The Hiding Place by Trezza Azzopardi Read Free Book Online Page A

any friends to call on him, and he only had the key to the back door. By the time he had scrambled down the alley and
round to the front of the house, whoever it was had gone, leaving a neat set of footprints, down the steps then up again, which Frankie measured with his own: the caller was a small man.
    Now he dips into his suitcase. He’s looking for something to staunch the snow that’s fluttering steadily in through the letter box. Frankie finds the leather pouch where he has
stored his keepsakes, and removes them one by one: the pink immortelle that Carmel put into his hand when he told her he was leaving; a pair of painted wooden dice; and a portrait of his mother.
Frankie stole the photograph on the night before he left, creeping past his grandmother’s bed and lifting it from the shrine she had built to her daughter. He was tempted to take the other
things: the plain black mantilla his mother had worn to church, the leather-bound Communion Book, the rosary. He decided on the spot, in the darkened alcove next to his grandmother’s snoring
body, that he was done with all that stuff.
    Not for the first time he thinks of his Nana, her grief at finding him gone. He hadn’t dared to look at these things on board ship for fear they would be stolen, so now Frankie gets a
shock: there is a twist of patterned lacework crushed into the bottom of the pouch that wasn’t there before – his Nana’s handkerchief. Frankie pulls at it, and a dart of
brightness spins out of the lace and through the air. It beats a peal on the concrete floor, skirts an arc to the front door, and twirls down in a hoop of light: red-gold, red-gold, then red and
gold as it slows. The door scrapes open. A small, handsome man bends and picks up the ring which Frankie has only just found and nearly lost. He slips it over the first knuckle of his forefinger:
holds it out into the space between them. Frankie looks into the stranger’s eyes, raises his own hand, and pulls on the other man’s finger. For a long, long second they remain this
way.
    Nice ring, says Joe Medora finally.
    Was my Papa’s, says Frankie, feeling right at home. He tugs gently at the ring, frees it, slips it on his own left hand. He smiles at his new friend.
    ~
    Habib , thinks Frankie, my very good friend. And how typical that Joe should have had the key to the front door. Carlo Cross! When Frankie realized that he was
meant to share the room, he renamed him Carlo Double-Cross. But he was secretly pleased. Joe would be company: they would get along fine.
    Did he speak out loud? He opens his eyes, blinks up at the portrait of Persimmon. It looks just like any other horse, like Court Jester, even. He remembers why he’s here: why this room
isn’t his, why the cafe downstairs isn’t his, why the ring . . . it makes his body twitch. He could really do with sitting down. He can look at Medora, but not – no way – at
the ring Joe is wearing. Frankie stares now at Medora’s face, cut into light and dark under the spell of round tungsten – so sharply, Frankie can just make out the black dot of a
piercing in Joe’s left ear. He reaches up, checks his own earlobe between finger and thumb, and goes back down the twelve knotted years of knowing him.
    ~
    Pretty, Frankie, eh?
    The girl pretends not to notice Joe’s loud aside. Halfway down the street, she turns round and looks back at them before disappearing into one of the tall houses on the
terrace. Joe lifts the cigarette from between Frankie’s fingers and takes a long draw, closing one eye against the smoke. They are sitting on the white steps at the front of the house,
squinting into the pale Spring sunlight. For an hour, they have been watching two men playing a Crap game against the wall. Now they are watching them argue. Frankie takes the wooden dice from his
pocket and smiles enquiringly at his friend. Joe’s hand covers Frankie’s own; he shakes his head.
    No, no, my friend. See them – no-good bums!