Read The Girl Who Wasn't There for Free Online

woman held her hand in front of her mouth. When the fixer stood up his trousers were covered with dust. The guests applauded, a man who had had too much to drink shouted that it was a good omen for the marriage, and everyone laughed.
    Sebastian left the marquee. Then he heard his mother. She had linked arms with the fixer and brought him outside. They were quarrelling; the fixer shook his head and tore himself away.
    The fixer went up to the illuminated castle, limping. A cat was asleep on the stone steps outside the entrance, moving its paws in its sleep. The fixer looked round. Then he kicked the cat in the stomach with the toe of his patent leather shoe.

10
    Two years later Sebastian took his school-leaving certificate. The Father stood at the altar in the monastery church. He wished the students who were leaving luck. It was a long sermon; he preached it every year. He said the students had finished their schooldays and must now make their own mistakes. Their lives would begin today. He hoped that they would leave the world better than it was. After the sermon, students played two movements from the Trout Quintet.
    Sebastian’s mother had been unable to come, ‘because of her nerves’, she had said.
    After Mass, Sebastian went to his room. In the last week before the leaving ceremonies, major industrial firms had set up their stands in the corridors of the boarding school. He had received offers from trainee programmes and courses leading to diplomas in applied sciences; a detergents manufacturer offered to finance his university studies. He sat at his desk. From here, he could see the Lukmanier Pass; he thought of his walks in the Rhine valley, and the wandering lights in the chestnut woods of the Val San Giacomo. He had been at the boarding school for almost nine years. He took the industrialists’ business cards and threw them in the waste-paper basket.
     
    He went by train to Freiburg, where he caught the bus and then carried his case home, almost a kilometre. He rang the doorbell. His mother’s new dog barked. The light came on; he could hear the fixer shouting at the dog. His mother opened the door. She wore a blouse with a frilled collar. They hadn’t been expecting him until tomorrow, she said, she must have entered it wrongly in her diary. Then she went back into her bedroom, saying she wasn’t well.
    Sebastian made himself a sandwich in the kitchen. The fixer sat at the table with him.
    ‘What are you going to do now?’ asked the fixer. ‘You’ll have to do something. So what are your plans? How long do you intend to stay here?’
    ‘I’ll tell you both in the morning,’ said Sebastian.
    ‘No, I want to know now. You’ve already woken me.’ The fixer had swollen eyes.
    ‘It’s been a long day; it really is too late,’ said Sebastian. He kept calm. He knew what was coming now.
    The fixer jumped up, strode round the table and took up his stance beside Sebastian’s chair. The artery at his throat was pulsating. The last time the fixer hit him had been a year ago, when Sebastian had wanted to visit his girlfriend from the girls’ boarding school in Italy, but the fixer had refused to let him go. In a rage, he had dropped the fixer’s car keys down a drain. The fixer had hit him there in the street. Sebastian must learn discipline, he had said, he’d show him what was what, he had shouted. Passersby had turned to look at them, and Sebastian’s mother had stood there saying nothing.
    Sebastian put the sandwich down on the plate. He stood up slowly. He was a head and a half taller than the fixer. He had spent an hour boxing every day at school for the last three years, he had played ice hockey and gone hill-walking in the mountains. His body was smooth and hard. He even wears that watch at night, thought Sebastian.
    The fixer stared at Sebastian, apparently unsure what to do. Then he gave up. He dropped into a chair, he lost command of his features and his eyes turned dull.
    Sebastian saw that