The Alembic Valise Read Online Free PDF

I had better come clean.” He looked for a reaction but there was none. Sophie continued to smile at him. “Basically I tracked you down,” he added.
    “Sure you did. Shouldn’t we be going? Otherwise we are going to be late. This is all a lot to take in,” she said standing and reaching for her coat.
    “I bought the bloody pilgrim’s badge on eBay.” Jim spoke the words quietly but emphatically. Sophie sat back down and rattled the icy residue in the bottom of her glass.
    “You had better get me another drink and then you can tell me who the merry hell you are.”
    She watched him standing by the bar waiting to be served, and wondered if his actions were romantic, or just plain creepy
    “So?” said Sophie when he returned with their drinks.
    “Welcome to real life,” he said. Putting her drink down carefully.
    “Pardon.”
    “I don’t know about you but for everyone else on this planet, moving towards what you desire is considered normal behaviour.”
    She continued to look at him but the corners of her mouth began to turn up a little and her eyes softened. Encouraged by this Jim continued.
    “When I was a kid my parents had the shop in Rudge Street where you and your friends used to buy cigarettes and cider.” Her eyebrows went up then down but she said nothing. “And at weekends my brother and I used to skateboard in the street outside. I remember you, even though it was years ago. The way you looked and moved. I just couldn’t forget you Sophie. I guess I had powerful adolescent yearnings. Then all these years later I saw a thing on the Internet for your talk about the causeway. It’s not exactly stalking, is it?”
    “It’s called imprinting. You are supposed to get over that stuff,” said Sophie finally.
    “I know,” said Jim.
    “As soon as I saw you coming out of the underpass I remember thinking of the four sisters from the off license in Rudge Street; I remember them, but not you,” said Sophie. Jim nodded. “What happened to them, no don’t answer. And what is a bunga tuffy?” she asked screwing up her face.
    “West Indian patois for a healthy or fat baby,” said Jim looking confused. “Why?”
    “Never mind,” said Sophie, putting on her scarf. “Let’s go.”
    She gained a further insight into Jim that night when she finally met “Stone Cold” Cuthbert Mcluhan, his father. The sobriquet was from his boxing days. As a young man he had been a skilled exponent and had been tempted into turning professional. However his career in the ring founded at an early stage. The managers of the other fighters on the circuit quickly realised the unpopularity of having their boys knocked out by a UK citizen with a black skin. It was bad enough that big punching American Negroes held all the titles, regularly turning up on these shores to dispense pain and humiliation: Leading to the popular wisdom of the time – never bet on the white boy. So Cuthbert turned away from the gentlemanly art and started to build a business empire instead.
    They were only twenty minutes late but Cuth and Marna seemed dressed for bed. They all wrestled with lobster and drank Moet then Cuth showed Sophie his art collection while Jim helped Marna get her computer’s webcam to function.
    Sophie felt Cuthbert’s eyes upon her as she was guided around the collection. In a soft and lilting voice he gave the background to his acquisitions. At no point during the evening did he refer to the ‘old days’ as Jim had predicted, erroneously it turned out. Once he touched her shoulder to indicate the way back to the sitting room. A touch so light she thought and yet he must have channelled destructive energy through those same hands in his boxing days.
    “How did you love birds meet?” he asked her, nodding towards Jim who was hunched over the computer at the other side of the room. When she replied that they shared an interest in the past,” his grey eyebrows shot upwards.
    “Bleedin hell! Your dad’s got a De