Beneath a Burning Sky Read online

  Jenny Ashcroft lives in Brighton with her husband and two children. Before that, she spent many years living and working in Australia and Asia – a time which gave her an enduring passion for stories set in exotic places. She has a degree in history, and has always been fascinated by the past – in particular the way that extraordinary events can transform the lives of normal people. Beneath a Burning Sky is her debut novel in the UK.

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Sphere

  978-0-7515-6505-8

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Jenny Ashcroft 2016

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Sphere

  Little, Brown Book Group

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DZ

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Beneath a Burning Sky

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  COPYRIGHT

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Before

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  The First Day

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  The Second Day

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  The Third Day

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Fourth and Fifth Days

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Eighth Day

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Ninth Day

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Tenth Day

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Eleventh Day

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The Final Day

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  After

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Epilogue

  For Matt, Molly and Jonah

  Acknowledgements

  There are so many people I want to thank for their help and support, it’s hard to know where to begin. Let me start though with my fabulous agent, Becky Ritchie, for loving Olly and Edward as much I do, understanding the book I wanted to write, all the time spent helping me get there, and for being such a wonderful champion. Becky, I couldn’t have done it without you! Thank you too to Melissa Pimentel, and everyone at Curtis Brown – I’m very grateful for all you do.

  Huge thanks also to the team at Little, Brown, I feel incredibly lucky to be working with you. Manpreet Grewal, thank you for loving this story in the first place, your amazing editorial insight, and all you have done to help transform it from word document into an actual real-life book. Thank you too to Thalia Proctor for all your work on editing, to Liz Hatherell for brilliant copy editing, and to Emma Williams and Stephie Melrose for everything you do on PR and marketing.

  I have some wonderful friends I want to thank too: Kerry Fisher, for all your wise words and friendship over the years – it has meant the world and I honestly don’t know where I’d be without you; Iona Grey, for so much, but most of all for your unswerving belief and support when I needed it most; Amanda Jennings, for long lunches, literary quizzes and keeping it fun; Tracy Buchanan, for a great deal – not least our writerly chats over tea and cake with our children; Dinah Jefferies, for believing you would hold a book of mine in your hands one day (I am so very glad you were right); Amanda Munden, for being a champion cheerleader from the word go; Chloe and Jon Coker, Nicole Nortmann, Hannah Clark, Tim Moore-Barton, Chloe Archard and Jane O’Connell, for being early readers and always being so supportive.

  Finally, so many thanks go to my family. To my parents, who read endless drafts and re-drafts and never stopped believing I could do it – I can’t tell you how grateful I am to have you. To my mother-in-law, Heather, for reading early versions and offering such great insight. To my sister, Chloe, for all the pickings up and dusting back offs again. To my husband, Matt, for being by my side in everything and never ceasing to know I could do this. And last, but never least, to my children, for so much more than I can put into words, and reminding me every day that if I’m going to practise what I preach, I had better never give up.

  Central Alexandria, 30 June 1891

  She reached for a wall, furniture, anything that might stop her falling. But there was nothing, and she fell, knees first, landing painfully on floorboards thick with dust. She pushed herself up, snapping her head this way, that way, disoriented by the speed with which everything was happening, straining to see. But after the fierce sunlight outside, the darkness swam and she could make out nothing but shadows and luminous spots.

  She started to scream. A hand came over her mouth: strong, rough, forcing the sounds back into her. Men filled the room; three of them, no, four. Her breath came quick and short through her nose. She smelt sweat, garlic, a trace of hashish. Outside, she could hear the distant noise of the street: horses’ hooves, the trundle of a tram. The men talked in Arabic around her, so calm. It terrified her, how in control they sounded.

  The hand on her mouth dropped.

  ‘What do you want?’ Her own voice was high, too strained, and unnaturally English. ‘I want to go. Let me go.’ She blinked, her eyes becoming used to the darkness. The room was all but empty; just a pile of crates in one corner, a table of glass bottles in another. The men were dressed in the white robes of locals. Their faces were concealed by rags.

  Footsteps clicked in the cobbled alleyway outside; the scrape of what sounded like a handcart. She opened her mouth, screaming again, calling for help. The man before her looked down, his eyes dark, wholly empty. Bored, almost. He shook his head, and reached for one of the cloths covering his own face. Seeing what he intended, she arched her body away. ‘No. No, no, no.’ She scrambled to stand. Someone forced her down, the other shoved fabric covered in sweat and grime into her mouth. She gagged, choking, as more cloth was tied around her face.

  Barely able to breathe, with tears pouring down her face, she looked to the door. White cracks of daylight shone through it. The packed Rue Cherif Pasha was only a moment’s walk away. She lunged, making a break, but they jammed her back down to the floor. Her gown spread around her. Her head cracked. Why are you doing this to me? It came out as nothing but moans through the cloth.

  She thought about her sister outside, still on the busy street. Perhaps in Draycott’s restaurant by now. The soldier, Fadil, too. Did he know? Would he come? Her mind m
oved to her home, all of them waiting. Especially him. Would he sense she was in trouble? Oh God, she couldn’t be here. This couldn’t be.

  A man crossed to the centre of the room. He opened a trapdoor. Noxious smells rose up. She felt herself being hauled along. She shook her head, kicking. It was a useless protest. They reached the hole in the floor. She saw stone stairs, gaping black, and pulled away, thrashing, filled with new terror. Where are you? The question to her sister and Fadil screamed in her mind. Why aren’t you coming?

  The first man disappeared into the floor. He seized her by her boots and pulled. Another pinned her arms to her side, heaving her along. As they carried her down, her body twisting and scraping along the rough brickwork, the others followed.

  Find me. The trapdoor shut over her. Please, please. Find me.

  BEFORE

  Chapter One

  Ramleh, Alexandria, March 1891

  Olivia looked out across the bay. Sweat prickled on her forehead, down her spine. Her bathing pantaloons and tunic stuck to her skin. It was baking for March; everyone kept telling her so. You didn’t bring Blighty’s weather out with you then. (Really, how could she have?) The sun, even at just a little after nine, was biting; the kind of hot that after years of freezing English winters and disappointing summers she didn’t think she would ever become accustomed to. She rolled her tight shoulders. Her woollen costume moved with them, across her bruises, catching painfully on her cuts. She tensed her jaw on the urge to wince.

  She never winced.

  The Mediterranean lapped the rocks beneath her, a turquoise blanket that stretched out to the horizon and made home seem so far away. Around the headland, towards the city, long-tail boats scudded back to the harbour, sails full as fishermen returned to Alexandria’s morning markets, the waiting steam trains and donkey carts that would deliver their catch to Cairo, Luxor, a hundred other desert towns. The water flashed gold, speckled with light, inviting Olivia in.

  She glanced back at the house. Her new husband, Alistair, stood on the veranda, ready for the office in his three-piece, the skin of his savagely elegant face as white as the veranda fencing surrounding him. He held a cup and saucer in hand, lingering over his morning tea: imported Ceylon leaves, a dash of milk from the kitchen cow, half a level spoon of sugar. (‘Level, Olivia, not heaped. Level.’) His gaze was fixed on her, watching. Always watching.

  Olivia took a step. She felt rather than saw Alistair pause mid-sip, saucer held aloft, cup of Ceylon’s finest suspended. She flung herself forward and held her breath as first steaming air then cool water rushed through her layers, a balm to her burning skin. She dived deeper, lungs filling, fit to burst. For a sweet, submerged moment, she was invisible.

  She broke the surface with a gasp, and swam out with swooping strokes. She was a confident swimmer, she’d learnt in the Solent as a child thanks to the icy dawn immersions that the mother superior at her boarding school had insisted on (excellent for your constitutions, girls, and your wicked souls). The distance between her and the shore quickly grew. It was only when her arms would take her no further that she rolled onto her back and let herself drift. Occasionally she turned her head towards the house, straining to make out Alistair’s ramrod form, imagining the tick of irritation in his eye.

  It was a familiar routine by now. She’d been coming to this bay at the bottom of their garden every morning since Alistair had brought her to Alexandria three weeks ago; the fact that Alistair hated her doing it (‘I won’t descend to drag you out in front of the servants, but you should be in the house. With me. It’s improper, this gadding around in the water. Your skin is turning quite native.’) gave her reason enough to carry on. He made her suffer come nightfall, of course. With words first (‘What’s going on in your mind, Olivia? Have I not made myself clear?’), and then all the rest of it. But she wasn’t fool enough to believe that if she stopped, he would. He’d been finding reasons to punish her ever since the sodden winter’s day two months ago that she’d finally relented, given up on her hopeless search for an alternative, and married him. It wasn’t as though she’d swum the frozen Thames back then. No, it had been her melancholy at the ceremony that he’d taken her to account for that night. After that, it was the clothes she’d brought in her trunk for the P&O voyage to Alexandria (totally unsuitable, far too thick, for God’s sake. Was she listening? Was she?), then her laugh at the captain’s joke over dinner (frankly flirtatious), and so it went on.

  Olivia closed her eyes, pushing the memories away. She floated, hair loose around her. The water muffled everything but her own breathing in her ears. The sun moved higher in the sky; she felt the tell-tale tightening of freckles cropping on her cheekbones and sighed inwardly, knowing her lady’s maid would insist on doses of lemon juice for nights to come.

  She glanced again at the terrace and, seeing only space where Alistair had been, exhaled. She waited a few minutes more, enough time to ensure he’d really left for the day, off to the headquarters of his cotton export business in the city, then made her way back in. As she sliced through the soft swell, her unhappiness weighing bluntly inside her, she consoled herself with the thought that her older sister, Clara, would be calling soon. She came every morning, riding over by carriage from her own home up the coast. Sometimes she was alone, more often than not she brought her sons, Ralph and little Gus. Olivia still got a jolt, seeing them all. Clara especially. Real again, at last. For fifteen long years, ever since the two of them had been forced to leave their childhood home of Cairo for England following the death of their parents, they’d been kept apart. They’d had no communication – their grandmother had made sure of that: not a letter, not a word. Olivia hadn’t even known Clara was living back in Egypt, the land they’d been born in, until Alistair had arrived on her doorstep in London and told her. Clara had been little more than a shadow to her; that dull ache of knowing she existed somewhere in the world, but with no clue as to where. And a memory, just one, of the day their grandmother – full of hate towards their dead mother and determined to exact her revenge, as though death wasn’t enough – had torn them apart: that freezing January morning at Tyneside docks, back when Olivia was eight, Clara fourteen, and which Olivia tried, very hard, never to think about.

  She didn’t think about it now as she pulled herself from the sea, clambering out of the water. Wrapping herself in her bath sheet, she turned, picking her way over the rocks and into the garden. As she padded up the lawn towards the house, grass stuck to her toes. Water evaporated from her skin, leaving salty snail-trails on the unladylike tan of her forearms. The villa loomed large before her, a palm-fringed palace. Its terracotta walls were laced with jasmine, the shutters flung open in every room revealing the shadows of servants moving within. Olivia passed into its stultifying shade.

  On the way to the stairs, she paused at the door to the boarder’s room – a cavalry officer by the name of Captain Edward Bertram. He’d been staying with Alistair, a business associate of his father’s, for years. It wasn’t an unusual arrangement – all British officers rented private rooms in Alex, there was no great garrison here as there was in Cairo – but Olivia had yet to meet this houseguest. He’d been away ever since she arrived.

  Today, though, the door to his room was ajar and two maids chattered within. Olivia asked what they were doing, and they replied that Sir Sheldon (they all called Alistair so, even though he wasn’t a ‘Sir’ anything; it was the way of Egyptian servants with their masters) had asked for the room to be readied for the captain’s return. Word had come that he’d be back that night.

  Olivia shrugged, unsurprised by Alistair not bothering to mention it to her, and only mildly curious to meet this captain at last. Her life was so full of strangers these days, what difference would one more make?

  She carried on upstairs, her thoughts fixed on getting ready for Clara. By the time she reached her bedroom she’d all but forgotten Captain Edward Bertram was on his way home.

  Edward dropped down into his s
eat as the Alexandria Express creaked into motion, steam filling the air beneath the vaulted iron roof of Cairo’s central station. He pulled his case of cigarettes from his jacket and lit one, inhaling slowly as the train chugged out to the fierce daylight beyond. As it picked up speed, funnel blowing, the beggar children who lived in the surrounding slums – blackened urchins with round eyes and mouths that were too big for their faces – swarmed alongside the carriages, hands outstretched. Edward stood, throwing what coins he had for them, then winced as one leapt for a window and was pushed from within, landing, a ball of scrawny limbs, in the rocks and dirt. He came to a halt just shy of the rails, but was up within the instant, ready for more.