have volunteered, that this was a job for a tough Alamo survivor like The Arizona Jew. But most of him was only aware that he loved life very much... and did not want it to end just yet. So he opened his mouth and then closed it again without speaking.
"Why you?" Laurel asked again, urgently. "Why shouldn't we draw straws? Why not Bob? Or Rudy? Why not me?"
Nick took her arm. "Come with me a moment," he said.
"Nick, there's not much time," Brian said. He tried to keep his tone of voice even, but he could hear desperation - perhaps even panic - bleeding through.
"I know. Start doing the things you have to do."
Nick drew Laurel through the door.
25
She resisted for a moment, then came along. He stopped in the small galley alcove and faced her. In that moment, with his face less than four inches from hers, she realized a dismal truth - he was the man she had been hoping to find in Boston. He had been on the plane all the time. There was nothing at all romantic about this discovery; it was horrible.
"I think we might have had something, you and me," he said. "Do you think I could be right about that? If you do, say so - there's no time to dance. Absolutely none."
"Yes," she said. Her voice was dry, uneven. "I think that's right."
"But we don't know. We can't know. It all comes back to time, doesn't it? Time... and sleep... and not knowing. But I have to be the one, Laurel. I have tried to keep some reasonable account of myself, and all my books are deeply in the red. This is my chance to balance them, and I mean to take it."
"I don't understand what you mea - "
"No - but I do." He spoke fast, almost rapping his words. Now he reached out and took her forearm and drew her even closer to him. "You were on an adventure of some sort, weren't you, Laurel?"
"I don't know what you're - "
He gave her a brisk shake. "I told you - there's no time to dance! Were You on an adventure?"
"... yes."
"Nick!" Brian called from the cockpit.
Nick looked rapidly in that direction. "Coming!" he shouted, and then looked back at Laurel. "I'm going to send you on another one. If you get out of this, that is, and if you agree to go."
She only looked at him, her lips trembling. She had no idea of what to say. Her mind was tumbling helplessly. His grip on her arm was very tight, but she would not be aware of that until later, when she saw the bruises left by his fingers; at that moment, the grip of his eyes was much stronger.
"Listen. Listen carefully." He paused and then spoke with peculiar, measured emphasis: "I was going to quit it. I'd made up my mind."
"Quit what?" she asked in a small, quivery voice.
Nick shook his head impatiently. "Doesn't matter. What matters is whether or not you believe me. Do you?"
"Yes," she said. "I don't know what you're talking about, but I believe you mean it."
"Quik!" Brian warned from the cockpit. "We're heading toward it!"
He shot a glance toward the cockpit again, his eyes narrow and gleaming. "Coming just now!" he called. When he looked at her again, Laurel thought she had never in her life been the focus of such ferocious, focussed intensity. "My father lives in the village of Fluting, south of London," he said. "Ask for him in any shop along the High Street. Mr Hopewell. The older ones still call him the gaffer. Go to him and tell him I'd made up my mind to quit it. You'll need to be persistent; he tends to turn away and curse loudly when he hears my name. The old I-have-no-son bit. Can you be persistent?"
"Yes."
He nodded and smiled grimly. "Good! Repeat what I've told you, and tell him you believed me. Tell him I tried my best to atone for the day behind the church in Belfast."
"In Belfast."
"Right. And if you can't get him to listen any other way, tell him he must listen. Because of the daisies. The time I brought the daisies. Can you remember that, as well?"
"Because once you brought him daisies."
Nick seemed to almost laugh - but she had never seen a face filled with such sadness and bitterness. "No - not