The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay Read Online Free Page B

an editor of books, and craved her editorial language of secret symbols, for the absorption and certainties of a project-led life, and for the way that it could be allowed to take over the waking hours, running on seamlessly into the evening and obliterating doubt. That was always at least half what work had signified.

    She woke late, on the fourth morning, and when she came down to breakfast found that everybody else was already there.
    “Ah, here she is,” June and Iris said together, with open relief, as if she’d been missing and was found.
    “I hope you don’t mind me asking,” Cathy said, “but are you all right on your own? What I mean is, if you want to join in with Gareth and me, we’re off on the ferry to the caves today. Come with us.”
    “That’s nice of you,” Nina said. “Actually, I’m enjoying being alone. I’ve had a busy year, and my mother died” — she heard herself saying this as if it was something recent; it continued to feel recent — “and my sister-in-law died — well, strictly speaking she was my brother-in-law’s wife …” She had to pause. Thethoughts crowded in. “Anyway. She died, and then my husband and I separated.”

    Dr. Christos came into the room, looking in his bag. “I brought you …” He rummaged further. “In fact, I forgot to bring it. It doesn’t matter. Tomorrow.”
    “What was it you forgot?”
    “Andros is into our local mythology …”
    “Andros who ran over me?” Nina was smiling, he was relieved to see.
    “Yes, that Andros.” He smiled wryly back. “He showed me a photograph of a mosaic floor, one they’ve found on another island. It’s from the second century, and there you were, riding a dolphin.”
    “There I was?”
    “Long fair hair, blue eyes, a long nose, and a certain very determined expression. It was definitely you. You had armor, too. You looked like you meant business.” As it happened, Nina had been there, to the island of the mosaic, but she didn’t tell the doctor this. He said, “Do you know about the Nereids?”
    “Not really. Were they mermaids?”
    “Mermaids, yes. Sea nymphs. People confuse them with sirens but they were the opposite of sirens. Sirens meant harm to men, but these sea nymphs were more like guardian angels. They lived deep in a silvery sea cavern, fifty of them with their father, Nereus. They came to the aid of sailors in distress. Andros is very superstitious.”

CHAPTER THREE
    Luca had always been Nina’s closest friend. When he married Francesca, when they were all ridiculously young, Nina gave him something in addition to the official gift that was really from her dad, the pair of Victorian wineglasses. This second gift was wrapped in tissue paper, a tiny thing pressed into his hand in a coffee shop. It was a soapstone heart, about an inch across, and had belonged to her mother.
    “In that case I’m doubly privileged,” he said. “I loved your mother.” Nina’s mother had only recently died.
    A few days later a padded bag arrived bearing Luca’s handwriting. It wasn’t unusual to get letters — he wrote fairly often, long, rambling messages that covered subjects big and small, the somethings and nothings that had occurred to him — but this was the first object to arrive in the post. Inside the bag there was another heart, of about the same size, one of Venetian glass, so dark blue it looked black, but with other colors suspended within it, ones visible only when you held it up to the light. There was a note, but it was only ten words long. I thought we should exchange hearts. It seemed only fair .
    She rang him to say thank you. In those days, phoning demanded predictability about where a person was going to be on any given day at any given hour, and Nina was inhibited about leaving messages on Luca’s answerphone, which sat on the new table in his newly acquired hall like a sleek black brick. Nobody was at home when she called. All Nina could say, her low voiceamplifying into