Read Online A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar by Suzanne Joinson - Free Book Online Page B

glazed, amazing,’ and she had not wanted to disappoint him by letting him know that astride his torso she simply couldn’t see as far as his face.
    She couldn’t quite say why. A chance to look around a stranger’s house appealed. Irene Guy. She was curious. She would call work and tell them that she was jet-lagged and exhausted.
    She was aware, for a moment, of the innumerable flight paths above the ceiling of her flat, above the roof of the building, up in the sky. She could hear, now, as she listened, the engines (at least two of them, simultaneously) zinging along invisible paths in the sky. It was the wrong way round, her being on the ground. Usually it was Frieda up there, knees squeezed behind plastic trays, head resting on a grubby window looking down at a view half-obscured by a wing, at the mini-lives being lived in toy houses, wondering how she was meant to be a part of it.
     
    Perennial ryegrass. Cock’s foot. Couch and sedge. Crossing the cemetery she began to fear that the sound of her wheels on gravel was disrespectful to the great stretch of dead laid out all around her so she pushed the bike on to the grass instead. Up in the highest part of the cemetery, grandfatherly oaks stood nodding like village elders. Reaching the exit, Frieda pulled the letter out of her bag to double-check the address and looked again at her A–Z, squinting at the confusion of red, yellow and blue stains.
    Out of the gate. Twenty yards. Immediate right.
    It was local authority, a red-brick ground-floor flat. She D-locked her bike to a post and looked up and down the street. There was no sign of an official with a key, just an unwelcoming stairwell leading to a front door. She decided to wait on the street and she pulled out her phone and looked at the time. An elderly man cycled past, wobbling across the road, right into the other lane and then back again, his wheels wheezing with each turn. Her dad answered just as a bin lorry consumed the entire road like a tank, lights flashing, its skip-carrier at the back wide open like a ravenous mouth.
    ‘What? What?’
    ‘Dad, it’s me.’ Frieda turned away from the lumbering truck as it pulled off and looked down the street into the sun instead.
    ‘Oh, you. Listen to this,’ he said. There was a thwacking noise. Thwack thwack thwack .
    ‘What do you think?’ He sounded nasal, as if his nose was stuffed up. She wished he would blow his nose, clear it, or not sound so . . . congested; she would much rather have an uncongested father.
    ‘What is it?’ She placed both of her feet so that her heels touched the kerb and her toes met the yellow lines.
    Thwack, thwack, thwack .
    ‘What do you think?’ he repeated, nasally.
    ‘Well, it’s a little difficult to tell over the phone. What is it supposed to be?’
    ‘What do you think it is?’
    ‘No idea.’
    ‘Delicious isn’t it? Satisfying. Doesn’t it sound brilliant? Best hundred pounds I’ve ever spent.’
    ‘On what? What is it?’
    ‘It’s a divining rod, made out of beech. Beautiful, really beautiful.’
    ‘You paid a hundred pounds for a beech rod?’
    He let out a sigh. ‘It doesn’t just divine , it can also be used as a wand, a drawer down of energy, a phallic energy courser.’
    ‘Right,’ Frieda said, holding back a sigh. ‘Listen, Dad, have you ever heard of someone called Irene Guy?’
    ‘Don’t think so, why?’
    ‘Because I am outside her flat now and apparently I am her next-of-kin.’
    ‘Hold on,’ he said, ‘aren’t you supposed to be in Egypt or Jordan or China or somewhere?’
    ‘Yeah, I’m back now. I am on some Council list as being connected to her.’
    ‘You could have told me you were home. It would be nice if you could let me know which country you are in, at the least. And when are you visiting?’ A disingenuous question, she was sure, because he doesn’t actually want her to visit. It would ruin his cosmic alignments, made all the more cosmic and aligned with his new