Q: What was your first job?
A: I joined the BBC’s World Affairs Unit after reading Modern History at university.
Q: What was the most memorable event you have reported?
A: I’ve covered a succession of memorable events: Tiananmen Square in 1989; Baghdad and the Gulf War 1991; famine in Somalia 1993; the Soweto riots 1996. Every year produces a major disaster. I wish the media would focus more on mankind’s achievements. I think being swamped with bad news depresses people.
Q: What are your worst and best qualities?
A: Worst: I’m impatient, especially with petty bureaucracy. Best: Probably tolerance.
Q: If you could travel backwards in time, what era would you visit?
A: I’d like to have been the expedition reporter on Christopher Columbus’s ship Santa Maria when, trying to reach the East by sailing westwards, he discovered the New World.
Q: What excites you and what depresses you?
A: I’m excited by the World Wide Web: I believe it has the potential to make life better for everyone. I’m depressed by self-satisfied, self-serving politicians.
As she re-read his answers to the questions, Liz was forced to admit that, had she known nothing about his personal life, the interview would have impressed her.
His childhood sounded far more exciting than hers. She had always longed to travel, but a possessive mother, shortage of money and falling in love with Duncan had conspired to prevent her from being anything but an armchair traveller. Now her wanderlust had diminished. From what she read, mass tourism and the popularity of back-packing had combined to make exotic destinations far less exotic than they had been when she was eighteen. The time to take off and see the world had been then, not now. As her grandmother had often said to her, ‘Opportunity only knocks once’.
Liz shut down her computer and went back to bed. After she had switched out the light, for a while it was Granny she thought about. Granny had tried to dissuade her from marrying so young. ‘You’re not properly grown-up,’ she had said. ‘You’ve had no experience of life…or other men. There are more fish in the sea than Duncan.’
Knowing that her grandmother’s marriage had not been happy, Liz had dismissed her advice.
But her last thought, before she slept, was not about Granny. In her mind’s eye she saw the strong features of the man whose faced was filed on her computer.
Cam’s e-mailed instruction, before his next visit, to have Alicia make up the bed in the room above the garage puzzled Liz until, on her own next visit to La Higuera, she went upstairs for the first time. It then became clear that the bedroom where she had seen him kissing Fiona was a comfortable guest room and the room over the garage was his room.
The first thing that caught her eye was a portrait on the wall between the two windows, obviously placed there so that the light wouldn’t fade it. It was an oil painting of a man in the regimental dress uniform of a bygone age. He had an early Victorian hairstyle, but otherwise it might have been Cam in fancy dress. There was a small engraved brass plaque on the bottom of the ornate gilt frame. She had to go close to read the small writing—Captain Nugent Fielding, 1st Bombay Light Infantry. Clearly the captain was Cam’s ancestor.
There were family photographs around the room and many other personal possessions. She found it interesting that he slept here when he was alone, but used a guest room when he had a girlfriend in residence. What would a psychologist make of that? she wondered. That he didn’t want his private space invaded by any woman? That he saw women purely as sex objects and therefore, like kitchen equipment and garden tools, they belonged in certain areas, but not in here?
It was twelve-forty-five and she was about to wash the fruit she was having for lunch when the telephone rang.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s Cam. I just got in. What are you doing for the next couple of hours?’
‘Nothing in particular, but—’
‘Then we’ll go out to lunch. There’s a lot to discuss. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes, OK?’
Taking her consent for granted, he rang off.
Liz flew upstairs to her room, whipped off her house clothes and scrambled into grey gabardine trousers and a grey and white striped silk shirt. Slotting a belt through the loops on the waistband, she stepped into suede loafers, then put on her favourite gold knot earrings, hurriedly slapped on some make-up and re-brushed her hair before pulling it through a black scrunchy.
It was only when she was ready, with a couple of minutes to spare, that she asked herself, What am I doing, making an effort to look good for a man I don’t even like?
There wasn’t time to consider the answer to that question because, remembering that once summer was past the interior of Spanish restaurants could sometimes be chilly if they didn’t have an open fire, she had to whizz back upstairs and grab her red shawl.
She was running downstairs when she heard a knock on the door. She had thought he would pip his car’s horn to alert her to his arrival, but when she stepped into the street he was waiting to open the door for her. Quickly, Liz locked up and slid into the passenger seat. No doubt it was part of a womaniser’s armoury to have impeccable manners, she thought as he bent to pull the safety belt out of its slot and handed her the buckle.
‘Thank you.’ She tried to recall a previous occasion when a man had performed that small extra courtesy but could not remember it ever happening before.
‘So what’s new in Valdecarrasca?’ he asked, as he got in beside her and pulled the other belt across his own broad chest.
‘Nothing…as far as I know. How did your trip go?’
‘I’ve been dashing around the world, covering outbreaks of mayhem, for too long,’ he said, checking his rearview and wing mirrors before pulling away from the kerb. ‘It no longer gives me a buzz, which means it’s time to call it a day and find something more rewarding to do.’
‘What have you in mind?’
‘It would be fun to do a Gerald Seymour.’
‘The name rings a bell but I can’t place him.’
‘He used to be a war reporter. Now he writes excellent thrillers.’
‘Oh, yes…I remember now. My husband used to like his books.’ Not that Duncan had been a bookworm, but when they were going on holiday he would buy a thriller at the airport and often would still be reading it on the flight home.
‘Unfortunately I don’t think I have Seymour’s imaginative powers,’ said Cam, ‘and, although there are exceptions, not many non-fiction writers make a comfortable living. By the way, the house is in the best shape it’s been in since it was new. Your relationship with Alicia is obviously going well.’
‘My Spanish is improving too,’ said Liz. ‘It’s hard to get her to speak really slowly, but we’re managing. I’ve started buying the Saturday edition of El Mundo. It has very good health and history supplements. It takes me all week to read them, but it’s good for my Spanish vocabulary.’
‘There are some Spanish novels on the shelves in the sitting room. If you want to borrow them, or any of the books, feel free,’ Cam told her.
‘That’s very kind of you. If I do, I’ll take good care of them.’
‘If I had any doubts about that, I wouldn’t have suggested it.’ He took his eyes off the road for a moment to smile at her. ‘I don’t give many people the freedom of my library.’
The flattering implication that they were two of a kind, at least as far as books were concerned, was a small breach in her defences that she couldn’t afford to let him repeat.
‘If there are any wonderful