She stood there, willing herself not to panic, her mouth dry, her heart thudding. What should she do? What the fuck should she do?
“Several of us will go,” the ranger told Alex, “since you have no idea where she went.” His voice was calm, but cold. He was obviously very angry: with good reason.
“Yes. Thank you. I’m so… so sorry. Should I come with you?”
“Absolutely not. No. Stay here. If she turns up, if you find she’s just sitting by the pool or something, tell them at the hotel. And they can radio us.”
“Of course,” said Alex. He was absolutely confident Linda was not sitting by the pool. Or the bar. Or anywhere. She was out there in all that danger, possibly even now being savaged by something, her lovely body being ripped quite literally apart, and it was his fault for being so harsh with her, so critical, so cruel. Sam had been right: he really wasn’t worth having a relationship with.
He stood at the doorway, the light of the room behind him, that gentle, sweet candlelight, so at odds with what he was feeling, what was happening. He strained his eyes into the darkness. He couldn’t see or hear anything, except the Land Rovers that the rangers had taken. Jesus, those lions the other day had been only a mile or so away. Several of the other bungalows were lit up; he could see faces at the windows. What stories these people would have to tell when they got home: about this misfit couple who fought endlessly, put the safety of the whole camp and all the rangers at risk…
He tensed; he could hear the Land Rover now, drawing nearer. It pulled into the courtyard, its engine silenced. Alex stood, unable to move, more fearful than he could ever remember. They had called off the search; she had been found dead or horribly mutilated; no one could find her, she-
“Right, Alex. Here she is. Safe and sound, although she might not have been much longer; something quite big out there, could have been anything, leopard, lion… Please don’t do that again, Linda; you’re putting us at risk as well as yourself. Good night.”
“Good night.” Linda’s face was drawn and tearstained, distorted by fear and remorse. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“That’s OK. Night.”
He looked pretty cheesed off, Alex thought. He would have been, too. Some silly cow endangering his life, all for a bit of drama. He took Linda’s arm, pulled her in, shut the door. He shook her-hard. Again and again. Her eyes were shocked and afraid in her white face.
“I’m sorry, Alex. I’m so sorry.”
“You stupid fucking thoughtless bitch. How could you be so selfish, so insanely stupid…”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry. I… well, I’m sorry.”
“You’d better be.” He stopped shaking her suddenly, set her away from him. “You know, I could…”
“What?”
Suddenly he couldn’t stand it any longer. Her fear, her misery, his relief. He sat down abruptly on the bed, his legs weak, sat looking at her. She didn’t move, just stood there, staring back at him.
“What?” she said again.
“Oh, Linda,” he said after a long silence. “I’m afraid I love you. That’s what.”
CHAPTER 47
It was very odd to be seeing him again. Being with him, talking to him, having a laugh with him, doing everything with him, really… except touching him. That seemed to be totally off-limits. And it was all, really, she wanted to do. Well, more or less.
Still… it was something even to be working with him.
And Georgia. Georgia was great. Really cool-bit immature, bit spoiled, but funny and clever, and really good to work with, full of ideas, willing to do anything, put in endless hours. A real trouper.
They had formed a committee, which met regularly and then issued properly reported minutes at Abi’s instigation: “Formalising it all is the only way to push it forward; otherwise it just turns into a wank, everyone discussing their wonderful ideas and never doing anything.”
The committee members were Abi, who was chair-“Only because I’ve been involved in all this stuff a bit before”-Georgia, and William.
Then there was Emma, representing the hospital, and a friend of Abi’s called Fred, who worked for a charity and knew a great deal about the ins and outs of that industry, about fund-raising, about sponsorship, and running events in general. He said he might even be able to find a sponsor for them. He was doing it for nothing.
Fred wasn’t too much like anyone would expect a charity worker to be: he looked like a secondhand-car salesman, as Abi said when she introduced him to the group. Fred had taken the implied criticism of this with great good nature and said that selling charities and selling cars were much more similar processes than anyone would think. “You’re still getting people to part with more than they want for something. Charities are easier really, in a way, because you can work on their consciences.”
Abi knew that William had thought initially that Fred was doing it because he fancied her, but in fact he wasn’t; he was a happily unmarried man, as he put it, with a sweet-faced girlfriend called Molly, and a baby on the way. Abi spent a lot of time at the first meeting she brought him to asking Fred about Molly and the baby and when it might be due.
They had a notional date for the festival now, of July eighth and ninth; but as Abi said, it was no use setting anything in stone until they knew they could get some bands.
“There are literally thousands of them,” she said, “and they’ll all be on MySpace. You’ll only get unsigned ones to come, obviously, although it would be great to have one slightly bigger name.”
“Would a slightly bigger name come?” asked Georgia, and Fred said they might, if the idea appealed, and there was going to be some good publicity.
“Which there will be, won’t there?”
“There certainly will,” said Abi coolly. “And quite big bands will bring their fee right down if it’s for charity. The smaller ones will probably do it for cost. Just to get the chance to play and be heard. We’re just going to have to hit the keyboard, Georgia, e-mail all their agents. Those who have them. We also want quite a good spread of music styles. Like rock, obviously, but also jazz, bit of folk even, for the families…”
It was William who came up with the really clever idea: “I was talking to a bloke the other night in the pub, telling him what we were going to do; he was awfully impressed. Anyway, he’d been to a small festival the other side of Bath, and what they did was have a whole load of sort of auditions-play-offs, he called them-called Battle of the Bands, in pubs. Each area fielded a few bands and they played in the pub and the punters voted and the winner was put forward to play. He said it was great because everyone who’d voted wanted to go the festival and hear their band. So they got loads more people than they would have done.”
“That is such a good idea,” said Georgia, “wonderful local publicity too. You are clever, William. Isn’t that clever, Fred?”
Fred said it was a good idea. “Only thing is, what sort of standard would the bands be? Bit of a gamble.”
“No worse a gamble than if we chose them from MySpace,” said Abi briskly, “and obviously we’d hear them too, and if they were dreadful we wouldn’t book them. We should get cracking on this straightaway. William, you give us a list of villages, or small towns I s’pose might be better, not too close together, with really good pubs that you think’d cooperate, and we’ll get some flyers done… I can run them off at work. Oh, God, if only we had some money. And a name. We’ve got to have a name. Georgia, you’re the creative one; get us a name.”
William felt rather pleased at having made such a large contribution to what he thought of as the theatrical side. Everyone-including him-had seen his role as strictly functionaclass="underline" providing the site, finding the contractors, organising the infrastructure… The cost of providing power lines and building the arena was eye-watering, and he hoped his father would never find out. They had settled on a ticket fee of thirty pounds, children half price; it sounded a lot, but not set against the thousands they were going to have to find. In his darker moments, he worried that they wouldn’t make any money at all, just a whacking loss, and half wished he had said no in the first place. But then he thought of the heady pleasure of the thing, the sense of purpose it had given them all, and of creating something so original and exciting, and he knew it was worth it.