Boot Camp Bride

by Lizzie Lamb

  ‘Exactly. The idea, I believe, was to hold us for ransom and when the money was paid they would release us.’

  She frowned. ‘You believe - don’t you know for sure? Isn’t that what the Contras do?’

  Ffinch laughed harshly. ‘Everyone says we were kidnapped by the Contras but the truth is less romantic and more prosaic.’ He pulled a face at romantic, showing that he considered the notion ridiculous. ‘We were kidnapped by one of the many illegal armed groups operating around the coca, marijuana and opium poppy fields. The Aguilas Negra - the Black Eagles - or the ELN, probably working in collusion with our native guides.’

  ‘Ejército de Liberación Nacional - The National Liberation Army,’ Charlee added, taking the opportunity to remind him that she’d studied Politics as well as Languages at university. He shouldn’t underestimate her simply because of her current lowly position at What’cha! She was worth more than that. She deserved more than that.

  ‘You’ve got the accent down to a tee.’ He nodded his approval almost absent-mindedly. They were bowling along the road to Thornham but Charlee knew that he was back in Darien. ‘There was a problem with communication. The patois which the kidnappers spoke was so far removed from the Bogotá Spanish spoken by the undergrads and myself that we could barely understand them.’

  They drove along in silence for several minutes while Charlee assimilated this information. She glanced over the low hedges and dun-coloured fields stretching towards the salt marshes where the sea was a black line on the horizon. The landscape perfectly suited their sombre mood.

  ‘What happened next?’ she prompted.

  ‘It started to rain and didn’t let up for days. They marched us through the rainforest stopping only to feed us basic rations or to let us sleep - while they smoked dope or chewed coca leaves. Elena was the first to fall ill. She was so young …’ his voice wavered, as if the memory was more than he could bear. Then he coughed to clear his throat and changed the subject, signifying that Charlee would learn no more that day ‘The sea goes wa-ay out when it’s high tide, then it gathers itself and rushes forward, like a mini tsunami. In certain places where the water is funnelled, it comes rushing in almost as fast as a man can walk.’

  Hiding her frustration at the swift change of subject, Charlee looked where he was pointing. She wanted to know more about what had happened in Darien - not be treated to a learned exposition on tide tables. But she knew it was best not to push it.

  Tides.

  She sat bolt upright, remembering the conversation she’d overhead in the mews kitchen. What had Ffinch said …Yes, the night of the high tide; I’ve checked the tide tables and the internet - twice. Stop worrying, it’ll be fine. You’ll be there? Good. No, she has no idea and that’s how I intend to keep it . . .

  Charlee racked her brain but couldn’t see the connection between high tide, a boot camp for brides, a Russian supermodel and a mysterious phone call conducted in Spanish in the middle of the night. One glance at Ffinch’s closed expression showed he did not intend to elucidate further on the matter, or to return to the subject of his kidnapping. Sensing that, she slid lower in her seat and remained silent as the camper van ate up the miles. God, Norfolk was bleak, especially in the fading light of a January afternoon when the sun was setting, taking its meagre warmth with it. She was going to freeze to death at the boot camp. Fact.

  But compared to the vicissitudes that Ffinch and his team had faced in Darien, freezing to death in Norfolk would be a walk in the park.

  It was properly dark by the time they reached Thornham and The Ship Inn. As Ffinch parked the VW in the car park across the road from the inn, birdwatchers returning from the marshes with cameras and binoculars strung round their necks bade them good evening. They consisted mainly of retired couples in matching waterproofs, woolly hats and muddy boots. Ffinch took the heavier of their bags out of the back of the camper and left two smaller ones for Charlee to carry. Even so, she walked stiffly after the long drive from London and almost dragged them behind her.

  ‘Have a care, Montague, those cases are vintage Louis Vuitton,’ Ffinch said. Charlee couldn’t tell if he was joking or not, that was the trouble with him. But she guessed that he was. He’d showed scant regard for material possessions during the short time she’d known him. It was as if he’d reached a place in his life where objects held no intrinsic value for him. But, maybe that was because he had - or could have - everything he wanted?

  ‘You are such a poseur,’ she said under her breath, but meaning it as a joke.

  ‘I heard that,’ Ffinch said, holding open the heavy door of the former smugglers’ inn. ‘Glad you’ve recovered your sense of humour and your enthusiasm for what we have to accomplish. I know you’re on top form when you make plain your low opinion of me. I was beginning to think I would have to send for Sally to replace you, but you’ve bucked up and - here we are.’

  Charlee didn’t have a low opinion of him, quite the reverse. Actually, the more she learned about what had happened in Colombia, the greater her respect for him. It was the knowledge that he was withholding information from her which was seriously pissing her off.

  Didn’t he know that he could trust her with his life?

  They walked into the dark interior and Ffinch deposited their bags by the reception desk. A huge fire was burning in a fireplace which almost filled one wall of the square, flagstoned hall. Low lamps had been lit and people were strolling through into the low-ceilinged bars for their first drink of the evening. There was a nice buzz about the place; it was all very welcoming and just what Charlee needed. She let out a sigh of relief and her shoulders, which had been practically pinned to her ears all the way here, relaxed and dropped.

  ‘Fonseca-Ffinch and Miss Montague,’ Ffinch announced to the receptionist.

  True to form the woman gave him a bright smile, almost purring as she handed over his key. She passed Charlee’s key to her almost as an afterthought, but her gaze rested briefly on Granny’s ring and her eyes widened. Then her polite, corporate expression fell back into place. But it was easy to tell she thought any woman who had the opportunity to share Ffinch’s bed, but chose not to, was either a fool, a close blood relation - or Amish.

  ‘Up the stairs and turn right. Your rooms are next to each other, as requested.’

  ‘Thank you, Susanne.’ Ffinch read the name on her lapel badge and gave her a smile that made her come over all unnecessary. ‘And we are booked in for dinner?’

  ‘A table for two at eight o’clock, Mr Fonseca-Ffinch.’ She tripped over his name but then remembered to ask: ‘Do you need any help with your luggage, madam?’

  ‘I think we’re okay. Can you manage, darling?’ Ffinch asked, smiling down at Charlee like she was indeed his beloved fiancée.

  ‘You know me, ever resourceful,’ she retorted, adding ‘sweetie.’ The receptionist looked as if she was trying to puzzle out their relationship. Sweetie? Darling? Two separate rooms? Then, clearly deciding it was none of her business, she shrugged.

  Ffinch led the way up the wide staircase with its faded tartan carpet and uneven treads. The old inn was so atmospheric that Charlee had no trouble imagining it as the haunt of smugglers who had navigated the creeks at high tide and landed brandy, tobacco and lace when the revenue men weren’t looking. Was Ffinch a modern-day smuggler, she wondered? Vanessa’s list of his alleged illegal activities echoed in her tired brain: gun running, drug smuggling, money laundering.

  They reached a wide landing and Ffinch stopped by a rather battered door and turned towards her, jangling his key.

  ‘This is mine - and that one, angel, is yours.’

  ‘Thank you, hun,’ Charlee replied in kind, although she felt like slapping him. And not simply because of the cloak of secrecy he and Sam had drawn over the mission - but, because of some other feeling she couldn’t quite put into words.

  ‘Permittez moi?’ Taking the key from her slack fingers, he opened the door, picked up her cases and put them next t
o the bed. Charlee walked in and closed the door on him. She’d had quite enough of Señor Rafael Fonseca-Ffinch and wanted him to know it.

  She leaned back against the door and surveyed her room. Unsurprisingly, it was decorated in a seaside theme with tones of navy-blue, white and red, coiled ropes, shells, and paintings of the marshes placed around the room for maximum effect. The bedside table lamp was lit, and there were water and tea-making facilities to hand. The bed, with its pale-grey tongue and groove headboard and patchwork quilt in navy and white, looked inviting. She walked over to the low window tucked under the eaves and looked across Ship Lane towards the marshes. Not that she could see much, however, it was almost a quarter to five and the last of the light had gone.

  Drawing the thickly lined curtains against the January gloom, she dropped onto the bed, pulled the quilt over her shoulders and drifted off into a dreamless sleep. Half an hour later, she woke with a headache and a feeling of disorientation and loneliness. Since Christmas Eve, she’d stayed in her bedsit (twice), her parents’ home, Ffinch’s grandparents’ mews and now here she was in another location. In three days she’d be booking into the boot camp; small wonder she felt rudderless, adrift.

  She threw back the coverlet and swung her legs out of bed. Maybe if she made herself a coffee and ate some of the biscuits on the tray, the sugar rush would help her to regain her equilibrium. As she waited for the tiny kettle to boil, she let her gaze wander round the room. It was then she saw IT. She leapt to her feet, all earlier feelings of disconnection and detachment forgotten in her anger.

  ‘Ffinch, you bastard …’

  Abandoning the tea tray she strode up to the interconnecting door between their two rooms and banged on it with her fists, like she was leading a police raid. The door opened and Ffinch stood in his jeans, stripped to the waist and with a towel draped round his shoulders.

  ‘Christ on a bike, Montague - is there a fire?’ he asked, slapping shaving foam from his cupped hand onto his cheeks. ‘I would have thought it was the inn’s place to inform us of an emergency.’

  ‘You - you . . . ’ She pointed at him, lost for words.

  She found herself unexpectedly fazed by the sight of his naked torso, and couldn’t help making an inventory of his salient physical points. Chest lightly downed with just enough dark hair to be considered sexy, deliciously tanned skin, slim waist, broad shoulders and -

  ‘What?’ he asked puzzled, as she seemed to have come to a complete stop. He wiped the newly applied shaving foam off his face with the towel and indicated that she should enter his room, but she hesitated on the threshold.

  ‘An interconnecting door,’ she choked out at last in constricted tones.

  ‘So? It’s an interconnecting door?’

  ‘Don’t you remember what I said in the office, before we went undercover in the skip?’

  He gave out a tired, slightly exasperated sigh. ‘Charlee - to be honest, you say so many things it isn’t easy to distinguish one from another. What’s wrong with having an interconnecting door? I thought it would make communication easier.’

  ‘Communication? Ha! That’s a new word for it?’ Charlee spluttered, detecting his amusement and smarting. She had dug a hole for herself and he showed no inclination of helping her out of it.

  ‘Lost me there, I’m afraid,’ Ffinch said, walking through to the en suite bathroom.

  ‘To recap . . .’ Charlee was reluctant to cross the threshold in case it meant something. Like in a vampire movie where the heroine invites the creature into her house and there’s no going back. ‘I said - I have no intention of working late, missing the last train back to town and “staying over” in some country house hotel with you. Or being shown to a suite of rooms which - surprise, surprise - have interconnecting doors.’

  ‘Oh that,’ Ffinch laughed over his shoulder. ‘And I called you Chelsea and said something about you not being able to keep your hands off me. Looks like I was right, doesn’t it?’ He started his shaving preparations all over again and Charlee knew that he hadn’t forgotten one iota of their conversation. He was trying to wind her up - and succeeding.

  ‘Why, you!’ Forgetting her earlier resolution she marched across the threshold. She suspected, whenever this incident was recalled - and she had a gut feeling that it would be, and often - Ffinch would insist that she had broken the door down, marched into his room and -

  And what, she wondered?

  Standing in the middle of his much bigger room, she threw back her head and let out a groan.

  ‘Look, make us both a coffee. And before you say anything, Montague, I fully acknowledge that you will be doing so as a huge favour to me. Because you’re my partner and not because you’re female and it’s expected. Okay?’ He shut the bathroom door with a deft backwards flick of his bare foot and went on to complete his ablutions in private.

  Put that way, Charlee felt less like a faint-hearted feminist dead set against domestic duties and more like a complete idiot. Sighing, she switched on the kettle, checked out the pots of milk and his biscuit supply - which, incidentally, was better than hers. Clearly as senior partner, Ffinch had been accorded the best room. Finally, as the kettle boiled, he came back into the room wearing a hotel dressing gown over his jeans. Charlee cocked an inquiring eyebrow at the dressing gown and he laughed.

  ‘The way you banged on that door, I’m taking no chances. If ravishment is on your mind, can I ask a favour? Can it wait until after dinner - I’m starving?’ Charlee giggled and relaxed, acknowledging he had the power to infuriate her but could always make her laugh. She handed his coffee to him. He sat in the easy chair, crossed his legs and made a great show of arranging the folds of his dressing gown so not an inch of spare flesh was on view.

  ‘Okay, knock it off, Ffinch. I was just -’

  ‘Tired and emotional?’

  ‘Hangry.’

  ‘Hangry?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s a word my brothers and I made up to express when you’re so hungry that you feel angry. Never felt like that?’ she asked, dunking a highland shortie in her coffee.

  ‘Maybe, but not for food.’ He looked at her with the now familiar, unblinking gaze which she fancifully imagined could see into her soul. A silence lengthened between them, not an uncomfortable one, but one loaded with emotions and expectations they both knew were best kept reined in. Then he changed the subject. ‘Oh, I meant to say - we’ve made The Times. I picked up a copy in reception; I’ve left it open on the bed - take a look, guess we’re officially engaged now.’

  Charlee put down her coffee, walked over to the bed and picked up the newspaper he’d left open at hatches, matches and dispatches.

  Mr R. Fonseca-Ffinch and Miss C. Montague

  The engagement is announced between Rafael, son of His Excellency Ambassador Salvio Fonseca-Ffinch and Mrs Richenda Fonseca-Ffinch of Killiecrankie, Edinburgh and Charlotte, daughter of Doctor and Mrs Henry Montague of Highclere, Berkshire.

  The same heaviness of heart she’d experienced when Ffinch had shown her the mock-up of the announcement, overwhelmed her. It was as if they were making a mockery of love and it was wrong, somehow. Shaking her head free of the thought, she dropped the paper back onto the bed.

  ‘So, the game’s afoot?’ she said in an attempt at levity.

  ‘No shit, Sherlock,’ he confirmed, drinking his coffee in one thirsty gulp. Charlee made as if to stand up. ‘No, stay there; wait,’ he commanded. Then he crossed over the threshold of the interconnecting doors and into her bedroom. She heard him running a bath in her en suite and she came over all hot and bothered. If he thought for one minute they would be bathing a deux and playing ducks and drakes, he’d better prepare himself for a disappointment.

  After some time, he returned carrying a matching dressing gown to the one he was wearing. ‘Dinner’s at eight. I’ll call for you at quarter to and we can have a drink in the bar. Don’t worry - I’ll use the proper door.’

  Taking her hand, he guided her from his bedr
oom into her own and then softly closed the double doors and locked them.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Keeping Up Appearances

  True to his word, Ffinch knocked on her door at seven forty-five. Charlee paused and took several deep breaths before opening it. For reasons she couldn’t as yet fathom, their relationship was undergoing a sea change. Everything felt different. As if here, on neutral ground, emotions and feelings had shifted up a gear and the dynamic had altered.

  Ffinch knocked on the door for a second time and called her name.

  ‘Coming -’ Giving the room one last look, Charlee opened the door.

  Ffinch was standing on the wide landing with his back towards her, looking over the bannister and down into the hall. He turned round, leaned back against the bannister and smiled. Adrenalin shot up from Charlee’s solar plexus like a heat-seeking missile and exploded behind her breastbone. Taking a deep breath, she shrugged off the shiver of reaction that left her feeling weak and reminded herself this wasn’t a date, it was a business arrangement.

  Nothing more.

  ‘You look …’ Ffinch appeared lost for words as he took in her cocktail dress in shades of blue, sheer stockings and high heels. ‘Am I allowed to say lovely, or will that offend every feminist principle you hold? Will it make my compliment more palatable if I add that you’re also the go-to civilian the local constabulary call upon when they have a particularly tricky door to batter down?’

  ‘Very amusing Ffinch - let’s settle for “don’t we scrub up well”.’ Charlee’s scornful expression hid her inner turmoil and the fact that she couldn’t tear her eyes away from him. She gave him a second, more thorough look.

  ‘I’ll settle for that,’ he said, giving one of his dry smiles. But there was a light dancing in his eyes and he seemed wired. Remembering Vanessa’s caveat, Charlee wondered if he’d been snorting cocaine in the en suite bathroom as well as having a shower. ‘Shall we?’ He held out his hand, and, obviously sensing she had something on her mind, added: ‘Keeping up appearances, remember?’