Sleepless Nights

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.