Follow a Stranger

aren’t going to faint, are you?”

She laughed, her voice sounding high and unstable even

to herself. “I feel quite drunk!” she confessed, giggling.

“Everything is going round, like a fairground.”

Marc supported her gently. “Can you walk to the car?

The road is still blocked.”

“I think so,” she said, trying to stop giggling. The road

was awash with rain, but the purple sky was now clear and

cloudless. To the east there were a few grey wisps of light,

heralding the coming dawn, but the stars still flashed, far

off, like tiny diamonds, and the moon sailed, like a slice of

lemon, above the shadowy hills.

They picked their way carefully back over the rocks

which littered the road. Marc helped her into the jeep,

climbed in and began reversing slowly, sounding his horn,

to warn anyone coming up the road behind them. At a

convenient widening he managed to turn the jeep and they

drove home fast.

Kate swayed with the movement of the jeep, her head

feeling almost loose on her shoulders. So much had

happened tonight and she had worked with such intent

concentration that she had lost sight of everything else but

the job in hand. Now the loss of a night’s sleep was catching

up with her. Her eyes were raw and dry, as if rubbed with

sand, and her throat hurt.

The greyness in the sky grew as they drove. “It will be

morning soon,” Marc murmured as they drew up outside

the villa.

Kate climbed out and stretched, yawning. Through the

trellised tunnel at the side of the house she could see the