The Lantern by Deborah Lawrenson Read Free Book Online Page B

who set snares in the woods and caught rabbits and larks with sticks and twine: the clever, grinning ten-year-old boy who provided the meat for Maman’s herb-laced casseroles. The look on her face when he presented her with a fat animal or string of dead birds was beatific, like the face of the Virgin Mary at church, but she never knew that for every one he gave her, he had sold two to the restaurant at the foot of the hill and spent the money on cigarettes: real cigarettes, not the rubbish made of dried clematis rolled in leaves, which most of the village boys learned to puff on.
    Head down, eyes almost closed, I scuttled past him down the few steps to the hall and into the sitting room, scrabbled in the drawer next to the bed, and drew out my rosary. Holy Mary, Mother of God. Bless us and keep us.
    The third time he came, he was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes in the morning. I was still bleary, emerging from sleep. But there he was, standing by the side of the bed, waiting for me to rouse myself.
    I knew for certain then that Pierre, in the guise of the unsettling child he once was, had come back for good. He was staring at me mockingly, wordlessly, as if to make sure I had understood that there should be no mistake about it. His fingers were playing with the smooth twigs and the twine he used to make his most effective traps.

Chapter 10
    A t that stage, it was only a wisp of suspicion, but it was the first time I had ever had reason to feel it about Dom. There had been bad times with other men, but never with Dom. He was different. I trusted him absolutely, in every way. Obviously, there was an element of disappointment in this small intrusion of reality. But at this stage, it would be more accurate to call it a dread of disappointment rather than the fact of it.
    So, when I started asking questions, it was in the spirit of wanting to be proved wrong. I knew that in pressing him I risked one of his cold moods, but it wasn’t fair of him to expect me never to be curious about his ex-wife. She was part of who he was, for better or worse.
    “Are you still in touch with Rachel?”
    It was a few mornings after the lunch at the Durands’. The hilltop lay on the cloud like a lushly vegetated island, long and low on a spumy sea. On the other side of the valley a village high on the Grand Luberon emerged in golden light from the same cloud waves, so that the great fortified walls appeared as seafront buildings.
    The question clearly irritated him, as I had known it would. “In touch with Rachel? No.”
    I searched his face, the frown, the eyes, which avoided mine, staring past me at the floor, at the wall, and only then finding the great vista on the other side of the window.
    I couldn’t help but pursue it. “No, not really . . . or no, not at all?”
    Again, a beat lost.
    “No, I’m not in contact with her.”
    “But you know where she is?”
    Just the tiniest fraction of a second. “Yes.”
    “What does she do?”
    “What is this?”
    “Just . . . curious.”
    “But why are you asking?” A flash of anger now, with a sarcastic bite. “Have you overheard me phoning her, found some texts between us, or—God!—perhaps you think I’m still in love with her!”
    “Of course not.”
    There were so many other questions: How long were you together? How did you meet? What’s she like? Is she anything like me? Why did you split up? Whose fault was it? What was so bad that it has hurt you so much?
    But the look he gave me before he walked out of the room ensured they would remain unasked. Don’t go there, it said. I asked you not to. You promised.
    B efore the incident with the woman at the Durand party, it never occurred to me that I might be jealous. I thought I knew as much as I needed to about Rachel, and accepted that she was a part of Dom’s past, without wanting to know more.
    But from that day on, it seemed Rachel was constantly there: hiding unacknowledged in the background of stories Dom told