of giggles, Lisa half-choking on her mouthful, while Natalie unhooked a corner of her veil and, still holding it to cover her face, with her other hand mimed sliding a spoonful of soup behind it.
âMust take a bit of practice,â said Nigel.
âAll right, thatâs enough, girls,â said Rick. âYou can take âem off now.â
âCan I try one?â said Nigel.
Lisa helped him into hers, wrapping it round him like a dressing-gown and fastening it with a couple of hooks at the shoulder. Fussily she adjusted the veil. He found he could see perfectly well, but that there was an interesting feeling of peeping out from a hiding-place.
âNow you can forget about me being a boy,â he said. âIâm Nigella. Hi, Lisa. Hi, Natalie.â
More laughter, almost hysterical now. Obsessed with the breakthrough he hadnât noticed what was happening the other side of the table. Thereâd been an edginess in Rickâs voice when heâd told the girls to take the veils off, and now Janey had half risen from her chair, glowering, clearly about to explode, while Rick was making desperate calming gestures. Not bothering to fiddle with the hooks Nigel pulled the dahl off over his head and gave it back to Lisa.
âIâm terribly sorryâ he said. âI â¦â
âJaney takes that side oâ things dead serious,â said Rick. âYouâd been a grown man, sheâdâve been wearing one herself. You couldnâtâve known.â
âIs serious,â said Janey. âPlease, not again.â
âIâll remember,â said Nigel.
Mercifully the ice stayed broken. Janey and the girls cleared tea away and Rick got out a box of small coloured hexagonal tiles with different symbols on them, spread them out on the table and explained the rules of the game to Nigel. It looked fairly simple, but it wasnât. Natalie was a demon at it, and was clearly going to win when the time came for him and Rick to go and collect Nigelâs mother and take her back to the embassy.
As they crossed the inner courtyard, stifling after the air-conditioning, Nigel said, âIâm sorry about putting my foot in it with Janey over the dahli.â
âForget it,â said Rick. âWeâd had a bit of a set to âbout it, matter oâ fact. She wanted girls to wear âem for your visit, but I put my foot down. Wasnât that way when we married, Nigel. OK, I converted to Islam âcause it made things easier with her family, but neither of us took it that serious back then and I still donât, but sheâs got a lot stricter recent. Thereâs a bit of that going around.
âNever used to see the full veil in the old days, but thereâs all sorts wearing them now, despite the Khanâs dead set against it.â
At the bottom of the hill and Nigel got out and waited while Rick fetched the guard out of a bar. It was early evening and they were right down by the river but he was streaming with sweat in the thick and breathless heat.
Fohdrahko had been right. He could smell the thunder in the air.
CHAPTER 5
Hi there. Sorry about the gap. Mr G invited us up to his hunting lodge in the mountains for a couple of days and there arenât any internet connections there, Weâd flown up in his helicopter and landed in a storm and damaged to chopper so we had to stay on a bit. I could still write the blog but I couldnât post it till we got back to Dara Dahn .
So this is Day 6 .
It thundered amazingly all night â¦
The embassy seemed to shudder to the non-stop bellowing explosions. Rain torrented down. It was impossible to sleep, but after a while the rain let up and Nigel got out of bed and watched the storm. Heâd never seen anything like it before. Even in the heaviest thunderstorms thereâd always been intervals of utter dark before the next dazzling shaft, but here the fierce light flickered and
Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child