Page 38 of Someone in the Water

Frankie

Hey, mazzera, did you dream about Lola?

No violent words; no threats; no aggression. But enough to keep me awake all night, fighting the urge to run across the beach into Lola’s room and check she’s alive.

I haven’t told a soul about my dream in Gatwick Airport car park, so the note can only be guesswork. But whoever slipped it under my door knows enough to taunt me with the mazzeri legend.

Defeated by the glare of morning sunshine, I push up, pull my knees into my body, and lean back against the oak headboard.

This is how I’ve spent most of the night.

Restlessly changing position, as though movement might provide the answers.

My eyes feel gritty now, and my head is swaying on the inside.

I lean over towards the bedside table and pick up my phone: 7.

13 a.m. Lola will still be asleep. If I call her now, she might not pick up, and I’ll panic. Imagine the worst.

Her face forever imprinted on a bleeding eagle owl.

I fling the sheet away and climb out of bed. It was a note, I remind myself again. Written by a human hand, someone who clearly wants to mess with my head. The mazzeri legend is a story, a fantasy, no different to Harry Potter or Hansel and Gretel.

But someone real did write it.

Dom had the time. He left the restaurant before Lola and I last night, and he always loved playing practical jokes.

Maybe his sense of humour has become more depraved with age.

But while he knows about the mazzeri legend – I remember talking about it at the Bastille Day parade in town – why would he associate it with me?

I never told him about the dream I had before Izzy died.

It could have been Jack trying to punish me – if he still blames me for Archie’s death, even though my failing was nothing compared to his. I never told him about my mazzeri dream either, but he’s been here twenty years, plenty of time for Salvo to let it slip. Or Raphael, if Salvo confided in him.

But perhaps it’s Raphael who wants to freak me out.

He may have said last night that he wants to put the past behind us, but I still remember his angry accusation in the police station.

Shame on you. Looking back, it was obvious he had feelings for Izzy, whether they were sleeping together or not.

And he knows how intensely Salvo would have pushed his mazzeri beliefs onto me, so he could guess that they’d still be haunting me twenty years later.

I shake my head. The most important thing to remember is that it’s just a note. A piece of paper. It can’t hurt me or Lola.

And we’ll be out of here soon.

I pad into the bathroom, turn the shower on, and step inside.

I close my eyes, tilt my head, and feel the jets of cold water bounce off my face.

An official in the British consulate in Marseille will print off Lola’s travel documents today.

He or she will slide them into an envelope and stick on a label with Hotel Paoli’s address.

The envelope will leave the building in a bag full of post, and travel to the port, or the airport, then cross the sea overnight.

And tomorrow a whistling Corsican postie will pick it up in a little van and drive it to the front door of the hotel.

And Lola and I will go home.

Tomorrow.

I switch off the shower, reach for a towel, and hold it against my face.

I just have to make it through one more day.