LITMIR.BIZ

      ‘Hey, I’m sorry to startle you,’ I stammered, kneeling down beside her as she groaned and rubbed her limp ankle. I checked again. Yes. He’d gone. ‘I was only after some directions.’

      Just as I wondered impatiently if she wasn’t making a bit of a mountain out of a molehill with all this groaning and writhing, she looked up at me from under the cape, opened her mouth to reply, and there was a kind of punch inside my chest. She was like something out of a Botticelli painting. An angelic face staring out from a soft-focus tangle of other angelic faces in an advert for some perfume. There was no distant, starved, prematurely aged expression such as I would expect from a nun. Her pale heart-shaped face seemed to glow out of the shadow of the heavy material she was wearing, with high cheeks flushed so pink – from her recent secret fuck-fest, obviously – that they looked as if she was wearing blusher.

      The tight grey frame of her veil accentuated that very absence of any make-up or artistry and in any case those huge blue eyes, long eyelashes and plump pink O of a mouth needed no mascara or lipstick, let alone the kind of invasive procedures involving needles that I’d been contemplating recently. She was ridiculously pretty; like a doll with life breathed into it.

      ‘Help me!’ she stuttered, glancing round anxiously. ‘I’m already late for prayer, and if I don’t get back they’ll kill me!’

      I took hold of her arms and pulled her upright. The colour drained from her face as she leaned against the bridge.

      ‘Seriously? Get back where? Who will kill you?’

      ‘OK, not literally.’ She closed her eyes briefly and tested her weight on the foot. ‘But I am petrified, because they will punish me for sure if I’m not in chapel on the dot. They’ll know I’ve been outside without permission. Well, that’s because they never give permission! So, let’s go. Andiamo!’

      I still had hold of her arm as she started to hobble over the bridge. This close to her I could make out several old piercings for studs in both ear lobes and a couple of fine strands of blonde hair trying to escape the white cap under her veil.

      ‘You’re English?’ I asked. ‘I thought I heard you speaking Italian just now?’

      ‘Half English. Born here, brought up in London. Came back here to try to see my family and take up my vocation.’ An even stronger flush rose from her throat right over her cheekbones as she stopped dead. ‘You heard me talking? You were spying on me just now in the campo? Oh God! She sent you! I’m done for!’

      ‘Don’t be so silly! A spy? Moi?’ I dropped my hands in exasperation. ‘Being a spy would be much more fun than the dull reality, I promise you. I’m just a tourist. I’ve never seen you in my life before. So how could I spy on you?’

      She shrugged, still eyeing me suspiciously. Her shoulders were so slight.

      ‘Mother Superior, Mother Marta – she’s capable of anything.’

      ‘In fact if you must know I’m on business buying glass for my shop in London. So it’s all perfectly bona fide. Nothing cloak-and-dagger about me.’

      Her pout turned into a weak smile. We paused a little longer for her to get her breath, then picked up speed descending the bridge. She turned right along another narrow pavement, then through another archway similar to the one where I’d seen my stalker. By now I was even more lost than before.

      ‘But in answer to your accusation, yes.’ I couldn’t resist it. ‘I saw you there, scuttling out of that house, swearing at someone called Carlos, was it? The guy in the window?’

      ‘Carlo.’

      ‘The guy you were shagging just now like there’s no tomorrow?’

      ‘Shagging?’ There was a catch in her voice. She bent her head and tried to quicken her pace. ‘I don’t know what you mean!’

      ‘Oh, you understand me perfectly, Sister. I’m just putting two and two together. You are forbidden to leave the convent, but you absconded to be with your lover. He was fucking your brains out and you were loving it! I heard everything. The groaning, the bed creaking and banging against the wall, his voice, your voice – I have to admit it was a bit of a turn-on, all that je t’aime stuff in the middle of a dull afternoon when you haven’t had some for a while. Really X-rated! I’m amazed you didn’t have the whole city listening in! You have well and truly jumped the wall, haven’t you?’

      ‘Stop it! Stop it! You’re mistaken!’ She stopped abruptly again and pulled me round to face her. No longer the cute dolly. Her blue eyes sparked with a strange wild fire. ‘And keep your voice down, please, signora. So, thank you for helping me, but I have to go now!’

      ‘Hang on! I came over because I need you to help me!’

      ‘I don’t have time. I can’t help you. Can’t even help myself.’ She shrugged me off and started to walk away, but soon she stumbled, whimpering with pain. When I caught up with her she slumped against me, helpless again. ‘Please! If you come back with me you can’t tell them where I was or what I was doing or they’ll thrash me to kingdom come!’

      I bit my lip in disbelief.

      ‘I’ll keep my mouth shut on one condition. That you spill it all out to me.’

      She shook her head, tucking imaginary strands of hair behind her ears and tugging the hood over her veil. A blast of cold air whistled round the corner, and we shrank back into a doorway.

      I tried again. ‘Sister, tell me what’s wrong. Something is bothering you, I can tell, and I’m extremely good at keeping secrets.’ I lowered my voice. ‘You can use me as your confessor, if you like.’

      A tear sparkled in the corner of her eye. I swear if I didn’t know better I’d have had her down as some kind of actress. Because it got me right where it was supposed to. I was already putty in her hands.

      ‘They’re tugging me every which way. Him, and them. They’re all ripping me in half!’

      Now I couldn’t help smiling. ‘Calm down with the melodramatics, honey. It can’t be that bad.’

      She hesitated, then clasped her hands together. ‘Carlo, he’s my old boyfriend, you see, from when I was young. We bumped into each other last summer, just before I was going in to the convent, literally when I was on my way there. I had just left my family. Well, my cousins. The others won’t speak to me. I was saying goodbye.’

      ‘Goodbye?’

      I decided to be patient, almost unheard of for me. After all, it hadn’t taken much persuasion for her to pour her heart out. It would be worth it just to hear what else had been going on up there in that bedroom.

      She was quiet for a moment so we restarted our snail’s pace, past tourists studying maps, workers carrying briefcases, a crocodile of children coming home from school. On a wider stretch of canal a barge chugged past us, a grand piano lashed to its deck. Nobody looked at us. Two women, deep in conversation, a nun and a sharp-looking businesswoman – what was to notice?

      ‘It’s a closed order. We are not allowed to speak to outsiders except through a grille. It’s silent, and it’s bliss. We’re not even allowed to speak to our Sisters unless we’re working, and then

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