The Sacred Vault

His tone became sarcastic. ‘I didn’t mean me. I meant your boyfriend, Captain Perfect. He’ll give you a helping hand . . . and try to cop a feel with it.’

‘Oh, Eddie! You’re not really jealous of Rowan, are you?’

He grinned, exposing the gap between his front teeth. ‘Don’t be daft. I’m just taking the piss.’ A beat. ‘Mostly.’

‘You don’t have anything to worry about. Rowan and I broke up a long time ago.’ She thought about it for a moment. ‘God, it’s been twelve years. I was only twenty. I can’t believe how much has happened since then.’

‘And how old was he?’

‘Twenty-six.’

‘So he was a cradle-snatcher?’

‘And what does that make you?’ she asked with a smile. ‘You’re the same age as Rowan.’

‘Yeah, but you’re older now. Half the man’s age plus seven years, that’s how old the woman has to be to stop the bloke from being a creepy perv.’

‘He was twenty-six, I was twenty. Do the math.’

He worked it out. ‘Bollocks! Although, hang on,’ he continued as she laughed, ‘how old were you when you started going out?’

‘Nineteen.’

‘Ha!’

‘And Rowan was a year younger as well.’

Another few seconds of mental arithmetic. ‘Definitely on the dodginess borderline. Anyway, I still think he’s got his eye on you.’

‘Only as a friend, Eddie.’ Her mood became one of reverie as her husband sat beside her. ‘He was a great friend, actually. He helped me through a really tough part of my life, when my parents died. I honestly don’t know what I would have done without him. Or what I’d be doing now.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I almost gave up on archaeology. I mean, it got my parents killed - if they hadn’t been obsessed with finding Atlantis, they’d still be alive. I almost dropped out because for a while I didn’t want anything more to do with it. Rowan changed my mind. So I stayed on, got my degree and then my PhD, and, well, here I am.’

Eddie shook his head with a wry expression. ‘Can’t imagine what you’d be doing now if you weren’t an archaeologist.’

‘I dread to think. I once had a summer job in an office and I hated every minute of it. And what about you? Where would you be if you hadn’t met me?’

‘Christ knows. Running around the world getting into trouble, probably.’

‘Oh, so no change there.’

‘Ha fuckin’ ha. I’d still be doing the same kind of work as I was then, though. It’s what I’m best at.’ He looked at a shelf across the room.

Nina followed his gaze. ‘Thinking about Hugo?’ she asked softly. The shelf contained mementos of their pasts; propped against a Cuban pottery figurine of Fidel Castro was a photograph of Eddie and another man, who had a long face and a prominent nose.

‘Yeah,’ said Eddie. ‘Wish he could have been at the do tonight.’ Hugo Castille, his friend and comrade from his troubleshooter days, had been killed during the hunt for Atlantis. ‘Other people too. Like Mitzi.’ He shook his head. ‘Shit, maybe I’m getting old. Starting to lose more friends than I’m making.’

She gave him a sympathetic look. ‘You’ve made a friend of everybody you’ve helped, Eddie. And there have been a lot of them. Trust me, I’m one of them.’

‘Thanks, love.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘So I’ve kind of got Rowan to thank for us getting together? I suppose that makes him an okay bloke.’

‘High praise indeed, coming from you.’ Another reminiscent smile. ‘You know, when I was a teenager and he was helping my parents as a grad student, I had such a crush on him . . .’

‘Yeah, I really needed to hear that.’

She stroked his face. ‘Don’t worry. I made my choice. And I think it was the right one. Usually . . .’

He swatted at her playfully as he stood and headed for the kitchen. ‘I’m going to put the kettle on. You want anything?’

‘No thanks,’ she called after him. ‘Just a decent night’s sleep. The exhibition opens in two days, and there are still a hundred and one things I need to sort out.’

‘What?’

‘I said, there’s loads still to organise. I’ll be on the phone all tomorrow. Oh, the joys of management.’ She leaned back, then remembered something. ‘Eddie?’

No answer. ‘Eddie!’ she said, more loudly.

He appeared in the doorway. ‘Yeah, I heard you. What?’

‘Actually, it’s about you hearing me. Or not. Is everything okay?’

‘Why wouldn’t it be?’

‘Because a couple of times at the party you didn’t hear me - even when I was right behind you. And I’ve noticed it a few times recently. Maybe you should see a specialist, get your hearing tested. After all,’ she said, lightly humorous, ‘you’ve been close to a lot of loud bangs over the years.’

A conflicted look crossed his square face, immediately making her regret her levity. She sat up, concerned. ‘Eddie, what is it?’

He sat beside her. ‘The thing is . . . I did see a specialist.’

‘What? When?’

‘About two months back. I’d been having trouble on and off since that bloody room in the pyramid with the big pipe-organ thing.’ Nina remembered it all too well, an ancient booby trap deep within the Pyramid of Osiris designed to deafen intruders with an unbearable blast of sound. ‘So I made an appointment to have my ears checked out.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

He shrugged; not dismissively, but in a kind of resignation. ‘’Cause I thought it’d go away on its own. It always did before - like you said, I’ve heard a lot of loud bangs. Only this time . . . it didn’t.’

‘What did the specialist say?’

He stood and went into the study, returning with a manila envelope. ‘Let’s see,’ he said, taking out a sheet of paper. ‘ “Permanent threshold shift due to repeated damaging levels of noise exposure . . . sensorineural hearing loss to a moderate degree in the high frequencies . . .” In other words, my hearing’s fucked.’

Nina felt suddenly cold, the happiness of the evening evaporating. ‘ “Permanent”?’

He held her hands to provide reassurance. ‘It’s not like I’ve gone stone deaf, and he said it wouldn’t get any worse for now. It just means I can’t hear as well as I used to, and it’s worst with high-frequency sounds, like voices. Well, women’s voices, basically.’

She wasn’t sure how to respond. ‘Oh, God. Eddie, that’s . . .’

He smiled crookedly. ‘You’ll just have to nag me in a deeper voice if you want me to hear you.’

Nina wasn’t amused. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Well . . . you know what I’m like. Not big on owning up to being less than one hundred per cent at anything.’

‘Yeah, I’ve noticed.’ She managed a slight smile.

‘Tchah. But yeah, it’s made me think a bit. If one thing starts going, then what’s next?’

‘Is that why you’ve been spending so much time at the gym? Fending off the inevitable ravages of age?’

‘Oi!’ he protested. ‘Thirty-eight’s not old. And I’m still in top nick - going to the gym’s just a way to keep from getting a fat arse from sitting in an office all day. You should come with me.’

‘Are you saying I’ve got a fat ass?’

He made a show of examining it. ‘Your arse is a thing of beauty. And women always look better with curves anyway.’

‘You are saying I’ve got a fat ass!’ They exchanged smiles, then Nina’s face became more serious. ‘So what are you going to do?’

‘Not much I can do. It’s not like when I trained back up after breaking my arm - I can’t lift weights with my