laughed, a dry hard laugh with no humour in it. ‘I was so sure I was invincible I think I had them fooled too.’
Fooled? Interesting word.
‘I planned for so long I don’t think there was room to worry, really.’ She wasn’t really talking to him, he realised, more lost in the past. ‘My grandfather was in the merchant navy and he had always told me all these stories of places he had been to. I wanted to see it all. Other kids have posters of pop stars on their wall, I had maps and routes and pictures of magical places I wanted to go to. I was babysitting at thirteen, running errands for neighbours and every penny went into my travel fund. I was going to start out in Asia then Australia, New Zealand, on to Japan then South America, finishing off with a Greyhound trip round the States.’
He could picture her. Intent, focused, planning on conquering the world. ‘Did you get to go? Did you see all of those places?’
‘No.’ Her voice was colourless. ‘I had Summer instead.’
‘Hang on.’ He turned and looked at her rigid profile. ‘Did you have your daughter while you were away?’
‘She was born in Australia.’
He whistled softly. ‘That must have been tough. So you cut your adventures short, flew home and became the responsible, capable woman you are today.’ He shook his head. ‘Quite some achievement.’
He thought he was such a tough guy but his adventures were orderly by comparison. He always knew where he was going to sleep that evening even if it was in a sleeping bag in a shared tent; he had a ticket back arranged, plans for a month of surfing and partying organised. He even got a wage, for goodness’ sake. Clara had taken off at an age most people were still figuring out the Tube and had spent three years travelling. Even a pregnancy and a baby hadn’t slowed her down.
When she didn’t answer he turned to look at her; she was looking out of the window but her body was slumped. It wasn’t the posture of someone who had achieved something remarkable. It was more like despair.
‘Are you going to tell me where we are going?’ she asked, straightening and turning to him with a polite smile.
The confidences were obviously at an end.
‘I don’t need to tell you,’ he said as he smoothly turned the car through a pair of metal gates, the only break in a sea of barbed-wire fencing that ran along one side of the road screening off the fields beyond. ‘We’re here.’
‘We’re what?’ Clara twisted in her seat and looked around her, horror on her face as she took in the barbed wire. ‘You are kidnapping me. Where are we? What is this?’
‘This is one of the premier activity sites in the country.’ Raff flashed her a smile. ‘I hope you like mud.’
* * *
‘You want me to do what?’
Clara wasn’t sure what was worse. She ticked the offending items off on a mental list. Lists usually were soothing, bringing order and meaning.
She wasn’t sure anything could bring meaning to her current situation.
First, the mud. There was certainly a lot of it, all greeny-brown, glutinous and deep. Second, the outfit. All that time spent wondering what to wear, turned out she needed baggy camouflage trousers, desert boots that had been worn by who knew how many other smelly, sweaty, muddy feet and a shapeless T-shirt that was the exact colour of the mud. Yep, it all came back to mud.
Mud that she, Clara Castleton, was supposed to be trampling, running, heck, apparently she was supposed to be crawling in it. On her belly.
Which brought her to number three. Men. Smirking men. Okay, toned, built men, the kind that actually stretched out their T-shirts in all kinds of good ways, who filled out the baggy trousers with bulging thighs, who wore the mud on their faces with aplomb. Men who belonged here as she most definitely did not.
The most annoying of the men, ‘Call me Spiral’, as if that were really his name, began to repeat the instructions in the same loud bark. ‘Run through that trough, climb that rope, go over that bridge, swing across the ravine, crawl under the net, slide...’
‘I heard all of that the first two times.’ Clara folded her arms and glared up at him, deliberately ignoring the fourth and most annoying thing of all: a palpably amused Raff Rafferty. ‘I’m still not clear why.’
‘Because I told you to,’ Spiral said with no hint of irony. ‘Now get your butt over to the starting line.’
‘Come on, Clara.’ Raff was openly grinning. ‘This is supposed to be fun. Where’s your sense of adventure?’
Back in Australia. Left behind with her backpack, her travel journals and her well-thumbed traveller’s guide.
‘This is your idea of a date?’ She rounded on him. ‘What’s wrong with a walk, a picnic, doves and flowers?’
‘Too obvious. Besides, I had the chance to try this place out and see if I want to hire it for a staff conference. I’m multitasking. I thought you’d approve,’ he said with a self-righteous air that made Clara want to smack him—or tip him into the mud that suddenly looked a lot more tempting.
‘This isn’t just a lousy date, it’s a cheap date?’
Raff leant in close, his breath sweet on her cheek. ‘It’s a fake date and you are on triple time. Enjoy it. Think about what a lovely story it makes.’
Clara gritted her teeth. ‘One for the grandkids?’
‘In our case one for my grandfather. Do you want to go first or shall I show you how it’s done?’
Eying the long trail of ropes, platforms, nets and pits, Clara felt her stomach drop. This was going to be incredibly undignified. But there was no way she was going to look weak in front of him. ‘I’ll go.’
She refused to look back as she walked to the start line, painfully aware that all the conversation had stopped and every khaki-clad man was staring at her, lips curled with amusement. They were waiting for her to fail. To give up.
They were in for a surprise. She hoped.
‘Come on,’ Clara told herself fiercely as she stood at the rope marking the beginning and stared out at what looked like miles of hell. The trail started with a long, shallow trough that Clara was supposed to run through. Correction, wade through. The trough was filled with the ubiquitous mud and led to a cargo net that she was sure was higher than her house.
That was just the start.
Weekly Pilates might be good for her stress levels but it hadn’t prepared her for this.
‘On the count of three,’ Spiral roared. ‘One, two, three!’
Clara hesitated for less than a second and then, with a muttered curse, pushed herself forward, managing not to yell as she sank calf deep into the cold, gloopy mud.
‘Faster,’ Spiral yelled. ‘Are you a man or a mouse?’
Answering him would
