The Secrets Between Us Read Online Free PDF

attraction on that side of Sicily.
    May was chatty; I was tired. I hadn’t slept well. My hair was still damp when we climbed aboard the minibus. Our driver, who was called Salvatore, took us in and then out of Siracusa on a long, straight road through some forgettable countryside, reclaimed marshland and then past massive factories and chemical works, with Etna gradually dominating more of the skyline ahead of us. I closed my eyes and drifted for a while. I had a dream I’d had ever since the baby was born. I was in the playground, at primary school. I was eight or nine years old and wearing a grey tunic and a polo shirt that was itchy under the armpits and short white socks with brown sandals and I was skipping, jumping over a long rope that was being turned by two of my friends. I lovedskipping and I was happy. The other girls were turning the rope in time to the rhythm of the words they were chanting: Sarah and Laurie sitting in a tree, K–I–S–S–I–N–G. First comes love and then comes marriage, then along comes Sarah with a baby carriage . They chanted and turned the rope faster and faster and I jumped faster to keep up and I was laughing and breathless and flushed with joy. Then the singing faded and the playground and the children disappeared and there I was grown up, alone somewhere, standing with my hands on the handle of an old-fashioned hooded pram. The pram was well sprung; it rocked on its big wheels. I bent down and leaned forward and pulled the blanket gently back, a smile on my lips and a clutch of pleasure in my heart, anticipating seeing my sleeping child snug in his little blue sleep-suit.
    But the pram was empty.
    I’d had the same dream a hundred times and the pram was always empty and each time it shocked me.
    I must have cried out, because May nudged me.
    ‘Hey,’ she whispered, shaking my arm. ‘Sarah, shhh.’
    I struggled to fight off the dream and remember where I was.
    ‘Were you having a nightmare, love?’
    ‘Mmm.’
    May pulled a sympathetic face, then took my head between her two hands, pulled me close to her and kissed my forehead.
    ‘You’ll be all right,’ she said.
    ‘I know.’
    ‘You’ve been through a lot. It takes a while to get over these things is all.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Look,’ she said, nodding in the direction of the window. ‘There it is.’
    I followed her gaze and, through the windscreen of thebus, beyond the cedar trees and the red-roofed villas, saw the town of Taormina, clinging precariously to the top of a high, impossibly steep-sided hill like icing on a very tall cake.
    ‘Spectacular, eh?’
    ‘Oh it is; it’s like something in a fairytale.’
    May smiled. ‘We’re going to have a good day,’ she said.
    The bus crawled steeply upwards along a winding road into the centre of the pretty little town, one-time home of D. H. Lawrence, according to May’s guidebook. It was obvious why he had chosen to live there. It was, despite the tourists and the cars, exquisite. May and I drank Orangina and ate slices of salty mozzarella and spinach pizza at a table outside a shaded café surrounded by trinket and postcard shops. We fed a little pregnant ginger cat that was about our legs. We strolled through the light and shadow of the gardens where Lawrence liked to walk and sat on a bench dedicated to him. The trees were full of starlings, the fountains splished and tinkled and painted railings gave way to precipitous views over the roofs of hotels and apartment blocks. We took some photographs and walked further uphill, along a narrow road lined with shops and canopied kiosks selling puppets and souvenirs, to the gate that led into the amphitheatre park.
    We bought our tickets and followed the climbing path into the amphitheatre, walking up its slopes and sitting on the ranks of benches carved out of the hillside. Neither of us said much. The place was too beautiful for words.
    We were a few rows down from the upper rim of the theatre. My clothes pinched my