Mapping the Edge by Sarah Dunant Page B

was nothing she could use. She went to the bed and flung back the covers to expose the space underneath, keeping one eye on the door and using her hand to try to locate the bag. Nothing. She ducked her head down and looked deeper. Sure enough the bag was there, pushed way back in the dark. She had to get down on her hands and knees and crawl to reach it.
    She had got it out and was opening it up when she suddenly heard him. He must have come up the stairs silently. How could he do that? In the split second before it happened, she saw that her ticket and passport were gone and was on her feet moving toward the open door. He got to it first. As he slammed it closed she caught a glimpse of his face. This time he wasn’t smiling.

Away—Friday A.M.
    S HE STOPPED TALKING and put the receiver down. In an inner courtyard below the kitchen window, a woman was hanging out washing, using a pulley system to push the clothes farther out into the sunshine. The image echoed a film she had seen somewhere; Italian, black-and-white, fifties or sixties, she couldn’t remember the title.
    â€œAll right?” he called from the other room.
    â€œThere’s no answer from Patricia’s. I got through to Paul’s mobile and left a message.”
    â€œWhat about your daughter?”
    â€œI left one for her there, too. She’s crazy about phones. Especially the mobile. Loves all the buttons.”
    â€œGood. So now we can have breakfast.”
    â€œPatricia must have left for Ireland already. I should have talked to her before she went. She’ll be worried.”
    â€œYou should have warned them you’d be late.” He stood in the doorway dressed to go out, linen trousers and a soft cotton shirt; casual, deliberately. If she went up to him now and put her hands on the material she would feel money. And behind the money, flesh. A part of her would have liked to go back to bed with him now, but along with the missed alarm the morning had brought with it a renewed fear of her own desire and the damage it could do to both their lives. He took pity on her. “Didn’t you tell me that this guy—what’s his name?—”
    â€œPaul.”
    â€œDidn’t you say that Paul picked Lily up from school on Friday anyway?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œSo—by then he’ll have got your message and will tell your baby-sitter himself when she calls. What did you say?”
    â€œThat I’d missed the plane and I’d be back sometime over the weekend, whenever I could get another one.”
    â€œThere you go. Crisis over. Come on, I’m starving, let’s go eat.”
    â€œFirst I have to book a return flight.”
    â€œAnna!” He laughed. “Our relationship may be almost exclusively carnal, but if there’s one thing you must have learned about me it’s that I can’t function on an empty stomach. It makes me irrational and difficult.”
    It had, right from the first phone call, been his humor that had been one of the attractions. She liked the way it earthed the tension in her. “Don’t tell me. You have to go to football matches too.”
    He shrugged. “Why do you think I suggested Florence?”
    â€œSee. And all this time I’ve been thinking it was about infidelity.”
    The café was on the main square. She had powerful memories of Fiesole from twenty years before. She had liked it best in the winter, when the tourists cleared away and the mists rolled in. There was a monastery she used to visit, no longer used by the Church. You could go and sit in the cells, stone bare and cramped, thin windows cut into thick walls with just a cot bed and wooden table as furniture, all preserved exactly as it had been for centuries. She had liked imagining the monks living there in prayer year after year with only God to keep out the cold, until at last their souls flew free through the keyhole window. What at eighteen had seemed