"What do you mean?"
There was a pause, and when Alfredo replied, his tone was severe.
"I'm an insomniac. I lie wide awake every single night. Trust me, waiting up for you will not be a problem."
Feeling embarrassed at having touched a nerve, Chantal cleared her throat and sought to end the conversation.
"Great, so I'll see you later then?" Okay?”
"Fine," he replied. "OK, bye."
CHAPTER 13
The clock on the C2's dashboard told Chantal it was just after ten o'clock. She was nearly there. Another 1.5 miles according to the sat nav.
The countryside all around was enveloped in a late-winter mist. The whole setting gave Chantal the creeps. She felt as though she was in one of those horror films where a Z-list actor plays the guy who gets captured and eaten by zombies. However fleeting, the thought frightened her and sent a shiver down her spine. She flicked the car's central heating up a notch, sending a blast of hot air into the passenger compartment.
A decrepit road sign told her that some place or other (she couldn't make it out) was 9 miles away. A bit further on, a wooden sign bearing a date from a couple of years earlier declared: “Simone and Clarissa had sex here for the first time”. Slightly lower down, on the same sign, was a drawing of a cock and a pair of tits underneath some writing: WE DON'T GIVE A SHIT!
Just as she was wondering what kind of place she'd come to, Chantal noticed that the sat nav was now saying she had 2.4 miles to go.
How was that possible?
She was getting further away from her destination.
Perhaps she should turn ar...
Suddenly, there was the most horrendous noise.
Chantal instinctively slammed on the brakes.
At first, she thought maybe she'd strayed too close to the edge of the road, but it couldn't have been that because the car was fractionally over the centre line.
There it was again, that fine line...
She pulled over to the side of the road. There was no crash barrier, but there was a very steep drop as the road fell away. People round here had to be mad driving on these roads all the time.
She turned off the engine, opened the door and got out of the car. There was an icy chill in the air. Chantal looked around but there was no sign of what might have caused the noise.
She knelt down to look under the car and thought she could see something towards the rear end. She stood up, walked towards the boot and knelt down again to take a closer look. Gross! A black bin bag had got caught between the silencer and some other component that she didn't know the name of. She tried to kick the bag and gagged at the stench coming from it.
No joy, so she fetched the warning triangle from the boot and used it to unhook the bag.
Job done.
Chantal got back to her feet. Through the mist, she could just make out a shape moving close by. The triangle slipped out of her hands when she realised it was a person.
"Car trouble, young lady?"
It was an old woman whose cutting voice reminded Chantal of the witch who gives the poisoned apple to Snow White.
She took a step back, startled. The woman must have been in her eighties. She had straggly white hair and a bony face, studying Chantal with a curious and unnerving pair of eyes. One of them had no pupil, leading Chantal to suppose it was made of glass, while the other was practically transparent.
"Won't it start?" the old lady asked, pointing at the car.
"Ye...yes" Chantal struggled to get her words out. She cleared her throat. "Yes, it's fine. There's nothing wrong with the car. I just ran over..."
She paused and pointed at the bin bag.
"...that thing. It gave me a fright, but it's fine now."
"Ah, OK. In that case, I'll be on my way," the old woman replied.
Chantal stayed motionless for a few seconds, wondering what the hell an old woman was doing out in the cold on a deserted road at this time of night. Was she the local nutter?
"Excuse me?" Chantal called out.
Enshrouded in mist, the figure of the old lady stopped and turned around,
revealing her terrifying face once more.
"Can I ask you something?"
The old woman smiled thinly and inclined her head.
"I'm looking for a bed and bre..." Chantal stopped herself, unsure whether the old woman would be familiar with the English term. "I don't suppose you know of a guesthouse in these parts? It must be around here somewhere, but my car's navigation system doesn't recog..."
The old woman's smile vanished and her expression turned to one of sheer terror.
"Do you know it?" Chantal asked, persisting in spite of the additional anxiety brought on by the woman's reaction.
The old woman raised a bony arm and pointed to a dirt track Chantal hadn't noticed, before scuttling away down the road as fast as her age would allow.
Still a little spooked by the encounter, Chantal got back in the car, reversed as far as the dirt track and turned onto it. Five hairpins and a seemingly endless straight climb later, she arrived at the top of a hill. The enormous valley to her right nestled into the dark night. It must be one hell of a view in the daytime, Chantal thought to herself. By night, however, it was most disconcerting. Were someone to attack her, no one would hear her scream.
According to the sat nav, she was just 850 yards from her destination. She continued along the dirt track, which was now widening gradually. Her already scant visibility was impaired even more by the dust she disturbed as she drove along. She could just make out a light in the distance, however, and as she progressed another couple of hundred yards, the dark outline of an imposing building began to emerge. A yellow light shone through one of the windows.
The ground crunched under the weight of her car as she drove on towards the house.
Eventually, she feathered the brakes and the C2 squeaked to a halt in what seemed to be an unguarded parking lot. A crooked sign told her she had arrived at the TWIN OLIVE TREES B&B. She wondered if there really were twin olive trees hidden among all the other trees in this vast expanse of green. She looked up at the house again. Her first instinct was to turn around and head right back to where she'd come from. She didn't like this place one little bit; it gave her the creeps. It was a huge, bleak house out in the middle of nowhere. If something happened to her out here, she'd be dead before the ambulance could arrive.
She felt sick at the thought of it. Chantal figured she was too tired to begin her return journey that night, but she'd head back to Gussago in the morning. Her hometown was nothing to write home about, but at least it didn't have B&Bs that put the fear of God into you.
She closed her eyes and tried to calm down, raising both hands and drawing circles with her fingertips to massage her temples. It worked, her mind gradually emptied of each and every thought. Except one. She felt like she could sense...
Her eyes bolted open just as the thought entered her head.
...someone.
She screamed with such ferocity it burned the back of her throat. Her mouth remained locked open, now emitting nothing more than a frightened moan.
The figure outside the car approached the door and opened it.
Chantal threw herself across to the passenger seat and tried to open the other door. She was panic stricken, unable to think clearly.
"It's alright," said a man's voice. "It's me, Alfredo."
Relief flooded over Chantal, but she still didn't manage to speak. The