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
