Читать книгу Crocodile Tears онлайн

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The sound causes her to halt, rooted to the spot, unsettled; the eight chimes of the cathedral remind her, as they do whenever she hears them, of the time at which her father used to open her cell door. Ursula knows she can’t afford the luxury of trembling; there are some things better 34kept in a wooden box, and that box should be kept inside another one, and everything inside an even bigger one made of iron, bound with steel cable and dropped to the bottom of the sea.

One day she’ll have money and she’ll be able to move out of the Old Town, buy a house in Carrasco with a swimming pool and a maid and a fancy car and forget all about her past. Forget about Daddy, for example, leave that house with all its memories. Actually, if it wasn’t for that woman she should already have her house in Carrasco and much more. She feels the pull of hatred, of revenge. No, now is not the time: she’s afraid of getting lost in the labyrinth of her thoughts, and she forces herself to keep going.

She enters the square. Today is one of those pale sepia days when everything makes you feel like crying. Despite the cold air, the nape of her neck is sweating, her armpits are already soaked and there’s a nagging pain between her ribs.