Hotel Portofino: Lovers and Liars by J. P O'Connell

Author:J. P O'Connell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2024-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

He looked awful, thought Lucian. Changed almost beyond recognition. Impossibly thin, his curly black hair long and straggly, a fulsome but filthy beard obscuring the lower half of his face entirely.

Clearly feverish, he spoke as if in a delirium. ‘You found me,’ he kept saying. ‘You found me.’ Then he would twitch and shiver, his eyes drifting upwards so that you could only see their whites.

‘Keep calm,’ Lucian said. ‘It’s going to be all right.’

With urgent speed Constance changed the blood-sodden dressings on Nish’s wounds, carefully prising the gauze pads – old field dressings – from the sticky, putrid mass of burnt skin underneath. Nish howled in pain. Lucian’s instinct was to shush him – what if someone was outside? – but it felt inhumane. He hadn’t seen anything like this since the war. Back then stinking, gangrenous wounds had been routine. You almost stopped noticing them, stopped making a fuss if you had one yourself. But the passing of time had altered his perspective and now he found himself horrified all over again. Which had to be a kind of progress.

Constance used up all the field dressings on Nish’s leg wounds. That still left the ones on his chest. Luckily, Billy had stolen an old sheet from the linen cupboard. He busied himself cutting it into strips with a large knife that Constance thought looked familiar.

‘Where d’you get that?’ she asked, genuinely puzzled.

‘It’s me mam’s. I borrowed it from the kitchen.’

‘You’d best put it back sharpish,’ she said. ‘She thinks Salvatore stole it.’

When she had finished they went outside, leaving Billy with Nish.

‘Well done,’ said Lucian, resting a hand on her shoulder. His heart felt full to bursting, both with admiration for Constance and worry for Nish. ‘How is he?’

‘Not good. He has concussion and a burst eardrum, a broken leg that needs resetting and a shrapnel wound on his chest that’s starting to show signs of infection and needs to be cleaned. I’ve done what I can but it’s not enough. I’m a maid, not a nurse.’

Lucian rubbed his eyes. ‘We need to move him. But where to? We can’t take him back to the hotel.’

‘I don’t see how we can move him at all,’ said Constance, ‘not without being seen. If Gianluca and Nish are being hunted by the authorities, a building belonging to Gianluca’s father is the first place they’ll look.’

Lucian sighed deeply. ‘Let me talk to him. See what he wants.’

‘It isn’t just about what he wants,’ Constance reminded him.

Lucian replaced Billy by Nish’s side, telling the lad that Constance needed to ask him something. They had improvised a makeshift mattress by stuffing sacks with straw, but Nish couldn’t risk staying above ground. Soon he would have to get himself back down the ladder into the cellar as he had got himself up it – with great difficulty.

‘I can walk,’ Nish said, his voice weak and thin. ‘It’s just that when I do it’s agony.’ The fever, at least, had abated a little: Constance had given him some aspirin from her own supply.

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