The Garnett Girls by Georgina Moore EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available For Free Download
- Author: Georgina Moore
- Language: English
- Genre: Friendship Fiction
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- Size: 2 MB
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Sinking
Venice
Imogen watched the door shut behind William and fell back against the
pillows. William liked to get his money’s worth at the hotel breakfast buffet
but Imogen had no patience in the mornings for tourists with heads bent
over maps, as if in prayer. The solemn hush, the stealing of sly glances at
residents as they entered the dining room. Tourists in Venice were so
earnest. To please William, Imogen had experimented with breakfast at La
Calcina but all the getting up and down for bits of hard cheese and cold
meat, a stale croissant and a cube of butter on ice had made her selfconscious. And the breakfast room was gloomy with Venetian burgundy
and brocade twirls everywhere. There was a certain kind of opulent Italian
decor that looked good at night, but in daylight reminded Imogen of a sad
and shabby Victorian theatre.
Margo had always made them have a big breakfast on holiday, so they
could skip lunch for church visits. On cultural trips, Margo had kept them
on their feet all day, marching out in front, her strident call of ‘Girls!’
turning heads on all sides. Imogen remembered being embarrassed by how
English Margo sounded, how unmistakeably herself. She never seemed to
care about the looks she provoked. Heartened by the thought that Margo
was not with her now, Imogen threw off her sheets and, like a ghostly blur,
spun around the hotel room, clattering open all the shutters. She made so
much noise that passers-by glanced up from the canalside below; the
waiters laying out cutlery at the floating restaurant turned their heads. If
they had caught a glimpse of her, they would have seen that she was naked.
But before anyone could see more than a flash of skin, Imogen was quickly
back under the sheets, basking in the sunlight that now warmed every
corner of the room.
Imogen worried that their hotel room was so imposing that it was
overwhelming any romantic instincts. Not just ‘a canal view’, the room had
a private terrace overlooking all the action of the Zattere with views on
three sides. Everything shimmered in the spring sunlight. First Venice had
seemed like an impossible mirage rising out of the water and then it had
assaulted Imogen with a riot of colour. Its cobalt skies, warm red stone, the
gold of the St Mark’s Basilica, the orange of the spritzes they drank.
Imogen had not expected to feel so daunted by it all, or for her feelings to
be so rebellious. At times just the teal stillness of the canals made her
tearful. She had always known that Venice was destined to have
significance for her as her parents had honeymooned there. Margo had
never taken her daughters, never even spoken of it, even though they all
knew that Italy was her favourite place on earth. It was one of those
subjects that was off limits.
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