Wildfire

Chapter Two

A few hours earlier …

Ben had thought Australia would be a nice change from England in February. The small town of Macclesfield in Cheshire, where he lived with his dad, was at its least appealing in winter. The days were short; in fact, they never properly got light. It drizzled all the time. The sky was the colour of dishwater. It was so cold you had to wrap up like an arctic explorer when you went out.

Then his mum had phoned. She and Ben’s dad had separated years before and she now travelled the world as a roving ambassador for the environmental organization Fragile Planet. Right now she was in Adelaide, South Australia to speak at a conference on weather science. Would Ben like to come out to stay with her for half term? Ben jumped at the chance. It was a long way to go for just seven days, but Ben couldn’t wait to wear flip-flops on the beach, try his hand at surfing, and relax beside the barbecue in the long, warm evenings.

But, he thought as he first arrived in the country, so far it wasn’t turning out to be the wonderful experience he had hoped for. For a start, the flight was delayed and his mum couldn’t meet him at the airport because she had to give an important speech at the environmental conference. Instead, when he stepped off the plane, he saw a woman in the airline uniform holding up a placard with his name on. She guided him through arrivals and took him outside to get a taxi. He had just a few seconds to bask in the southern hemisphere warmth and look up at the blue sky before she shepherded him into a car with air conditioning so extreme it could have started an ice age.

His escort got into the back seat beside Ben. On the journey into town she gave him a frightening list of dos and don’ts for his stay in Adelaide.

‘Don’t go out without sunscreen, ever. Reapply it every two hours. Set your watch or your Blackberry or your phone to remind you so you don’t forget. Cover up your arms and legs. Drink plenty of water. Don’t go on a journey unless you have high-factor sunscreen and water with you. Ditto if you play sports. Try not to be outside anyway between eleven in the morning and three in the afternoon. Familiarize yourself with the symptoms of heat exhaustion and dehydration; it’s all in this leaflet’ — she handed him a folded piece of paper — ‘so make sure you read it. Don’t touch any spiders or caterpillars; there’s a section about them in the leaflet too. Don’t use hose pipes — we’re having the worst drought since records began. Don’t light any fires, for any reason, anywhere.’

Ben’s brain was reeling with all these instructions, but this one pulled him up short. Fires? he thought. What are the teens around here like?

At the hotel he was briskly hustled up the steps and into the air-conditioned reception. Finally he was left in his room with instructions to unpack and wait for a call.

The room looked out over pale beaches and the sparkling blue marina. The sands were empty; no sunbathers, but it was ten on a Monday morning, so most people would be at work. There were lifeguards out in the bay and people working on the boats in the marina. During an English summer, people working outdoors in the sunshine wore as little as possible, but here they wore long sleeves, long trousers and hats with wide brims. Cars went by in the street below. More than half of them had soft tops or sun roofs, but they were all closed. So were the windows.

People here didn’t welcome the sun. They hid from it.

This was South Australia. Not far away was the infamous hole in the ozone layer. In this part of the world, the sun wasn’t a benevolent relief from the cold; it was a cosmic blowtorch.

Ben’s mother would have scolded him for forgetting that. Anyone who took the environment for granted, or didn’t seem to be taking enough care of it, felt the rough edge of her tongue. Dr Bel Kelland didn’t balk at haranguing popes and presidents, and the way she spoke to world leaders on television gave the impression she thought of them as spoiled children with too many toys. Bel was a woman on a mission, all right. She wanted to make her mark on the world. Although, more accurately, you might say she wanted to stop other people making their mark on it. Sometimes Ben was proud of her, but just as often the things she did embarrassed him.

Ben’s father, Russell Tracey, wasn’t like Bel at all. He was brilliant but shy, happy with his quiet, uneventful life in a small town in Cheshire. Russell and Bel were both scientists, but in every other way they were poles apart, as opposite as the climates of England and Australia in February.

Ben looked at his watch. Bel was supposed to meet him at the hotel room after he’d unpacked. She was late.

He read the leaflet he’d been given. It was a list of the venomous spiders and caterpillars and how to recognize them:

The redback will pretend to be dead rather than bite you, but the funnelweb, which is the size of your palm, will kill you within an hour. The funnelweb will grip its victim and bite several times …

Despite the constant warnings about sunstroke and dangerous wildlife, Ben was anxious to get out and see the sights. He hadn’t spent twenty hours on a plane just to be stuck in a refrigerated hotel room behind tinted glass windows. He was tired but there was no way he could go to sleep when there was so much out there to explore. He started to pace around the room impatiently, wondering how long it would be before he got a message from Bel.

At the same time, Kelly Kurtis was also wondering where her parent had got to.

She was walking up the stairs in the Adelaide conference centre, looking for her father and attracting rather a lot of attention. All the people around her were dressed smartly, and wore name tags. Kelly, on the other hand, was wearing an orange baseball cap and pale blue flying overalls, the legs rolled up to her knees like long shorts and the top half unzipped with the arms tied around her waist and a thin vest visible. Her bare arms were slathered in sun-tan oil, which gave off a scent of coconut. Around her neck she had a gold and black scarf. The conference delegates were looking at her as though wondering which planet she’d blown in from — or if she was there to cause trouble.

She pitied them, having to spend all day cooped up in a gloomy conference centre. It was such a lovely day to go flying.

Following the smell of coffee, she took the stairs to the first floor. A cafeteria area with tables and chairs overlooked the main entrance hall below. Then she spotted her dad, sitting at a table at the far end. He was bent over some papers, talking to a woman in a pale-green, slightly crumpled safari suit. A specialist in weather science with the US army, he was wearing dress uniform, charcoal-blue with gold buttons, and a shirt and tie. His dark hair was cut brutally short, military style. Kelly made her way over to them.

Major Brad Kurtis looked up, surprised to see his daughter. ‘Kelly! What are you doing here?’

‘Hi, Dad. Did you take the keys to the Jeep this morning?’

The major patted his breast pockets absentmindedly. The left one made a jangling noise. ‘Oh yes.’ He fished the keys out and handed them over. ‘Sorry.’

Kelly took the keys, but now something else had caught her attention. There was something familiar about the woman sitting next to her father, her delicate fingers counting through a stack of papers like the legs of a spider. She was very petite, with straight red hair and an angular chin.

The woman looked up at that moment. Her eyes were icy blue. They registered that Kelly was staring. Kelly gave a slightly uncertain smile. Small though she was, there was something a bit fierce about the woman.

The major snapped his fingers. ‘Where are my manners?’ He turned to the woman. ‘Bel, this is my daughter Kelly. Kelly, this is Bel. Bel Kelland.’

The red-haired woman put out her hand and shook Kelly’s. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ She had an English accent. That and the name — printed in full on the badge she was wearing — suddenly made a connection in Kelly’s brain.

BEL KELLAND, FRAGILE PLANET. Kelly suddenly knew where she had seen her before.

‘Dr Bel Kelland? You presented the Discovery Channel programme on the flooding of London.’ Kelly slipped the Jeep keys into the button-down pocket on her leg, pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘I really enjoyed that programme; it was powerful stuff. It’s a pleasure to meet you.’

Bel smiled. ‘Glad you appreciated it. I was just in the right place at the right time. Or the wrong place at the right time, depending on how you look at it.’

Kelly folded her arms in front of her on the table and leaned forward. ‘I had some friends who were in New Orleans when it flooded. Can you get Discovery to do a programme about that? I think you’d be great at it.’

‘They’ve already made one,’ said Bel, ‘but they got an American environmentalist to front it. Which is a pity, as there were loads of things I wanted to say about the federal government’s criminal culpability.’ She shrugged. ‘Still, I’m always available for weddings, bar mitzvahs and funerals.’

Kelly was baffled for a moment. Was that last remark a joke? She didn’t always get the English sense of humour. She laughed uneasily.

The major changed the subject. ‘Kelly’s travelling before she goes to Stanford in the fall to study law. She got her pilot’s licence last year.’

Bel’s face became animated. ‘Flying?! I got my licence years ago. I love it. I just don’t get enough time to do it now.’

Kelly was delighted to find she had something in common with Bel. ‘You should come up with me,’ she said. ‘Dad’s hired a microlight while I’m here, and it’s got dual controls. Give me a call and I’ll take you for a spin.’

‘That’s very kind of you. I would really, really love to.’ Bel spread her hand out over the papers on the table. ‘But I’m snowed under here: they want me to chair all the debates and I’ve got to do a live TV broadcast in a few minutes. My son arrived from England this morning and I don’t know how I’m ever going to find time to see him.’

The fierce and feisty Dr Kelland had a son. Kelly had a vision of Bel’s delicate features translated into young male form. She imagined a willowy English poet with intense blue eyes, passionate beliefs and a clever, slightly baffling sense of humour. Fresh off the plane and needing a companion. It sounded very appealing.

‘I’ll take him up in the microlight,’ she offered.

Bel was taken aback. ‘Would you?’

‘Yeah,’ said Kelly. ‘He can have a go at the controls. I’ve taken friends up with me loads of times and let them have a go once we’re in the air. No problem.’

‘That’s really kind of you, Kelly. Thank you very much. He’d love it.’

‘Is he in TV too?’ asked Kelly.

‘Oh no,’ said Bel, ‘he’s a bit young for that. He’s still at school.’

‘In school?’ said Kelly. ‘Where? Oxford?’

‘Not university,’ said Bel. ‘What you call high school.’

The penny dropped. Kelly now remembered that in England, school meant something different from what it meant in the States.

The major started laughing. ‘How old did you say he was, Bel? Fourteen?’ They had obviously swapped stories about their children before Kelly arrived.

Bel shook her head. ‘Thirteen.’

Kelly felt like a cruel joke had been played on her. ‘Thirteen?’ she repeated. Her mind’s eye wiped out the mental image of a lean young man and replaced it with a tousle-haired freckly swot in an ill-fitting blazer.

‘I’m sure he’d love to go up with you, Kels,’ said the major. ‘You’ve got the microlight for a month. A couple of days won’t hurt.’

Kelly tried to hide the disgust on her face. Taking a thirteen-year-old flying was babysitting. But she couldn’t complain too much as her dad was paying for it — and now she’d already made the offer. ‘All right,’ she said.

Bel’s phone rang. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘I have to take this … Dr Kelland here … OK, see you downstairs in five minutes.’ She closed the phone and slipped it into her breast pocket. ‘The ABC Television crew have arrived. I must go.’ She got to her feet and gathered up her papers. ‘Kelly, it’s lovely to meet you, and thanks for agreeing to take Ben up. He’ll really enjoy it. He’s just like me; he should pick it up with no problem.’ She shook Kelly briskly by the hand again. ‘He’s very grown up.’ She made to move away from the table.

‘Where will I find him?’ asked Kelly.

‘Oh yes,’ said Bel absent-mindedly. ‘He’s at the East Beach Hotel. Just ask for him at reception. His name’s Ben Tracey.’ She thought for a moment, then added: ‘He was in London with me when it flooded. He had a hell of an adventure. You can ask him all about it. I’ve got to dash now. Brad, I’ll see you at the first debate.’

Major Kurtis raised a hand to wave her goodbye.

Kelly watched Bel make her way through the crowd towards the stairs. She couldn’t imagine what she’d talk to a thirteen-year-old about, even if he had been in a disaster zone. Whichever way she looked at it, she’d been conned into babysitting. But at least the woman had had the decency to look faintly embarrassed about it.

She went back to their hotel, collected the Jeep, and in ten minutes was marching into the foyer of Ben’s hotel on the waterfront.

There was a tall guy standing at the reception desk with his back to her. ‘I’m waiting for Dr Bel Kelland,’ he said to the receptionist. ‘Has she left a message?’ He had a cool English accent.

Kelly went and stood next to him. ‘Do you know Dr Kelland? Because I’ve got to babysit her kid.’

The guy turned round slowly and looked at her. ‘Babysit?’ he repeated.

Kelly suddenly realized he was a lot younger than she’d thought. She wished the ground would open up and swallow her. ‘Are you Ben?’

Ben’s blue eyes narrowed. ‘Yes. Who on earth are you?’