Palace of the Drowned by Christine Mangan

Palace of the Drowned by Christine Mangan

Author:Christine Mangan [Mangan, Christine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books


CHAPTER 15

Frankie spent the rest of the day trying to sleep, to forget what Jack had said and the truth of what it meant for the two of them, for their friendship, but the dull pulsing in the back of her head made such oblivion impossible. She wasn’t certain when, or even if, the girl had left the palazzo. After standing in the courtyard, indecisive, she had stormed back upstairs, not bothering to stop and speak to any of them. Now she wondered whether the three of them were still downstairs, heads bent toward one another as they whispered about her, about her outburst, about how instead of Venice she should be locked away in a place like Brimley House again. Her head ached. For God’s sake, why had she drunk so much the night before?

Groaning, she turned over in bed. The light falling through her window warned her it was already late afternoon. Surely she had waited long enough—her editor should be awake by now.

In the hours that she had been hiding in her room, she had come up with a plan. She needed more information in order to answer the questions she had about Gilly, to prove to the others that her suspicions about the girl were right—and there was only one person she could think of who was capable of providing such answers.

Now, creeping down the stairs, she paused to listen for the fall of footsteps, for the hum of conversation. There was nothing. In the sitting room, Frankie lifted the telephone, her anxiety making it feel as though every turn of the dial was taking longer than it should.

“Yes?” His voice came through strong and—she couldn’t help but note—slightly irritated, once they had been connected. It was also more gravelly than she had anticipated, and she worried for a moment that she had miscalculated, worried that he might still have been fast asleep when the first shrill cry of the telephone had sounded. It was the weekend, and Harold was notoriously unattainable until a certain hour on his days of respite.

“Harold, I need you to look into something for me,” she said in a rush, not bothering with preamble. “I need you to ask around, see if anyone has ever heard of a girl called Gilly.”

“Frankie? Is that you?”

“Who else would it be,” she responded, trying her hardest not to show her irritation. “Now listen, this is urgent. She might also go by her full name. I assume it’s Gillian.”

“You assume?” he repeated.

“Yes,” she said, pushing brusquely back against his confusion. “Have you written that down, so you don’t forget?” she asked.

“Frankie, what’s wrong? Has something happened?” He didn’t sound worried, she thought, only suspicious. There was a pause. “Frances, are you all right?”

Harold never called her by her proper name unless he was angry or worried. Frankie bristled, hoping in this instance it was the former, not wanting to deal with the implications of the latter. “Have you written the name down or not?”

There was



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