The Stephanie Fitzpatrick series

Boyd had his back to the sink. Stephanie was leaning close to the Rayburn, letting its heat warm the backs of her thighs. Outside, a storm rampaged. Earlier, she’d watched the clouds gather. The rain had arrived as the light died in the west. Four hours later, the tempest was intensifying.

‘When I heard you’d run after Malta, I wasn’t surprised. I warned Alexander. I said you would, right from the start. I told him, if she gets a chance, she’ll take it. But you were so good, he didn’t believe me. He thought I’d trained you too well for that.’

‘But you hadn’t?’

‘Depends on how you look at it. I take the view that I trained you well enough to think for yourself. Once you were out there, you weren’t a programmed machine. You were versatile. Imaginative. Beyond containment.’

‘Am I supposed to be flattered?’

‘You’re supposed to ask what went wrong.’

‘Maybe nothing did.’

‘You became Petra, didn’t you? That was never supposed to happen. Once you’d vanished, you should have stayed vanished.’

‘Nobody stays vanished. Not from them.’

‘You could’ve.’

‘They found me, didn’t they?’

‘Living under the surname Schneider,’ Boyd said, making no effort to disguise his contempt.

Stephanie wasn’t sure that had anything to do with it.

‘If you’d been more careful, you could’ve made it work. You could’ve created a brand-new life for yourself. A good life.’

‘I did. In the end.’

‘It should have happened straight away. You had enough talent to do it. Once you were free, you could’ve done anything …’

‘Like what? Settle down in Sydney or Reykjavik? Get a job, have children?’

‘Why not?’

‘I guess you don’t know me as well as you think you do.’

‘Maybe you didn’t try hard enough.’

Goaded, Stephanie retorted, ‘You mean, like you? Let’s face it, we’re not that far apart, you and I. Both of us are screwed up, neither of us able to live in the real world with real people, doing the nine-to-five.’

Boyd refused to rise to the bait. ‘Mentally, you’re in worse shape than when we first met. Then, you were just out of control. You were angry and aimless. Now? I don’t know what it is but it’s something more complex …’

His regret was wounding to her. Upset, she resorted to cheap sarcasm. ‘A shrink as well as a soldier. You’re a man of many talents.’

‘And you used to be a woman of many talents.’

‘If you see damaged goods, you should take a look at yourself. You made me.’

‘I know. And I’m aware of that responsibility. Now more than ever.’

‘It’s a bit late in the day, isn’t it?’

‘Why did you become Petra after Malta?’

‘That’s none of your business.’

‘You can’t carry on like this forever.’

‘Like what?’

‘Avoiding the only issue that matters.’

‘You mean, like you have? Look at you, living here in the middle of nowhere, trying to forget that Rachel’s no longer alive.’

He contained himself but only just. After the silence, he said, ‘I think we’d better call it a night.’ He turned his back to her. ‘Before one of us says something we’ll regret.’

She lay on her side, curled into a ball, wide awake despite her exhaustion. Rain rattled the window. In the darkness, she could hear the curtains creeping on the draught. She felt the chill of loneliness. There was confusion in her mind, anger in her heart.

She rose from her bed, pulled on a large black sweatshirt, and tiptoed slowly down the passage. The floorboards were cold against the soles of her feet. Boyd’s bedroom was over the kitchen. She opened the door. It creaked and she paused for a response. Nothing. Boyd was a man who heard whispers in his sleep; sure enough, when she put her head round the door, his bed was empty. She went downstairs and heard him in the kitchen. He was heaping coke into the Rayburn. She waited silently in the doorway. He sensed her before he saw her. He put the bucket down, stood up straight and turned around.

She said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Forget it.’

‘The way I’ve behaved isn’t the way I feel.’

‘You’re trained not to behave the way you feel.’

‘I know. But I don’t need to make any more enemies.’

She stepped forward and kissed him on the mouth. He neither embraced her, nor pulled away. When she broke the kiss and retreated, he said nothing.

‘I’ve spent all my adult life not talking about the things I feel.’

‘Stephanie …’

‘Are you going to tell me this is a bad idea? Because if you are, don’t bother. This isn’t some reckless impulse. It’s been in the back of my mind for the last four years. When we’re running through the middle of nowhere, you shout at me but I can hear that your heart isn’t in your voice. When you glare at me, your eyes give you away. Tell me it hasn’t been on your mind, too.’

When he spoke, she knew his throat was dry. ‘This is a bad idea.’

She pulled the black sweatshirt over her head and let it drop to the floor. It was warm in the kitchen, the heat welcome on her naked skin.

‘Is this some kind of game, Stephanie?’

‘It’s no game.’

‘What, then?’

‘We’re just two similar people in a situation. With nothing to lose.’

‘Nothing to lose?’

‘Do you know what I want more than anything?’

‘What?’

‘I want someone to see me as a woman. I want you to see me as a woman. I’m not a man masquerading as a woman. I’m not a robot, I’m not a killing machine. When Alexander looks at me, he sees a device. When I was Petra, the people I met looked at me and saw a threat. When I looked at them, all I ever saw was fear. That’s not what I want.’

‘Are you sure this is what you want?’

‘I want someone to know me.’

‘What about your friend in France?’

For a second, there was guilt. Then there was perspective. ‘Laurent was lovely. We had a good time but it was a casual arrangement. It could never be anything more than that because I could never show him who I really am. He didn’t know me at all. But you could.’

A silence grew between them.

Boyd hadn’t allowed his eyes to leave hers.

She said, ‘For Christ’s sake, look at me.’

He couldn’t.

‘I’m a twenty-seven-year-old woman. I’m standing naked in front of you. Do something.’ She was amazed at how small her voice sounded. ‘Please.’

‘It’s not that simple. I … I … don’t know what to think.’

It seemed a strange thing to say. It made him sound helpless.

‘You’re not supposed to think.’

‘I’m not like you.’

‘Which is one of the things that makes it easier for me to like you.’

‘You don’t like me.’

‘You’re wrong,’ Stephanie insisted. ‘I do.’

‘If you saw me on a crowded street in a city, you wouldn’t see me at all.’

‘We’re not in a city.’

‘Put the sweatshirt back on, Stephanie.’

‘Make love with me.’

‘No.’

She felt the onset of panic. ‘Then fuck me.’

He winced. ‘No.’

‘Then let me fuck you.’

‘No.’

‘You won’t have to do anything.’

‘Go to bed.’

‘You’re humiliating me.’

‘You’re humiliating yourself.’

Stephanie took a step forward. Boyd stood his ground by the Rayburn.

‘I know you want me.’

‘I don’t want you.’

‘Liar. I’ve seen the way you look at me. When we’re running, when I’m stretching, when we’re both drenched to the skin. I know what you’re thinking. The same thing I’m thinking.’

‘Stop it.’

She moved closer. ‘Has there been anyone since Rachel?’

‘That’s enough.’

She was within touching distance. ‘Has there?’

‘I mean it.’

The Rayburn door was still open. She saw dark orange flicker across her stomach.

‘You don’t want me to go away. I know you don’t.’

‘Stephanie …’

She reached for his hand and pulled it close so that his fingertips brushed her pubic hair. ‘If you want to, you can pretend I’m her.’

The light went out in his eyes.

He snapped his hand free of hers. Stephanie lurched backwards, caught her hip on the corner of the table, and stumbled. She clutched the sink. The moment fractured, her nakedness felt clumsy and cheap. Boyd gave her a look that was as full of hatred as any she’d ever seen.

‘You’ve got sixty seconds to get dressed.’

They started along the track. By dark, it was treacherous. Then Boyd told her to veer right and they left behind the only relatively even surface for miles. It was a foul night; torrential rain, thunder, a piercing cold, flashes of sheet lightning. As the incline grew steeper, the grass began to cede to heather and rocks. They tripped and slid, jarring ankles and wrists, grazing shins, knees and palms. Only when she fell would Boyd allow himself words.

‘Up! On your feet! Get up!’

She tumbled down a grassy slope to a rocky ledge fifteen feet below, landing on soaking granite, winding herself. Boyd scrambled to her side.

‘Don’t just fucking lie there! Run!’

She tried to get to her knees. Boyd bent down, grabbed her by the hair and started to drag her over stones. Despite herself, Stephanie yelped. When she clawed at his wrist, he kicked back with the heel of his boot, hitting her on the elbow. She cried out again.

‘What are you squealing for? Isn’t this what you wanted?’

On they went, Stephanie losing all sense of time and location. Somewhere amid the confusion, it began to occur to her that Boyd wasn’t merely content to force her past the point of collapse; he wanted to force himself past it too.

They were climbing higher, the gradient growing steeper. They pressed along a ledge two feet wide, a slick wall of stone to the left, an incalculable drop into darkness to the right, loose scree beneath their feet. Scrawny trees sprouted from beneath slabs of black rock, spindly branches and twigs slashing at skin and cloth alike. Squinting fiercely through the rain, Stephanie slowed to try to make out the route ahead, only to feel the heavy prod of Boyd’s fist in her back.

‘Faster, not slower!’

When she fell, he made no attempt to catch her. She reached out blindly, her left arm clattering against a branch. She wrapped herself around it. Bark shaved skin off the crook of her arm. Her feet were airborne. Blinking furiously, she saw Boyd on the track, hands on hips, watching. She slowed her swing, steadied herself and climbed back to the ledge. On her hands and knees, she looked up at him. She expected an insult but he said nothing. He didn’t have to. The message was in his stare; there’s no safety-net out here.

They reached a plateau. Stephanie guessed it was the saddle between two peaks because suddenly the wind was stronger, the rain horizontal. With the incline gone, he forced her to go faster still. At the higher altitude there was no thick grass, just greasy tufts between slivers of sheered rock and sheets of smooth stone. Her T-shirt clung to her body like an extra skin.

Recklessly, they ran without direction, burning the last of the air in their lungs, the wind moaning in their ears. When she retched, she didn’t stop. She just spat the last of her bile and saliva into the night. Sometimes she fell, sometimes he fell. She’d hear the grunt as he hit the ground and the crackle of loose stone beneath him. She never looked round. She carried on, forcing him to make up the lost ground. Will-power drove her on when her stamina began to fail.

Until she twisted her ankle.

It was a flat slice of land but her right foot skidded and then wedged itself between two rocks. She went over on it, felt the wrench in the joint, the searing heat up her calf and shin. The foot broke free as she fell.

She came to a stop close to the edge of a small pool of icy black water. She lay on her back, her spasmodic breathing beyond control. Boyd barked at her to get up. She did nothing and felt his boot in her ribs again. She rolled onto her side and then dragged herself to her feet. But when she placed the weight of her body on the right ankle, it folded. Boyd yelled at her once more.

‘I can’t!’ she panted.

He grabbed the collar of the T-shirt, squeezing cold water from it. ‘You will.’

‘My ankle … it’s sprained … twisted …’

‘I don’t care if it’s broken! Run!’

Three times she tried, three times she fell, but Boyd was having none of it. As she lay on the ground, he stood over her and pressed the sole of his boot onto her right ankle. She squirmed but refused to cry out.

‘The next time you fall down I’m going to stamp on this bone until it’s fucking paste! You understand, you shilling slut?’

She staggered to her feet once more. The strike caught both of them by surprise. Stephanie wasn’t fully aware of throwing it and Boyd had no time to avoid it. Her right hand cracked against the side of his face, loud enough to over-ride the cacophony of the storm, strong enough to put him down. But like a rubber ball, he was on his way up the moment he hit the ground. Stephanie never even raised her hands. He threw a punch, not a slap. It caught her on the right cheek, just below the eye. As she collapsed, stars erupted on the inside of her eyelids, the only spots of brightness in the night.

For a moment, there was nothing but rain and cold.

When Stephanie opened her eyes, Boyd had moved away. He was sitting on a mossy ledge, his head in his hands. She watched him, as still as stone, water dripping from him. Eventually, he looked up at her. Despite the darkness, she could see that the hatred was gone. In its place, there was sorrow.

6

It took two hours to return to the lodge. Boyd supported Stephanie so that she wouldn’t have to put any weight onto her right ankle. At first, she was oblivious to the wind and rain but when she saw the faint shimmer of the loch and the vague outline of the cabins beyond, the cold cut in and the last of her strength evaporated.

Inside, he led her to the kitchen, sopping and shivering. He pulled a wooden chair from the table and turned it to face the Rayburn, making sure not to place it too close, before collecting dry clothes for her. He removed her wet T-shirt first – replacing it with a thick burgundy sweatshirt – followed by her tracksuit bottoms and trainers. After jeans, he pulled thick Alpine socks over her frozen feet. Finally, he wrapped a scarf around her throat. Then he put the kettle on one of the hotplates before disappearing to change his own sodden clothes.

Outside, the storm continued to rage.

Gradually, Stephanie drifted back. The thaw in her fingers and toes began to burn. They drank two mugs of sweet milky tea, Boyd telling her to sip not slurp. The clatter of wind on glass was curiously comforting now they were warm and dry. She was a child again.

Boyd waited until her body was able to generate its own heat before attending to her. He removed the scarf and pulled her chair a little closer to the Rayburn. He examined her right ankle, turning and pressing it. He strapped it with a bandage, wiped her grazes with antiseptic and rubbed arnica into the worst of her bruises. Neither of them spoke. Later, he fed her Nurofen, led her to her bed and told her to go to sleep.

It was mid-afternoon. She dressed slowly, easing her muscles through the stiffness. She pulled on the same pair of jeans, a thick roll-neck jersey, climbing socks and a pair of boots. Outside, the weather had cleared. The air was sharp, the sky a deep sapphire. She found Boyd servicing the diesel generator in one of the outbuildings, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows, his hands and forearms black with oil and dirt. There was a mark on the side of his face. She couldn’t tell whether it was a bruise or just grime.

He laid a wrench on a strip of stained cloth. ‘How’s the foot?’

She shrugged. ‘Okay.’

‘And the rest of you?’

‘Look, about what happened …’

‘Don’t say anything, Stephanie. It doesn’t matter.’

‘It does matter.’

‘Well, it’s in the past now. Better that we leave it there, don’t you think?’ When she didn’t reply, he added: ‘For both of us.’

‘Can I ask you to do something for me?’

‘What?’

‘Cut my hair.’

Boyd frowned. ‘I’m not much of a barber.’

‘You won’t need to be.’

The following morning brought frost, the start of a four-day cold snap. Stephanie awoke late and rose slowly. The wood-framed mirror above the chest of drawers was only large enough to reflect half her face. She had to crouch a little to see her dark hair. Cropped close to the scalp in ragged tufts, she thought it made her look vulnerable. Which was how she felt. And which she didn’t mind.

Outside, the ground was glass beneath her boots. Above, the sky was almost purple in patches with a few wispy cirrus clouds. Boyd had gone on a run without her. She could see him on a ridge on the hill on the far side of the loch, a green-grey spot moving against a backdrop of wet rust.

She was waiting for him in the kitchen when he returned. He wasn’t short of breath but the cold air and his heat had turned his cheeks red. Sweat lent his forehead a sheen.

He looked at the kitchen table. ‘What’s this?’

‘What does it look like?’

‘You don’t have to make breakfast.’

‘I know.’

‘What I mean is, you don’t have to make amends.’

‘I know.’

Valeria Rauchman was a Russian-language teacher sent by Alexander during the last week of September. Snow-skinned with large, dark brown eyes, she had black hair with silver streaks that she wore in a bun at the nape of her neck. She looked as though she was in her mid-forties but Boyd later told Stephanie she was older. Squarely built, she was nevertheless elegant. Usually stern, she could never quite extinguish the sparkle in her eyes. For every obvious feature, Valeria Rauchman possessed a contradictory quality not far beneath the surface.

The first few days of tuition were intense since Stephanie was unable to exercise. ‘Not as good as I’d expected,’ Rauchman declared after the first lesson. ‘But with a lot of time and effort, who knows?’

A week after Rauchman’s arrival, the last commercial group of the season left. Stephanie watched them file onto two minibuses bound for Inverness. Boyd spent the next two days with his assistants, cleaning the cabins and closing them down for winter. On their last night, he spent the evening with them at the staff cabin. Stephanie and Rauchman remained at the lodge. After supper, Stephanie stood by the sitting-room window and looked out. Weak orange light spilled from the cabin’s windows. It was a still night. Intermittently, they could hear faint peals of laughter.

Rauchman said, ‘It’s good that he’s happy tonight.’

Stephanie looked across the room at her. ‘How well do you know him?’

‘I’ve known him for years. I knew Rachel, too.’

‘What was she like?’

‘Lovely. Quiet but strong. Stronger than him.’

Stephanie felt a pang of jealousy. ‘How did you meet him?’

‘That’s not for me to say.’

‘But you knew him before he came here?’

She nodded. ‘We used to run into each other from time to time. Zagreb, Jakarta, Damascus.’

‘What was he doing in those places?’

‘The same thing I was doing. Working.’

‘In a place like Damascus?’

‘When I saw him in Damascus, he was on his way home from Kuwait.’

‘The Gulf War?’

‘After Iraq invaded Kuwait, he was sent in to gather intelligence. For the six months leading up to Desert Storm, he lived in Kuwait City itself. On his own, on the move, living in rubble, living off rodents, transmitting information about the Iraqis when he could. He stayed until the city was liberated.’

‘And then you just happened to bump into him in Damascus?’

Rauchman smiled. ‘Don’t pretend to be so naïve, Stephanie. I know who you are. So you know how it is.’

‘He doesn’t talk about those things to me.’

‘Of course not. He never talks about anything that’s close to him. That’s why he’s never mentioned you.’

It was a week before Stephanie resumed training. A fortnight later, Rauchman was called to London for several days. Stephanie and Boyd embarked on a four-day trek. Boyd selected their clothes and prepared a small pack for each of them. He carried a compass, but when it was clear he made her navigate using a watch and the sun. She remembered the process: in the northern hemisphere, you hold the watch horizontally with the hour hand pointing at the sun. Bisecting the angle between the hour hand and the twelve, you arrive at a north – south line. From there, all directions are taken.

Her ankle healed, her stamina almost as developed as his, they travelled quickly, no matter what the terrain. Stephanie enjoyed the daily distance covered. By daylight, they stuck mostly to high ground. In the late afternoon, they would find a river or burn and descend towards it. Being the harsh landscape that it was, food was scarce. They had nothing to bring down a stag, a hind or a bird, so they fished for trout. In each pack there was a tin containing fishing line, a selection of hooks and some split lead weights. Stephanie proved to be useless at fishing and caught just one trout in four days, Boyd snagging the rest.

They carried groundsheets for night-time shelter. They plundered saplings from forestry plantations and draped the groundsheets over makeshift frames. Boyd had allowed them the luxury of lightweight Gore-Tex sleeping bags. By choosing places that offered some natural cover, the groundsheets proved largely effective against rain.

Each pack contained waterproof matches to light small fires at night, the flames securely contained within stone circles. They cooked gutted fish over glowing embers. Boyd supplemented their diet with bars of rolled-oat biscuits. When it was clear, he taught her how to read the major constellations in the sky: the Plough, Cassiopeia, Orion.

On the final morning, Stephanie awoke before Boyd. It was still dark. She watched the creeping daylight in the east and the rise of a plum-coloured sun. She heard the distant roar of an old stag on the slope above. Later, they spotted it, corralling its hinds along a ridge. They tracked the animals, taking care to remain downwind and out of sight. Boyd brought her close to them. They crawled through a peat hag rank with the stag’s musky scent and then found a flat slab of rock that overlooked the deer. When the animals moved on, Stephanie and Boyd climbed to the peak, from where they saw the lodge, a speck dwarfed by a wall of granite.

They sat on a rocky lip, their legs dangling over a fifty-foot drop, and ate the remains of their rations. Stephanie glanced across at Boyd, who was chewing a rolled-oat biscuit. He was looking down at his filthy boots and at the air beneath them. He was smiling.

‘What are you thinking about?’

He shook his head. ‘I was just wondering what it must have been like for your parents. Having you as a child, that is.’

‘And you find the idea of that funny?’

‘I find the idea of it terrifying.’

‘Thanks a lot.’

‘Were either of them as strong-willed as you?’

‘Both of them.’

‘Christ.’

‘So was my sister. And one of my brothers.’

‘Must’ve been a lot of noise.’

Stephanie laughed out loud. There had been. All the time. ‘But I was the worst.’

‘You reckon?’

‘I was a nightmare for my parents. Especially when I was a teenager. Too bright for my own good, too headstrong for anyone’s good. I never wanted to be anything like them.’

‘What teenager does?’

‘True. I always tried to disappoint them. And I was pretty successful at it. I was the brightest in my school but I underachieved. I got caught smoking and drinking. I listened to the Clash and the Smiths and hung around with the kind of boys I knew they’d dislike.’ Stephanie gazed at the drop, too. ‘Is there anything in the world more self-centred and pointless than a teenager?’