Sisters in Sin. Primula Bond
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‘You’re all tarts!’ At least I think that’s what he said. Maybe it was ‘Your last chance!’ Either way I felt a rush of shame, followed by a rush of fury that he’d made me feel that way. He slammed closed the shutters and suddenly his window became as blind and deaf as all the others in this ethereal city.
I could hear her footsteps tapping away into the distance. Silence and darkness were gathering round me again, along with lanky tendrils of fog. I started to run after her. She was the only human being I’d seen in the last hour, after all. Not counting the stalker, who I reckoned wasn’t human at all. Worse than that, I had no idea where I was and it wasn’t funny any more. At least she’d be able to tell me the way back to my plush hotel on the Riva degli Schiavoni.
‘Scusi! Signorina!’ I called out, careering out from under the archway and on to a narrow, slippery pavement beside a sliver of green canal. There were no railings, and I nearly splashed straight into the water. As I fell back against the wall, heart juddering, I caught sight of a tall dark figure standing on the other side of the canal, framed by another archway. The hat shaded the face. All I could see was the high collar of his coat and the sharp chin turned sideways. In the dusk he was a whole lot spookier than in last night’s fantasy. Downright scary. And he was, like me, intently watching the nun as she lifted one sturdy shoe to climb a little stone bridge.
As my voice echoed off the water she flinched and turned round sharply. Her ankle scooted out sideways, veering her towards the water. I gasped apologetically, but luckily instead of going into the canal she fell heavily against the stone balustrade of a little bridge.
‘Ach, cazzo!’
‘Oh, shit!’
We swore in unison, our voices amplified by the silent, slimy walls. I teetered carefully along the slippery stones, glancing again in the direction of the stalker. But by the time I had reached her and saw how awkwardly her ankle was twisted, the dark figure had vanished.
‘Hey, I’m sorry to startle you,’ I stammered, kneeling down beside her as she groaned and rubbed her limp ankle. I checked again. Yes. He’d gone. ‘I was only after some directions.’
Just as I wondered impatiently if she wasn’t making a bit of a mountain out of a molehill with all this groaning and writhing, she looked up at me from under the cape, opened her mouth to reply, and there was a kind of punch inside my chest. She was like something out of a Botticelli painting. An angelic face staring out from a soft-focus tangle of other angelic faces in an advert for some perfume. There was no distant, starved, prematurely aged expression such as I would expect from a nun. Her pale heart-shaped face seemed to glow out of the shadow of the heavy material she was wearing, with high cheeks flushed so pink – from her recent secret fuck-fest, obviously – that they looked as if she was wearing blusher.
The tight grey frame of her veil accentuated that very absence of any make-up or artistry and in any case those huge blue eyes, long eyelashes and plump pink O of a mouth needed no mascara or lipstick, let alone the kind of invasive procedures involving needles that I’d been contemplating recently. She was ridiculously pretty; like a doll with life breathed into it.
‘Help me!’ she stuttered, glancing round anxiously. ‘I’m already late for prayer, and if I don’t get back they’ll kill me!’
I took hold of her arms and pulled her upright. The colour drained from her face as she leaned against the bridge.
‘Seriously? Get back where? Who will kill you?’
‘OK, not literally.’ She closed her eyes briefly and tested her weight on the foot. ‘But I am petrified, because they will punish me for sure if I’m not in chapel on the dot. They’ll know I’ve been outside without permission. Well, that’s because they never give permission! So, let’s go. Andiamo!’
I still had hold of her arm as she started to hobble over the bridge. This close to her I could make out several old piercings for studs in both ear lobes and a couple of fine strands of blonde hair trying to escape the white cap under her veil.
‘You’re English?’ I asked. ‘I thought I heard you speaking Italian just now?’
‘Half English. Born here, brought up in London. Came back here to try to see my family and take up my vocation.’ An even stronger flush rose from her throat right over her cheekbones as she stopped dead. ‘You heard me talking? You were spying on me just now in the campo? Oh God! She sent you! I’m done for!’
‘Don’t be so silly! A spy? Moi?’ I dropped my hands in exasperation. ‘Being a spy would be much more fun than the dull reality, I promise you. I’m just a tourist. I’ve never seen you in my life before. So how could I spy on you?’
She shrugged, still eyeing me suspiciously. Her shoulders were so slight.
‘Mother Superior, Mother Marta – she’s capable of anything.’
‘In fact if you must know I’m on business buying glass for my shop in London. So it’s all perfectly bona fide. Nothing cloak-and-dagger about me.’
Her pout turned into a weak smile. We paused a little longer for her to get her breath, then picked up speed descending the bridge. She turned right along another narrow pavement, then through another archway similar to the one where I’d seen my stalker. By now I was even more lost than before.
‘But in answer to your accusation, yes.’ I couldn’t resist it. ‘I saw you there, scuttling out of that house, swearing at someone called Carlos, was it? The guy in the window?’
‘Carlo.’
‘The guy you were shagging just now like there’s no tomorrow?’
‘Shagging?’ There was a catch in her voice. She bent her head and tried to quicken her pace. ‘I don’t know what you mean!’
‘Oh, you understand me perfectly, Sister. I’m just putting two and two together. You are forbidden to leave the convent, but you absconded to be with your lover. He was fucking your brains out and you were loving it! I heard everything. The groaning, the bed creaking and banging against the wall, his voice, your voice – I have to admit it was a bit of a turn-on, all that je t’aime stuff in the middle of a dull afternoon when you haven’t had some for a while. Really X-rated! I’m amazed you didn’t have the whole city listening in! You have well and truly jumped the wall, haven’t you?’
‘Stop it! Stop it! You’re mistaken!’ She stopped abruptly again and pulled me round to face her. No longer the cute dolly. Her blue eyes sparked with a strange wild fire. ‘And keep your voice down, please, signora. So, thank you for helping me, but I have to go now!’
‘Hang on! I came over because I need you to help me!’
‘I don’t have time. I can’t help you. Can’t even help myself.’ She shrugged me off and started to walk away, but soon she stumbled, whimpering with pain. When I caught up with her she slumped against me, helpless again. ‘Please! If you come СКАЧАТЬ