Unmasked by Natasha Walker Read Free Book Online Page A

when she reached the piazza. The look on his face when she told him she had not been true to him. He had wanted to be forgiven but had shown he was unwilling to forgive her. Had he searched for her? She stood against the sea wall as the sea breeze blew against her face. She hadn’t spoken to David since leaving their home. She hadn’t bought another mobile phone. She had abandoned her email addresses. There was no forwarding address. She had given him no second chances.

    But she loved him. She loved him more than ever.
    So far she had resisted the temptation to ask her parents about David. She communicated with them by payphone, assuring them she was fine and that she would come home soon. They didn’t pry. Her mother wasn’t that kind of mother, her father knew better than to ask. They had always respected her choices. Her mother had given her the phone numbers and addresses of her family in Denmark as a backup and had moved a couple of thousand dollars into Emma’s account, which Emma had refused to use. It was still there, in case of an emergency, though.
    Now that her life had been stripped down to the barest essentials she needed nothing. From this perspective David was rooted to a particular spot on the earth and he represented a life full of things . She remembered her pride in their home. The furniture she had chosen. The lovely pieces she had bid for in antique furniture auctions. She remembered her hand caressing the gear stick of her BMW, the solidity of the oak banister, the way her skin brushed against her expensive cotton sheets … and she felt sick.
    Nothing was permanent. She glanced up at the beautiful brutality of the walls of the onceproud fortress town. These walls hadn’t protected Otranto, the Turks had taken the town twice. David’s solidity, attractive as it was, hadn’t been enough to save their marriage. She had been seduced away from her true self. She was made strong enough to have no roots, to have nothing, to do what she pleased. She was lonely now, but free. But her life with David had been lived in a minefield of rights and wrongs. She had come to believe in these distinctions, too. She had become too frightened to move and had made do with what she could safely reach.
    There was no minefield. Right and wrong were fluid not fixed. That’s why some wrongs feel so right. We must be fluid, too, if we are to do more right than wrong. She loved David, but could never go back.
    Emma started to walk towards the cathedral.
    Marco was sitting on his stool. The other stool was empty.
    ‘We go now?’ he asked as she came up to him.
    ‘Yes, now,’ she said, folding up the empty stool for him.
    ‘ Va bene .’
    Marco was smiling. Less than half an hour had gone by since Emma had left him. He packedup the toolbox he used to store his pens, pencils, charcoal and rags, and folded up his little easel. It was all then crammed into an oversized, striped carry bag, stools and all. He then crossed the square and entered a building. Moments later he was back without the bag.
    ‘ Va bene ,’ he repeated, smiling. ‘You want we go now, we go now.’
    Emma enjoyed his good humour. He led her down the alley and they cut through a passageway she had discovered only the day before. She was expecting him to stop at one of the doors – she had a romantic idea of him living in the old city – but they kept walking and he stopped where a number of scooters were chained up. He unlocked his.
    ‘You still want?’ he asked Emma, who realised her face must have been revealing her feelings. She wasn’t sure anymore.
    ‘Where do you live?’
    He waved his hands north, in the direction Emma lived.
    ‘Far?’
    ‘ Si , far.’
    Emma hesitated.
    ‘We go have drink,’ he said, locking his scooter again. ‘I show later.’

    ‘No, no. I’m OK. We go now.’
    ‘ Va bene ,’ he repeated and unlocked the bike, then kick-started it. He climbed on and Emma did as she had done when he had saved her, she threw