A Tale of Two Sisters by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788632706
Publisher: Canelo
Published: 2019-04-11T00:00:00+00:00

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There was such trouble in her heart that Alice could not return to the gossip of the women’s room, could not walk in the garden even though the sun shone, could not go to the library and tell Harry what had transpired. Instead, she scuttled to her room, avoiding the surprised looks of the women she encountered. There she pulled the drapes across the window and lay down on the divan, grateful for the shadows.

Once again, she wondered just how close Lydia had been to Paul Boucher. Had he suspected what she was doing at Ismet’s behest? And what had Elise Boucher meant by saying her sister would come back? Three times the woman had said it, but why was she so certain? Was Lydia to come back for Paul? Surely not, yet Alice was more convinced than ever that he or someone in his family was responsible for Lydia’s disappearance. She had blamed her sister’s friendship with Ismet and thought her involvement in political intrigue had led to this abduction. But what if it were something more personal? Elise’s manner, her words, suggested that it might be.

She sat upright. Did her sister’s letters hold the answer? She had read them so many times, but if she were to look at them again with new eyes… She pulled her suitcase from under the divan and rifled through the few of Lydia’s belongings returned to her. The letters were at the very bottom. Painstakingly, she read through them once more. Read and re-read to no avail. She noticed again how much shorter the letters had become, how much less open, and now that she knew what Lydia had been engaged in, she could see why. But apart from the initial mention of meeting Paul and his wife on the train, her sister had written nothing about the Bouchers. There was not even a comment on the party the Sultan had thrown for his European guests, though Alice knew for a fact that Elise Boucher had talked to Lydia at the event.

She bound up the letters once more, tying the ribbon tight, and this time packed them into the locked compartment of her case. Then gathered together the few possessions Lydia had left: pens and paper on one side of the suitcase with watercolours on the other. There was a view of Hagia Sophia, a vivid sketch of the local market, and a cemetery of some kind, water in the background and tall gravestones that stared out at her from the page, fierce and uncompromising. It was unsettling but it told her nothing. All that was left was the book her sister had been reading – Constantine the Great by one J. B. Firth. She picked it up, then buckled slightly under its weight. That made her smile. It was just the kind of forbidding tome Lydia would take on a journey; the serious student of history was as much part of her sister as the mad girl who launched bricks through windows or sang music hall songs at the top of her voice.

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