B004M5HK0M EBOK by Unknown Read Free Book Online Page A

whistled – the chap who was always repairing his car, perhaps. Emily didn’t look back.
    Emily wanted to find Joe. She went out into the garden and saw him standing there, tall and handsome, easy to spot in the crowd. She went towards him as quickly as she could. Joe and Emily. With their very English names they could have been toddlers playing up while their mothers had a natter in Starbucks, except that Joe was so tall and so handsome and so Hungarian, and Emily was... Emily was sweating like an adult woman who has just lugged a suitcase containing a contortionist down two flights of stairs.
    ‘That was mad,’ she said. She meant the knife-throwing but she could have been talking about any of it.
    Joe smiled, as though it was a compliment. ‘They’ve lit the bonfire,’ he said. ‘Come and sit over here, or you’ll smell as though you’re forged in a volcano.’ He took her hand and led her over to one of the wooden benches. They sat there for a moment. Joe seemed as exhausted as if he had personally raised Zsa-Zsa from the dead. If only that was a legitimate possible explanation. Emily looked around at the other guests in the garden, trying to decide what she wanted to ask him. Was she really going to ask him if he had just covered up a death? Perhaps the knife had slipped, and out of loyalty...
    ‘Wait here,’ Joe said. She must have looked as though she hadn’t said what she’d come out here to say because he put his hand on her shoulder and said, ‘I won’t be long. I’ll come back.’
    ‘Do you know your Chekhov?’ said Emily.
    ‘What can you mean?’
    ‘It’s something Elise said. It’s about Zsa-Zsa. I need to know the names of the plays.’
    Maybe he looked at her strangely and maybe he didn’t. It was hard to see in the darkness with the smoke from the bonfire blowing in their eyes.
    ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t know anything.’ He walked away.
    Emily sat and waited. Not far from where she was sitting, the little stall was still going, serving roast pig straight from the spit. Emily spotted a very elderly lady she knew heading for the front of the long queue of people waiting to be served with a slice of pork. Emily only knew this lady as ‘Auntie’. It was a term of respect rather than an acknowledgement of familial ties because Auntie was originally from Jamaica and Emily had never even been there on holiday. Auntie was small but she was mighty. She was fierce. She stood in her slippers at the gate post in front of her house most days, and greeted the world as it passed by. The gate post was only a few feet from her front window, so there was no doubt that she stood there not because she’d get a better view but because she wanted to hail the passersby and get a greeting in return.
    Seeing the long queue for the roast pork, rather than wasting time trying to evaluate how long it would take her to wait and whether or not she should stand in line or come back, Auntie had taken the sensible decision to press her suit as one of the oldest people there, and had walked to the front and held out her plate. ‘Hello, Auntie,’ called Emily. Auntie gave a queenly wave, but she didn’t look back. She was concentrating on her plate as the meat piled up on it. ‘A liccle more,’ she said to the man in the chef’s hat, each time he paused. ‘A liccle more.’
    Now Dr. Muriel was heading in Emily’s direction, her cane in one hand, a cup of punch in the other. ‘I wonder if it’s true,’ Emily said to her, ‘that roast pork smells like roasting human flesh.’
    She’d thought Dr. Muriel would say something obvious like, ‘Let’s hope we never find out!’ Instead she said, ‘When is something “true”, Emily? Is it when you read about it or hear about it, when you see it with your own eyes – or is there some other term of reference for you?’
    ‘In this case,’ said Emily. ‘I’d have to smell it with my own nose, wouldn’t I?’
    Dr. Muriel sat down next to Emily, as