Dead Season by Christobel Kent

Author:Christobel Kent [Kent, Christobel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
Publisher: Corvus
Published: 2012-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

SHE APPEARED IN THE kitchen doorway, padding on bare feet, pale but not sick, not any more. The ghost of colour in her cheeks.

From the kitchen table Luisa smiled at Anna tentatively. The tabletop was scattered with pages of notes: Sandro’s notes. She hastily pushed them into a pile and pulled out a chair beside her. Moving gingerly under her own weight, Anna lowered herself obediently into the seat.

Without asking, Luisa put water on to boil. Camomile tea, the answer to everything and nothing. Sweet biscuits: she wished she had something better than the plain ones she kept as a last resort. She would buy something with chocolate, Luisa decided. She should also get something more tempting and began to wonder where she might get a decent chicken in August; chicken would be good for the baby.

Telling herself not to be daft, that Anna Niescu would probably have fled before she got back from the butcher’s, Luisa turned from the stove to see the girl studying a page covered in Sandro’s scrawl. He’d written down what they told him about the apartment. It was headed, Via del Lazaretto. It was about the only thing on the page that was legible, but it was enough. Anna turned her head sideways to meet Luisa’s gaze.

‘You went there?’ she said, and at the trace of pride in the girl’s voice, Luisa’s heart sank. ‘Did you see it? Did you see our apartment?’

Carefully, Luisa set the cup in front of her and the plate of biscuits. She sat down.

‘It’s a lovely area,’ she said. ‘Close to the countryside, isn’t it? Very nice.’

Anna set her chin in her hands and gazed off into the distance. ‘You think I’m an idiot,’ she said simply. ‘You think he deceived me.’ She sat up and looked into Luisa’s face, hands folded on top of her belly. She didn’t even glance at the biscuits.

‘I don’t know,’ said Luisa, and it was the truth. However bad it looked, she still clung to the belief that the man had at least loved Anna Niescu. What kind of human being could deceive this child, in that way? If Sandro were here, he would tell her, Plenty. There are plenty of them out there. Luisa knew as much herself, if she was being sensible, only she wasn’t being particularly sensible at the moment. Going to see that apartment with the balconies in San Niccolo had only been the start of Luisa not being sensible.

‘We couldn’t get inside the apartment,’ she said with a sigh and pushed the plate closer to Anna. ‘Eat. For the baby.’

Anna contemplated the biscuits, which Luisa had arranged in a star shape, and picked one up. ‘No,’ she said, nibbling, the food held in her little paw of a hand. ‘I couldn’t get inside either. No one would let me in. That porter knew I was there but he hid from me.’

‘Did you see him when you went there with your – with Josef?’ asked Luisa. ‘The porter?’

‘He spied on us,’ said Anna, still nibbling, to Luisa’s satisfaction.

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