I lifted the lap-top's lid up again; the screen flicked back on. I looked at the last few lines we'd exchanged. Commitments.
'Oh, Stephen,' I whispered, 'what am I to do?'
The DVD player was still in its box: I hadn't had the time or the inclination to try connecting it to my lap-top yet. The disc Poudenhaut had given me was still in my jacket pocket, hung up inside the wardrobe and smelling of smoke (all the industrialists on Mr C's yacht were heavy smokers). I didn't need the disc, or the DVD player. I could see Mrs Buzetski silently mouthing Oh, oh, oh, very clearly indeed, thank you.
I didn't save our exchange to the lap-top's hard drive; I just powered down. First the machine, then, after a shower, me.
Well, now, here was an interesting little treat: that nice Mr Cholongai had loaned me his company Lear. It was a good one, too; actually had facilities. The first time I was offered a lift on a private jet I was appalled to be told it might be an idea to visit the airport loo before we left as the plane didn't have a toilet. Finding that your ultimate corporate status symbol has less in the way of amenities than a modern express coach can take the gloss off the experience.
I should be old enough not to want to do this sort of thing, but, well. I discovered my ordinary mobile phone would work and attempted to call my pal Luce back in California. Voicemail. I tried another of my girlfriends in the Valley. She was on an exercise bike in the gym and was suitably impressed when I told her where I was, but too breathless to be able to talk much. Still in a telephonic mood, I drew various blanks, machines and more voicemails, then got through to Uncle Freddy.
'Guess where I am, Frederick.'
'No idea, dear girl.'
'In a Lear jet, all by myself, flying across India.'
'Good heavens. I'd no idea you knew how to fly.'
'You know what I mean, Uncle Freddy.'
'Oh, you're a passenger?'
'I am the passenger. I am outnumbered two to one by the crew.'
'Well, good for you. I suppose there are times when it's good to be in the minority.'
'Oh, really? Name one other.'
'Umm…Troilism?'
Given that only a few months earlier both India and Pakistan had been trading underground nuclear tests, it was probably a sign of how good our relations were with both states that the Lear was cleared straight through across both air spaces to a small airport at Siliguri, situated in the little bit of connective tissue that winds round the northern frontier of Bangladesh and beneath the southern limits of Nepal, Thulahn and Bhutan to join the main body of India with the appendage of Assam. The Himalayas, visible in the distance to the north throughout most of the flight as a deep sweep of glaringly white peaks, gradually disappeared under a layer of haze. I started playing Jagged Little Pill, but it was entirely inappropriate. Besides, I'd grown fed up with Alanis Morissette's little end-of-phrase gasps and hadn't forgiven her for entirely confirming the Brit prejudice that North Americans don't know the meaning of the word irony.
I looked through my discs and decided I didn't have any music suitable for this view. Instead I fired up the DVD at last and put it through the lap-top, glancing at the film of Mrs B and her lover (like Emma, it did come with sound — the volume just hadn't been turned up before), then clicking through the documentary and photo files on the rest of the disc. Depressing. Soon enough we dipped towards the ambiguous landscape that was neither plains nor foothills around Siliguri.
I had to change planes here. The Lear couldn't land at Thuhn: it needed about four times the length of runway there and it also wasn't really happy landing on anything other than smooth tarmac. As Thuhn's airstrip was composed of the sort of uneven gravelly earth that was pretty crap as a football park, let alone an airfield, this meant that the very nice young Norwegian co-pilot had to lug my bags across to the scruffy Twin Otter I recognised from the last time I'd made this trip.
This two-engined Portacabin was the pride and joy of Air Thulahn, and indeed the only aircraft it actually possessed. There was a little socket just outside the pilot's sliding window; jamming a stick in there with the Thulahnese royal flag attached instantly converted the plane into the Royal Flight. The plane was wittily nicknamed Otto. It didn't really look all that primitive — well, apart from the props and the fixed undercarriage and the odd dent or two in the fuselage — until the ground staff opened up the nose (which I'd fondly assumed might contain radar, direction finders, instrument landing gear, that sort of thing) and dumped my luggage in the empty space revealed.
The last time I'd climbed aboard Otto, at Dacca airport in Bangladesh, fresh off a PIA DC10 (terrible flight, perfect landing), I'd had to share the cabin with a gaggle of drunken Thulahnese bureaucrats (there were six of them; I later discovered this constituted about half of the entire Thulahnese civil service), two saffron-robed priests with funny hats and plastic bags full of duty-free cigarettes, a couple of peasant ladies who had to be dissuaded from lighting up their kerosene stove for a bowl of tea while in-flight, a small but pungent billy goat and a pair of vociferously distressed and explosively incontinent piglets. Oh, and there was a crate of hens, every one of which looked distinctly dubious about trusting their necks to such a patently un-airworthy craft.
What a fine old time we had.
On this occasion I was the only passenger, though there was a pile of crates secured by webbing behind the last row of flimsy seats and various sacks of mail occupying the front two rows. The pilot and co-pilot were the same two small, smiling Thulahnese guys I remembered from the last time, and they greeted me like an old friend. The preflight safety briefing consisted of telling me they suspected the last seat-pocket safety instruction card had been eaten by either a goat or a small child, but if I did happen to find another one on the floor or anywhere, could they have it back, please? They were due an inspection soon and these Civil Aviation Authority people were such blinking sticklers!
I promised that in the unlikely event I opened my eyes at any point during the flight, I'd keep them peeled for laminated cards or indeed photocopies floating past on the breeze or stuck to the ceiling during a section of an outside loop.
They thought this was most amusing. While my new flightdeck crew tapped gauges, scratched their heads and whistled worriedly through their teeth, I stuck my nose as close as I dared to the suspiciously smeared surface of the window and watched the sleekly gleaming Lear swivel its electronics-crammed nose round, briefly gun its twin jets and taxi towards the end of the runway. I suspect my expression at that moment would have displayed the same despairing regret of a woman who has in some moment of utter madness just swapped a case of vintage Krug for a litre of Asti Spumante.
'You want we leave the door open?' the co-pilot said, leaning round in his seat. He'd been eating garlic.
'Why would you do that?' I asked.
'You get better view,' he said.
I looked out between him and the captain at the tiny windscreen, only a metre and a half away, imagining it entirely full of rapidly approaching snow and rocks. 'No, thanks.'
'Okay.' He pulled the door to the flight deck shut with an uneven, flapping thump. The sun visor on your average family saloon gave a greater impression of solidity.
'Uncle Freddy?'
'Kathryn. Where are you now?'
'In a flying transit van heading straight for the highest mountains on Earth.'
'Thought it sounded a bit noisy. In Tarka, are you?'