Mapping the Edge by Sarah Dunant Read Free Book Online

the demands of politeness.
    â€œSo you like horses.” They were almost onto the autostrada now, filtering into heavy traffic all moving at speed.
    â€œOh, it wasn’t for me. It was for my daughter.”
    â€œYour daughter?” And he seemed surprised. “You have a daughter?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI . . . er . . .” And this time he went looking for words. “You don’t look like a mother.” It wasn’t immediately evident that this was a compliment. Could this be some kind of elaborate pickup? she thought. If so, would she be annoyed or flattered? “How old is she?”
    â€œSix. Nearly seven.”
    He drove for a bit. “You don’t buy her guns?”
    â€œGuns?”
    â€œIsn’t that what women do now? To make their children without . . . without sexism.”
    The sheer naïveté of the remark made her laugh. Someone had once bought Lily an electric car, all fast chrome and flashing lights. She had played with it twice, then left it to rot under the bushes where it had crashed in the garden. “She doesn’t like guns. Or swords. They bore her. Some things you can’t change.”
    He nodded, as if that idea pleased him. “And your husband? Does he agree?”
    â€œI don’t have a husband. I’m a single parent.” She added the last sentence with a touch of defiance, just in case the listener might see fit to quarrel with this vision of the world.
    â€œI see,” he said. “That is all right for you?”
    â€œYes,” she said. “Yes, it is.”
    â€œAnd your daughter, where is she now?”
    â€œShe’s with a baby-sitter, a friend.”
    Talk of Lily made her want to be home. It was always worse on the return journey, as if she were a homing pigeon fixing on its spot, the emotional radar kicking in. She looked at her watch. Twenty to seven. There was a one-hour time difference. Lily would be home from school now, though Patricia and she would have probably stopped off at the park to play for a while first. In England it would be light for hours to come.
    Not so here. Already there was the hint of twilight in the air. She would take off into a Mediterranean sunset, and arrive into northern light. It was over. No adventure, no change. So be it. It had been a romantic notion, anyway. Plane tickets don’t alter your life; they just transport it somewhere else. For real change you need to be braver—or more foolish. She felt her eyes closing with an enveloping tiredness. She tried to rouse herself into conversation. They were in the middle lane of the freeway, both sides still heavy with traffic. She looked at her watch again. Almost 7:00 P.M. now. Her check-in time was already past.
    â€œDon’t worry,” he said, in answer to the unasked question. “We are not far. See?”
    In the distance she saw a set of signs coming up on the grass verge, one to the right bearing the symbol of an airport, a set of silver wings already airborne. She felt herself suddenly nauseated, as if the sight of it had given her a kind of instant vertigo. She fumbled with the door controls.
    â€œI’m sorry, I have to open the window a little. I need some fresh air.”
    He glanced at her quickly. He pushed a button and her glass slid silently down. A wall of fume-clogged air hit her, worse than the recycled atmosphere in the car. She felt her eyes water with its toxicity. She tried to close the window. Again he did it for her.
    â€œI’ll turn up the air-conditioning. We’ll be out of the traffic soon. Why don’t you lie back and shut your eyes? We’ll be at the departure terminal in ten minutes.”
    She wanted to tell him that she was okay, that it was just a touch of travel sickness and all she needed was to be out of the car, but then she began to feel decidedly worse, as if her brain were filling up with poisonous fog and she was drowning in it. She