Christmas at the Island Hotel - Jenny Colgan Page 0,68

could not, anyway, be there for any longer—and he slipped away to the entrance to her flat, just behind the museum. There were no other inhabitants of the building. Nobody saw him, and the flat was, as always, unlocked.

Chapter 46

Lorna found him there, sitting in front of the fire, his face buried in his knees, his hands clasping them to his chest. He looked like a statue; he wasn’t rocking, or sobbing, or anything—almost anything would have made Lorna feel less nervous about him than she did.

She poured them both a little whisky and waited.

Eventually—because they never had time, never—he managed to raise his head. But he was still staring into the fire and would not look at her. She put the whisky in his hand and he took a small sip, then put it down and let out a huge sigh.

Her heart was pounding in her chest. A tiny bit of her—even now, even so—leaped at the simple fact that he was there, in her room, in front of her fire. The physical fact of him, to which she was so ridiculously and absolutely addicted. He was in front of her. Perhaps this was him telling her, telling her that he had decided—of course it would be sad—that he had made his decision, that they could be together.

The fact that this was absurd, unlikely, difficult . . .

Well. Difficult things happened all the time.

She couldn’t bear it, almost. To sit still and wait for him to speak. Finally, she gently touched his shoulder, and his flinch cut her like a knife.

“Amena,” he managed finally, and Lorna’s heart dropped like a plummeting lift. Of course it wasn’t him telling her things would be okay. Of course not. She bent over in pain. Soon, there would be nothing left of her, just a Lorna-shaped skin suit she would have to carry for the rest of her life.

“They . . . they found her?” she heard herself saying.

He nodded, tears coming to his eyes now, and still stubbornly, defiantly, he would not look at her.

She stroked his arm very gently, even as she felt as if she were being carved out by a cruel knife, to the gentle sound of nothing but the softly crackling fire and the distant oohs and ohs of more and more villagers coming to see the unearthly light.

He buried his face.

“She’s . . . alive?”

Again the nod. But why was he so . . .

“What is it, Saif?” she said gently but firmly, drawing on all her years of dealing with recalcitrant children or shy little ones. “Tell me what it is.”

CANDACE BLUNT WAS confused. She’d arrived to find no cabs, no transport, no nothing, except the airport manager had offered to give her a lift somewhere.

She’d informed him she wanted to go to the Rock without saying why, which was that she was down for the Daily Post to write an exposé on how dreadful it was, but he explained that it wasn’t open for paying guests yet and dropped her at the Harbour’s Rest instead. Which was, she had to admit, a bit peeling round the edges, and the glasses were a bit sticky, but the welcome, from a large, friendly Icelandic girl, was warm, the drinks were generous, and her bedroom was absolutely vast and overlooked the sea. There wasn’t that much to complain about.

Hearing the commotion and listening to the voices in the bar discuss the angel, including at least one blaming the whisky, she had headed down to the scene, on the sniff for a story; she needed to justify this. One hit piece might not be enough.

It was freezing up here, good God. Her smart London mackintosh wasn’t going to cut it at all. No wonder all the locals looked like they were going to join the British Antarctic Survey. The wind cut through her and she narrowed her eyes. How the hell could people live here?

It was even slightly spooky, all of them gathering around an enormous lit-up statue of an angel. At least she thought it was an angel; it was hard to tell. Modern art, she thought. Her readers absolutely hated modern art or anything that smacked of fancy concepts. If it had public funding, that would probably be another excellent take on things. “Island Wasting Taxpayers’ Money on Crazy Modern Art” was definitely an angle that would work with this.

She asked the first person she met who was responsible, who nodded toward a tall, surprisingly good-looking blond