Page 98 of The Last Kiss Goodbye

Dominic turned to her, his expression serious.

‘What’s the matter, Mrs Bailey?’

‘What’s the matter? You’re taking my only child into the jungle. Endanger your own life with your flights of folly, but don’t risk the safety of my little girl. I thought you would know better than this.’

There was a long, awkward silence.

‘You’re right,’ said Dominic finally.

Ros glared at him in horror. ‘What are you talking about?’ she snapped. ‘It’s all arranged. I thought you were excited that I was coming with you.’

‘That was before I realised how upset your parents would be.’

‘It’s my mother. She’s had too much drink.’

‘No I have not,’ blustered Valerie.

‘Let’s talk about this later,’ said Dom.

‘No,’ said Ros with passion. ‘Let’s talk about it now. Jonathon, help me out here.’

‘Mrs Bailey, perhaps we should leave these two alone for a few minutes,’ said Jonathon diplomatically.

Valerie looked as if she was about to object, but Jonathon guided her out of the room and closed the

door behind them.

‘I can’t not go,’ Ros said with panic. ‘I’ve spent the last few weeks looking at maps and charts and atlases – I even went along to the Royal Cartography Institute to read up on anything and everything they’ve got on the Amazon. I’m going to be the best expedition team member you’ve ever had.’

‘You know how dangerous the trip is going to be?’

‘I’ve always known that. It’s why I’m coming with you. Right until the bit where it starts getting muddy and jungly and full of flies.’

She thought he would laugh, but his expression remained sombre.

‘Are you sure you’re up for that? Waving me off when there’s every chance I might not come back?’

‘You are coming back. You promised me. I trust you. I believe in you.’

Dominic nodded but didn’t quite meet her eye.

‘I’m not going to change your mind, am I?’ he said quietly.

‘And neither is my mother,’ she said, taking his hand and holding it as if she would never let go. ‘We’re a team, Dominic Blake. That’s what we’re here to celebrate. You and me. And I’m not going to let anyone or anything change that.’

Chapter Twenty-Five

God, it was hot. Rosamund didn’t think she’d ever been this hot. She pulled at her collar and untied her damp scarf, dabbing at the beads of perspiration on her forehead. Not that she had much experience of heat beyond a sweltering family holiday on the Isle of Wight when she was fourteen. This was something else; the heat seemed to get inside your skin, and the air felt thick and soupy, like you couldn’t draw enough into your lungs. Ros had long ago given up worrying about her clothes: they stuck to her from morning to night, as though she’d just run through a shower. She looked up at the corrugated-iron roof and willed the fans to turn faster.

‘I’m guessing they don’t have ice,’ she said, pressing her tin cup against her cheek.

‘I don’t think there’s been a refrigeration unit since Lima,’ said Dominic. He was sharpening one of his knives with a flint.

‘But at least we’re off the boat,’ quipped Willem, the half-Peruvian, half-German translator, who had met them at the airport and who was apparently making some additional cash by taking a series of photographs for the Royal Cartography Institute back in London.

Ros and Dominic nodded in agreement, thinking of the Santa Ana, the rusting steamer that had been their transportation from the regional capital of Tarapoto, upriver to Kutuba, the furthest outpost of civilisation, little more than a tiny shanty town, before the jungle closed in around you.

It had been an awful journey but the only practical option. There was no railway in Peru, at least not in this remote part of the country, where the lumber and the various cash crops could be moved much more easily by river. The geography and meteorology of the country made roads impractical for the most part, with the fast-growing vegetation able to close in on a highway in a matter of days, and flash floods and mudslides washing them from the map in hours. And while seaplanes occasionally made the journey into the interior, the only reliable way to reach Kutuba was on the painfully slow steamer, which had taken ten days to limp the 150 miles.