The Alchemist

stooped and lifted the stirring boy over his shoulder.

The puzzled officers found Marc Dubois lying in the back of one of the police cars ten minutes later. ‘Where the hell did he come from?’ asked one. ‘Beats me,’ said his companion. It was a while before it dawned on them that he was the kid on the Missing Person posters.

Simon watched, deeply satisfied, as his men brought more than thirty coughing, spluttering, smoke-blackened personnel out of the shattered building. Six bodies had been recovered so far, and enough weapons and ammunition to lay serious criminal and terrorism charges against the whole organization.

Speed, Aggression, Surprise. He’d heard that that was the unofficial motto of a certain British Army regiment. He grinned and shook his head.

56

Roberta was swinging between wild elation and trembling exhaustion as Ben led her away in the darkness. With one arm around her waist he steered her through the shadowy woods. Back towards the little lane outside the police cordon where he’d hidden the rental car. He was evasive and silent, ignoring the questions she fired at him.

They arrived at the car. He turned sharply at the sound of the foliage rustling behind them. But it was just an owl, disturbed by their passage.

He kept to the backroads, and they sat in silence for a while as he drove. Roberta closed her eyes. Already the details of her imprisonment were beginning to seem hazy and distant in her mind.

After two kilometres of cutting across rough country lanes they came out onto a narrow road.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

‘I rented a place.’

They passed through a couple of small villages and twenty minutes later they arrived at a country cottage tucked away behind a clump of trees up its own private track. Ben led Roberta up the path, opened the door and flipped on the light. The cottage was bare and functional, but it was safe.

She flopped down in an old armchair, leaning her head back and shutting her eyes. He came and handed her a glass of red wine. She drank it down quickly, and could feel the immediate relaxing effect of it. She watched him as he piled kindling wood and logs and lit a crackling fire in the stone inglenook fireplace. He was strangely quiet, distant.

‘Are you OK, Ben? What’s wrong?’

He said nothing, kneeling in front of the fire with his back to her, stirring up the flames with a poker.

‘Why won’t you talk to me?’

He dropped the iron poker with a clang, got to his feet and turned round to face her. ‘What the hell were you playing at?’ he demanded furiously.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Have you any idea how worried I was? I thought you were dead. What possessed you to go wandering off like that?’

‘I-’

‘Of all the stupid, idiotic…’

She stood up. Her lip was quivering and her hands were shaking.

He softened when he saw her face. ‘Look, don’t cry. I’m sor-’

He didn’t get to finish the sentence. Her fist flew up and connected with his jaw. He saw lights, and staggered back two steps.

‘Don’t you talk to me like that, Ben Hope!’

They stood facing each other. He rubbed his jaw. Then she threw her arms around him and buried her face in his shoulder. She felt him tense up and she backed off, looking at him uncertainly with hot tears in her eyes.

But then his tension broke and something welled powerfully up inside him. He wanted it now, that warmth he’d rejected for so long. He wanted to plunge into it like a diver into a warm ocean lagoon, and never come out again. As he stood looking into her sad, wet, blinking, searching eyes he knew that he loved her more than he’d ever realized.

He reached out for her, grasped her arms and drew her to him. They held one another tight, caressing, gasping, running their fingers through each other’s hair.

‘I was so scared,’ he whispered. ‘I thought I’d lost you.’ He ran his fingers up to her face and wiped away the tears from her laughing cheeks. Their lips drew together and he kissed her, long and longingly, as he’d never kissed anyone in his life before.

She was woken up the next morning by a crowing cockerel in the distance. Her eyelashes fluttered open and after a couple of seconds she remembered where she was. Sunlight was streaming through the bedroom window. A little smile spread across her lips as the memory of last night came back to her. It wasn’t a dream. When she’d told him how much she loved him, he’d said he felt the same way. He’d been so tender with her, a whole new side to him opening up as their passion had mounted.

She rolled on her back and stretched her body out under the sheet, luxuriating in the crisp cotton. Brushing the tousled hair out of her eyes, she stretched out an arm to touch him. Her hand felt an empty pillow. He must have gone downstairs.

For a while she swam in that nebulous, drifting haze between sleep and wakefulness. The horror of her kidnap and imprisonment seemed a faraway memory, as though they belonged in a different life, or a half-forgotten nightmare from long ago. She wondered what it would be like to live in Ireland, by the sea. She’d never lived by the sea…

More awake now, she wondered what he was doing. She couldn’t smell coffee, and couldn’t hear any sounds apart from the singing of the birds in the trees outside. She swung her legs out of the bed, and walked naked across the bedroom to gather up the trail of discarded clothes she’d left from the top of the stairs to the bed. More fresh memories, and she smiled to herself again.

He wasn’t downstairs making breakfast. She searched around the little cottage, calling his name. Where was he?

It was when she saw that the car and his things were gone that she began to worry. She found his note on the kitchen table, and knew what it was going to say even before she unfolded and read it.

Tears gathered in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. She sat at the kitchen table, sank her head into her arms and wept for a long time.

57

Palavas-les-Flots, Southern France, three days later

Autumn was setting in now. The busy season was coming to an end for the seaside resort, and the only tourists still out there bathing in the sea were Brits and Germans. Ben sat on the beach and gazed out at the blue horizon. He was thinking of Roberta. By now she should be heading back home to safety.

He’d left early after their night of love. You shouldn’t have let that happen, he thought. It wasn’t fair on her. He felt terrible that he’d admitted his feelings to her, all the while planning to slip away at first light while she was asleep.

At dawn he’d sat at the kitchen table and written to her. It wasn’t much of a letter and he wished he could have said more, but it would only have made his leaving more painful for both of them. Beside the note, he’d left her enough money to get her safely and quickly back home to America. He’d grabbed his things and been about to head straight out of the door.

But he couldn’t just walk away. He wanted to see her one last time, and he tiptoed back up the creaking stairs, careful not to wake her. He’d stood for a moment or two, watching her sleeping soundly. Her body was rising and falling slowly under the sheet, her hair spread out across the pillow. Very gently, he pulled a curl away from her eye.