‘I drove it quite a bit too, when I was first here,’ said Cass.
‘Hey? Well, he must think a lot of you,’ said Usain. He turned to Ranulph. ‘When did the road run out?’
‘It’s OK until this bit,’ said Ranulph. ‘There’s been a lot of rain but as far as we can tell this early, no really bad damage.’
Usain wanted to see what the road was like so thethree of them went down to where Bastian’s pick-up was parked.
After some chat about the state of the island, Usain declared it was time he was getting back. Cass climbed into the pick-up and Ranulph started the engine.
Embarrassment flooded over Cass like the rain had the previous day. It was not helped by Ranulph being tight-lipped and quietly livid next to her. How could she have been so stupid? She had risked her life. Surely not even Bastian’s paper was worth that.
‘Is Bastian’s house all right?’ she asked, desperate to break through the atmosphere in the pick-up.
‘Very little damage. It wasn’t a bad hurricane. Only about a two.’
‘It seemed quite bad when I was out in it.’
The words were only half out of her mouth before she regretted them.
‘You shouldn’t have been out in it!’ he snapped.
‘I know! I’ve said I’m sorry.’
‘There’s no point in apologising to me! I wasn’t the only one who stayed awake all night worrying about what had happened to you!’
She muttered, ‘I’m sorry,’ again. It was so similar to being told off by a parent or a teacher.
Had Ranulph ever been a teacher? she wondered. At that moment she was glad she’d told her father she didn’t want to train as one. She loved playing with children but didn’t want to have to lecture them. She reminded herself she must remember to cancel her college course.
Beside her, wrestling to get the pick-up down thedamaged road, Ranulph exuded anger. She wondered why he was going on feeling angry, even after she had been discovered safe and sound. She really hoped Bastian didn’t behave in the same way; she had been almost killed – pushed on to the road out of a moving vehicle by Austin – for his work, she really didn’t want that thrown back in her face.
Bastian also hugged her when she got out of the car. ‘We were worried,’ he said. ‘But when we realised the hurricane wasn’t too bad, we relaxed. At least, I did. I thought there was a good chance that you were all right.’
‘Let the girl come in,’ said Delphine, who apparently had walked over from her house early. ‘She’ll want a shower and some food.’
Cass did feel a lot better after a very quick shower that included washing her hair but then realised she had no clean clothes to change into. All her clothes were with Austin, wrapped round her father’s camera. The thought made her shudder almost as much as the prospect of putting her clothes back on: cold, muddy and full of grit. She washed out her bra and pants and put them on while they were still wet. There was only one towel she could wring them out in and, although she’d done her best, it wasn’t that effective.
She wrapped the towel around her and sidled into the kitchen. ‘Delphine! I’ve got nothing to wear. Austin went off with my clothes.’
Delphine pursed her lips but refrained from expressing her feelings about Austin. ‘I’ll find you something.’
She found a dress, a bit shorter than Cass would have liked given that it seemed years since she’d worn anything except combat shorts and T-shirts.
‘Suits you!’ said Delphine. ‘Someone left it behind once. You can keep it. It’s too short for me.’
Half an hour later, Cass was sitting at the table on the veranda, surrounded by people wanting to hear her story. Becca was there as well as another couple of people from the dig. Ranulph was elsewhere. He’d heard her story and he obviously didn’t want to hear it again.
‘So!’ said Becca. ‘Spill!’
Cass looked at her and realised that Becca was quite annoyed too.
She took a breath. ‘First of all, I want to apologise to everyone. I realise you’ve all been worried sick about me. At the time I just thought I had to leave. I didn’t realise the hurricane had actually hit until we were in the pick-up.’
‘Ran was beside himself,’ said Becca. ‘We came up for breakfast and discovered you were missing—’
‘We found the notes,’ said Bastian. ‘I understand why you went but it was a bad decision.’
‘I know that now. In fact I knew that about three minutes after we set off, but I couldn’t get Austin to turn back.’
