Appassionata Read Online Free PDF Page A

you. It is very convenient, only three kilometres from the convent.’
    To Rupert, the Red Parrot was Sister Mercedes’ revenge – a two-storey, cockroach-ridden version of the hair shirt. Having acceded to Rupert’s demands for double beds and air-conditioning over the telephone, the landlord, Alberto, whose tight, grease-stained grey vest displayed tufts of stinking, black armpit hair, showed them into a room where the double bed wouldn’t have accommodated two anorexic midgets. The air-conditioning consisted of wire netting over the window, an electric fan which distributed the dust and the swarms of insects, and a gap along the top of the walls to let in the blare of the television sets in neighbouring rooms. Outside the rickety balcony was about to collapse beneath the weight of two parched lemon trees in terracotta tubs, and traffic roared both ways up and down what had been described as a ‘quiet one-way street’. It was only when Taggie looked round for water to relieve the parched lemon trees, that they realized the nearest bathroom was twenty yards down the corridor.
    Seeing that Rupert was about to blow his top, Taggie said soothingly that Alberto couldn’t be that bad.
    ‘Did you see those sweet little hamsters running round his office?’
    Rupert hadn’t got the heart to tell her they were on tonight’s menu along with another Colombian delicacy: giant fried ants.
    ‘The only consolation,’ he said, crushing a second cockroach underfoot, ‘is that the Press will never dream of looking for us here. Tomorrow we’ll move somewhere else.’
    ‘I don’t think we can. Alberto just told me he’s Sister Mercedes’ brother.’
    But they were so tired and relieved they fell asleep wrapped in each other’s arms in one tiny bed.
    The next morning, Taggie, shrugging off any jet lag, was back at the convent, blissfully happy to be looking after Bianca and helping Sister Angelica with the other orphans. Having dropped her off, Rupert returned to the Red Parrot and spent half the morning on the telephone checking up on all his horses, including his best one, Penscombe Pride, who had happily recovered from a nasty fall in the Rutminster Gold Cup.
    Rupert also tried to cheer up his favourite jockey, Lysander Hawkley, who was suicidal because his old horse Arthur had collapsed and died within a whisker of winning the Gold Cup, and because the girl he loved, Kitty Rannaldini, was showing no signs of leaving her fiendish husband.
    ‘No Arthur and no Kitty, Rupert, I don’t think I can stand it.’
    Afterwards Rupert visited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bogotá. As a former government minister, he wanted to see how many strings he could pull, and how much red tape he would have to cut through to enable them to take Bianca back to England.
    He lunched with a polo friend, a sleek, charming playboy called Salvador Molinari, who offered him a cocaine deal.
    ‘You know so many reech people, Rupert.’
    The deal would have sorted out all Rupert’s problems at Lloyds. Regretfully, he refused.
    ‘I’ve got to behave myself, Sal, until we’ve got Bianca safely home.’
    Later, in the Avenida Jiminex, Rupert bought some cheap emeralds from a dealer for Taggie, his daughters, Perdita and Tabitha, and Dizzy, his head groom. In Bogotá, beside the dark-haired, dark-eyed Colombians, Rupert was as flashily conspicuous as a kingfisher. Leaving the dealers, he was stopped by a policeman, pretending to be doing an official search, who then tried to make off with Rupert’s Rolex and his wallet. Being still high from a cocaine hit at the dealers’, Rupert knocked the policeman across the street, leaving him minus two front teeth, and went off and bought a gun and a money belt.
    On the way to pick up Taggie, the taxi broke down. Having asked Rupert to give him a push, the driver proceeded to drive off with Rupert’s briefcase, containing the emeralds and all the adoption papers and medical reports, stamped both in Petty