Don't Look Now Read Online Free

mediumistic tricks on him? It was fraudulent, unhealthy; this was probably the way they lived, touring the world making everyone they met uncomfortable. Give them half a chance and they would have got money out of Laura--anything.
    He felt her tugging at his sleeve again. 'Isn't she beautiful? So happy, so serene.'
    'Who? What?' he asked.
    'The Madonna,' she answered. 'She has a magic quality. It goes right through to one. Don't you feel it too?'
    'I suppose so. I don't know. There are too many people around.'
    She looked up at him, astonished. 'What's that got to do with it? How funny you are. Well, all right, let's get away from them. I want to buy some postcards anyway.'
    Disappointed, she sensed his lack of interest, and began to thread her way through the crowd of tourists to the door.
    'Come on,' he said abruptly, once they were outside, 'there's plenty of time for postcards, let's explore a bit,' and he struck off from the path, which would have taken them back to the centre where the little houses were, and the stalls, and the drifting crowd of people, to a narrow way amongst uncultivated ground, beyond which he could see a sort of cutting or canal. The sight of water, limpid, pale, was a soothing contrast to the fierce sun above their heads.
    'I don't think this leads anywhere much,' said Laura. 'It's a bit muddy, too, one can't sit. Besides, there are more things the guidebook says we ought to see.'
    'Oh. forget the book,' he said impatiently, and, pulling her down beside him on the bank above the cutting, put his arms round her.
    'It's the wrong time of day for sight-seeing. Look, there's a rat swimming there the other side.'
    He picked up a stone and threw it in the water, and the animal sank, or somehow disappeared, and nothing was left but bubbles.
    'Don't,' said Laura. 'It's cruel, poor thing,' and then suddenly, putting her hand on his knee, 'Do you think Christine is sitting here beside us?'
    He did not answer at once. What was there to say? Would it be like this forever?
    'I expect so,' he said slowly, 'if you feel she is.'
    The point was, remembering Christine before the onset of the fatal meningitis, she would have been running along the bank excitedly, throwing off her shoes, wanting to paddle, giving Laura a fit of apprehension. 'Sweetheart, take care, come back ...'
    'The woman said she was looking so happy, sitting beside us, smiling,' said Laura. She got up, brushing her dress, her mood changed to restlessness. 'Come on, let's go back,' she said.
    He followed her with a sinking heart. He knew she did not really want to buy postcards or see what remained to be seen; she wanted to go in search of the women again, not necessarily to talk, just to be near them. When they came to the open place by the stalls he noticed that the crowd of tourists had thinned, there were only a few stragglers left, and the sisters were not amongst them. They must have joined the main body who had come to Torcello by the ferry-service. A wave of relief seized him.
    'Look, there's a mass of postcards at the second stall,' he said quickly, 'and some eye-catching head scarves. Let me buy you a head scarf.'
    'Darling, I've so many!' she protested. 'Don't waste your lire.'
    'It isn't a waste. I'm in a buying mood. What about a basket? You know we never have enough baskets. Or some lace. How about lace?'
    She allowed herself, laughing, to be dragged to the stall. While he rumpled through the goods spread out before them. and chatted up the smiling woman who was selling her wares, his ferociously bad Italian making her smile the more, he knew it would give the body of tourists more time to walk to the landing stage and catch the ferry-service, and the twin sisters would be out of sight and out of their life.
    'Never,' said Laura, some twenty minutes later, 'has so much junk been piled into so small a basket,' her bubbling laugh reassuring him that all was well, he needn't worry any more, the evil hour had passed. The launch from the