The Dark Frontier by A. Decker (best books to read non fiction .txt) 📕

stopped and span round. The street was empty. The echo of her footsteps had been silenced. She was alone. But this only added to her sense of disquiet. Then, just as abruptly, two little boys about fifty metres back down the street dashed out from a door, shouting and laughing as they chased after a ball, then disappeared around a corner as swiftly as they had appeared. Ellen turned and continued on her way at a more hurried pace, keen to reach the comfort of her accommodation.

Her hotel was a small family-run place. An unpretentious building that bore no comparison with the grandiose Lombard-style architecture and inviting porticos around the piazza. And while it offered the seclusion she was seeking, it also reflected the same sense of dark menace she felt emanating from the mountains around the lake. It had been a bad choice to stay here. And this probably helped nurture her decision to return. The owner of the hotel was Signor Sciarone.

A portly, avuncular sixty-something with a bushy grey moustache, thick flowing hair to match and a perpetual twinkle in his eye, he seemed affable enough. He was at the desk when Ellen arrived back at the hotel. And he reached down the key to her room as he saw her coming through the door.

“Buona sera, signora.” He handed Ellen the key.

“It is so nice to have an English lady as our guest.”

Ellen smiled politely.

“I love your country,” he continued. “A lovely country. But such a tragic place. Like a – how you say tentatrice – she draw so many people to an early death.”

Ellen stopped in her tracks. She shot a startled look across the desk at Signor Sciarone. The twinkle in his eyes had gone.

He pointed to the wall behind him. It was covered in faded photos, ragged newspaper cuttings browning at the edges and one that appeared much cleaner and fresher. Ellen recognised the picture in this one instantly. She recalled the iconic image plastered across the front pages of every newspaper just a few years previously. The arms of the Bluebird rearing up out of the lake at Coniston like a crab out of water.

“That’s Donald Campbell’s awful crash,” she said.

“I meet his father when he make record here on Lago Maggiore,” Signor Sciarone nodded, and pointed to the most faded of the cuttings. “Thirty years before. Such a beautiful sunny day. Now they go to England to make records. And die there.”

Stepping back towards the wall, he planted a deliberate stubby forefinger on a face that meant nothing to Ellen.

“Jo Siffert. Another great driver. He win Grand Prix in England. And three years later he also die there.”

Signor Sciarone banged a huge fist down on the reception desk as he spoke these words. Ellen jumped. The brutal violence of this fist on the desk was totally at odds with his affable manner. She found this other side of him disconcerting.

“I don’t follow the sport,” she whispered timidly. “But I do recall reading something about the accident a few months ago.”

She was about to turn and climb the stairs to her room, then added “It’s very sad” in an effort to comfort her host. But he had already turned his back and was shuffling off down the corridor to the back of the house.

The dimly lit stairwell was steep and narrow, and by the time she reached her room on the third floor she was quite out of breath. The room itself had also seen better days. There was a slight mustiness about the air in the room as she entered. But it was not unpleasant. It lent a sense of history to the place. And Ellen could imagine the many travellers who must have passed through here over the decades. Single ladies in lace with matching parasols. Salesmen with suitcases packed full of their sample products. And lovelorn writers escaping the heartbreak of being dumped. The age and history that seeped out from the furniture and the heavy curtains over the window gave Ellen a feeling of comfort, a sense of not being quite so totally alone.

She drew back the curtains and opened the doors onto the narrow balcony to let in what remaining light there was. Sadly, although she was on the third floor, it did not offer the view over the lake that she had hoped for when she checked in. Instead she had to make do with a view of the balcony on the other side of the street – almost close enough for her to leap over with little trouble. This intimacy with the neighbourhood increased Ellen’s sense of vulnerability. She went back inside, closed the curtains, removed her platform boots and lay down on the bed.

Holed up in this history-laden room with not even a view to speak of, Ellen let her thoughts turn to the events and non-events of the last months. To Frank’s protracted absence. To what he had been doing here in the first place. And who he even was.

She recalled him in her arms that morning, just before he left, as they lay bathing in the spent tension of their bodies. Their languid limbs still tangled together. His drenched body wedged between hers. With the memory of that moment she felt a tingling sensation course through her body. During all the time that Frank was away, she had been too pent up with worry even to recall the many wonderful times they had enjoyed together – let alone try to get to know herself. But for the first time in a long while she conjured images of Frank’s slightly tanned, perfectly proportioned body – and she began to remember who she was. A frisson of electricity, like the static of a nylon blouse, began tingling again with the memories. The feel of his velvet skin on hers. That perfect smell. The tenderness of his lips on her neck. She let the tips of her fingers dance lightly over her skin.

The suddenness of the knock