rather a lot for such a short acquaintance, but then the circumstances had an intensity that speeded up the normal course of social intercourse.

‘Of course I’ve only been gone a few days,’ she added, feeling guilty.

‘I’m sure you’d have got around to sending a postcard eventually.’

‘I don’t send postcards.’

‘Or call? They seem to have been calling you.’

‘Those messages? Probably business,’ she said dismissively. ‘Belle and Daisy and I have a television production company. We’re due to start work on a new documentary soon.’

‘Oh, well, the good news is that we needn’t worry about them worrying about us.’

That was the good news?

‘Okay, Miranda Grenville. We seem to have just two options. I may have found a way through the roof. The first part of the climb would be fairly easy. Up the back of the eagle where it’s sloping to the ground. But after that it’s going to be a tough climb, finding footholds in the dark. See?’