rode down in the lift and walked out into the chill of evening. He drew his overcoat tighter across his chest and took a slow breath of clean cold air. Then he gathered himself and walked away with the long determined stride of a with important work to do.
When Michael left London he took with him a little of the special joy that had filled Isabella's LIFE over these last weeks.
She drove him out to Heathrow. 'We always seem to be saying goodbye, Mickey,' she whispered. 'I shall miss you so, as I always do.' 'I'll see you at the wedding.' 'There will probably be a christening before that,' she answered, and he held her at arm's length.
'You didn't tell me,' he accused.
'His wife,' she explained. 'We are moving to Spain at the end of January.
Ramsey wants the baby to be born there. He will adopt it under Spanish law.' 'You must let me know where you are - at all times -and remember your promise.' She nodded. 'You'll be the very first one that I'll call on for help, if I need it.' At the doors to the departure-hall, he looked back and blew her a kiss.
When he disappeared she felt chilled with loneliness.
This was a feeling that evaporated swiftly in the Iberian sunlight.
The apartment that Ramsey found was in a tiny fishing village a few miles down the coast from Mdlaga. It occupied the top two floors, and had a wide paved terrace that looked out over the tops of the pines to the blue Mediterranean beyond. During the day, while Ramsey was at the bank, Isabella in her tiniest bikini lay out on a protected corner of the terrace where the cold wind could not reach her and the sun tanned her face and body to the colour of dark amber while she wrote the final section of her thesis.
Born in Africa, she was a child of the sun, and she had missed it desperately during the London years.
Ramsey was called upon by his bank to travel as frequently as when they had lived in London. She hated to see him go, but between his trips there were lyrical interludes spent together. While in Mdlaga his bank duties were light and he could slip away for the entire afternoon and take her to secret and unfrequented coves along the seashore, or to out-of-the-way restaurants that served the local seafood specialities and country wines.
His wound had healed cleanly. 'It was the expert nurse I had,' he told her.
It left a pair of dimpled scars on his chest and back that were glossy with a pink cicatrice. The sun tanned the rest of his body to a much darker tone than hers, like oiled mahogany. In contrast to the tan, his eyes seemed a lighter brighter green.
While Ramsey was away she had Adra for company. Where Ramsey had found her she was never able to ascertain. However, the choice was a master-stroke, for Adra Olivares was a marvelous substitute for Nanny. In some ways, she surpassed the original, for she was not as garrulous and prying and domineering as the old woman.
Adra was a slim but physically robust woman in her early forties. She had jet hair with just a few strands of dead white that she wore sleeked back into a bun the size of a cricket ball behind her head. Her face was dark and solemn, but at the same time kind and humorous. Her hands were brown and square and powerful when she performed the housework, but quick and light when she cooked or ironed Isabella's clothes to a crisp crackling perfection, or again they were gentle and infinitely comforting when she massaged Isabella's aching back or anointed her bulging sun-browned belly with olive oil to keep the muscles supple and the skin smooth and young and free of stretch-marks.
She took over Isabella's tuition in the Spanish language, and their progress was so rapid that it surprised Ramsey. Within a month, Isabella was reading the local newspapers with ease, and arguing fluently with the plumber and the television repair man, or supporting Adra as she haggled with the stall-holders in the local marketplace.
Although she loved to question Isabella about her family and Africa, Adra was not forthcoming about her own origins. Isabella presumed that she was a local woman, until one morning she noticed amongst the mail in their postbox an envelope addressed to her that was stamped and franked in Havana, Cuba.
When she remarked, 'Is it from your husband or family, Adra? Who is writing to you from Cuba?' the woman was brusque.
'It's only a friend, sefiora. My husband is dead.' And for the rest of the day she was withdrawn and taciturn. It took until the end of the week for her to return to normal, and Isabella was careful not to mention the Cuban letter again.
As the weeks passed, and the time of Isabella's parturition drew closer, so Adra's anticipation of the event increased. She took an intense interest in the layette that Isabella was assembling. Michael had made the original contribution. An airmail parcel arrived from Johannesburg with a set of six cot-sheets and pillow-slips in finest cotton piped with blue silk ribbon, and an exquisite pair of woollen baby- jackets. Each day Isabella added to the collection and Adra helped her with her selections. Together they scoured every possible source of babywear within a radius of an hour's drive in the Mini.
Whenever Ramsey returned from his business trips, he always brought a further contribution. Although the clothing was often large enough to fit a teenager, Isabella was so touched by his concern that she could not bring herself to point out the discrepancy. On one occasion, he returned with a pram whose capacity, suspension and glistening paintwork were worthy of the Rolls-Royce workshops in Crewe. Adra presented Isabella with a silk christening-robe that she had made herself with antique lace that she told Isabella came from her grandmother's wedding-dress. Isabella was so touched that she broke down and wept. Her tears seemed to come closer to the surface as her pregnancy progressed, and she thought often of Weltevreden.
When she telephoned her father and Nana, it was difficult to prevent herself blurting out something about Ramsey or the baby. They believed that she had merely gone into retreat in Spain to finish the thesis.
On several occasions before her pregnancy made it unwise for her to travel, Ramsey asked her to undertake errands for him during his absence. In each case, she had merely to fly to a foreign destination in Europe, North Africa or the Middle East, there to make a rendezvous, receive an envelope or small packet and return home. When she flew to Tel Aviv, she used her South African passport, but in Benghazi and Cairo she showed her British passport. All these trips lasted only a day and a night and were uneventful, but served to vary her lifestyle and give her a fine opportunity to shop for the baby. Only a week after her trip to Benghazi, the monarchy of King Idris I was overthrown by a military coup ditat led by Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi, and Isabella was appalled when she realized how close she and her baby had come to being caught up in the revolution. Ramsey shared her concern and promised not to ask her to undertake another errand until after the baby was born. She never asked him if her journeys were in connection with bank business or the darker clandestine side of his life.
Once a week, she went for a check-up at the clinic that Ramsey had selected for her. Adra always accompanied her. The gynaecologist was a suave and cultured Spaniard with an austere aristocratic face and pale competent hands that felt cool against her skin as he examined her.
'Everything proceeds perfectly, sefiora. Nature is doing her work, and you are young and healthy and well formed for the task of childbirth.' 'Will it be a boy?' 'Of course, sehora. A beautiful healthy boy. I give you my personal guarantee.' The clinic was a former Moorish palace, restored and renovated, and equipped with the most modern medical equipment. After the doctor had taken her on a tour of the facilities, Isabella realized the wisdom of Ramsey's choice. She was sure that it was the finest available.
During one of her visits, when the doctor had finished his examination and Isabella was dressing in the curtained cubicle, she overheard him discussing her condition with Adra in the waiting-room. Isabella's Spanish was by this time good enough for her to appreciate that the exchange was technical and specific, like that of two professionals. It surprised her.
On the drive home, she stopped at a sea-front restaurant and, as was their established custom, ordered ice-cream and chocolate sauce for both of them.
'I heard you talking to the doctor, Adra,' Isabella said, with a mouthful of ice-cream. 'You must once have been a nurse, you know so much about it - all those technical words.' Once again, she encountered that strangely hostile reaction from the woman.
'I am too stupid for that. I am just a maid,' she said harshly, and retreated into a sullen silence from which Isabella could not dislodge her.
The doctor anticipated that the baby would arrive during the first week in April, and she made a spurt on her thesis to finish it before that time. She typed the final pages on the last day of March and sent it off to London. She was undecided whether it was arrant nonsense or sheer genius. After it had gone she agonized endlessly over fancied omissions and possible improvements which she could have made to the text.
However, within a week she had a reply from the university inviting her to defend her thesis during a viva with the examiners of the faculty.
'They like it,' she exulted, 'or they wouldn't bother.' Despite her advanced pregnancy she flew to London for three days to attend the viva. It went better than she could have hoped but by the time she got back to Milaga she was exhausted.
'They promised to let me know as soon as possible!' she told Ramsey. 'But I think it's going
