Read Online 300 Days of Sun by Deborah Lawrenson - Free Book Online Page A

and legal, to Roy and Sue Harris on September 16, 1992. It was on the document.”
    â€œDo I still call you Nathan?”
    â€œI quite like it. It’s more who I really am than Josh Harris, after all.”
    I made Nathan put his number in my mobile, and then rang it while he was still there to make sure it was correct, and that he had mine. This time, I wanted to get everything right.
    â€œYou should get some sleep,” I said. “You’ll make yourself ill if you don’t.”
    â€œFat chance of that. The girls in my house will be raring for action, and they don’t take no for an answer. There’ll be too much noise and then everyone’ll be off clubbing again. And then . . . look, I don’t want you to think I’m losing it or anything, right, but I think my room got broken into. My stuff was messed about, but I couldn’t find anything missing. Then one of the girls told me the man who was asking about me had come back and that he gave her the creeps. Now I keep thinking I might have seen him myself, and that he’s following me, but there again, I might be getting paranoid. I mean, if he wanted to see me, why doesn’t he just knock on the door?”
    He seemed so vulnerable, I wanted instinctively to comfort him.
    â€œAll right, come back to mine, then.” I’d said it before I could stop myself. “That’s not an invitation in the way you think it is. I just want to give you a break, that’s all.”
    I thought he would refuse, but he didn’t. He had a glass of water and went straight to sleep in the bed; I took the sofa. I did try, but I couldn’t get to sleep; my head was full of too many thoughts fighting for attention. The book Ian Rylands had given me was on the shelf where I’d left it, yet another nagging distraction that night. At one o’clock I clicked on the dim lamp on the side table. Nathan didn’t stir. He was stone still under the sheet.
    I started to read.

 
Part Two
    Excerpt from The Alliance by Esta Hartford, first edition published 1954

 
    i
    I n Lisbon, flowers cascaded from every balcony. That was what she noticed. He exulted in the lights that blazed through the night and the imported whisky and cigarettes, freely available. In the way of married ­couples, they saw things differently but together Alva and Michael Barton were the lucky ones.
    They had made it to Portugal, blown like seeds in the wind across Europe as the war closed in. In the city’s grand baroque avenues the old order prevailed. Twilights fell, with an ache that was half regret and half euphoria, into soft slow evenings.
    â€œThe only question is, how long will it last?” asked Ronald as he tamped tobacco into his pipe.
    The three of them were sitting in a café on the Praça Dom Pedro IV, an imposing square known as Rossio. A black-­and-­white-­cobblestone wave pattern rippled across it like a tide stopped in stone. Water splashed from fountains before a grand theater and a railway station with the dimensions and beauty of a cathedral and an advertisement for Porto Sandeman rose high above trees, trams, and cars: a potent flag of commerce larger than any banner of national sovereignty.
    â€œYou don’t think Portugal can hold out?” Michael spoke in the tone of voice he used when he was working: casual interest, disguising grave concern.
    Ronald lit the pipe and made kissing noises at the end of the stem. Smoke released gently from the bowl. “Spain has been primed by the Germans. Between them, they could overrun this country in an evening. Worse than that,” he went on, with deadpan cheer that Alva hoped was the famous British sense of humor, “the Germans here boast that it would take one telephone call from Hitler to Salazar to annex Portugal.”
    â€œVery funny,” she said.
    â€œMy dear, you do realize that the chap in charge here is a fascist, too? Dr. Salazar may