Pool Read Free Page B

this same conversation. ‘Dad, we’ll be late.’
    His father changed gears and reversed deftly into a parking space behind the Westons’ Kombi. Apart from a tendency to crawl along on the shoulder of the road at forty kilometres per hour, the old man had lost none of his driving skills.
    ‘Seventy,’ Leo said, stepping out of the Range Rover and carefully locking the door behind him. ‘I can remember the day she was born.’
    Sylvia leaned over and removed the keys from the ignition. ‘Thank you for being patient with him, Wolfgang,’ she said softly. ‘He finds it terribly humiliating.’

    St Pius Church was octagonal, the pews arranged in four wide rows that formed a semi-circle around the altar. Wolfgang and his parents always sat on the right hand side, two or three rows from the back. Because the floor was dished, sloping down towards the sanctuary, and because Wolfgang was half a head taller than anyone around him, he had an unimpeded view of most of the congregation.
    He saw the blind girl straightaway. She was standing in the third or fourth row from the front on the opposite side of the church. Her lips moved as she joined in the opening hymn. It surprised him to see her at mass. He’d never noticed her there before. She didn’t seem the church-going type. The way she talked. The cigarettes. Her age. Across the width of the church, she looked younger than she had yesterday. Almost his age. Wolfgang trawled his eyes slowly around the church. Apart from the Westons – and the eldest, Caitlin, wasn’t there again – he and the blind girl were the only teenagers in the congregation.
    Wolfgang considered approaching her after mass and telling her he’d found her hat, but quickly dismissed the idea. She was with a prim-looking blonde woman – her mother, presumably – and Wolfgang felt awkward about introducing himself. The mother would make assumptions, much as Michael Hobson had the previous day. You might have a chance with a blind one, hey? Besides, if he introduced himself, he would have to introduce his parents as well.
    As soon as they arrived home, Wolfgang disappeared into his room and closed the door. Even his mother seemed to have forgotten his promise to wash the car. He sat down at his desk and lifted the jar off the black wing.
    ‘Lepidoptera Mulqueen,’ he said softly.

5
    For the first time in the three-and-a-half weeks that Wolfgang had worked at the pool, the blind girl wasn’t there. He didn’t give her absence much thought. It was the black butterfly wing that preoccupied him. He had almost called in sick that morning, simply so he could be at home when Dr Karalis answered his email.
    It was December twenty-first, the longest day in the year. And the slowest. Wolfgang must have looked at his watch a thousand times before – finally! – the display showed six o’clock.
    He rode home in a hurry, pedalling all the way, and went straight to his bedroom. He switched on the computer. But when he went online, only spam came up in the messages box. There was nothing from Dr Karalis. Wolfgang’s shoulders slumped. He opened the ‘Sent’ box and re-read his email to the scientist; then, just to be sure, he sent it again. Clicking on the attachment, he brought up the scanned image of the black butterfly wing he’d made the night before. Enlarged four times, it filled half the screen.
    ‘Check your emails, Doctor Karalis,’ Wolfgang muttered at the computer.
    Sylvia was in the kitchen making a rice salad. She looked up and smiled when Wolfgang came out of his bedroom. ‘I thought I heard you come home. How was work, darling?’
    ‘Okay.’ He took a glass from the draining rack and filled it from the cold tap. ‘Were there any phone calls for me today?’
    ‘I don’t think so. Have you asked your father?’
    As if he’d remember, Wolfgang thought. He gulped down the water and refilled the glass. He was still hot from his ride. ‘I was kind of hoping Doctor Karalis might have