Read Blood on the Tongue (Ben Cooper & Diane Fry) for Free Online

grizzly bears or lumberjacks for miles.'
    She looked dizzy and disorientated, but when she shook herself hard, she reverted to a confident woman in her mid-twenties.
    'The meeting is set up with the local police, isn't it?' she said.
    'Of course. Don't worry about that. It's all organized.'
    'I'm sorry, Frank. It just hit me suddenly. This is more than travelling to a foreign country – it's like venturing into the past.'
    'I understand that.'
    'And it's a dangerous past. I really feel as though I'm on the borders of hostile territory.'
    'Don't expect hostility from every quarter,' he said. 'Not necessarily.'
    Outside, Alison Morrissey looked at the grey sky and ran a hand across her forehead.
    'You're right,' she said. 'Transatlantic flights knock hell out me. I suppose it's past breakfast time here?'
    'Nearly lunchtime, in fact. We can find somewhere to eat here at the airport, if you like.'
    'May we drive out to Derbyshire first, Frank? How long will that take?'
    'It depends whether they've got the A57 clear yet,' he said. 'I had to come here by the motorway. The last I heard on the radio traffic bulletins, the Snake Pass was still blocked. I don't know why – they're usually pretty good at getting the snowploughs out to clear the main roads. Perhaps there's been an accident or something.'
    *    *    *    *
     
    Grace Lukasz peered cautiously round the door into the back room of the bungalow, clinging on to the wheels of her chair to suppress the noise. Zygmunt was in his armchair by the table. He looked as though he might be asleep. His hands lay on the table, the blue veins standing up prominently, as if he really did suffer from the high blood pressure he'd always complained about, but which the doctors said didn't exist. His head was tipped against the back of the chair, and he'd taken off his spectacles. Grace could see the red marks on the sides of his nose and the small wings of white hair pushed up over his ears. There were tufts of hair inside his ears, too, and more hair on his neck where he never thought to shave.
    The old man's eyes were closed, but Grace wasn't sure that he was really sleeping. Often he sat like this while awake. Zygmunt always said he was thinking, when he took the trouble to explain at all. Grace supposed he was going back over his life in his mind, dwelling on his past. It was all he seemed to do now, to dwell on the past. But maybe she was misjudging him. Perhaps the old man was thinking of his wife, Roberta. She doubted it, though. It was more likely that he was thinking of Klemens Wach. These days, he thought mostly about Klemens.
    Next Sunday was the day for the Edendale oplatek dinner. Almost the whole of the Polish community would gather for the event in the ex-servicemen's club, the Dom Kombatanta. Grace knew that for Zygmunt this would be the emotional high point of the year, more important even than Wigilia , the Christmas Eve celebration. This was the time when everyone began the year anew, but it was also a chance to reflect on their history and their place in the world. Most of the folk who would come to the dinner had not been born in Poland, of course. But since Solidarity and democracy, and the possibility of EU membership, some of those people had begun to talk more and more about their culture, their roots, their place in Europe. Not Zygmunt, though. Zygmunt didn't talk much at all these days. When he did, it was about the past.
    But still, there would be the dinner. Though the community celebration had drifted back into January, it was no less of an occasion and everything had to be done just right. Grace could taste already the beetroot soup, the poached pike, the carp with horseradish sauce, the mushroom-stuffed tomatoes. The ladies who organized the dinner clung tenaciously to the traditions, no matter how much trouble they had to go to.
    The stops had been pulled out for the family Wigilia , too, when all of them had sat down to the traditional twelve