Kerry Postle: A Forbidden Love

KERRY POSTLEleft King’s College London with a distinction in her MA in French Literature. She’s written articles for newspapers and magazines, and has worked as a teacher of Art, French, German, Spanish, and English. Kerry’s first novel, The Artist’s Muse, about the relationship between Wally Neuzil and the artist Egon Schiele, came out in 2017.

She lives in Bristol with her husband. They have three grown-up sons.

Kerry is currently working on her third novel about the artist Raphael.

A Forbidden Love is her second novel.

Follow her on twitter @kerry_postle

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019

Copyright © Kerry Postle 2019

Kerry Postle asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008330798

E-book Edition © April 2019 ISBN: 9780008310271

Version: 2019-02-25

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Acknowledgements

Extract

Dear Reader …

Keep Reading …

About the Publisher

To Paloma

and all the women who lost their lives during the Spanish Civil War

‘The poem, the song, the picture, is only water drawn from the well of the people, and it should be given back to them in a cup of beauty so that they may drink – and in drinking understand themselves.’

Lorca

Luis de los Rios ran out of the university building onto the Avenida de Cervantes, black jacket in one hand, tan leather folder in the other. The porter called after him, ‘Running late today, Seňor?’ But the unlikely academic had already been swallowed up by the bushes on the other side of the road.

He was on the Paseo del Parque, a long pathway shaded by trees that ran between the harbour and Malaga’s old town. Every Friday morning between ten and eleven Luis walked up and down it. Always on the same day, always at the same hour. He never taught then. He’d insisted it be written into his contract. No one knew why. And today he was running late.

At 9.50 a.m. a student had turned up at his door. Luis’ instinct had been to brush him aside but the better part of him had won out. He’d sat back, listened to the boy. Or tried to. He’d looked at his watch – 9.52 – and rolled his eyes. Looked at his watch again: 9.57. He thrummed his fingers loudly on the desk. Why was he not able to focus on anything the boy was saying? By seven minutes past ten Luis had had enough. The wooden chair he’d been sitting on went crashing to the floor. ‘I must go,’ he’d said, running to the door, hurtling along the corridor and flying out of the building. And wishing he’d listened to his instinct in the first place.

It was ten minutes past ten by the time Luis set foot on the path in the park. Lined by tall plane and palm trees, it felt like a cool, dark, cavernous cathedral and it calmed him instantly. He blinked. His eyes adjusted to make out strips of light and shade on the path beneath his feet. He looked upwards. The sun shot through the green ceiling above. He blinked again. His eyes focused further. He saw people as they walked back and forth under the high, fringed canopies, an optical illusion of unbroken movements bathed in radiance.

Was she here?

He was later than usual – ‘but not too late,’ he said to himself.

He proceeded to walk along the path. Purpose pumped through his veins. His skin tingled, senses crackled, as parakeets flew through the air, their plumage igniting into a vivid green. Their fiery wings blazed a trail into his soul, lifting him on his way.

He went past the old men, acknowledging them as he passed, just as he did every week; nodded to the widows, and the young women who shared their grief. They were here, survivors all, leading a semblance of a normal life, just as he was, refusing to let the past destroy them. They milled around, sat on benches, talked about the weather. Luis winced, moved by the dignity of the everyday in the face of a memory of the horror they all shared: civil war. A nation could not recover from it easily.

Yet if innocence had gone forever, hope had not. That’s why he was here, making his way to a clandestine meeting, the details of which he’d written in a note and handed to a girl over four years ago.

He didn’t even know if she’d read it.

Meeting place: the Antonio Muñoz Degrain monument, Parque de Malaga

Time: 10–11 a.m.

Day: Friday

I’ll wait for you .

Luis sat on a bench and looked at his watch: 10.45. He thought back to the last time he’d seen her. He’d pushed her away. He’d had to. It was time for her to go. But he had given her the letter. She had it. He hoped she’d read it.

He leant back against a bench and cast another glance down at his watch. 10.55. Time to start making his way back to the university. He’d always been a good timekeeper. A smile broke out across his face as he remembered that the girl he loved had not. He ran his fingers through his hair, resigned to the fact he’d not found her. This time.

He went to pick up his jacket and folder when the screech of a parakeet overhead distracted him. Threat or warning, either way it was too late. The brilliantly coloured bird had already left its dull coloured deposit on the shoulder of his crisp, white shirt.

‘Filthy beast!’

An old gypsy woman dressed in tattered clothes, a black shawl wrapped around her wiry grey hair, smiled at him through cataract-misted eyes. ‘Supposed to be lucky,’ she laughed at him. In the haze of her fading sight Luis had something of the angel about him. To Luis, she looked like a fat, old bird, too large and heavy for the tree above, sat as she was on a nest made of cloth, her skirts billowing up all around. He watched as she plunged her hand in amongst the many layers that surrounded her. She pulled out a dull-coloured patch with frayed edges and waved it at him.