The Drowning River by Christobel Kent

Author:Christobel Kent
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781429906517
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

At three in the morning by the small, leather-bound clock on her bedside table – the clock that Ma had given her when she’d gone away to school at thirteen – Iris raised herself on her elbow, leaned across Jackson’s humped shoulder beside her in the narrow bed, and whispered.

‘Jackson?’ Then, louder, ‘Jackson?’ He made a noise, still asleep.

‘I want you to go,’ she said, in her normal voice, and waited, her back against the wall. After a minute Jackson sat up beside her, alert in the moonlight but not all there, still actually asleep even as he answered her.

‘OK,’ he said, unquestioning, fumbling for his trainers. ‘’Sssa time?’

‘Late,’ she said, and he just nodded.

‘OK.’ Now he was awake.

He swayed as he stood over her, shoes on, belt buckle undone. He felt in his pocket for his keys; she heard them jingle. ‘You all right?’

‘Mmm-hmm,’ said Iris, meaning to say, of course I am, but not able to find the right words, the right tone. He leaned down towards her but she turned her face away so he got her cheek. She felt his dry lips brush it.

The door closed behind him but she could hear him on the stairs, then the street gate rattled and clanged, a deep silence settling like fog in his wake, filling the flat’s dark corners.

Even though the whole point of telling him to go had been that Iris would get some sleep, at last, with the clang of the gate her thoughts set off again. She wondered where he was going back to, at three in the morning. She didn’t know where he lived, or who he lived with; she knew he could get angry and he had a police record in the States, and she knew he had an iPhone, and that was about it. She knew what his skin smelled like, now. What have I done? she wondered.

The detective guy had called as they were getting into the cab on the way home. Sandro Cellini. She had felt Jackson next to her as she spoke into the phone, listening intently as she tried to remember to say everything that was important. She’d felt breathless as if she was being interviewed, more nervous than when she’d been speaking to the carabiniere earlier; it all seemed so absolutely hopeless. Searching for needles in haystacks, old painters called Claudio in a city full of painters, looking for Ronnie’s mystery man when he could have been any one of dozens of playboy Italians in blazers, American college boys in Bermudas or even a sculptor with his own studio.

When Jackson could have made the whole thing up, because she only had his word for it. And Jackson had been the last person to see Ronnie.

She told herself the detective was taking it seriously, though there had been long silences on the phone; maybe he was writing it all down. She had to believe in him because he was their last chance, Ronnie was slipping through their fingers and only Sandro Cellini could catch her.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.