She was between two lampposts and the light fell on her hair and on the white blouse. She went briskly and did not look back.
Why had she spent seven hours of her day with him, laughed and joked with him, listened? Because he was attractive and handsome? Because he was a success and taught in a language school? Because of his humour and culture?
Eddie Deacon thought the girl – Mac – was lonely. Sad too.
He would count the hours till they met again, and thought himself blessed.
She was round the corner, gone from his view. He would tick off every hour until they met again and hadn’t done that for as long as he could remember.
Eddie Deacon kicked a can down the pavement then across the width of the street, and was euphoric.
1
She started to run. There was no pavement, only a track of dried dust at the side of the road. She ran past the stationary cars and vans that had blocked her brother’s little Fiat. Faced with an unmoving jam more than three hundred metres long, she had had no alternative but to get out of the Fiat and head on foot towards the distant gates of the town’s cemetery. To be late for the burial would have been intolerable to Immacolata Borelli.
She had left the car door open. Behind her she heard it slammed, then Silvio’s call, his head protruding from the sun hatch perhaps, for her to run. Everything about the day, and the schedule, had been – so far – a disaster. The call had come to her mobile the evening before, from Silvio, the youngest of her three brothers.