The Snake Stone

73

Amelie lay on the divan, fiddling with a lock of her hair, her attention focused on the old book her husband had left behind in Yashim’s flat.

She read quickly, sometimes skipping whole pages, sometimes turning the book in her hands the better to read the tiny brown scrawls that decorated the lines and margins of the text. Yashim was right: hers was an expressive face, and so as she read her expression changed. She frowned and bit her lip; she smiled; and once, holding the book with one finger between the pages to mark her place, she got up and walked around the little apartment with an anxious glance at the window.

When she had finished examining the book she sat up, quite still, with her hands in her lap and a deep, faraway expression in her clear brown eyes.