AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I fetched another letter, and opened it. ‘I wish we could read the Italian.’ I screwed my eyes and deciphered a name. ‘Beryl – look, that’s definitely Beryl. Why would Lora know about Beryl?’
‘Izzy must have told her about her step-sister. I mean, there’s only three years between them...’ She wiped an eye. ‘And they were both teenagers at the time she was writing. When Izzy met Colin, Beryl was jealous of them; she had formed an attachment to your gran, and Izzy… well, she was suddenly married and pregnant, and not interested in her younger step-sister.’
‘This Lora,’ I said cautiously, ‘do you think she’s Catherine’s daughter?’
Mum brushed the letter off her lap with a defiant gesture. ‘Water under the bridge. This all happened years ago. I don’t remember.’
I picked up the flimsy sheet and tucked it back in the envelope. The pain was too much for my mother. Dad wasn’t likely to help either, and Richard was a vacuum when it came to family information. The untranslated text, and strange squiggles, might reveal the true nature of the relationship between Lora and Isabel.
Yvette spoke some Italian.
While Mum returned to funeral arrangements, I excused myself, gathered up the letters without her noticing, and left to visit my friend.
Thirty-Four
York
For two days I hung around the Clifford Tower, paying out for parking tickets, eating sandwiches and drinking black coffee, listening to the radio or experimenting with colours on my palette to fill the time.
The parking attendant probably thought I was some pervert. If he had asked me why I was there, I couldn’t have explained my irrational need to know one way or the other if I had made the right call. Trusting somebody new in my life was tough. I had just a few friends, and even with them, I hadn’t told them personal stuff, like my real name.
By the end of the day, Robyn hadn’t appeared at York Castle. Perhaps she needed to stay longer in Coalville than she thought. But then, I might be totally wrong about her. I could be falling in love with a fake. But the little I knew about Robyn didn’t match with that image of heartlessness. So wherever my feelings took me, hurt followed on swiftly, but this time the taut knot in my stomach wasn’t due to anger or fear.
I turned the key in the ignition. Let her find me; the tactic had worked before. Next stop was Spofforth Castle; the penultimate ruin and hardly the best place to spend a lonely day.
Thirty-Five
Coalville
Yvette excitedly clapped her hands at the sight of the bundle of letters. ‘A scandal, delicious. In the absence of pictures, what’s better than letters? Art historians find them useful for provenance.’
We sorted them, and while I pottered in her kitchen rustling up coffee and a bowl of crisps, she tried to decipher the writing with the aid of a dictionary.
I walked back into the sitting room and nearly dropped the mugs. ‘What?’
‘Put those down and sit here.’ She spoke firmly, but her face was flushed.
‘You’re scaring me.’ The mugs rattled together; I was grateful for the coffee table.
‘It’s not the letters, per se. They’re two kids writing to each other. They’re secretive. I can’t crack the code.’
‘Code?’
She smoothed out one sheet on her knee. ‘These symbols are unintelligible. The Italian is basic, school level, fortunately for me, and Isabel. Her pen pal writes of her family, and calls herself Lora, but in the first letter, when she introduces herself, she uses her full name.’ She ran her finger under a line. ‘My name is Loretta di Matteo.’
Now I knew why she’d asked me to sit down. My eyes clouded over, the dizziness swept me back into the seat, and I crashed there. ‘Loretta. Lora.’
‘Yes.’
‘Di Matteo.’ I said, but thinking de’ Medici at the same time.
‘Yes.’
‘L. D. M.’
‘Are you okay?’ she asked.
‘Yes. I think.’
