“Have you had many lovers?” Letter to Reader Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN EPILOGUE Copyright

“Have you had many lovers?”

Like his proposition at the table, the question startled her. In her world people didn’t ask such things. They repressed their curiosity...and much else.

“Hardly any compared with your ally, should imagine.”

He caught hold of her hand. “What makes you think I’m a womanizer?”

“Because that’s the way you come across.”

“Time isn’t on my side, Sarah,” Neal said gently. “The slow approach isn’t practical in these circumstances. You’re leaving town.... It will be a month after that before I get back to the U.K. Between now and then, anything could happen. My motto is Seize the Day.”

“Mine is Look Before You Leap...especially before you leap into bed with someone.”

Dear Reader,

I was married in the spring. After the honeymoon, my husband had to leave for a rather dangerous place on the other side of the world. I’ll never forget how the months dragged until, just before Christmas, I was able to join him and, as a bonus, found the inspiration for my first book.

The inspiration for Sleepless Nights came in a somewhat similar way. My husband and son decided to climb a mountain in the Himalaya together. They left at the end of September and for the next four weeks I tried not to worry about them.

At last came the night when I flew to Nepal to wait for them there. I reached Kathmandu late the following day, spending another mess night in probably the most bizarre bedroom I shall ever sleep in. Early next morning I went out to explore the city, soon losing my way in a warren of fascinating backstreets. Eventually I returned to base. “Key not here,” said the smiling Nepalese desk clerk “Maid cleaning now.”

But it wasn’t the maid in my room. It was a pair of hollow cheeked, bearded climbers who, by hitching a lift on a Russian helicopter, had arrived in Kathmandu a day sooner than planned.

Our joyful reunion was followed by a family holiday exploring the Kathmandu valley until it was time for our son to return to the mountains, this time as one of the organizers of the Everest Marathon. Flying back to Europe, I read my travel notes. Ideas began to form. I hope you will enjoy the story based on that trip as much as I enjoyed living it.

Sleepless Nights
Anne Weale

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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.

CHAPTER TWO

SITTING at the back of the mini-bus, with a garland of fresh marigolds round her neck, Sarah studied the guide who had come to meet the thirteen trekkers and shepherd them through the chaos of touts and taxi-drivers waiting outside the airport building.

The guide had introduced herself as Sandy, a suitably androgynous name for someone who had a few female characteristics but whose general appearance and manner was more masculine than feminine. Sarah, who didn’t usually dislike people on sight, had felt an instinctive aversion to the woman who now was standing next to the driver and lecturing them with the aid of a microphone. Lecturing was the operative word.

Did she really expect them to take in all this stuff before they had caught up on their sleep? Sarah wondered. It would have made more sense to hand out a printed supplement to the bumph they’d already received. But perhaps Sandy liked the sound of her own voice and believed in making it clear from the outset that she was the boss of this outfit and they had better remember it.

Surreptitiously checking out her fellow-trekkers, Sarah felt her spirits sinking. She had expected a lively group of fit, mixed-age and mixed-sex adventurers. But even allowing for the fact that they’d just come off a thirteen-hour flight and were not at their best, without exception this lot were older, more out of condition and, to be blunt, duller than she had anticipated. Suburban was the label that sprang to mind when, in ones and twos, they had assembled round Sandy after reclaiming their baggage.

As provincial suburbia was where Sarah had spent her entire life, the last thing she wanted was to spend the next two weeks with people from the same unexciting background. Which of the other single women, she wondered, was to be her room-mate and tent-mate?

She found out half an hour later when the mini-bus entered the forecourt of a large hotel and numerous uniformed porters began unloading the baggage.

As each trekker stepped off the bus, Sandy re-checked who they were, gave them a name badge and, except in the case of the couples, told them who was their ‘Partner’. Sarah’s partner was Beatrice, a thin woman in her sixties whose pursed-lips smile was more like the grimace of someone who had just swallowed a spoonful of disgusting medicine.

The view from the window of their room made Sarah feel more cheerful. Beyond the rooftops of the city was part of the ring of mountains enclosing the Kathmandu valley, with glimpses of higher peaks in the background.

‘I can’t believe I’m really here at last,’ she said dreamily, leaning on the sill, enraptured.

When Beatrice didn’t respond, she looked over her shoulder. Her room-mate had started unpacking. Looking up for a moment, the older woman said, ‘I hope you’re a tidy person, Miss Anderson...or do you prefer to be called Ms?’ Her tone held a thread of sarcasm.

How to make friends and influence people! Sarah thought incredulously. Aloud, she said pleasantly, ‘I prefer to be called Sarah. I’m going to go down and order myself a stiff pick-me-up, leaving you to arrange your things in peace. As we seem to have only one key, perhaps when you’ve finished up here you’ll come and find me. See you later.’

Although the daylight was waning and it wouldn’t be long to sunset, she had her drink in the hotel’s well-kept garden. Even the five-star hotel was a bit disappointing, being international rather than Nepalese in style. She had hoped for somewhere with more character.

Wondering where Neal was staying, she remembered the note she’d attached to the inside cover of the notebook she’d bought for a travel diary. He had written his name, the name of his hotel and the telephone number, all in the neat capital letters of someone for whom accuracy was essential and facts were sacred... or should be, she thought.

Less than an hour ago she had been determined to steer clear of any more encounters with Neal. But now she had changed her mind. If, as it turned out, she was going to be stuck with Sandy, Beatrice and the rest, an evening with Neal would at least be an interesting send-off. In fact she could hardly wait for tomorrow morning to call him and fix it.

Soon after eight, while Beatrice was downstairs having breakfast, she rang him from the hotel bedroom.

‘Putting you through,’ said the operator.

‘Neal Kennedy.’ His voice sounded even deeper and more resonant on the telephone.

‘It’s Sarah. Good morning.’

‘Good morning. Had a good night?’

‘Fine,’ she said untruthfully. ‘And you?’

‘I woke up at four and read. It takes a couple of days for my body clock to adjust. Can we have dinner tonight?’

‘That would be lovely.’

‘I’ll pick you up at six-thirty. We’ll go for a drink at the Yak and Yeti beforehand.’

Sarah knew from her guide book that it was Kathmandu’s largest and smartest hotel. She said doubtfully, ‘I didn’t bring my little black dress.’

‘No problem. Rich locals and the world-tour crowd dress up, but climbers and serious trekkers don’t. They’re not into competitive dressing. Whatever you wear, you’ll look great.’

‘OK...if you say so. See you later. Goodbye.’ As she replaced the receiver, she felt a resurgence of the excitement she had expected to feel every day, every moment. But dinner and breakfast conversations with some of the others, and a night in a room with Beatrice, had quenched that expectation.

She was in the lobby, watching the comings and goings, when Neal strode through the entrance and went to the desk. She knew they would direct him to where she was sitting so she watched him for the few moments he had to wait for one of the desk clerks to be free.

He was wearing the same trousers he had travelled in but with a different shirt. Over his arm he had one of the warm light garments known as a fleece. Naomi had lent Sarah a canary-yellow fleece. Neal’s was dark blue with a coral-coloured collar.

He looked strikingly different from all the people in her trekking group. An almost tangible aura of vitality and virility emanated from his tall, upright figure. When, on the clerk’s instructions, he swung round and headed for where she was sitting, she felt the force of it even more strongly.

She was on her feet by the time he reached her. ‘Ready and waiting,’ he said approvingly. ‘I hate kicking my heels for half an hour. Let’s go, shall we?’

Preceding him out of the door, Sarah smiled at and thanked the saluting doorman.

‘Our transport’s outside the gate,’ said Neal. ‘These upmarket hotels don’t like cycle rickshaws lowering the tone of their entrances. What do you think of this place?’

‘I wouldn’t have chosen it. A guest house is more my style.’

That morning, on Sandy’s guided tour of the city, Sarah had seen many pedal-driven rickshaws weaving their way in and out of the chaotic traffic. The driver of the one waiting for them was a small thin man with grey hair who didn’t look as if he had the strength to pedal two large Europeans. She smiled at him. ‘Namaste.’

‘Namaste, madam.’ Beaming and bowing, he indicated a metal bar she could use as a step.

The rickshaw’s seat was quite high off the ground and designed for people of smaller proportions than Westerners. When Neal swung up beside her the whole vehicle swayed. It swayed even more alarmingly when, after pedalling a short distance, the driver changed traffic lanes to negotiate a busy roundabout. Glancing down, Sarah saw the wheel on her side wobbling as if at any moment it might fly off and send the rickshaw crashing under the wheels of the cars all around them. Perched on little more than a padded ledge, she had never felt more at risk.

Suddenly Neal shifted his position to put an arm round her shoulders and draw her against him. ‘Scary, isn’t it? The traffic gets worse every year.’

Leaning into the solid wall of his chest, with his hand firmly spread round her upper arm, she felt a lot more secure. Not exactly relaxed, but no longer unsafe. She liked him for pretending that holding her close made him feel better too. She felt it would take a lot more than Kathmandu traffic to scare him.

Presently the driver turned off the main road down a tree-shadowed side street. Soon this passed through a small shopping centre before arriving at the imposing entrance to the Yak and Yeti.

It was many times larger than the hotel where she was staying, with a palatial foyer giving glimpses of an arcade of elegant shops to the left, a restaurant on a mezzanine level and, to the right, a large bar.

His fingers light on her elbow, Neal steered her past the pianist playing background music to a table close to the windows overlooking the garden, its darkness illumined by lights outlining the shape of a temple-style pavilion and a free-form swimming pool.

‘What would you like to drink?’ he asked, handing her the drinks menu.

The bar offered various specialities ranging from an Everest Ice Fall to a Yak’s Tail and a Yeti’s Smile, but Sarah was wary of cocktails which might pack a lethal punch.

‘May I have a Campari and soda?’ she asked as a waiter approached.

Neal repeated her request and ordered a beer for himself.

‘So what have you been doing on your first day?’

‘This morning we had a tour, led by our guide, and this afternoon we were free to do our own thing. I think most of the group had naps. The average age has to be sixty...maybe sixty-five because two couples who’ve come together are in their seventies.’

‘Are they in good shape for their age?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m amazed they’ve all chosen this type of holiday. The rest of them are paying customers. I’m the only one who’s on a freebie. When Sandy announced at dinner last night that I’d won the trip as a prize there were a few beady looks...especially as the prize was given by Stars and Celebs magazine which specialises in scandals.’

‘How did that come about?’ Neal asked, raising an eyebrow.

‘Someone who likes doing competitions thought the prize would appeal to me and filled in my name on the form. Actually the winner had a choice of three activity holidays. I could have gone snorkelling in the Cayman islands or skiing at Aspen, Colorado.’

‘Are you wishing you’d opted for one of those?’ he asked.

‘I don’t ski and I’m not very good in the water. This was the trip I wanted. The group may turn out to be more fun as I get to know them better.’

‘I shouldn’t bank on it,’ said Neal. ‘I’ve always found my first impressions are pretty near the mark. Is Sandy a man or a woman?’

‘A mannish woman.’

He frowned. ‘Has she put you in her tent?’

‘No, I’m sharing with Beatrice who seems to suspect me of being a radical feminist and who snores all night long. I don’t suppose it will keep me awake once we’re spending long, strenuous days out of doors, but it did last night.’

‘But she’s not likely to make a pass at you?’

‘Definitely not! I don’t think Sandy would either. She might put me on a charge for insubordination,’ Sarah said, smiling.

He was asking about the other members of the group when a woman’s voice exclaimed, ‘Neal...I didn’t know you were in town!’

He rose to his feet ‘Hello, Julia. How are you?’

‘Great...and you?’ As she asked, she offered her cheek.

She was almost as tall as he was, model-thin, with a cloud of red hair framing her angular face. Her brilliant blue-green eyes were her only claim to beauty, but she exuded personality.

Neal put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks. ‘I’m fine...flew in yesterday. This is Sarah. We met on the plane.’

‘Hello.’ Julia offered her hand. Her grip was unexpectedly strong.

‘Will you join us?’ Neal asked.

‘Thanks, but I can’t. I’m just back from Lukla and still on duty. Tonight’s the end-of-trek booze-up. My lot will be down in a minute.’ She looked in the direction of the lobby. ‘I can see one of them now. How long are you here for?’

‘Till the start of the Everest Marathon.’

‘Oh, great...we can get together later. Bye for now.’ Her smile included Sarah. She strode away, booted and jeaned but with a clingy mohair sweater on her top half, its softness outlining a bosom as surprising as her handshake. Those voluptuous curves above the waist didn’t match the boyish hips and greyhound legs.

‘Julia’s an outdoor pursuits instructor and a trekking guide,’ said Neal. ‘A very tough lady indeed.’ His tone was admiring. ‘We met on a course about five or six years ago.’

‘What sort of course?’ Sarah asked.

‘We were learning how to handle four-wheel-drive vehicles in wilderness terrain. She was the only woman and by far the best driver. That didn’t go down too well with some of the guys,’ he added, with reminiscent amusement.

‘But it didn’t bother you?’

‘I have hang-ups like everyone else...but that isn’t one of them. If a woman handles a car better than I do, it doesn’t hurt my ego. When my parents go out together, it’s always my mother who drives. She enjoys it. My father doesn’t. The traditional demarcation lines have always been flexible in our family.’

How different from mine, Sarah thought, before shifting the conversation into a safer zone by asking if the course had been a preparation for an expedition.

‘In Julia’s case, yes. Not in mine. It just seemed a skill that might come in useful some time.’

When they left the bar, about half an hour later, they passed Julia and her group. They looked a much livelier lot than Sandy’s charges. Although she was talking as they passed, Julia appeared to sense that Neal was nearby. Without breaking off what she was saying, she looked round and waved to him.

The gesture left Sarah feeling that, although it might not apply now, at some stage in their acquaintance they had been close...very close.

‘Shall we walk to the restaurant? It’s not far if we take some short-cuts,’ Neal suggested.

He appeared to know the city like the back of his hand, steering her down dark alleys she would have avoided had she been on her own.

The restaurant was in one of the busy thoroughfares. A signboard Simply Shutters indicated its presence but, on her own, she might not have found the entrance which was through a shadowy passage and up a flight of stairs.

The interior of the place was in marked contrast to the somewhat seedy way in. Inside it was immaculate, the tables decorated with fresh flowers, the young waiters informally dressed in Lacoste shirts with long white aprons.

Neal and Sarah were welcomed by the proprietor, a good-looking Nepalese who spoke perfect English and made pleasant conversation while seeing them settled at their table.

His restaurant was small but stylish and the people already there, although foreigners, did not appear to be tourists but residents of Kathmandu, perhaps working at the various embassies or with foreign aid organisations.

The menu was written on a blackboard and Sarah chose the walnut and mushroom roast. Neal ordered Spanish pork.

‘How long have you been a vegetarian?’ he asked her.

‘I’m not...I just feel in the mood for walnuts and mushrooms.’

‘You had a vegetarian meal on the plane.’

‘How observant of you to notice. But I suppose that’s an essential qualification for a journalist. I ordered vegetarian meals when I booked my flight because somebody told me they’re usually more interesting than ordinary airline food.’ She wondered if this revealed she wasn’t as experienced a traveller as he assumed her to be.

‘Some people think the kosher meals are the best,’ he said. ‘A colleague of mine did a behind-the-scenes feature on the food preparation at Heathrow. The logistics are mind-bending. British Airways alone needs around twenty-five thousand meals for its long-haul flights.’

The reminder that he came from the world of newspapers, a far more exciting milieu than her own humdrum background, made Sarah wonder how long it would take him to suss out that she wasn’t the kind of sophisticated career woman he was used to.

Racking her brains to contribute something amusing to the conversation, she thanked her stars that she had a friend like Naomi who was good at telling jokes and anecdotes. Her own forte—if it could be called that—was listening rather than talking. But by borrowing from Naomi’s repertoire, she managed to make him laugh a couple of times.

Towards the end of the meal, when they had both eaten generous helpings of ginger and apple pudding and were finishing the white wine, he said, ‘Instead of spending another night listening to Beatrice’s snores, why not come back to my place? I don’t snore and the room I’ve been given is a double with a vast bed and its own roof garden where I had breakfast this morning.’

The suggestion took Sarah’s breath away. She had been propositioned before, but never so soon or so openly. The others had done it obliquely, testing the ground before they came to the point which, with two exceptions, had never actually been reached because she had made it clear she wasn’t interested.

This time she was interested, but it was too soon...much too soon. Some women might jump into bed with a man within thirty-six hours of meeting him. Some might do it even sooner. But sex to her could never be something trivial...a fleeting pleasure to be enjoyed and forgotten.

‘I’m sorry...no,’ she said awkwardly. ‘I wouldn’t have come if I’d realised that was what you expected.’ To her chagrin, she found herself blushing.

‘I didn’t expect it,’ he said easily. ‘It just seems a good idea. If you don’t agree, that’s OK. I wasn’t sure that you would. Women usually take longer to make up their mind about these things. Maybe you’re already spoken for.’

‘If I were, I wouldn’t be here, having dinner with you.’ After a pause, she added, ‘If that sounds very old-fashioned, that’s the way we are where I come from. Small-town, provincial England is several light years behind what goes on in London.’

‘Slightly behind...not that far,’ Neal answered dryly. ‘In big cities there are fewer people watching and gossiping. Small-town people tend to be more discreet, but they’re still human beings. My grandfather’s favourite axiom is “Love, lust and heartache are part of the human condition. Always have been, always will be.” He should know. He’s been around a long time.’

‘But it wasn’t the way it is now when he was a young man,’ said Sarah, remembering her father’s attitudes. And he had been decades younger than Neal’s grandfather.

Neal said, ‘Grandpa likes life the way it is now. There’s less hypocrisy. The whole set-up is less rigid.’

She was tempted to say, ‘My father thought it was too slack, that morals had gone down the drain.’ But that was an area of her life she didn’t want to expose to him.

The uncomfortable truth of the matter was that she would prefer to keep almost everything about herself under wraps, knowing that, if she laid all the facts on the line, he would disappear...fast.

Instead of coffee, she was having jasmine tea. Neal had asked for hot chocolate. Her tea was set before her with ceremonious precision by the waiter. She smiled at him. ‘Thank you.’

A few moments later Neal said quietly, ‘I like the way you relate to people...not treating them like robots.’ Before she could answer, he added, ‘What are you doing tomorrow?’

‘We’re being taken to see a couple of temples.’

‘Are you free in the evening? We could do this again...at a different restaurant.’

‘I have to stay with the group. There’s a slide show and final briefing.’

‘You’d have more fun at Rumdoodles.’

‘What’s Rumdoodles?’

He lifted a mobile black eyebrow. ‘You haven’t been there? It’s a bar-cum-restaurant where climbers go to celebrate... the home of The Summiteers’ Club. The ceiling and walls are covered with cardboard cutouts of yetis’ feet signed by climbers and trekkers who’ve done expeditions together. The most famous signatures are Tenzing Norgay’s and Sir Edmund Hillary’s. I wonder who was the first to set foot on the summit of Everest...the Sherpa or the New Zealander? Not that it matters. It was a fantastic achievement.’

It occurred to her that, as well as being a well-known journalist, he might be an outstanding climber. He certainly had the physique for it.

‘Have you done it?’ she asked. ‘Climbed Everest, I mean?’

The planes of his face seemed to harden. His mouth became a grim line. For a moment he looked close to anger. ‘I’m not a mountaineer.’ The answer was clipped and curt. ‘There are too many people going up there, paying huge sums of money and putting others at risk in order to boast that they did it. The mountain is being degraded.’

She could see that although it was he who had brought up the subject, somehow her innocent question had touched him on a raw spot.

Or was it that, despite his seemingly amiable acceptance of her refusal to sleep with him, he was piqued that she wasn’t going to give him another chance to persuade her into bed with him?

Neal signalled to their waiter that he wished for the bill.

‘Please let me pay my share,’ said Sarah, before it arrived.

‘Certainly not You’re my guest,’ he said firmly, the reply accompanied by a smile that made her feel foolish for suggesting it.

Outside the restaurant a hopeful rickshaw driver was eager to be hired but Neal declined his inviting gestures.

‘We’ll walk back, if that’s all right with you,’ he said to Sarah.

‘It’s fine with me. Some exercise would be good after all that delicious food.’

Although it wasn’t late, already the streets were quieter with many shops closed or closing, giving the impression that before long everyone local would have retired for the night.

The byways through which he led her were even quieter. Suddenly, in a poorly lit lane with the brighter lights of a main road about fifty yards ahead, he put a hand on her arm and drew her to a halt.

‘We’re nearly back to your hotel. I’ll see you to the door but say goodnight here.’

Before she realised what he meant, she was in his arms being kissed.

It was a long time since her last kiss and it hadn’t been anything like this. The man had been only a little taller than she was and had spent most of his life in a car or behind a desk. She had not felt herself overpowered, as she did now, by a superior force which, even though it wasn’t trying to subdue her, made her feel disturbingly helpless.

Nor had the other man’s mouth taken possession of hers with the same confident assurance that his kiss would be welcome. He had not been sure of himself. Put off by his lack of confidence, she had pushed him away.

Neal didn’t give her the option of accepting or rejecting his kiss. He held her securely against him, one arm round her waist and his other hand cradling her head while he made it clear to them both that he wanted to make love to her... and knew that she wanted it too but wasn’t ready to admit it.

It was so long since she had experienced such feelings that Sarah had almost forgotten how it felt to be swept away by the overwhelming emotions surging through her body now. She was intensely conscious of the tall, strong frame of the man who was pressing her to him.

She had thought that desire was over for her. That never again would she feel the wild, wanton longings she had once felt, with such disastrous results. But now, long dormant but not dead, they sprang into eager life as she felt the hard wall of his chest against her breasts, and the muscular breadth of his shoulders under her wandering hands.

‘Are you sure you won’t change your mind?’

The question was a husky murmur as he released her lips to explore, with his, the smooth texture of her cheek.

‘Let me go, Neal...please.’

With the flat of her hands, she attempted to make space between them, and, surprisingly, succeeded.

He did as she asked, stepping back and dropping his arms. ‘If you insist...though I can’t think why,’ he said sardonically. ‘It isn’t what you really want. It certainly isn’t what I want.’

She combed her hair with her fingers, trying to ignore the tingling and throbbing inside her. ‘We’re strangers... we’ve only just met. You may not mind that. I do. Attraction isn’t enough for me. I need to know people... trust them...before I—’ She left the sentence unfinished.

‘Trust is instinctive, like attraction,’ he answered. ‘All the important reactions we feel in our bones before our brains get to work. But if you want to postpone the pleasures in store for us, that’s your privilege.’

‘Men can take the pleasures for granted. Women can’t,’ she retorted somewhat tartly, remembering a relationship that hadn’t worked out. She began to move on.

‘I can’t argue with that,’ he said dryly. ‘But I think you know in your bones that it wouldn’t be like that for us.’

‘My bones aren’t always reliable.’

‘Have you had many lovers?’

Like his proposition at the table, the question startled her. In her world people didn’t ask such things. They repressed their curiosity...and much else.

‘Hardly any compared with your tally, I should imagine.’

He caught hold of her hand. ‘What makes you think I’m a womaniser?’

Knowing she wouldn’t be able to disengage her fingers unless he chose to let her, she said crossly, ‘Because that’s the way you come over.’

‘Time isn’t on my side, Sarah,’ he said gently. ‘The slow approach isn’t practical in these circumstances. You’re leaving town the day after tomorrow. By the time you come back, I shan’t have much time left. It will be a month after that before I get back to the UK. Between now and then, anything could happen. My motto is “seize the day”.’

‘Mine is “look before you leap”...especially before you leap into bed with someone.’

‘Are you naturally cautious, or has life made you that way?’

‘Most people get more sensible as they get older.’

How old did he think she was? she wondered. She knew she looked younger than her age because a lot of people expressed surprise when they found out what it was. All the things she had been through hadn’t left their marks on her skin as they did to some women. The ash-blonde look didn’t hide any threads of grey like the colour rinses of some of her stressed-out contemporaries.

‘Were you ever not sensible?’ he asked, on a teasing note.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said, her tone wry. ‘At seventeen I was as crazy as they come.’ Crazy to break free. Madly in love. ‘But that was a long time ago.’

They had come to the gateway to her hotel. Still holding her hand, he came with her to the building’s imposing entrance.

‘If you decide to skip the official programme tomorrow night, you know where to contact me.’

In full view of the uniformed doorman who had already opened the door and was saluting, Neal lifted her hand and brushed a light kiss on the back of it. ‘Goodnight, Sarah. I hope we’ll meet again.’

He said goodnight in Nepali to the doorman before turning and striding away, leaving her staring after him, halftempted to call him back.

But she didn’t and moments later, without looking round, Neal went out of the gate and disappeared.

Sarah spent the free morning before the group’s departure by air to Lukla wandering round town, grappling with the realisation that she didn’t really want to go. She wanted to see Neal again more than she wanted to do the trek. Perhaps she would have felt differently if the others in the group had been more congenial. But they weren’t, and she knew that situation wasn’t going to improve with closer acquaintance.

After a while she went into the garden behind Pilgrims Book House and ordered a pot of jasmine tea. There were not many people there that morning but presently another woman on her own wandered in and sat down not far from Sarah. She looked interesting and Sarah would have liked to start up a conversation but the other woman began writing postcards.

Some time later she rose and hurried in the direction of the lavatories, leaving her pack at the table. Either she was unusually casual about her belongings or her errand was urgent.

While she was gone, more people passed through the garden, either coming from the bookshop or going in by the back way. Sarah kept an eye on the pack. Perhaps there wasn’t a high risk that an opportunist thief would steal it, but such things did happen.

Suddenly the pack’s owner reappeared, very unsteady on her feet and covered with blood. She reeled back to her table and sank down, looking as if she might pass out at any moment.

At this point a waiter arrived with her order, took in the streams of blood and said worriedly, ‘Is there are a problem?’

‘Yes, there is,’ said Sarah, taking charge. ‘This lady needs medical attention. Please call a taxi...quickly.’ She bent over the injured woman, trying to determine how seriously she was hurt. ‘What happened? Can you tell me?’

‘I was sick...it made my head swim...I fell against something hard. I think I knocked myself out I’m not certain...’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll look after you,’ Sarah said reassuringly. Luckily, she had the address of a recommended clinic on a slip of paper in her passport. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Rose Jones.’ She burst into tears.

The clinic’s waiting room, leading off the reception area, was crowded with people when Sarah and Rose arrived. But, seeing the state Rose was in, the woman on duty at the desk quickly arranged for a colleague to show them to a room at the back of the premises.

‘The doctor won’t keep you long,’ said the second woman.

Rose, by now a bit more composed, sat down and closed her eyes. Sarah looked round the room. In the centre was a high examination couch. Everything was very clean and orderly. She knew that the clinic was staffed by foreign doctors and was famous for its research into the causes and treatment of the illness jokingly known as the Kathmandu Quickstep.

Moments later the door opened and Neal walked in. His left eyebrow shot up in surprise at the sight of Sarah. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘What are you doing here?’ she countered.

But already he’d switched his attention to Rose. ‘Hello...I’m Dr Kennedy. Let’s get you up on the couch and I’ll be taking a look while you tell me what happened.’

As he drew her to her feet and assisted her onto the couch, Sarah gaped at him in astonishment. He had told her he was a journalist, a staff writer on The Journal. He’d said nothing about being a doctor. Had he misled her deliberately? If so...why?

CHAPTER THREE

ALTHOUGH she had flinched and quivered when Sarah had tried very gently to clean up round the injury, Rose submitted to Neal’s examination without any nervous reactions. She repeated her explanation of what had happened and lay still while he worked on the wound.

‘It’s actually quite superficial,’ he told her. ‘The vomiting sounds like a food poisoning. Where did you eat last night?’

She told him, describing her meal which had finished with apple pie and curd, as yogurt was called locally.

‘Could be the curd,’ he said.

Sarah watched him perform various routine tests, including making Rose follow with her eyes the movements of his finger from side to side and from the tip of her nose to a point several feet away from it.

He then asked her what shots she had had before coming to Nepal and when she had last had a tetanus booster.

‘Right: the nurse will give you a shot to settle your tummy and then you can rest upstairs for half an hour before going back to your hotel. Take it easy for the rest of the day. Tomorrow you should feel OK,’ he told her.

Before leaving the room, he said quietly to Sarah, ‘I’ll have a word with you later...while she’s lying down.’

A few minutes later a nurse came to give Rose an injection. Then, with Sarah following, she helped Rose up two flights of stairs to a small room with a bed in it.

‘You won’t leave me,’ Rose appealed to Sarah, while she was having a blanket spread over her.

‘No, I may pop out for a coffee, but I’ll be here when you come down,’ Sarah promised.

In the light of what Rose had confided on the way to the clinic, she was in no state to be left on her own.

Neal was at the foot of the staircase when Sarah returned to the ground floor. ‘We’ll go round the corner for a coffee,’ he said briskly. ‘How did you come to get involved?’

As they left the clinic, Sarah explained what had happened from her point of view.

‘Now perhaps you’d explain why you fed me all that stuff about being a journalist,’ she finished indignantly.

‘I am a journalist... a medical journalist. I qualified as a doctor, then came to the conclusion it would be more useful to write about how to stay healthy rather than spend my time lobbing out pills to people who, in many cases, had wrecked their health either from lack of information or from deliberate disregard of the basic rules of self preservation,’ he added sardonically.

‘You didn’t say you were on the staff of this clinic.’

‘I’m not. I’m a friend of someone who is and as they were under pressure when I came by to tell him something, he asked me to take a look at Rose Jones. Is she here on her own or with friends?’

‘She’s alone at the moment. She came with her husband. It’s their honeymoon...but it’s gone wrong. He’s somewhere up in the mountains and she’s by herself. I gather they had a big row and she came back to Kathmandu on her own.’

‘It’s not the first time that’s happened, and it won’t be the last,’ Neal said dryly. ‘Don’t tell me, let me guess. She didn’t like the rough and ready conditions in most of the trekking lodges. The very basic amenities were too much for her delicate sensibilities. She’d had no idea how tough it was going to be.’

‘I don’t think either of them had. They’d done some fell-walking together and Rose enjoyed that. But this trip went wrong from the moment they arrived. Apparently it was arranged by some people who run a small shop in their home town and have Nepalese connections. Even the hotel in Kathmandu where they spent their first night, and where she’s staying now, isn’t up to the standard they expected. But I can’t understand her husband letting her come back alone.’

‘Perhaps he can’t understand her being prepared to desert him so soon after marrying him,’ said Neal.

Preoccupied by her concern for Rose, and by Neal’s revelation that he was a qualified doctor, Sarah had been paying no attention to her surroundings. Only now did she realise that they were in familiar territory. The building looming ahead was the Yak and Yeti where they had come the night before last.

In the bar they sat at the same window table where they had had drinks.

‘Coffee...tea...or something stronger?’ Neal asked.

‘Tea for me, please.’ Reminded by where they were of the woman called Julia, she wondered if, yesterday, they had got together.

‘It could be tricky contacting Rose’s husband,’ he said, looking thoughtful. ‘Have you any idea when they were due to get back if their trek had gone to plan?’

‘I didn’t go into that. She was crying...on the verge of hysterics. I just tried to calm her down. I think she was fairly distraught before she threw up and knocked herself out in the loo. It’s a nervous-making situation: being alone in a nasty hotel in an unknown city after a major row with your bridegroom.’

Neal said, ‘Where did you go for your honeymoon?’

For a few seconds the question fazed her. Then she collected herself and said calmly, ‘I’ve never been on a honeymoon.’

He lifted an eyebrow. ‘You surprise me. I would have guessed that you’d walked up the aisle very young and it hadn’t worked out.’

‘You would have guessed wrong. Like you I’m a dedicated single.’

‘With women who look the way you do that usually means a career conflict. You said you worked with computers. Was that a throwaway reference to something extremely high-powered? Are you a computer scientist at the cutting edge of research?’

Sarah laughed and shook her head. ‘I’m the computer equivalent of the man who comes to fix the washing machine or the dishwasher...except that I’m female and I fix personal computers. But I have no idea how to fix Rose’s problem. There has to be some way to contact her husband, surely?’

‘Don’t worry about that. I’ll look into it. Do you have the time to take her back to her hotel? What time are you leaving town?’

It pleased her that he thought her capable of being a computer scientist and that he hadn’t forgotten today was the day the group left.

‘Not till after lunch. We’re leaving for the airport at two and spending the night at Lukla to start the trek tomorrow.’

Neal leaned towards her, his forearms resting on his knees, his long fingers interlaced. ‘I wish you weren’t leaving so soon. I feel this is one of those times that “taken at the flood leads on to fortune”...at least in the sense of some memorable days, and possibly nights, together.’

She didn’t know how to respond but just then the waiter returned and saved her from saying anything.

She watched him unloading his tray, thinking it far more likely that a brief affair with Neal, rather than leading on to fortune, would fulfil the continuation of that famous quotation and, like so much of her life, be ‘bound in shallows and in miseries’.

‘When you were here before, did you go to Bhaktapur?’ he asked, as the waiter went away.

Sarah knew the moment of truth could not be put off any longer. ‘I haven’t been here before. This is my first visit. I’m sorry my T-shirt misled you. It was lent me by a friend. But I should have put you right.’

Her confession was followed by a long moment of silence. She could not read his expression. Had the lie by omission made him distrust her?

‘Why didn’t you?’ he asked.

‘It’s hard to explain. I’m not usually careless with the truth. I suppose I wanted you to see me as someone more interesting than I am. We were strangers on a plane and I thought you might be bored if I admitted to being a “newbie”.’

As a journalist, used to computer-speak, he would know that was the somewhat derogatory name given to the inexperienced by those who knew their way around.

‘Who makes you feel you’re not interesting?’ he asked.

‘No one...not in my own world. But your world is different. I’ve read enough to know that real travellers haven’ t much time for tourists. I’m not even much of a tourist. The truth is I’ve never been anywhere. This is my first time abroad, can you believe?’

‘Considering how comfortable you seem, I do find that hard to believe. When I saw you in the airport at Doha, I took you for someone who’d chalked up a lot of air miles.’

‘I wish I had. I always wanted to travel, but my life went another way.’ She glanced at her watch. Already it was fifteen minutes since they’d left the clinic. ‘We mustn’t be too long.’ She began to pour out the tea. ‘I’m glad I’ve got it off my chest. I didn’t like not being honest with you.’

‘As long as you promise not to do it again, I’ll forgive you. Only straight answers from now on...agreed?’

For a second or two she hesitated. If she agreed, would he want to open doors she would prefer to keep closed?

Another quotation from Shakespeare came into her head. This above all: to thine own self be true...thou canst not then be false to any man.

‘Agreed,’ she said firmly, handing him a cup of tea. ‘Tell me about this place you mentioned...Bhaktapur? What’s special about it? I don’t think Naomi has been there. She’s the friend who lent me the T-shirt and made me wear-in my boots.’

‘What’s special about Bhaktapur is that it’s still the way Khatmandu used to be when the only people who came here were mountaineers and hippies. I don’t think Bhaktapur will stay the way it is now. Tourism changes places... always for the worse unfortunately. But right now it’s still a magic place. You mustn’t go home without seeing it...especially the golden gate. It’s not as famous as San Francisco’s Golden Gate, but if someone could only see one of them, I’d recommend Bhaktapur’s.’

‘Having seen both presumably?’

‘Yes. I spent a year travelling before I switched careers.’

Sarah was silent, sipping the hot tea and thinking thoughts it would be tactless to disclose to him.

Disconcertingly, he read her mind. ‘You’re thinking that journalism is a trashy occupation compared with medicine. I’ve had lots of people put that to me. They forget that if it were not for investigative journalists, a lot of bad things would continue unchecked. Some forms of journalism are tacky, but a free press is still our main safeguard against bad governments and unscrupulous vested interests such as some of the drug manufacturers. Just recently I wrote an exposé of racketeering in cosmetic surgery. It carried more weight coming from a doctor and it certainly warned a lot more women to be careful who they trust their faces and bodies to than I could have done any other way.’

‘You’re right, of course,’ she conceded. ‘I hadn’t thought it through. My attitude to journalists is coloured by all the bad things we know they do...targeting public figures in the hope of catching them doing something they shouldn’t...hounding people at times when they need to be private...concentrating on the horrors and ignoring the good side of life.’

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