(1992) Prophecy Read Online Free PDF Page B

sure they met in a public place, and offered to go along and lurk in the background as her minder. Frannie promised she would meet him in a public place, but said she would not be able to relax if she knew Carol was lurking, watching her.
    On Monday she had lunch in a café round the corner from the Museum with Debbie Johnson, an old friend, with whom she had been at school from the ageof thirteen. Debbie had a rough-and-tumble impishness about her; she was short, but prettier than she normally allowed herself to look, with large doe-like eyes and fair hair that sprouted like wild grass around a badly tied bandanna.
    ‘Hm,’ said Debbie, ‘he sounds
very
dishy. Nothing like that ever happens to me.’
    Debbie worked as public relations officer for a chain of fashion shops and was always enthusiastic about everything, which was one of the many things Frannie liked about her. She told Frannie she thought it sounded incredibly romantic but, like Carol Bolton, warned her to meet in a public place. Even if he was a maniac, she said, he could hardly murder her in a crowded bar.
    They discussed whether the fact that he had been on his own with his son meant that he was divorced or a widower, or even that he was happily married and seeking an affair. Debbie ruled out the happily married option; she did not think he would have dared risk an advert. Frannie agreed with that.
    There was no call on Tuesday. Frannie did not go to her aerobics on Wednesday in order to be at home in case he rang. But the phone remained obstinately silent.
    He called the following night when she was in the bath. It was half past nine. She had for the moment forgotten about the ad and the letter, and was thinking about the argument she had had with her parents when she had gone to their Bethnal Green flat for Sunday lunch, as she usually did. Her mother had loosed off one of her regular salvoes at her for being nearly twenty-six and not married, not even going out with anyone; for not having started to make babies.
    Her father had been in one of his despairing moodsin which he shook his head at her and questioned her wisdom in choosing archaeology. He could not understand how his daughter could get into university then not go into industry or law, how she could be content to make do on a meagre salary and spend her time looking at what he called old stones and bones. Frannie had heard the same argument with weary monotony two or three times a year ever since she had first made the decision to study archaeology. During her university years her father had not been so forceful, wondering perhaps at the back of his mind whether she had a smart commercial motive he had not spotted. Now, when he was in a bad mood, he vented his anger at his own failure to prosper at Frannie’s betrayal, as he saw it, of all he had worked for. She had no ambition to be rich. He could not understand her. He and her mother had sacrificed everything to come to England to try to make money.
    She had replied angrily that she could not understand how they had run a café for thirty years in London’s Square Mile and made no money. Lunch had ended in a shouting match, with her kid sister Maria-Angela taking her side and her brother Paolo taking her parents’ side. The row had eventually petered out, but the acrimony had not, and she had returned to Clapham on Sunday evening angry at herself for having erupted, angry at her parents, and with a sense of desolation about her life.
    Her parents had worked hard, they had tried, they had given her the opportunities. Maybe they were right and she was letting them down. It was much easier for animals who left their families for ever the moment they could feed themselves, she thought. Then she remembered the numerous times she had gone back to her parents after she’d split up with boyfriendsor was just down in the dumps, and they’d sat with their arms around her and talked wisely, made jokes, made her feel strong again, and she felt lousy