I faked a tight-lipped smile. I knew I was acting like a fool but I simply could not help it. ‘I am happy for you,’ I lied.
‘I’m not so sure myself whether I’m happy or not,’ she said. ‘Franco is a great guy – he’s good-looking and he’s quite well off. Most of the time, he’s great company and makes me laugh. And yet, sometimes he’s too crazy and irresponsible. Maybe I’m too hard to please. Most women I know would give anything to date him. I should be thanking God instead of complaining.’
I was thinking what to say to Laura when my attention was drawn by an old man sitting on a doorstep. The door behind him was wide open, and I could hear the angry cackle of a woman’s voice coming from within. He had a puffy face with a double chin, and his head was topped by a mop of cotton-white hair that receded at the temples. He turned over his shoulder and shouted, ‘Get stuffed!’, presumably to the woman inside, whose angry croaks subsided into muffled mutters and curses. The old man was engrossed in something furry that he held in both hands. When we got closer, I realised that the hairs on the back of his thick hands were caked with blood. He was skinning a small, furry animal with a jackknife, tugging at its skin and pulling it off from the carcass as if he were removing a tight-fitting glove. A small pile of shiny entrails lay between his feet, and a rivulet of red was spreading out into the middle of the road, carried along by rainwater. As we walked by, I could hear his rasping breath and an occasional grunt. He looked up at us through dark, beady eyes, which lingered on Laura. He gaped at her in a malicious, predatory way and I noticed that she quickened her pace. I glared at him, but he was too caught up in ogling Laura. The limp carcass dangled in his hands, dripping crimson droplets that spread on the wet ground like slender red roots. The dull grey blade of the knife had stopped its movement. I could see the man’s shoulders heaving up and down as if he was labouring to breathe. Then, abruptly, he lowered his glance to the misshapen furry mass he held in his hand and resumed his grisly task.
Click on the front cover to purchase this heart-warming novel. | Recently unemployed and divorced Duncan Dyer quits his secure but disappointing life in Malta to head for Tuscany in search of his late teenage mentor’s precious diary. The untimely death of the famous Scottish author Gordon Bell, attributed to accidental mushroom poisoning, has raised many eyebrows. Duncan’s search, spurred by the mysterious Elijah, turns into an extraordinary ordeal of the mind, body and spirit, as he travels from one hilltop town to another, in search of obscure clues that are hidden in plain sight amidst the artistic and religious treasures of the Valdichiana. Accompanied in his quest by the beautiful but elusive Laura, Duncan unravels more than he bargained for. In a journey that spans distance, time and the world of the living and the dead, Duncan reinvents himself into the man he always longed to become, but risks being smothered by the sinister forces that have stirred up to stop him from taking the lid off the dark closet. |