The Silver Chain Read Online Free PDF

gloves, because if I don’t my fingers will seize up and I won’t be able to feed the tube ticket through the machine or unlock my front door, or work Polly’s printer, let alone press the shutter on my camera. I hunt around on the ground. Nothing. Try the gate to the square, rattle it, but it appears to be locked. My fingers stick to the iron. I wrench them off before they freeze there permanently. You hear of that happening, don’t you? In the Himalayas, or the Arctic. People’s tongues stuck to, what, pickaxes? Cups? Spoons? What else in the Arctic would you be licking?
    I can feel ridiculous tears crowding into my throat.
    ‘Where am I going to get some new gloves at this time of night, for God’s sake?’
    My gloves float out of the darkness, right under my nose where I’m hunched over the gate, biting back sobs. The bloody things are waggling and waving at me in thin air. They look solid, filled, as if they have fingers inside them.
    ‘I took them hostage, Serena. I’m so sorry. I was teasing you. I picked them up earlier in the garden.’
    Gustav Levi is indeed wearing them, and they look ridiculous, like a child’s mittens hanging off his long fingers. My eyes are still heavy and wet with unshed tears, and though I blink furiously to try to hide it, he bends and peers into my face. The new expression there, the softness in his eyes, the self-mocking bat of his thick eyelashes, the teasing lift of his mouth, are all so unexpected that I nearly burst into tears in earnest.
    ‘I’m OK, it’s fine, really,’ I gulp, blinking back at him like an owl. ‘Thank you for my gloves.’
    He wipes one leather finger gently along the lower lid of each eye and then hands both gloves back to me.
    ‘Now. Tell me I can’t escort you somewhere, Serena. You look a bit, well, undone. Dishevelled? No, that’s not the right word. At sixes and sevens. Knackered. Who wouldn’t be? This can be an exhausting old town. How about allowing me to buy you a drink if you think you can trust me?’

THREE
    It takes me all of three seconds to make up my mind. There’s no-one waiting for me. No-one expecting me to check in. No-one who gives a toss.
    ‘Mr Levi? Thank you. I could murder a glass of dry white wine.’
    ‘Gustav. You were OK with it before. It’s a formal enough name without your making me feel like a sergeant major.’
    ‘OK, Gustav. And if you’re not to be trusted, well, I’m a big girl now. I can look after myself.’
    He presses his hand into the small of my back. A signal of agreement, or the commencement of a new journey? Either way it gets me going, like the crank handle on a vintage car. I’m happy for him to keep his hand there, actually. Against all my resolutions, despite my upbeat retorts, I feel right now as if I have no spine, no backbone, that I’ll crumple in a heap and give up with no visible means of support.
    But to my disappointment he removes it, puts his hands thoughtfully into his pockets, and instead of walking up the hill, as he started to do just now, he leads me away from the dark square, towards the bright lights of what must be Piccadilly where red buses and black taxis and normal people are going about their business.
    Behind me I imagine the shadows in the square staring after us, reluctant to let us go.
    We cross the street and like everyone else we walk briskly towards the Ritz Hotel. The famous lights illuminating its name above the colonnade are so inviting. Gustav glances down at me. The amusement I’m becoming familiar with starts in the crinkling of his eyes, the softening of his cheeks, lifts the curve of his argumentative mouth.
    ‘They have a dress code in there, I’m afraid, to go with all that glitzy gilt. They wouldn’t let us set foot in this revolving door, let alone contaminate one of their precious seats in the Rivoli Bar.’
    I am an urchin, standing in the cold, elbowed aside by the glossy rich visitors in their fur coats and ostentatious jewellery, being