Falling in Love Read Online Free PDF

‘Flavia,’ he said, ‘there’s no one here.’
    She tried, but failed, to smile. ‘Thank you, Freddy, and I’m sorry I shouted.’
    ‘You have every right to shout, Flavia. Now come upstairs with me and talk to us for a while and have something to drink.’
    ‘And then what?’
    ‘Then you come back down here and go to sleep.’
    ‘Why? Don’t you want me sleeping in your apartment?’
    His glance remained warm, affectionate, and he shook his head in feigned exasperation. ‘I expect better than that from you, Flavia. You have to come back down here to sleep or you won’t be able to sleep here again.’ He walked to the door and pointed to the lock. ‘If you lock it from inside, even the firemen couldn’t get in, and they can open almost any lock in the city.’ Before she could speak, he barrelled ahead. ‘And there’s no way anyone can get to the terrace. Not unless they want to rappel down from ours, and I don’t think that’s very likely.’
    Flavia knew everything he said was true, knew she was overreacting because she was exhausted by the stress of performance and by the savage rush of fear she’d felt when she saw those flowers lying there. She’d known fear in the past, but there had been a logic in what she feared: she’d known what it was about. These flowers made no sense: they should have been a compliment to her talent, sent in appreciation of a good performance. Instead, she felt in them menace and something even stronger than that, something approaching madness, though she had no idea why she thought this.
    She took a deep breath and looked at Freddy. ‘I’d forgotten what a good man you are, and patient,’ she said, putting her hand on his arm. ‘Thanks for the invitation, but I think I’d like to go to sleep now. It’s been too much: first the performance and the flowers at the end, then seeing all those people, and now this.’
    She ran her hands across her face, and when she took them away she looked even more exhausted. ‘All right,’ he said. You’ve got my number. Put the phone by your bed and call me if you want. Any time. If you hear something or think you do, call me. All right?’
    Flavia kissed him on the cheek, the way old friends kiss one another. ‘Thank you, Freddy.’
    He turned to the door. In a voice entirely devoid of drama, he said, ‘Lock it when I’m gone.’ He patted her arm. ‘Go to bed.’
    She did, pausing only to get undressed and pull on an old T-shirt she’d stolen from her son. She and Mickey Mouse were almost asleep when she remembered she had failed, for the first time after a performance, to phone her children. That guilt remained with her as she plummeted into sleep.

5
    Flavia woke with what felt like a hangover, or with the feeling she associated with having drunk too much, though this had not happened for years. Her head ached, her eyes felt gummy when she tried to open them. Her back and shoulders were stiff and tight when she stretched her body under the covers. She had no idea that stress could do this, until she remembered the jump and fall she had made from the roof of Castel Sant’Angelo the previous night: hurling herself forward on to a pile of foam mattresses, where she had landed tilted to one side rather than on her stomach. She’d felt the asymmetry at the moment she landed, but the rush of applause from the other side of the curtain had driven it from her mind.
    Hoping that heat would drive whatever it was from her body, she took a long shower, as hot as she could bear it, letting the water batter at her head and then at her back. Wrapped in an immense towel, another turbaned around her hair, she went into the kitchen and made coffee, which she drank black and without sugar. Barefoot, sipping at her second espresso, she wandered into the living room and over to the windows that opened on to the balcony. In the front rooms, she could hear passing vaporetti, although they were barely audible at the back of the apartment,