Page 5 of Under a Spanish Sky

The next morning Luke had to scrape ice off the windscreen of the car.

It was a dry day with a hazy sun, but dark clouds on the horizon threatened snow later on.

As they set off towards the mountains, he thanked the instinct that had made him choose a vehicle with four-wheel drive.

If the weather forecast was to be believed, the snow was going to be heavy.

They stopped a few times as they made their way up the valley towards the pass and Spain.

The relatively gentle hills had now been replaced by rocky outcrops and scree slopes.

Ahead of them, brightly lit by the spring sunshine, was the seemingly impenetrable barrier of snow-covered peaks that stood out clearly against the pale blue of the sky.

‘It’s going to be a hard climb from here to the pass.’ He cast another searching look upwards at the sky. ‘And if the snow sets in, we might not see anything. It would be so good to get the view from the top down into Spain, just like millions of pilgrims over the centuries.’

‘Like our mystery man.’ Amy sounded very definite about this and Luke smiled.

The previous evening they had made a start on their story and had decided that, seeing as they were going that way, their hero would also be making for the former pilgrims’ hospice of Santa Cristina, high in the mountains, near the Somport pass.

They had had quite a discussion about just who the main protagonist of their tale might be, as well as exactly when it might have been, but without coming to any conclusions.

Without admitting it to each other, or maybe not even to themselves, both of them now had a mental picture of a medieval character who looked suspiciously like Luke himself.

So far there wasn’t an Amy character, but he, at least, felt pretty sure she would put in an appearance before too long.

Meanwhile, modern-day Amy was trying to remember exactly where the abbey had been positioned.

‘And Santa Cristina’s right at the top?’

‘Just the other side, but it’s no more than a ruin these days. Quite possibly it’s hidden under a few feet of snow at the moment, but we can always hope.’

Amy nodded. ‘Such a pity, considering how important it used to be.’

‘Third only to the Great St Bernard and Jerusalem itself.’ Amy nodded. She hadn’t heard of Santa Cristina before, but half an hour on the Internet after dinner the previous night had made her realise its significance in the medieval world.

As they began to climb, the road got progressively more tortuous, and the valley sides tightened towards them more and more.

The road was now squeezed alongside the banks of the fast-flowing river.

Luke glanced across to the passenger seat.

Although Amy looked happy enough, it was difficult to know what she was getting out of this part of the journey, spectacular as it was to a sighted person.

He gave her a quick description of their surroundings, finishing with the words, ‘I wouldn’t want to fall into that river. ’

She half turned towards him. ‘Dirty or cold?’

‘We’ll take a closer look.’ He braked, pulled off the road, bumped down a steep track and drew up with a crunch of gravel beside the river.

‘Come on, let’s see what you think of a real mountain stream.’

As they opened the doors, both felt the noticeably colder air.

‘That’s straight off the snowy mountains.

’ Amy had correctly worked out the direction of the wind and was reaching for a jacket.

He leant over to the back seat and handed her a down-filled body warmer.

As she stepped out of the car and pulled it on, he took her arm and led her to the edge of the water, helping her across the bank of pebbles.

Hearing the water, she crouched down and dipped her hand in.

‘I see what you mean. It’s freezing.’

The word see had caused him all sorts of embarrassment when he first met her.

It kept leaping uninvited into his mouth in expressions like Let’s see or Come and see .

This had caused him acute discomfort each time as he’d felt he had made some dreadful gaffe in the face of her blindness.

If he had, she never gave any sign of it.

Gradually, he’d started to notice that she herself used the verb as often and as naturally as he did.

Relieved, he had reverted to his normal figures of speech.

She hastily withdrew her hand from the water and replaced it lightly on his arm.

Although she told herself this was just as a precaution as they were near the water’s edge, she did admit to herself that it was also because she found she increasingly enjoyed physical contact with him.

Even through his jacket, she could feel the strength of his arm muscles that flexed as he stretched.

She did her best not to let anything show on her face and took refuge in a safe topic, the weather.

‘Brr! Of course, at this time of year, and with sun on the mountains, I suppose the winter snows are melting fast. I imagine it’s really clear, clean water.

The pilgrims would have been able to drink it with impunity, wouldn’t they? ’

‘No question. I’m sure it’s as pure as pure.

’ He was acutely aware of her hand on his arm, the warmth reaching through the sleeve of his jacket, and the sensation, while pleasant, was disturbing.

He made sure he kept the conversation of historical matters.

‘Who knows? Hundreds, if not thousands, of medieval pilgrims may have come to this selfsame spot to fill their water bottles.’

‘Were they really bottles?’ She missed nothing. ‘Surely glass was horrifically expensive in those times. Is that what they really used?’ She gave his arm a squeeze, which he had come to recognise as the sign that she wanted something. The question was not difficult to answer.

‘If we’re talking about the Middle Ages, you’re absolutely right.

Glass was a real luxury until centuries later.

As far as water bottles were concerned, the usual container in those days was unquestionably a gourd or a sheep’s stomach, sometimes soaked in pitch.

Personally I’d favour the gourd to the dead sheep, but each to his own. ’

She giggled and he smiled with her. She really was a very good travelling companion, not at all the cold, aloof woman he had encountered in London.

He thought back to when they had first met.

It seemed so very long ago now. In reality it was barely a month and that meeting, he now knew, hadn’t been easy for either of them.

Her home was a wonderful, elegant house in Highgate.

He’d wondered idly to himself as he’d walked up the steps to the front door just how much the three-storey Georgian mansion might be worth in this part of London, where an apartment could sell for millions.

Father Tim who had persuaded him to go for the interview, had told him virtually nothing about Amy, apart from the accident that had robbed her of her parents, and her blindness of course.

In particular, Tim had totally omitted to mention that Amy Hardy was, without question, one of the most startlingly beautiful girls Luke had ever seen.

However, beautiful or not, her attitude that first day had been far from welcoming; decidedly cool in fact.

Why had she been so prickly? No time like the present, so he asked her.

‘Why were you so grumpy when we first met?’

A look of surprise crossed her face, closely followed by one of remorse. He had to wait a while for her reply.

‘I know, Luke, and I’m so sorry. I think, more than anything, it was fear.

Fear that you might take one look at me and decide you didn’t want the responsibility of taking a blind girl halfway across Europe.

You see, it took me five years to make up my mind to get up and start doing something with my life and, while I was waiting for you to come to the house that day, I was suddenly terrified it might not work out, and I’d be stuck there all on my own once again.

It came across as grumpiness, but it was fear of rejection.

Rebuilding a life isn’t easy.’ It was said with stiff finality.

She was still holding onto his arm, but her face was towards the rushing water.

He followed the direction of her eyes and found himself watching a bird’s nest swept downstream over the rapids.

A back eddy caught it, held it uncertainly for a few moments, before a fresh wave collected it once more and whirled it away downstream.

He was conscious of the inner turmoil in her voice as she continued.

‘The accident’s still ever-present in my head.

At least, it has been up to these last couple of weeks.

In the space of a few seconds my life changed completely and forever.

One moment I was a privileged, or rather over-privileged, member of the 1 per cent of the 1 per cent.

Then the next moment, my whole world, my family and my future were smashed to smithereens.

In the morning I was skiing back over from Zermatt.

In the evening I was in a hospital trying to come to terms with losing my family and my eyesight.

’ There were tears in the corners of her eyes, but she refused to let them run.

Angrily she rubbed her forearm across her face.