final payment forthe trip is long overdue. She can’t afford it but she’ll find it somehow. It feels important that they’re away from home right
now. A break down at Mount Baldy could be just what’s needed.
She opens up the household laptop and starts a trawl for a locksmith and a lawyer. All the barrels on the doors and windows
have got to be changed. It won’t be cheap, but she can’t think about that. And she needs to make an appointment with someone
who can take care of all the nasty official things – the divorce – and the inevitable battle to hang on to what little she’s
got.
Alfie has taken her self-respect, she’s damned sure he’s not taking her home as well.
She goes upstairs and checks on the girls. They’re still sleeping. Good. Maybe the deep rest will erase some of the horror
of the night. She pads barefooted to her bedroom and pulls down a dusty trunk from the top of the wardrobe.
Twenty minutes later she’s sat on it, squashing in as many of her husband’s clothes, shoes and personal belongings as she
can. She’ll bag the rest and dump it in the garage for him to collect when she’s not there. One thing for certain, he’s never
coming in the house again.
In the bathroom she sweeps his razor, foam, deodorant and clutter into a wicker bin and steps into the shower to wash off
the dirt of her experience. A clean start. Never has there been a truer phrase. She towels dry and examines each of the fiery
whip marks on her body. They’ll fade. Given time they’ll all go and so will the memories, thenagging doubts and the fear that right now are eating her.
She dresses for work. Bright colours today, nothing but bold statements and certain steps. A buttercup-yellow blouse, saturated
blue trousers and matching jacket. Too strong, she knows. Too summery, too gaudy. No matter. She needs the power of the colours
around her, a halo of energy to see her through the day. There are still a couple of hours before she needs to take the girls
to school so she settles at the kitchen table and surfs the internet. First the headlines. Then the gossip. Bored with the
same old same old, she finds herself entering ‘Turin Shroud’ into the search engine.
Half a million entries pop up in a ninth of a second. Impressive. If only they made men as efficient. Give a man a whole day
and he can’t even find where he put his wallet, let alone four hundred and ninety-nine thousand other things. Search engines
must be female.
There are numerous quasi-religious pages and the artefact has its own website, plus offerings from the usual suspects – Wikipedia,
BBC and CNN. She opens Wiki and looks for the first time at the haunting image that so obsessed Tamara Jacobs.
From the accompanying text she learns the photographs were taken in 1898 by an Italian called Secondo Pia. She’s blown away
by how much clearer the negative is than the sepia print. It’s hard to believe they’re the same image.
Mitzi goes to a kitchen drawer and finds a pen and spiral notepad. On a fresh page she makes bullet point jottings, jumping
from site to site.
Shroud is a large linen cloth seemingly bearing marks of a crucified man.
Kept in special chapel at the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin.
1978 a detailed examination was carried out by a team of American scientists called STURP (Shroud of Turin Research Project).
They found no reliable evidence of forgery and said it was a mystery how the image had been formed.
1988 radiocarbon dating was performed by universities of Oxford and Arizona and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
All independently said the Shroud originated in the Middle Ages, between 1260 and 1390 – all concluded it couldn’t have been
Christ’s burial cloth.
Mitzi sits back from the screen more certain than ever that the answers to her murder lie in Turin. She looks at her watch
and realises she’s been so engrossed in the mystery of the Shroud
now. A break down at Mount Baldy could be just what’s needed.
She opens up the household laptop and starts a trawl for a locksmith and a lawyer. All the barrels on the doors and windows
have got to be changed. It won’t be cheap, but she can’t think about that. And she needs to make an appointment with someone
who can take care of all the nasty official things – the divorce – and the inevitable battle to hang on to what little she’s
got.
Alfie has taken her self-respect, she’s damned sure he’s not taking her home as well.
She goes upstairs and checks on the girls. They’re still sleeping. Good. Maybe the deep rest will erase some of the horror
of the night. She pads barefooted to her bedroom and pulls down a dusty trunk from the top of the wardrobe.
Twenty minutes later she’s sat on it, squashing in as many of her husband’s clothes, shoes and personal belongings as she
can. She’ll bag the rest and dump it in the garage for him to collect when she’s not there. One thing for certain, he’s never
coming in the house again.
In the bathroom she sweeps his razor, foam, deodorant and clutter into a wicker bin and steps into the shower to wash off
the dirt of her experience. A clean start. Never has there been a truer phrase. She towels dry and examines each of the fiery
whip marks on her body. They’ll fade. Given time they’ll all go and so will the memories, thenagging doubts and the fear that right now are eating her.
She dresses for work. Bright colours today, nothing but bold statements and certain steps. A buttercup-yellow blouse, saturated
blue trousers and matching jacket. Too strong, she knows. Too summery, too gaudy. No matter. She needs the power of the colours
around her, a halo of energy to see her through the day. There are still a couple of hours before she needs to take the girls
to school so she settles at the kitchen table and surfs the internet. First the headlines. Then the gossip. Bored with the
same old same old, she finds herself entering ‘Turin Shroud’ into the search engine.
Half a million entries pop up in a ninth of a second. Impressive. If only they made men as efficient. Give a man a whole day
and he can’t even find where he put his wallet, let alone four hundred and ninety-nine thousand other things. Search engines
must be female.
There are numerous quasi-religious pages and the artefact has its own website, plus offerings from the usual suspects – Wikipedia,
BBC and CNN. She opens Wiki and looks for the first time at the haunting image that so obsessed Tamara Jacobs.
From the accompanying text she learns the photographs were taken in 1898 by an Italian called Secondo Pia. She’s blown away
by how much clearer the negative is than the sepia print. It’s hard to believe they’re the same image.
Mitzi goes to a kitchen drawer and finds a pen and spiral notepad. On a fresh page she makes bullet point jottings, jumping
from site to site.
Shroud is a large linen cloth seemingly bearing marks of a crucified man.
Kept in special chapel at the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin.
1978 a detailed examination was carried out by a team of American scientists called STURP (Shroud of Turin Research Project).
They found no reliable evidence of forgery and said it was a mystery how the image had been formed.
1988 radiocarbon dating was performed by universities of Oxford and Arizona and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
All independently said the Shroud originated in the Middle Ages, between 1260 and 1390 – all concluded it couldn’t have been
Christ’s burial cloth.
Mitzi sits back from the screen more certain than ever that the answers to her murder lie in Turin. She looks at her watch
and realises she’s been so engrossed in the mystery of the Shroud
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