Desperate to keep awake, he leant uncomfortably against them and tried to work out what to do. His one big hope would be that the young woman guide would be on duty the next day. She would listen and she would help him. If that didn’t work, he could try walking out of the fort with the visitors and dodging the waiting street kids, or persuade tourists of the trouble he was in. But would they be able to listen to him if the short-fuse guide was around? There was one other skinny hope – that a different guide altogether would be on duty tomorrow – but he was just going to have to find out. Next morning, the sun woke the seabirds first, terns krik-krikking in the distance, and the gulls screeching down where the fishing boats came in. Then light, rather than warmth, woke Leonard, who had slid into a fitful sleep despite himself. He stretched, remembered with a slam of his hopes where he was, then shut his eyes again so as not to look at the light coming straight at him. And as he opened his eyes to stare at the shadowed ramparts, he saw the sun’s after-image on his retina almost as clearly as the sun itself, blinding him to the stonework before him.
