Ursula's Secret by Mairi Wilson Read Free Book Online

was too much change too quickly, too many strange beds and places for her soporific self to take on board. It was the alone-ness. Even when she and Danny were on holiday she’d wake up to the familiar warmth of his body, the sound of his breathing. Or, most mornings, she woke to the sound of his voice and the touch of his hand gently shaking her as she’d slept through yet another cacophony of buzzers and bells. He’d bought her so many different alarm clocks; he couldn’t believe her ability to sleep through noise. He’d been beside himself when he’d taken her to the Albert Hall and she’d fallen asleep during the 1812 Overture .
    She shook her head sharply. Danny was the past. Danny was over, a continent away. She was in Africa. She breathed in deeply, stretching her legs out from under her as she sat up, the balcony’s rattan sunlounger shifting noisily beneath her. It was dark now and the cricking of cicadas seemed loud in the cooler air. For a second or two she felt panic, the unfamiliar African night intimidating and smothering her like a captor’s hood. Then she heard voices below, deep, rich and lyrical in a sing-song English she couldn’t quite catch, and she relaxed, feeling a little less alone. She let a tentative smile creep across her face as she stood and stretched more fully, long limbs easing out their cramps and creases, erasing any lingering memories of the long-haul flight.
    She was thirsty, so she wandered back into her room and poured water from the jug on the table neatly covered with an embroidered net veil to protect it from she didn’t like to think what. She’d slept for nearly two hours. Her suitcase still lay closed on the luggage rack just inside the door, where the porter had left it. She sprung the combination lock and rummaged through the contents until she found her washbag, clothes spilling to the floor as she pulled it out. She stepped over them on her way to the bathroom. She’d unpack properly later. Another couple of hours were hardly likely to make the creases any worse. Packing had never been her strong point. Nor had ironing, come to that.
    In the bathroom, the face that peered back at her was pale and dark-eyed. Sleep didn’t seem to have helped with that. She ran a comb through tangled hair, splashed water on her face, brushed her teeth and decided that would have to do; it wasn’t as if anyone knew her here.
    She shrugged one strap of her backpack over her shoulder but caught sight of herself in the mirror as she turned for the door.
    “Oh all right then,” she muttered, imagining her mother’s frown of quiet disapproval. “Lipstick, but that’s it.”
    Still not exactly elegant. She grabbed the end of a cream pashmina trailing from the suitcase and swirled it round her. Better, but surely she could manage the journey to the hotel restaurant without a bulging backpack? Digging deep amongst the travel paraphernalia and the bundle of still-unopened post from Ursula’s flat, she extracted her purse, her notebook and the Manila folder the Edinburgh solicitor had given her. She’d tried to go through it on the plane but failed. Perhaps a decent meal and a glass of good wine would help her make sense of it all. She dropped the backpack onto the bed, clutched folder and notebook to her chest like a breastplate and went in search of sustenance.
    As she locked her door with the old-fashioned metal key and turned to survey the corridor, she caught her breath. She hadn’t paid much attention to her surroundings as she’d been shown up to her room, just concentrated on plodding behind the porter, who’d done his best to pretend her case was feather-light. Perhaps to him it was, but when she’d been hauling it through the airport herself she’d regretted the decision to pack the photo albums Jenny had told her about, as well as the package of papers she’d found beneath them. She’d also thrown in the folder she’d found under the seat of the armchair when she’d