The Vanishing of Ruth by Janet MacLeod Trotter

Author:Janet MacLeod Trotter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MacLeod Trotter Books

CHAPTER 40

Kabul, Afghanistan

Cassidy

The day after Bamiyan, Cassidy got them cleaning out the bus. It was choked with dust. He did a day’s maintenance: checking spark plugs, replacing hose, greasing pipes, buying petrol before leaving Kabul. If he kept busy he didn’t have to think about Posh Boy and Ruth. The next day he sensed a restlessness in the group; they had bought what they wanted and eaten in most of the cafes on Chicken Street. Two Poshettes and Devon had the shits.

‘Everything’s going straight through me, man. It’s like Niagara Falls.’

Cassidy told them to drink sweet tea and eat dried toast. ‘Apple that’s gone brown helps an’ all.’ He gave them drops of tincture of iodine for their water bottles. ‘Sterilising tablets are bugger all use against amoebic bacteria. This’ll sort you out.’

‘Hey, Papa Cass to the rescue,’ Devon grinned before diving off to the toilet once more.

Juliet had the opposite problem, her stomach so bloated she couldn’t do up the zip on her skirt. Cassidy gave her Senacot and bought her a huge bunch of grapes and dried figs.

‘Keep the fluids up Forbsy.’

He was glad to help. Practical stuff he could cope with; mind games stressed him out. By this stage in any trip, conversation always boiled down to what went in the top end and out the bottom. Forget the forts and palaces; overlanders could talk all day about the state of their stools – or lack of them.

Early next morning he packed up the bus in the dark to the blare of music, traffic and the early calls from vendors. With no sign of his wayward co-driver and girlfriend after four days – he hadn’t expected them to turn up – Cassidy extracted their rucksacks and Marcus’s tent and left them at the Mustafa with a note to say they had gone ahead.

Soon they were leaving the broad plain and twisting down the Kabul Gorge. Dizzying drops and hairpin bends plunged them deeper down the dark canyon. Cassidy held his nerve at the wheel as they passed wrecked vans left at cliff edges as cautionary tales. By the end of the day, they were driving through a fertile valley to Jalalabad, surrounded by trees and irrigated fields. Sundown beat them to the border, so they camped on the Afghan side, lying out in the mild open air without bothering to pitch tents.

Cassidy lay listening to the night sounds: a donkey braying, a wailing singer, a night watchman shouting into the night, and Catriona snoring. He felt a protective swell of affection for the group. He might have been landed with all the driving to do from now on, but he would make sure they all arrived safely in Kathmandu before Christmas.

‘Stop worrying about them,’ Juliet whispered.

Cassidy had not realised she was lying so close in the dark.

‘It’s not your fault.’ She rolled a little closer. ‘I talked to Kurt about it yesterday. He thinks they’ve been planning to jump ship since Iran. He made me feel a whole lot better.

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