was the Lear with her father and Garry aboard.
'Have you picked up the signal?' she wondered, as she strained her eyes into the black heavens. 'Can you hear me, Daddy? Do you know I'm here?' She saw nothing, not even the shine of a single star, and the sound of engines overhead faded and left only the soughing of the wind and the rumble and crash as the thunderstorm fired its opening broadsides.
The rain began to fall again, and she ran back into the hut. She dried her hair and her bare feet and stood at the window looking down towards the beach.
'Please God. Let them know we are here. Help Sean to find us.' At breakfast, Nicholas said to her: 'I haven't had a chance to try out my new soccer ball.' 'But we've played with it every day, Nicky.' 'Yes, but... I mean with good players.' And then, realizing what he had said: 'You are a good player - for a girl. I think you would make an excellent goalkeeper -with some more practice.. But, Mamma, I would like some of my friends from school.' 'I don't know.' Isabella looked at Adra. 'Are your friends allowed here?' Adra did not look round from the wood-stove. 'Ask Jose,' she said. 'Perhaps it will be allowed.' That afternoon Jose and Nicholas arrived at the compound with a jeep-load of small black boys. The soccer match on the beach was noisy and passionately contested. On three occasions Isabella and Jose had to untangle a knot of punching and kicking bodies. After each battle, play was resumed as though nothing had happened.
Isabella was selected as goalkeeper for the Sons of the Revolution. But after she had let through five goals Nicholas, the team captain, came to her tactfully. 'I think you are tired, Mamma, and would like to rest now.' And she was sent to the sidelines.
The Sons of the Revolution beat the Angolan Tigers twenty-six goals to five, and Isabella felt very guilty about those five. After the final whistle Isabella produced a twokilo bag of toffees and chocolates from her gift-box, and her lack of athletic prowess was immediately forgiven by her captain and both teams.
At dinner Nicholas chatted easily, and Isabella tried to act as naturally, but her eyes kept straying to the window of the hut and the beach. If Sean were coming, he would come tonight. She noticed Adra watching her thoughtfully.
She made another effort to follow Nicky's conversation, but she was thinking about Adra now.
Could they take her with them? she pondered. Would she want to come? Adra was such a reticent and secretive person that she could never even guess at her true feelings, except her love for Nicky - that was all that was certain.
Could she trust her enough to warn her of the rescue? she wondered. Should she give Adra the choice of coming away or remaining? In fairness, could she take Nicky from her after all these years of devotion to him? Surely it would break her heart, and yet could she trust her enough to tell her?
Could she risk their freedom, hers and Nicky's, and could she risk the lives of her brother and all those other gallant young men who were attempting to rescue them? More than once during the meal she was on the point of speaking to Adra, but each time she shied away from it at the last moment.
When she tucked Nicky into bed he lifted his face to her and she kissed him quite naturally. He held her tightly for a moment.
'Do you have to go away again, Mamma?' he asked.
'Would you come with me, if you could?' she countered.
'And leave Padre and Adra?' He lapsed into silence. It was the first time he had ever spoken to her of Ramsey, and it troubled her deeply. Was it respect or fear she had detected in his voice? She could not be certain.
On an impulse she began: 'Nicky, tonight - if anything happens, don't be afraid.' 'What will happen?' He sat up with interest.
'I don't know. Probably nothing.' He looked disappointed and dropped back on the pillow.
'Good night, Nicky,' she whispered.
Adra was waiting for her in the darkness between the huts. It was the opportunity Isabella had waited for.
'Adra,' she whispered. 'I have to talk to you. Tonight...' she broke off.
'Tonight?' Adra prompted her, and when still she hesitated Adra went on: 'Yes, tonight he will come. He says to expect him. He could not come before, but tonight he will come to you.' Isabella felt panic rise to wash reason away. 'Oh God -are you sure?' Then she caught herself. 'That is wonderful. I have waited so long.' All thoughts of warning Adra of the rescue attempt were wiped from her mind. How could she face Ramsey - now that she realized what a cruet and evil monster he truly was? How could she let him touch her without trembling?
'I must go now,' Adra whispered, and slipped away into the darkness, leaving her alone with her terror. She had planned to wear jeans and a jersey beneath her nightdress ready to 1~ave when Sean- came, but she dared not do that now.
She lay so long alone in the darkness beneath the mosquito-net that at last she began to hope that Scan would come to her before Ramsey did, or at least that dawn would save her.
Then suddenly she knew that he was in the hut with her. She smelt him before she heard him. The faint but distinctive odour of his body that had always aroused her so readily. Her nostrils and every nerve in her body jumped tight. Her breathing seized up in her throat.
She heard the whisper of his feet across the floor of the hut, and then his touch upon the bed.
'Ramsey.' Her breath escaped on an explosive gust.
'Yes, it is me.' His voice struck her like a blow in the face.
She felt him lift the mosquito-net and she lay rigid. His finger-tips brushed her face, and she thought she might scream aloud. She did not know how to act, what to say to him. 'He will know.' She realized that she was panicking. She dare not move or speak.
'Bella?' he said, and she heard the first suspicion in his tone. In sudden inspiration she reached up and seized him.
'Don't talk,' she whispered fiercely. 'I cannot wait another moment - don't say anything. Take me now, Ramsey.'
She knew she was not acting out of character. Often in that distant happy past she had been like this - urgent, wild with desire, brooking not an instant's delay.
She sat up and began to tear at his clothing. I have to keep him from talking, from asking any questions, she thought desperately. I have to quieten and reassure him that nothing has changed.
With terror in her heart and the smell of him filling her head she let his hands lift her nightdress and then the hard smooth naked length of him slide into the bed beside her.
'Bella,' he whispered harshly. 'I have wanted you too much for too long.' And his mouth covered hers. It felt as though he were sucking out her very being from between her lips, the way he might suck the juice and flesh from a ripe orange.
With shame at the perversity and treachery of her own body she felt herself overwhelmed by raw sexual passion. She was making love to a sleek and beautiful animal, something inhuman and cruel and infinitely dangerous.
Fear mingled with lust to spur and goad her. She felt like that doomed creature in the bull- ring of Granada whose tragic struggle and lingering death had moved her so when long ago she and her love had been fresh and young.
At last when they were spent together, he lay on top of her as though he were dead. She could not move; her guilt and his weight threatened to suffocate her. She hated herself almost as much as she hated him.
'It was never like that before,' he whispered. 'You never did that to me before.' She could not trust herself to reply. She could not know what might come out once she began to speak. She realized that she was on the verge of a terrible destructive madness - and yet when he lay beside her and he stroked her and gently touched the most intimate parts of her body her thighs fell apart and she felt her flesh melt and her bones soften.
He began to speak softly. He told her how he loved her.
He spoke abut the future, when the three of them would be safe and happy in some secure and secret place. His lies were beautiful; they conjured up wonderful pictures in her mind. Although she knew that they were false, she wanted desperately to believe them.
When at last he fell asleep with his face pressed between her naked breasts, she stroked the crisp springing curls of his head with a terrible regret and a longing for things which she knew did not exist. So deep was her distress that it had driven from her consciousness all other thoughts, until abruptly and shockingly the night was ripped through by the screams of a woman and the sound of gunfire.
She felt Ramsey come awake and at the same instant spring from the bed, naked and lithe as a jungle cat. She heard the metallic snicker of a firearm as he snatched the pistol from the holster that lay on the floor beside the bed. The night was lit by flame and explosion. She saw Ramsey silhouetted against the light from the window. He held the pistol at the level of his eyes, pointed at the roof, ready for instant use.
Then she heard Sean's beloved voice, shouting for her in the darkness beyond the window: 'Bella, where are you?' She saw Ramsey's dark shape dart to the window, and the pistol glinted in the light of an exploding grenade as he levelled it.
'Look out, Sean!' she screamed. 'Man with a gun!' Ramsey fired twice, changing position between each shot. There was no answering fire from beyond the window. She realized that Sean dare not fire for fear of hitting her or
