Where Everything Seems Double by Penny Freedman (popular romance novels .txt) 📕

realise that some of the hotel waiters are out there now the restaurant is closed. I recognise Dumitru and his colleague Gheorghe and one or two of the others. With beers and cigarettes, they look distinctly adult compared with the teenagers, who are dancing now, not in pairs but in a small, heaving mass. It makes me uncomfortable to see them being watched by the men. Would it worry me if it weren’t for Ruby? I think it would. It feels voyeuristic verging on predatory. I go downstairs.

Outside, the light is going and the evening is damp and cold. The kids are keeping warm but I am surprised by the hotel staff standing around in their shirtsleeves. I look at Dumitru, who is talking to Gheorghe, but with his eyes elsewhere. His gaze is fixed on the jetty, and as I try to follow it I see that he is looking at Freda and Milo, who are not dancing with the others but sitting perched on an upturned crate, heads very close together, and Milo has his arm round Freda. At any moment he is going to kiss her says a voice in my head, and without pausing to consider I wade in. Intent on one another, they don’t see me coming until I have dodged the flailing limbs of the dancers and am standing in front of them.

‘She’s only just thirteen,’ I yell at Milo, as Freda, scarlet-faced, jumps up and he rises slowly to his feet.

‘Sure, I know that,’ he says with infuriating calm.

‘Then what do you think you’re doing?’

‘We were just talking,’ Freda protests.

‘He had his arm round you!’

‘I was cold!’ she shouts, and then says, ‘I can’t do this,’ and makes to go, except Milo puts out a hand to stop her.

Holding her arm he says, ‘She wasn’t just cold. She’s worried about something and she doesn’t think she can talk to you about it. But I think she should, and that’s what I was telling her.’ He looks around. ‘This will be breaking up soon,’ he says, ‘and then why don’t you two have a talk?’

I am stopped in my tracks. How has he done this? I have caught him molesting my thirteen-year-old granddaughter and suddenly he’s the only adult here and I am being told what to do.

Freda picks up his tone. ‘The ferry’s coming and people will be going home,’ she says. ‘Go in, Gran. I’ll come in as soon as the others have gone.’

I stand deflated and dismissed. ‘Ten minutes,’ I say to Freda in an attempt at some sort of authority. ‘Ten minutes and I want you inside.’

I turn to go, and I meet Dumitru’s eyes. I think he has been watching us all the time.

It is twenty minutes before Freda comes in, but I decide not to make an issue of it. It is more important to find out what’s worrying her. I go for bland.

‘We’ve got some hot chocolate sachets,’ I say. ‘Shall I make some? Warm you up?’

‘OK.’

She perches on the window seat, watching me. I bring the drinks over – one for me too, though I don’t really want it – and I sit beside her, not too close, not looking at her, not confrontational. It occurs to me that I wouldn’t have taken this much trouble with my daughters – brisk bossiness and a certain amount of yelling was my default mode – but Freda is different: she is just on loan to me, I have to take care.

‘So, do you think you can tell me what’s worrying you?’ I ask.

She starts with a lot of defensive stuff about why she was in the car park on her own, why she had to ring Ellie, how I didn’t understand, and I let that roll on until she comes to the crux.

‘And then I saw Dumitru,’ she says.

My stomach lurches. I saw the way Dumitru was looking at her this evening.

‘What did he do?’ I demand.

‘Nothing. He didn’t do anything. He was just carrying something.’

‘Carrying what?’

‘I don’t know. It was just like a bundle. Only it looked…’ She shakes her head and drinks some chocolate.

‘It looked what, Freda?’

‘It looked like it might be a body,’ she says in a rush. ‘Now you’re going to say I’m being ridiculous, aren’t you, because you like Dumitru, and that’s why I didn’t want to tell you.’

I put down my mug and try to speak very calmly. ‘Did he speak to you?’

‘No. He just rushed past. He looked – looked like he didn’t want to be seen.’

‘Furtive?’

‘Yes.’

‘And that’s what made you think he was carrying a body?’

‘No. It was the shape. And the way he was carrying it.’

‘How was he carrying it?’

She looks around the room, then jumps up and pulls off the bed the ornamental rug that is laid across the end of it. She rolls it up and then takes it in her arms and holds it against her as one might a child.

‘You couldn’t carry an adult like that,’ I say. ‘How big was the bundle?’

‘More like a child size,’ she says.

‘And you thought it might be Ruby?’

I don’t know!’ she explodes. ‘I know it sounds stupid. That’s why I didn’t want – but I can’t stop thinking about it.’

‘Well,’ I say, taking the bundle from her, ‘I don’t think anyone would carry a dead body like that, not hugged close like that.’

‘So how would you carry it?’

‘Like this, I think.’ I hold out my arms with the rug laid across them. ‘I’m not an expert but I have carried a dead cat. One of ours got run over and I wrapped her in a towel and carried her home like this, I think.’

‘But he might have been carrying a live person, you think?’

‘A small live person, yes, he could.’

A small, live, drugged person? I think, and then give myself a shake.

‘So should we do anything?’ she asks, and I can tell from that ‘we’ that she has shed her burden – this is my problem now.

I am