Boot Camp Bride

by Lizzie Lamb

  ‘We’re not actually going any further than The Ship Inn, Thornham,’ Ffinch explained. ‘It’s just a story we’re concocting to explain why you and I have disappeared. In actual fact we’ll be going undercover, initially passing ourselves off as birdwatchers - to check out the salt marshes where the prospective brides go for their cross-country runs.’

  Charlee was about to say that it all seemed a bit over the top just to get a few snaps of a dishevelled Russian model but she kept her counsel. Better they thought she actually was the lovestruck fiancée she’d been slated to play.

  ‘The Ship Inn, Thornham? Never heard of it,’ she said.

  ‘It’s close by Burnham Market or, to give it its nickname, Chelsea-by-the-Sea,’ Ffinch put in. ‘Lots of chichi shops and couples with black Labradors wearing Barbours.’

  ‘You can get Barbours for Labradors now?’ she asked, straight-faced. Ffinch looked about to explain that there should be an Oxford comma somewhere in the sentence, then he caught her eye.

  ‘Very funny, Montague. Remind me not to tangle with a linguist in future.’ Then he grinned and looked younger and momentarily free from the underlying strain that creased his forehead and had him pacing the living room floor during the night watches. His gaze rested on her for a few moments, consideringly, and Charlee flushed under his calm regard. Unbidden, her heart flipped over; but she put it down to excitement and anticipation of what lay ahead of them. ‘You’re getting a free holiday, a spa break,’ he reminded her.

  ‘A roll round in the mud more like it,’ Charlee put with her usual asperity.

  ‘So don’t push it.’

  ‘No, sir,’ she saluted him. ‘Or should that be sir - darling? I so want to get it right.’

  ‘Okay you two lovebirds,’ Sam said shortly. ‘Get out of my office, you’re putting me off my lunchtime pint. Go - make arrangements, work on your story, do whatever’s necessary for the success of this venture. Just don’t run up massive expenses or you’ll be paying for them yourselves. Go!’ he repeated as Charlee stood there clasping her reporter’s notebook to her breast and Ffinch seemed lost in thought. ‘Come back when you’ve got the spoiler - I want to run it as soon as possible. Mirror! Mirror! won’t know what’s hit it.’

  He rubbed his hands together.

  ‘Okay, Chief.’ Charlee made for the door but then paused, expecting Ffinch to follow her. But obviously they had further business to discuss, business she wasn’t party to. ‘I’ll go and tidy up my desk and put it about the office that -’

  ‘Yes, yes, whatever.’ Sam had already lost interest and wanted her gone.

  Charlee walked back to her desk, sat down heavily, put her notebook and pen by the mouse pad and covered her face with her hands. She let out a long breath - there was a lot to think about and she needed to marshal her thoughts into some kind of order. Downing the last of her champagne, she made her way to the staff kitchen and put her glass in the dishwasher. Vanessa went ape if the work surfaces weren’t kept clean and tidy. With everything else going on in her life right now, she didn’t need Vanessa on her case, too.

  Charlee spent a large chunk of the morning researching the north Norfolk coast around Brancaster and Thornham. She made it known that she and Ffinch were taking a minibreak in a country house hotel in Cornwall and left the bush telegraph to do the rest. At lunch time her colleagues kept passing her desk, demanding another look at the ring and asking some very personal questions.

  ‘You’re looking fabulous, Charlee,’ one female intern said. ‘You have a certain glow.’

  ‘It’s called fresh air and exercise,’ she quipped. ‘Almost a week in the country does that to a girl.’

  ‘Surely you mean s-exercise?’ another commented and they all laughed. ‘You’re having great sex, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course she’s having great sex. She’s engaged to Ffinch - the man’s sex on legs. Isn’t he?’

  ‘You might say so, but I couldn’t possibly comment,’ Charlee replied, concentrating on her typing with an air of mystery designed to keep them guessing.

  ‘God, I’m like, so jealous, you know?’ the first intern sighed.

  ‘If I was engaged to him, I’d never let him out of my bed …’ someone added. ‘We’d never get up, we’d order in food and champagne and …’

  ‘Those gorgeous grey eyes,’ the first intern said, romantically. ‘Or, are they blue?’

  ‘Come-to-bed-eyes,’ another female sighed. ‘Although I’d settle for five minutes in the stationery cupboard, if the chance arose. Oops, sorry Montague, just kidding,’ she said, realising she’d dropped a clanger.

  ‘And his family’s loaded,’ someone else added prosaically. ‘You’ve hit pay dirt, Montague. If you can hold onto him, that is.’

  ‘I happen to think he’s got a pretty good bargain, too,’ Charlee said sniffily.

  ‘Yeah, ri-ight,’ they opined, leaving the words ‘as if!’ hanging in the air.

  ‘Coming to Pret for a sandwich, Charlee?’

  ‘No, I’ve got an article to finish for Vanessa, then we - Ff - Rafa and me, we’re going home to pack and -’

  ‘- have afternoon sex,’ the girl at the next desk put in, comically popping her head over the top of her monitor, Muppet-like.

  ‘You lot are obsessed,’ Charlee laughed, thinking - ‘little do they know’. The closest they’d come to amorous was the ‘let’s get it out of the way’ kiss in her father’s study and her standing on Ffinch’s foot. ‘But it’s a possibility,’ she said with a suitably dreamy expression whilst thinking - No Way, José.

  ‘Lucky cow,’ they chorused, meaning it as an accolade.

  Vanessa and Sally came down the corridor and Charlee’s co-workers scattered like ninepins, reaching for their coats and bags before Vanessa could invent some trumped up reason for them to work through their lunch break.

  ‘Montague - a word,’ she said imperiously and walked into the staff kitchen, clearly expecting Charlee to follow.

  Sighing, Charlee pushed her chair away from her workstation. She would be furious if Sam had sent Vanessa to bring her up to speed on the assignment. That was Ffinch’s job, he owed her that at least. Hadn’t they said that the less people who knew about their plans, the greater chance the mission had of succeeding?

  Entering the kitchen, she folded her arms and leaned against the doorframe, primed for a quick getaway.

  ‘Montague,’ Vanessa began, baring her teeth in what she obviously imagined to be a winning smile. ‘Charlotte … I’ve been a good mentor to you since you arrived at What’cha! have I not?’

  There was only one answer to that question, Charlee thought, crossing her fingers behind her back. ‘Yes, Vanessa.’

  ‘And I’ve helped too, whenever I could,’ Sally smiled, reached out and straightened Charlee’s collar. It was only with the greatest of difficulty that Charlee stopped herself from flinching.

  ‘I guess,’ Charlee replied, wondering where this was going.

  ‘So -’ Vanessa brought her hands together and steepled her fingers, as if she was about to pray. ‘We feel we ought to warn you.’

  ‘Warn me?’ Charlee felt as if someone had poured a jug of ice-cold water down the back of her neck. ‘About?’

  ‘Ffinch. The rumours.’ Sally moved over to the sink and fired up the coffee machine.

  ‘What rumours?’ Charlee made an effort to pull herself together; repeating phrases like a simple-minded parrot would get her nowhere.

  ‘His drug taking. What he was really doing in Darien. I mean, come on - taking his team deep into the rainforest and losing two of them in the process? How many people get captured by the Contras, held to ransom and live to tell the tale?’ Charlee went quiet; these were the very questions keeping her from sleep.

  ‘Go on,’ she prompted, feeling strangely disloyal for talking about Ffinch behind his back - especially with two harpies like Sally and Vanessa. Then she remembered Sam’s mocking ‘put stars in her eyes’ and Ffinch’s economy with the t
ruth and hardened her heart.

  ‘They say …’ Sally and Vanessa took a step closer to ensure they weren’t overheard. ‘They say that the charity he’s set up in Colombia …’ Sally’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper and racked up the tension.

  ‘The one raising money to provide a hospital boat for the people who fished him out of the Amazon and nursed him back to health?’ Charlee didn’t want either woman to think that she was completely ignorant of her fiancé’s backstory. ‘What about it?’

  ‘Just that it’s a front for his other activities.’ Vanessa paused meaningfully.

  ‘What activities might those be?’ Charlee asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow. Vanessa and Sally had shown no interest in her welfare before now, so why were they acting like her fairy godmothers all of a sudden?

  ‘Gun running, drug smuggling, money laundering,’ Sally ventured. She gave Charlee a pitying look which suggested that someone high on l-u-r-v-e, and grateful for being singled out by a man like Ffinch wouldn’t see what was staring her in the face. That it was her duty as her superior - her friend - to point out these matters.

  ‘No-oh.’ The premise was so ridiculous that Charlee burst out laughing. Ffinch, a money launderer, a gun runner and a cokehead? ‘No-oh. Really, you’ve got it all wrong.’

  ‘You didn’t know Rafa before his trip to Colombia, did you?’ Vanessa asked.

  Charlee was forced to admit that was true. She’d heard him mentioned, of course, as if he was the best thing since organic, wholemeal Poilâne bread - but they hardly moved in the same circles. Ffinch was in the stratosphere while she was firmly anchored to earth.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ she admitted.

  ‘He came back from South America a changed man. Mood swings, dark moments, lapses in concentration. He hasn’t taken one photo since.’

  Vanessa and Sally traded a look. If Charlee didn’t know better, she’d suspect them of raining on her parade. But she dismissed the idea as ridiculous, even they couldn’t be that mean - could they? Besides it couldn’t be true about him not having taken a photograph since - he’d taken plenty of the Prince and Anastasia Markova on Christmas Eve.

  ‘Well he would react like that, wouldn’t he?’ she snapped, deciding to put paid to their scheming. ‘He’s lucky to be alive and he knows it. It’s bound to colour his view of the world.’ Her nose began to prickle and her throat tightened as a wave of empathy washed over her. When she spoke her voice was rough with emotion. ‘The book, and raising money for the hospital boat is his way of repaying his debt to the people who saved him, and at great risk to themselves.’

  She turned away from them, and was about to say ‘I don’t have the time for this’, when Vanessa made a grab for her sleeve.

  ‘Ask yourself this, Montague. How many people actually escape the Contras, or live to tell the tale if the ransom isn’t paid?’ She raised her eyebrows to her hairline. ‘How many?’ she repeated for emphasis.

  ‘I’m grateful for your concern but … I’ve got to pack. So if you don’t mind?’

  ‘Of course, we just wanted to be sure that you know what you’ve taken on.’

  Charlee detached herself from Vanessa’s python-like grip and backed out of the kitchen before they could undermine her belief in Ffinch and her faith in her own judgment. She threw everything into her bag and hurried to the lift. Her heart was still beating madly when she reached the ground floor and stepped into What’cha!’s sunlit atrium.

  Of course, Vanessa and Sally were pouring poison in her ear - she was smart enough to know that. They were jealous as hell that she had become engaged to Ffinch, even if neither of them had been in the running. However, once she was on the bus and heading back for the mews, she removed the piece of creased paper from the pouch at the back of her Moleskine diary and read through the list of forbidden topics again.

  How many people actually escape from the Contras and live to tell the tale? Charlee didn’t know; but she’d make it her business to find out.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Forget the Bucket and Spade

  It was a frosty afternoon and the sun was burning low on the horizon as Charlee and Ffinch headed for north-west Norfolk.

  Charlee was glad of the excuse to slip on her wrap-around sunglasses against the glare because they concealed her expression. She’d spent two days brooding over her conversation with Vanessa and Sally. And, despite all best attempts, some of their poison had dripped into her ear and seeped into her brain. She glanced sideways at Ffinch as he drove along the twisting road from Fakenham to Wells-next-the-Sea. He looked buoyed up and exhilarated, more than was reasonable given that their mission was to catch a Russian supermodel with mud on her plimsolls.

  What was she missing? She tapped her teeth with her thumbnail and drew her brows together in concentration.

  ‘You’re quiet, Montague. Why does that fill me with disquiet?’ Ffinch asked and, when she didn’t answer, added, ‘Anxious about the mission?’

  ‘I’m worried that Anastasia might recognise me from the nightclub,’ she prevaricated.

  ‘Take it from me, she won’t. She spends her life surrounded by her ‘people’ - gophers, hangers-on and the like. She probably wouldn’t recognise her own sister unless she wore a name badge and carried a backstage pass.’

  ‘Ouch. That was pretty cynical, even for you,’ Charlee responded.

  ‘Even for me?’ Ffinch gave her words some consideration before asking with deceptive quietness, ‘And what would you know about me?’

  ‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing.’ His words stung and Charlee returned to watching the bare fields sweep past, feeling cast down. Ffinch let out a breath and loosened the long scarf which he wore, muffler-like around his neck, as if he was suddenly too hot. Turning left at the junction, they skirted the top of Wells-next-the-Sea and headed towards Holkham.

  ‘What would you like to know?’ he asked resignedly, after a few miles of uncomfortable silence.

  ‘Okay, bite my head off if you must, but I want to know what happened on your trip to Darien.’ She turned in her seat to look at him. Like her, his expression was hidden behind sunglasses but she could tell from the way one corner of his mouth quirked in irritation that this information was being dragged out of him.

  ‘It’s something I’d rather forget, but it’s something …’ he paused, searching for the right words.

  ‘Something you can’t forget?’

  ‘That’s it,’ he sounded surprised that she understood. ‘Okay, long story short - I set out to take photographs while my research team took notes for the last chapter of my book. Chapter Ten - Darien.’ He glanced at her and when she looked back at him, blankly, gave her a dark look. Charlee’s crime was soon made plain to her. ‘You haven’t read the book, have you Montague? I might have known.’ Although he made light of her indifference to his magnum opus, she could tell that he was smarting just the same.

  ‘Come on Ffinch, be fair. When have I had time? It’s been full on since we met at your book launch … ’

  ‘As if I could forget.’ His tone seemed to imply that he would gladly forget every second of their contentious partnership, and that hurt. ‘You strike me as the sort of person who recycles presents she doesn’t want - or value. Gives them to a brother, for example?’ Charlee blanched; so he had seen his book on the kitchen table on Christmas Day and had been waiting for the right moment to bring it up. Oh, he was cute, very cute, and had her bang to rights.

  ‘Never mind all that. You can give me another one,’ she said cheekily. ‘Carry on with your story.’

  ‘Very well. I wanted to photograph the indigenous people of the rainforest - write about how the twenty-first century had impacted on their lives: trees being cleared for logging or cattle ranches, strangers bringing in viruses for which they had no immunity, guerrillas forcing them to work in the marijuana fields and using them as drugs mules.’

  Drugs. Charlee glanced up, sharply. Maybe there was some truth in Vanessa and Sally�
��s words. A photo journalist like Ffinch could pretty much go as he please, slipping over borders - his camera and passport his only credentials.

  ‘Go on,’ she urged. They travelled on with Holkham beach just visible through the trees, and, on their left, deer could be seen grazing in the woods behind a brick wall which marked the Earl of Leicester’s land. But she couldn’t afford to be distracted by the view; this moment might never come again.

  ‘We set off, well prepared: guides, native speakers, two undergrads keen to help with my research. Two armed guards.’ He let out a long breath, removed his scarf and unzipped his coat as if he was uncomfortably warm. ‘Foolishly, arrogantly, I thought - with my father being Brazilian and my South American connections - I’d be …’ he struggled for the word.

  ‘Safe?’ Charlee supplied.

  ‘Safe-r.’ He stressed the last letter and shook his head at what he now perceived to be his folly. ‘No one’s really safe there.’

  ‘You were wrong?’

  ‘Very wrong. The first night we camped on the edge of the rainforest - it was a fabulous experience, listening to the animals calling to each other in the darkness. I couldn’t wait to make contact with the indigenous people; it had all been prearranged through interpreters and the Ministry for the Interior. Then …’ he paused. Plainly, recalling the moment it all went wrong was distressing. ‘In the middle of the night - gunfire, chaos, confusion. We were dragged from our tents, roughed up, our belongings rifled - all the good stuff, cameras, mobiles and medicine, taken. Then they marched us through the rainforest. For days.’

  ‘All your team?’ She felt uncomfortable probing for more details, but in order to understand him, she needed to know everything that had happened.

  ‘No, our armed guards and our guides disappeared into the jungle in the confusion. Or maybe that’d been agreed upon - as payment for alerting the kidnappers to our presence. Who knows? Only I, my camera crew and the two students from Colombia University were taken.’

  ‘You were the cash cows,’ Charlee put in. ‘Europeans.’