Follow a Stranger

Helene looked at her carefully. “You like words?” Then

she smiled. “Of course, you are a schoolteacher.”

Kate flushed at the slight condescension of the words. “I

teach music, not English literature,” she said, a little more

sharply than she meant.

Helene said quickly, “I am sorry, I did not mean to offend

you.”

Kate relaxed. “I shouldn’t have snapped,” she apologised

in her turn.

Marc and Marie-Louise returned just before dinner. Kate

saw them walking up towards the villa, holding hands and

talking with animation, and she had to fight down a wild

impulse to run away.

She was sitting beside Sam on the verandah, drinking an

aperitif, and wearing her white voile dress. The weather

had been rather sultry that afternoon. When the early

morning mist lifted the sun was revealed, like a brass coin,

in the sky, and as the day wore on the heat grew more and

more oppressive.

Sophia darkly prophesied a thunderstorm that night, and

Kate was inclined to agree with her. The lowering sky, the

humidity, seemed to make one inevitable. Something of the

same atmosphere lay on her own spirits. She felt tense,

restless, nervous.

Marie-Louise gave Sam and Kate a brief, indifferent

glance as she walked past, but Marc nodded to them, his

eyes sliding over Kate without meeting hers. He was

looking rather serious, she noticed. She felt relief flood into

her when the other two vanished inside. The first encounter

had passed somehow, and now she need not dread having to