PRO L O GUE
The late-morning sun beats down on the child’s blonde head as she stares out from the Rock. Fourteen hundred feet below lies the Strait of Gibraltar, tankers and liners scarring its gleaming surface. Mountains break the haze on the far side of the water – Africa? Europe? The girl isn’t sure. She remembers her parents arguing when the cruise ship docked, her father insisting that Gibraltar was an island, her mother that it was attached to Spain. In the distance, a queue of glinting Matchbox cars waits to drive away onto dry land. Mama was right, then. The little girl walks on, scuffed red Mary-Janes kicking up the dust. Shielding the path from the sheer drop down the Rock is a crumbling stone wall, which bulges out into a small, curved enclosure. A group of grey-furred monkeys is huddled inside, grunting and swaying like a single multi-limbed beast. The girl glances round: her parents are still fussing over the baby, slumped mewling as usual in its carry sling. She looks back. One of the monkeys has escaped the throng and leapt onto the parapet wall. It gives a hiss, exposing dirty yellow fangs. The tour guide strides over, tanned and weather-beaten, king of his tiny domain. ‘Come away from the edge,’ he barks, ‘and don’t feed the apes, it’s against the law.’ But the child is pointing into the enclosure, where the noise has died down, the squabble mysteriously resolved. They watch in silence as, one by one, the monkeys jump onto the parapet, before clambering down the limestone crags out of 1
9781408846582 Hollow Mountain (976h) final pass.indd 1
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