"Tim Lebbon - The Repulsion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lebbon Tim)

never arrived.
Street noises appeared from nowhere, and within a few strides he found
himself back at the edge of the main square. He glanced back, confused,
and then he saw Maria sitting on the steps of the huge cathedral. She
stood when he approached and walked back towards their hotel, hardly
acknowledging his presence. He was sure that if he were to stop and sit
down for a drink, she would walk all the way back to their room without
noticing.
"Maria," he called.
She waited for him, running her hands over strings of red chillies hanging
outside a shop. When she looked up her eyes were hard and distant.
"Where did you get to?" Dean said. "I was worried."
"Why?"
"You vanished. One second you were there, the next I couldn't find you."
"I was behind you all the time," she sighed, turning and walking away. She
had not even tried to hide the fact that she was lying.
By the end of that first afternoon, when they returned to their room to
get ready for dinner, they were strangers. Maria went into the bathroom
and closed the door to shower and change.

The food was fantastic. Throughout their several years together, Dean and
Maria had always put good cuisine at the top of their list of priorities
when choosing their holidays. If they wanted a beach, it would have to be
near a good restaurant. A hotel, though it may have health suite, rooftop
gardens and apartment-sized rooms, was only as good as its chef.
Dean ate without tasting. He was thinking of those few minutes earlier in
the day when Maria had been lost to him, trying to analyse his emotions
and convince himself that he had been scared, not quietly, selfishly
pleased. They had come here to be together, but alone was much more
comfortable. Even now Maria's mind was far beyond these four walls. Dean
could see it every time he looked at her.
When a waiter trundled over with the sweet trolley Dean was subject to a
sudden, weird moment of utter optimism, one of those rare flushes of
rapture that strike all too seldom and are as difficult to keep a hold of
as a lover's gasp. He smiled, tapped his fingers on the table, glad to be
alive and confident that everything was going to turn out all right. He
looked at Maria, grinning, and he was about to tell her how lovely she was
when she spoke.
"Have you ever come face to face with yourself?" she said. "Ever really
seen yourself from someone else's point of view? It's the most humbling
thing I can ever imagine."
Dean felt the moment leave him, bleeding away like blood from a stuck pig.
"Are we going to really try this week?" he said. "I mean, really? Look at
this place, Maria. It's our perfect holiday. It's as if we were drawn here
to ... give it one last go. Are we?"
Maria shrugged, stared into her glass of red wine as if trying to define a
truth in there. "Maybe some things are more important," she said.
"Where did you go today? Before I found you in the square?"
"I want to go to bed," she said suddenly, and Dean was shocked by her
paleness. "Take me to bed." On any other occasion -- weeks, maybe months