Unknown by Unknown Read Free Book Online

her hand to his face, wanting to tell him how glad she was he had come, and her fingers encountered a bearded chin. Greg had never grown a beard.
    She cried out.
    Now she was hot. Her body was on fire and she tried to push off the bedcovers. It wasn’t often there was a heatwave in Brighton, but there must be one now, because she was stifling under the tarpaulin cover of a sailing dinghy she had just sold to a short, fat man and she couldn’t get out. She heard him talking to someone else. .
    ‘How long has she been like this?’ the fat man asked. ‘I felt sure she would be all right after resting in bed all day. I hope you made her stay in bed—I gave Benita strict instructions.’
    ‘Benita vanished before I came home, and Minella is not a young lady who’ll be ordered about. She got up for dinner.’
    ‘Tch, tch, tch! No wonder she has a fever! She should have been kept as quiet as possible and only given light food. I suppose you gave her steak!’
    ‘Pork and sausage, actually, but she didn’t eat much.’ The fat man threw up his hands in horror. ‘No, no, no, that is terrible!’
    ‘I’m sorry, Henrique. Vasco Hernandez came up here, which didn’t help matters. You know how I feel about him.’
    ‘I suppose you shouted and frightened her. Is that what happened?’
    ‘No, a little thing like that wouldn’t frighten Minella,’ said Sam. ‘She was all right until I had to tell her about the yacht breaking up. Her brother was on it, and I think they must have been very close. She keeps calling for him.'
    'Yes,’ agreed Dr Porva, ‘it is very sad. Very sad. Now, I will give her something to bring down the fever and make her sleep naturally, and I insist she must not be disturbed. You are bad for a young, innocent girl, o men amigo'
    When Minella woke up the room was cool. The curtains were pulled across the window to keep out the sun and her skin felt dry again, no longer bathed in perspiration. She lifted her arms above the sheets and found she was once more wearing the voluminous nightgown, and she wondered how it had been put on without her knowing.
    Seeing a movement in the bed, a plump, dark woman who had been knitting in the corner came over and looked at her, and when she saw Minella was awake her face lit up.
    ‘Ah, you are better! The fever, he has gone.’
    Minella frowned, not recognising her immediately. What was a foreign woman doing in her bedroom? And then she remembered.
    ‘Benita, why did you put your nightdress back on me? It’s much too big.’
    Benita finished the row of knitting and prodded both needles through a large ball of wool.
    ‘I did not do it. Sam, he put it on. It is my best one.’ Minella glanced round the room and saw the jeans and shirt she had been wearing neatly folded and hanging on the back of a chair. He must have taken those off her first. Her face coloured and Benita quickly put a hand to her forehead to test for a temperature.
    ‘You weren’t here last night,’ Minella said to her. ‘Did you come over this morning?’
    ‘I came yesterday. All day I looked after you.'
    'Yesterday? How long have I been here?’
    ‘Two days,’ said Benita.
    Minella closed her eyes and turned her head away. All at once she remembered what Sam had told her just before she collapsed, and an ache spread right through her body, worse than anything she had ever known. In front of her stretched a vast emptiness and she wished she could sleep on and on and know nothing more about it. Both Greg and Annette were dead and there was no one else in her life who mattered.
    She didn’t want to talk, and when Benita chattered in her broken English she pretended not to hear. The present was so painful she couldn’t cope with it yet, and all she could do was let her mind wander through the past where there had been happiness.
    It was Greg who taught her to sail. Living by the sea and with all the facilities within easy reach, he spent most of his spare time with boats, and because