It was unbelievably hot. No temple, no matter how ancient, was worth this kind of suffering, Manda decided, wiping the back of her arm across her forehead to mop up the sweat.

‘Come along, keep up,’ the guide called, with an imperious gesture. ‘There’s a lot more to see.’

He was evidently new to the job and hadn’t quite got the customer service thing nailed.

Since rebellion in the ranks was apparently unthinkable, he didn’t wait to ensure that he was obeyed but plunged further along the path in the direction of yet more ruins, his charges meekly trailing after him. Well, most of them.

Manda was not meek. Far from it. And she’d already had enough of this particular ancient civilisation to last her a lifetime.

Refusing to move another yard, she sank on to a huge fallen chunk of dressed stone that someone, long ago, had started to chisel into a representation of some beast. He’d evidently given up halfway through his task and if it had been a day like this, he had her sympathy.

She leaned forward, unfastening another button of a limp linen shirt that had not been designed for this kind of sweaty exertion, flapping the two edges to encourage what air there was to circulate and cool her damp skin.

Next time she grabbed the first flight on offer to the Far East, she’d take more notice of where she was going. Cordillera, she’d been assured when she’d called the booking agency, was going to be the next ‘big’ destination. She had caught part of a chat show interview with some impossibly glamorous female archaeologist who’d written a book about how she’d personally-and apparently entirely unaided-uncovered some ancient civilisation on the island, so maybe it was true.

Not really her thing; she’d been more interested in promises of unspoiled palm-fringed coves and white sand. Unspoiled was a euphemism for a lack of amenities, she discovered. They were trying, but the ‘resort’ at which she was staying was, so far, little more than a construction site.