Under an Amber Sky: A Gripping Emotional Page Turner You Won’t Be Able to Put Down. Rose Alexander

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СКАЧАТЬ additions to a new list. She had no car but she could get to the DIY shops on the road to Budva by bus and then call a taxi to get home.

      Just a few hours later she was back, loaded with a stepladder (the taxi driver had raised his eyebrows at that one but not as high as a London cabbie would have done, and had obligingly fitted it in by collapsing one of the back seats), pots and pots of paint in various hues of white, brushes, cleaning fluid and cloths plus a hammer, nails, and various other tools she thought might come in handy.

      She dumped it all downstairs, an area that had never been used for habitation but, in common with tradition in the area, was only for storage. She had been told that these konobas kept a constant temperature all through the year – hence their suitability for storing everything from dried meats to grains and wood. Stepping inside today, however, it felt more like a freezer than a storeroom. A howling draught whipped around her ankles and the wind rattled the aged wooden shutter slats. It smelt musty and unused, unloved.

      The house had two sets of double doors to the street outside, one pair slightly wider than the other. The right-hand ones were the main entrance and Sophie had never even tried to open the ones on the left. But on close inspection of them now, she could clearly see where one of the doors was hanging off its hinges. She eyed it, appraising the nature of the problem and what she might be able to do about it.

      It needs rehanging, she told herself, knowledgeably. She imagined Matt standing beside her, agreeing.

      Yup, he nodded, sagely.

      ‘Maybe a couple of nails here.’ Sophie scratched her fingernail along the broken slat that was causing the problem.

      You’ll have to loosen it up first, before you can straighten it, came Matt’s voice again.

      ‘You’re right,’ she concurred, peering closely at the problem area. Then stopped short, realizing she was actually speaking out loud, talking to an imaginary Matt and thinking – believing – that he was answering. She really had been alone for too long. Wasn’t talking to yourself the first sign of madness? She looked around. The huge stone blocks the house was built of stared blankly back at her. Or perhaps of sadness, she thought to herself desolately, the hammer hanging dejectedly from her right hand.

      The idea that she could fix this ancient door herself suddenly seemed laughable. The wind blew again and it rattled and shook. The hammer fell from Sophie’s hand and landed with a sharp thud on the floor slabs. But then Matt appeared again, smiling encouragingly. Come on, Soph, he said. ‘Give it a go. You never know what you can do until you try.’

      Picking up the hammer and straightening her shoulders, she tied back her hair with the band she had around her wrist and squared up to the door again.

      ‘Right then,’ she said, purposefully this time, intending to be heard, even if only by the old walls. ‘You’ve got me to deal with now.’

      Five minutes later she’d managed to actually get the door open but had come face-to-face with the fact that she was unlikely ever to be able to get it closed again unless she managed to shore up the most badly damaged part. Bracing herself, she tried to lift the heavy, cumbersome deadweight of slatted wood into the right position, but once there, she could not let go without it falling back again. This meant that she couldn’t possibly get to it with the hammer and nails to fix it in place.

      Struggling and cursing, her arms and back aching with the physical demands of what she was doing and her mind grappling with the mental challenge of trying to come up with a solution to the problem, she was oblivious to anything going on around her.

      ‘That ain’t the way to do it, luv.’

      For a moment she thought it was the imaginary Matt who had responded, but a Matt reborn as a native Londoner with a strong estuary accent. Her heart beating in double time, she swung rapidly around and came face to face with a real person in the shape of a bald, stocky bloke who was standing right next to her. Shocked out of her skin, she let go of the door, which promptly slumped back down, lopsided and resentful.

      The stranger smiled sardonically. ‘I said, that ain’t going to work.’

      ‘I heard what you said,’ retorted Sophie, not entirely sure why she was feeling so abrasive. There was something in his tone – something that said here’s a woman attempting to do a man’s job; that means I can patronize her – that had immediately put her back up. ‘I just didn’t expect you to speak English.’

      ‘Some people don’t call what I speak English.’

      The pair stood there looking at each other for a few moments, silently, as if squaring up for a fight. And then Sophie emitted a burst of laughter at his sublime riposte. ‘Touché.’

      ‘Nope, not me, luv.’ The man put his hand to his bald head and tapped it. ‘This is all me own.’

      Sophie stared at him, then shook her head, mystified.

      ‘Touché, toupee … OK, it’s a really bad pun …’

      The next outbreak of laughing doubled Sophie over. ‘Oh my God, that was absolutely terrible,’ she gasped. ‘So bad I didn’t know what on earth you were on about until you explained and then …’ Guffaws overtook her again.

      The bloke grinned. ‘Frank,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘And yourself?’

      ‘Sophie.’

      His handshake was brief but forceful.

      ‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said, automatically.

      ‘The pleasure is all mine.’ Frank pulled himself up to his full – which wasn’t very tall – height and looked at the collapsed door. ‘So, what seems to be the problem?’

      Having briefly explained what she was attempting, between them they managed to get the door upright.

      ‘You really need an electric drill and screws for this,’ grunted Frank, breathing heavily with the exertion. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got one, lurking among all that stuff in there.’ He gesticulated with his head, as both of his hands were full, towards Sophie’s purchases of the morning.

      ‘You suppose right,’ she sighed, pulling a sorrowful face. ‘I didn’t even think of buying one – I wouldn’t know how to use it anyway.’

      Frank’s silence indicated that he couldn’t find any reason to disagree with this assertion.

      ‘Get your old man to do it, luv. That’s what my missus always used to do, until she found that my mate had a more powerful one.’

      Sophie was silent for a moment as she took this remark in. Was he really being lewd or did she just have too vivid an imagination? Or a dirty mind? Frank’s face emerged from behind the door and she caught the expression on it. No, she had not been imagining it. She couldn’t stop herself smiling broadly again.

      ‘This is getting silly now,’ she commented, dryly. ‘Feeble jokes and sarcasm are one thing, but innuendo –’ She avoided addressing the issue of why her ‘old man’ wouldn’t be able to help.

      Frank chortled from deep within his throat, a sound that was as forceful and brief as his handshake. ‘Sorry, luv, I’ve worked on building sites since I were fifteen and it’s hard to change the habits of a lifetime.’

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