Lie Down With Lions by Ken Follett Read Free Book Online

known a man like this. But there had been too many times—in bed, or in restaurants, or just walking on the street—when she had been laughing with him, or listening to him talk, or watching the skin around his eyes crinkle as he thought hard, or hugging his warm body, only to find that he had suddenly turned off. In those switched-off moods he was no longer loving, no longer amusing, no longer thoughtful or considerate or gentlemanly or compassionate. He made her feel excluded, a stranger, an intruder into his private world. It was like the sun going behind a cloud.
    She knew she was going to have to leave him. She loved him to distraction, but it seemed he could not love her the same way. He was thirty-three years old, and if he had not learned the art of intimacy by now, he never would.
    She sat on the sofa and began to read The Observer, which she had bought from an international newsstand on the Boulevard Raspail on her way over. There was a report from Afghanistan on the front page. It sounded like a good place to go to forget Ellis.
    The idea had appealed to her immediately. Although she loved Paris, and her job was at least varied, she wanted more: experience, adventure, and a chance to strike a blow for freedom. She was not afraid. Jean-Pierre said the doctors were considered too valuable to be sent into the combat zone. There was a risk of being hit by a stray bomb or caught in a skirmish, but it was probably no worse than the danger of being run down by a Parisian motorist. She was intensely curious about the lifestyle of the Afghan rebels. “What do they eat there?” she had asked Jean-Pierre. “What do they wear? Do they live in tents? Do they have toilets?”
    “No toilets,” he had replied. “No electricity. No roads. No wine. No cars. No central heating. No dentists. No postmen. No phones. No restaurants. No advertisements. No Coca-Cola. No weather forecasts, no stock market reports, no decorators, no social workers, no lipstick, no Tampax, no fashions, no dinner parties, no taxi ranks, no bus queues—”
    “Stop!” she had interrupted him: he could go on like that for hours. “They must have buses and taxis.”
    “Not in the countryside. I’m going to a region called Five Lions Valley, a rebel stronghold in the foothills of the Himalayas. It was primitive even before the Russians bombed it.”
    Jane was quite sure she could live happily without plumbing or lipstick or weather forecasts. She suspected he was underestimating the danger, even outside the combat zone; but somehow that did not deter her. Her mother would have hysterics, of course. Her father, if he were still alive, would have said: “Good luck, Janey.” He had understood the importance of doing something worthwhile with one’s life. Although he had been a good doctor, he had never made any money, because wherever they lived—Nassau, Cairo, Singapore, but mostly Rhodesia—he would always treat poor people free, so they had come to him in crowds, and had driven away the fee-paying customers.
    Her reverie was disturbed by a footfall on the stairs. She had not read more than a few lines of the newspaper, she realized. She cocked her head, listening. It did not sound like Ellis’s step. Nevertheless, there was a tap at the door.
    Jane put down her paper and opened the door. There stood Jean-Pierre. He was almost as surprised as she was.
    They stared at one another in silence for a moment. Jane said: “You look guilty. Do I?”
    “Yes,” he said, and he grinned.
    “I was just thinking about you. Come in.”
    He stepped inside and glanced around. “Ellis not here?”
    “I’m expecting him soon. Have a seat.”
    Jean-Pierre lowered his long body onto the sofa. Jane thought, not for the first time, that he was probably the most beautiful man she had ever met. His face was perfectly regular in shape, with a high forehead, a strong, rather aristocratic nose, liquid brown eyes, and a sensual mouth partly hidden by a full, dark brown