Free Eighty Days Yellow by Vina Jackson Page A

to drink?’
    ‘Not a thing. Been guzzling mineral water all night. You’ve broken in a virgin.’
    ‘How wonderful,’ he chuckled.
    ‘She looked like she was having a pretty good time to me,’ Charlotte remarked, ‘and I didn’t even get to show her the couples’ room.’
    I fell asleep on Charlotte’s shoulder in a cab on the way back to her flat and woke up in the morning still wearing the pale-blue corset, though Charlotte had loosened the strings. The pillow was covered in glitter and streaks of black eye make-up. I felt as though I had a hangover, although I definitely hadn’t had a drop to drink.
    ‘Morning, sunshine,’ Charlotte called from the kitchen. ‘Made you a coffee.’
    I stumbled to the kitchen, immediately more alert at the promise of caffeine.
    ‘Wow,’ said Charlotte, ‘that outfit looked better on you yesterday.’
    ‘Thanks,’ I replied. ‘Can’t say the same for yours.’
    Charlotte was standing in the middle of the kitchen, holding a small china saucer in one hand and a cup of espresso in the other. She was completely naked.
    ‘I don’t wear clothes if I can help it,’ she said.
    ‘And when would that be?’ I asked.
    ‘When I’m deep-fat frying,’ she replied, ‘or when I have gentlemen callers. I put clothes on so they can take them off again. Blokes seem to like that.’
    When she said ‘blokes’, I remembered that Charlotte was from Alice Springs and was amazed again that anyone as cosmopolitan as her had been raised in the outback of Australia.
    ‘You’re in a good mood.’
    ‘Made some money already today,’ she said, glancing over at her computer, ‘and I slept well knowing that I expanded your mind last night.’
    She was grinning, but I felt a little strange about the whole thing. Nothing, other than music, had ever made me feel that way – that epiphany of both detachment and pleasure filtering its way through the pain. I pushed the feeling out of my mind.
    ‘Your phone’s been ringing off the hook. You could get a better ringtone.’
    ‘It’s Vivaldi, you philistine,’ I said. She shrugged.
    I fished my phone out of my purse and check the ‘missed call’ list. Darren. Ten times last night, another dozen times this morning. He must have heard about the violin somehow. I glanced at the clock above the oven in the kitchen. It was 3 p.m. I’d slept most of the day.
    ‘Stay another night,’ Charlotte said. ‘I’ll cook for you. I haven’t even turned the oven on in this place.’
    She left me in the apartment to shower and rest, while she went to the shops to buy food for dinner. I had a bath and then spent thirty minutes combing out the knots in my hair. Eventually, I grew tired of waiting and texted Charlotte to check if I could use her computer.
    ‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘There’s no password.’
    I waved the mouse until the screen appeared. Checked my Gmail account. Ignored the messages from Darren and the inevitable spam. Logged on to Facebook. One message in my inbox. I hovered the mouse over the inbox screen cautiously, expecting it to be yet another missive from Darren, but the message was from a profile that I didn’t recognise with no picture attached.
    I clicked on the message with mild curiosity.
    A polite introduction.
    Then:
    I am willing to gift you with a new violin.
    Do you accept my challenge and my terms?
    I clicked on the profile, but it was almost completely bare, just the location ‘London’ in the personal details. The name of the profile was just one initial: D.
    Of course I thought of Darren, but this just wasn’t his style.
    What else could the ‘D’ stand for? Derek? Donald? Diablo?
    I ran through a mental Rolodex of people who might know I was missing a violin and might be inclined to do something about it, and I came up with nothing. The only person who had all the details of the incident was the fat-handed London transport officer, and he seemed about as romantic as his profession suggested – that is,