She was completely on her own. Nobody to tell her how to behave or think or even move. There was a whole beach of virgin sand, swept clean by the morning’s tide, waiting for her. She could lie down and make sand angels if she wanted, or cartwheel down to the shore and plop into the sea.
She didn’t, of course.
After staring at the vast expanse for a few seconds, she turned and followed the footprints, placing her feet carefully inside the larger dents in the sand.
She hadn’t paid too much attention to her home for the coming week the evening before. Too busy trying to get the shelter up to worry about the scenery. Their camp was on a wide strip of sand that filled almost all of a gently curving bay with low rocky headlands at either end. At the left edge of the bay, maybe only thirty feet out to sea, was a small island. Well, a large rock, really. But its top must have been above the high tide line because a small tree grew on top, giving just enough shade for some scrubby grass to flourish underneath.
Away from the shore, the land was covered with dense green vegetation, and rose gently until it peaked in a rocky hill. Not exactly mountainous, but with the lack of any other geographical features, it seemed enormous.
It struck her that she didn’t even properly know where she was—except the surf on the beach was the Pacific and the nearest land mass was Panama.
She stopped walking and turned on the spot. Where had Finn and the cameraman got to?
Even though the rising sun was now starting to warm her face she shivered. Her clothes were still damp from the night before and her stomach was very, very empty. It was beautiful here, to be sure, but she had a sudden overwhelming sense of her own vulnerability.
She was saved from pondering a slow and nasty death from starvation by a crashing sound. She’d reached the end of the tracks in the sand now, where they disappeared into the undergrowth, and before she could decide whether she should freeze or run, Finn burst through the bushes and was standing before her, dragging what looked like half a dead tree behind him. Dave appeared a few seconds later, puffing and muttering things under his breath that she was glad she couldn’t hear.
‘Great! You’re up,’ Finn said, and smiled at her.
She nodded, suddenly unsure of what to say. The whole of the English language was at her disposal. All she had to do was pick a word. And what did she do? She nodded. Pathetic. But there were too many words. There was too much choice, and faced with so many overwhelming options she’d backed away and chosen nothing.
‘First things first,’ Finn said, marching back towards the camp, obliterating his own footprints as he went. ‘We need to build a fire and get warm, and we need to worry about food and water.’
Worry? Allegra almost laughed out loud. When did Fearless Finn worry about anything? He seemed to be glowing with strength and health and confidence this morning, as if the night battling the elements had revitalised him somehow.
She sighed and scurried after him.
No wonder the TV cameras ate him up. No wonder a whole army of women back home had linked themselves on the internet through blogs and social networking sites and referred to themselves as ‘Finn’s Fanatics’.
But the camera didn’t catch all of him. It didn’t catch the raw energy that pulsed from every pore, the sense that anything and everything could and would happen around him, even—as the show’s tagline hinted—the impossible. It definitely didn’t catch the way his throwaway smiles turned a girl’s knees to chocolate.
Allegra flicked a look across at Dave. While she’d been admiring the rear view of Finn dragging the tree across the beach, he’d trained the camera back on her.
She wanted to growl. Instead she swallowed.
Cameras might not catch all of Finn, but she knew they were very good at catching all sorts of things that people didn’t think they’d given away, and the last thing she wanted was the camera noticing her noticing Finn. That would be far, far too humiliating.
Finn watched carefully as Allegra struck his knife on the flint he’d given her. Not even a spark. And there wasn’t likely to be one if she kept stroking that knife against the flint. The fluffed up coconut husk underneath would never catch light. It was her first go at something like this, though—that much was obvious—so he bit his tongue and sat back on his haunches and watched. For now. She’d get it eventually; she just needed to find her own rhythm with it.
Far from moaning about being cold and damp this morning, she’d hardly said a word. She’d just stared at him with her doll’s eyes, listening intently to every word that had dropped out of his mouth about tinder and kindling and fuel, and then she’d helped him gather exactly the right stuff, no further guidance necessary. And when he’d explained how to build the fire, she’d watched and then reproduced, following his instructions to the letter.
Far from being a diva, this little ballerina was turning out to be a pleasant surprise.
The only thing lacking now was a spark.
She paused her efforts and glanced up at him, a questioning, slightly panic-laced expression in her eyes. It was the first time that morning he’d seen her show any emotion at all.
‘In the wild places of this planet, fire is everything,’ he said quietly, and her eyes grew the tiniest bit wider and rounder. ‘Without fire, we couldn’t survive. We need it to purify the water, to cook, to provide protection and warmth. I’ll give you plenty more opportunities to learn, but for now I think we’re cold enough for me to take over.’
She blinked and her chin rose an almost imperceptible amount.
Finn let a half-smile pull one side of his mouth upwards. A little bit stubborn, too, this girl. Good. She’d need that if she was going to pass the challenges this week would bring—especially the final surprise challenge he put all his celebrity guests through in the new programme format.
She handed the knife and flint over to him and he set about starting the fire.
‘Actually, there’s one thing that’s even more important than fire in survival situations,’ he said.
The coconut husk was smoking now. He picked the ball of fluff up and blew on it gently, coaxing the flame to life. Making a fire took practice, but it also took instinct—knowing exactly the right time to trust the almost invisible sparks to do their job, when to blow, how hard and for how long.
A tiny orange flame sprang from almost nowhere, and he turned the ball of fibres in his hand, letting it grow, and then he placed it gently on the fire pit they’d created and starting stacking the kindling around it. He couldn’t help himself; he had to smile. He always got a kick out of this, no matter how many times he did it. He glanced up at Allegra and found her smiling back at him.
At least, he thought that was Allegra. The soft, barely-there smile completely transformed her, lighting up her face more than the growing flames could have done.
Ouch.
He dropped the twig he’d been holding and sucked at his fingers. The flickering heat had got a little too close for comfort. That didn’t happen very often any more. He obviously hadn’t been paying proper attention. Time to get back to the subject in hand.
‘More than anything—more than survival skills, plant knowledge, physical strength or navigational ability—the thing that keeps us alive out here where mankind doesn’t normally dwell is spark.’
‘Spark?’ she said, lines in her forehead banishing the curve in her mouth. ‘Isn’t that the same as fire?’
He shook his head as he shuffled back and reached for some larger branches and put them on the