A/N: I have to confess that I have never been to Peru, and I know almost nothing about it – other than what I have gleaned from Google searches, and my niece's trip to Machu Picchu over ten years ago. Most of what I write about Peru is made up.
"We are all broken in some way. But it's all the shattered pieces that give us depth. Like stained glass, it's how the pieces and colors fit together that truly makes us beautiful."
- Adriana Law: "Falling for a Bentley"
The main bedroom in a small two up, two down in Bristol, UK – mid November 1962:
A small boy with dark brown hair sits beside the bed on which his mother has been lying for over a day now. Her face is white, and her eyes stare ahead of her, cloudy and unseeing. The boy knows what death is. He's seen death – cats, rats, dogs, and now people. Death is the place where life ends, but strangely, it doesn't frighten him. He knows what happens now. He knows that if he leaves her, his mother will rot away, leaving nothing but her hair and her bones, like the cats that have run on to the road, and been squashed under the tyres of cars. Death fascinates him – perhaps too much for a child of only six years.
The men still come to the door, knocking, calling out her name. Connie, they say, Connie, open up …. it's Sid (or Walter or Jim). Then they go away. She has always told him to never answer the door. You never know who it might be. His mother was most afraid of a person named The Bailiff. You mustn't let The Bailiff in, she'd say. The boy doesn't know The Bailiff, so he'll let no-one into the house, just in case.
He doesn't know what to do next. He would like to believe that his father might visit, but he can only remember this tall, severe man with dark brown hair and a long nose – called Nicky by his mother. His father had only visited him maybe once or twice. The boy had felt his father's eyes on him – small, critical eyes – and then he'd commented on how skinny were his arms and legs, his voice deep and strange sounding. Once, he'd patted the boy on his head, the beginnings of a smile on his lips, but the smile had been for his mother, and not for him. He didn't matter. Only adults mattered. The boy can't wait until he is an adult, and then he'll show them who matters.
No, it is unlikely his father will come to get him, so without his father to save him, and his mother to send him off to school, the boy goes downstairs and turns on the TV. When he gets cold, he runs back upstairs, and takes the blanket which covers his mother. She'll not be needing it.
It is later in the day that the men begin knocking again. He ignores them, until much later there is a woman at the door. He knows her voice. It is Mrs Channing, from his school. What can she want?
The boy opens the door to her, and it is then that his life changes.
80 km east of Lima, Peru – early September, 2012; 3:12 pm:
The bus driver changes to a lower gear, causing the engine to whine, as the tourist bus labours up a steep incline into the mountains.
"It shouldn't be long now," one of the English women says to her female companion. "Juan Carlos said he'd meet us at the Montana Desnuda bar in San Pedro de Casta. I hope he keeps his word."
"You mean, he may not?" her companion says, concern showing in her eyes.
"He's not the most reliable of men." The first woman smiles to herself, as if holding some private memory close to herself.
"But, you'll forgive him that, because …..."
"Because he's without doubt the best lay I've ever had."
Her companion's face registers shock, but only for a brief moment. The bus has reached a plateau, and before them stretches the long drive into San Pedro de Casta, a village which nestles against the stark, bare mountains of the Andes, themselves like monuments to a time which dates back long before the Incas. Both women stare in awe at the bare brown mountains which surround them.
"I couldn't help but overhear you."
Both women turn to see another English woman, younger than them both, her blond hair cut in a bob, her elfin face pretty and unblemished. "I hope you don't mind me interrupting you," the young woman continues, leaning across the aisle, which is cluttered with people's hand luggage. "I'm Cate. I'm from London. Well ….. I'm from everywhere, really. My husband is currently in Mexico, but I'm originally from London."
"I'm Kerry," the first woman says, the more outgoing of the two.
"And I'm Rachel," says the quieter of the two, a few years older than Kerry. Cate notices that this woman – Rachel – has large blue eyes …... unforgettable eyes, sad, wise eyes which stare at her... through her, into her.
"I'm looking for a lift into Marcahuasi, and I heard you mentioning a man who is meeting you."
"If you don't mind walking all the way, then you're welcome to join us," replies Kerry, her grey eyes staring at Cate, as though she's trying to remember where it is she's seen her before.
London – 11pm – the same day:
Harry Pearce feels bad. Nestled amid his sadness and long-standing grief over Ruth's passing, feeling bad is something he can do without, although he has only himself to blame. Guiding his car through the night towards his own house, he decides that the sex is not worth it. He is a man who still enjoys sex, although each time he's had sex with Lydia, he'd ended up feeling as though he is being unfaithful to Ruth. It seems that even meaningless sex means something to him, although it seems it cannot heal the wound which Ruth's death has left him nursing.
He'd met Lydia only two months earlier at a dinner for security services personnel. She is widowed, and he'd told her he is also, which is as close to the truth as he's prepared to share with her. She's in her mid 50's, and so closer to his age than Ruth had been. They should have a lot in common, but in the end, all she'd been looking for was sex, and that has been the limit of what he can share with her. They have only had sex three or maybe four times, and each time, he gets out of bed almost immediately afterwards, and then goes home to sleep in his own bed... where he falls asleep, imagining that the fatigue in his body is as a result of him having just made love to Ruth.
He knows he'll not see Lydia again. Sex which makes him feel bad is far worse than no sex at all. At least, when Ruth was alive, he'd believed that there was always the promise of something about to happen between them.
He has promised himself that one day – perhaps one day quite soon – he will make a genuine effort to move on. He will retire from the service, maybe travel, open his heart to meeting someone new, someone with whom he is prepared to share his life. For now, he cannot even contemplate that possibility. It has only been eleven months since Ruth's death, and his heart is still broken. He is still broken. For now, he'll just have to bury himself deeper inside his work. At least that is a familiar hiding place for him.
San Pedro de Casta, Peru – 9:30pm, the same day:
The four of them – Kerry, Rachel, Cate and Juan Carlos – are sitting on a wooden plank suspended between two piles of bricks, warming their hands by the fire which burns in an old tin can in the back yard of the tourist hostel – little more than a hut. The four of them are sharing a room, something which Rachel knows could be awkward, given Kerry's and Juan Carlos' attraction for one another.
"Maybe you two would like to retire first," Rachel says quietly to her friend. "I don't expect you and Juan Carlos to keep away from one another, and I don't fancy listening while you become reacquainted."
"Thanks. I can last until we get a tent to ourselves, but I'm not sure about Juan Carlos."
"I heard my name," Juan Carlos says in his Spanish accent (which Kerry has found so compelling). "What is it?"
"We can turn in first, and then Rachel and Cate will join us. How long should we say, Juan Carlos?"
"Oh …... at least an hour."
"Be serious," Kerry says, smiling broadly at him, her teeth as white as his.
"Alright. Half an hour."
"Just build up the fire a bit before you go, then," Rachel suggests, and Juan Carlos gets up, and grabs some small logs from beside the back door of the hostel, and throws them on the fire, causing sparks to fly skywards. Rachel can see the attraction this man has for her friend, as she examines his handsome profile against the glow from the fire.
Once Kerry and Juan Carlos leave to go inside, Rachel watches the sparks rising, and sees the stars above her in the clear night sky. She thinks of someone else who is probably asleep by now, or maybe has had a busy night at work, and is spending all night in his office.
"You're a long way away," says Cate, her voice quiet. Now that Kerry and Juan Carlos have gone inside, the night seems quieter, calmer.
"Yes," replies Rachel. "I miss home."
"I take it you mean England."
"Yes."
"I notice you're wearing a wedding ring. Is your husband back there?"
"No. He's dead."
Rachel doesn't wish to speak about her husband to this young woman whom she barely knows. The man she likes to think of as her husband is not dead at all, but to her, he may as well be. She cannot go back. Perhaps ever.
"I'm sorry," says Cate. "I didn't wish to pry. I've only been married three months, but Mark and I have spent almost all of that time apart. It's hard not seeing him, but at least I know I'll see him again."
Rachel opts to remain silent. Were she to talk any more, she would most likely begin crying, and during the past eleven months, she has shed tears enough to fill an ocean.
Marcahuasi, Peru - 2 days later:
"That's a natural structure?" Kerry says, staring at the outcrop of rock ahead of them.
"Of course. The gods made it, long before the Incas came." Juan Carlos has become their tour guide, although Rachel is not so sure that his knowledge of the history of the Monument To Mankind, and the other Marcahuasi rock formations goes beyond oral traditions and superstition.
Rachel is tired from their walk, and she is resting on a small outcrop of rock, her backpack on the ground beside her. To her immediate right, Juan Carlos and Kerry are arguing about the probability of the rock formation – on which can be seen distinct human face formations – being natural.
"I'll bet your ancestors crept up here at night, and carved the whole thing while no-one was watching."
"Kerry," said Juan Carlos, "my father will not like you …... to say that."
"I've never even met your father. For all I know, you may not even have a father."
The couple begin kissing, which is something Rachel has noticed they do whenever they have nothing more to say. She is envious of them, and irritated by them at the same time. That should be me, she thinks, but she will never say that, even to Kerry, whom she is getting to know even better than she'd known her in London all those years ago.
In the distance, Rachel notices Cate photographing the rock from many different angles. Cate has told them she's a documentary film maker, and is researching Marcahuasi as a possible documentary subject.
"Everyone knows about Machu Picchu," Cate had explained, "but this place is less well known, and just as remarkable. My main area of interest is the people, and how, even living as they do, they manage to protect this place from exploitation and vandalism. I've promised my husband and my parents that from now on I'll steer clear of war zones."
Two days later, they are pleased to again enter San Pedro de Casta, where they can spend a night on a camp bed before they head back to Lima with Juan Carlos.
Kerry will be relieved to again have Juan Carlos to herself.
Rachel will be happy to get back to her laptop, and her work for the translation agency in Lima.
Cate will be flying to Mexico to join her husband …... but not before she emails some of the photos of the Marcahuasi rock formations to her husband, as well as her parents and younger brother in England.
Harry's office – The Grid – 24 hours later:
Harry is preparing to go home for the day, when he notices the icon on his desktop computer, announcing a new email in his personal email account. Normally he'd wait until he gets home to read it, but it could be important, so he opens it. It is a newsy update from Catherine, with a suggestion he checks out her latest photographs. He opens the links to the photographs, taking him to her Flickr page. He clicks through them quickly, until he finds one with people in it. What he sees has his heart beating faster, and his eyes widening. He clicks on the photograph to enlarge it, and then he's sure. What he sees is impossible, but the proof is in the photograph which takes up most of his monitor's 23 inch screen.