The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse

Author:Kate Mosse
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Ghost, Historical - General, World War, Influence, English Historical Fiction, Fiction, Grief, 1914-1918, 1914-1918 - Influence, Historical, English, Fiction - Historical, France, English - France, Love stories
ISBN: 9780399157158
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
Published: 2011-09-15T21:48:38.523000+00:00

I looked down into the still surface of the water. My cheeks were hollow with lack of sleep and my eyes, rimmed with exhaustion, stared back at me in the uncertain daybreak. Fabrissa’s reflection was less clear. I turned, scared that she might have slipped away. But she was still there.

‘I feared you had—’

‘Not yet,’ she said, reading my mind.

‘We don’t have to go back.’

‘There is still a little time left.’ She smiled. ‘I should like to tell you something of myself, should you have the heart to listen.’

My heart leapt. ‘Anything you want to tell me, I would be honoured to hear.’

I hadn’t smoked all night, I suppose because nobody else had. Hadn’t even thought about it. But now I fished in my pocket and pulled out my cigarette case and matches.

‘Do you mind?’ I said, taking one out and tapping it on the silver lid.

Fabrissa leaned towards me. ‘What are they?’

‘Gauloise,’ I replied. ‘I’m a Dunhill man in the normal run of things, but they’re impossible to get down here.’

I offered the case to her. She shook her head, but seemed transfixed by what I was doing. She watched intently as I put the cigarette in my mouth, then cupped it with my hand, struck the match and held it against the tip. Her eyes grew wide as a wisp of smoke wreathed up into the dawn air and she reached out, as if to wind it around her fingers like thread.

‘It is beautiful.’

‘Beautiful?’ I laughed, charmed. ‘That’s one way of putting it, I suppose.’ I snapped my case shut, returning it and the matches to my pocket. ‘You’re remarkable. I can honestly say I’ve never met anyone like you before.’

‘I am no different from anyone else,’ she said.

I smiled, thinking both how wrong she was and how delightful she did not realise it.

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