Read Unmasked for Free Online Page A

glanced south towards the marina and then stared out across the pier to the east where she had read that on clear days you could see the mountains of Albania. But there wereno mountains visible that day. Just clouds, a grey sea and a strong cold wind blowing into her face.
    Her travels were over. There was nothing more she could do. Her bank account contained enough money to buy a bus ticket to Rome and a flight back to Sydney and not much more. She left the piazza and while walking empty streets of the old town looking for a pensione she spotted a large green bin. She dropped her bag to the ground and opened it. Squatting, she took out her guidebooks, pamphlets and timetables and tossed them into the bin. After walking up and down the medieval streets blindly, she found herself a cheap room, washed, ate a few biscuits and went to bed.
    Not long after this she started to write. The words came and they were a relief. She wrote about David. She wrote about him and he entered her heart again. Those first nights were the hardest. She let him back in. She stared into his eyes for hours at a time and cried and cried. But the writing changed things. The more she wrote the more she was able to see.

    Two months later Emma was still in Otranto. Her days were uniform. She was living frugally.The money she made from her conversations with Sylvia did not cover her costs but it had meant she was able to postpone her departure. One of Sylvia’s friends had rented Emma a room in her apartment. The woman was old, in her late seventies. Her children were living in the north, her grandchildren were scattered around the world.
    Emma spent hours alone in her room. She had re-read the three novels in her bag. The Portrait of a Lady a few times. She couldn’t move on. Whenever she asked herself what she wanted she found only one answer, but that was something she couldn’t have.
    So she stayed, and each afternoon she went to work. The room was cheap but out of town in a grim housing development. The walk into town was not long but still depressing. Modern Italian architects seemed determined to build with no reference to the outstanding examples of architecture left them by their ancestors. Emma would make a beeline for the coast and then walk along the waterfront. Every step she took towards the old town, the more pleasing was the environment. The local government’s duty of care only seemed to extend as far as the day-tripping tourist dollar wandered. And few wandered out of the old city.

    Otranto woke as winter retreated. The waterfront cafes reopened, people were taking to the water, the evening promenades began. Young people started to appear. Where they had been these last months, Emma could not say, but she welcomed their return. They stood on the esplanade by the beach in groups, chatting, flirting, smoking and laughing. They were loud and fierce, sweet and affectionate, rude and uninhibited. The girls stared at her as she passed them. Bold, threatening, inquisitive stares. And Emma felt instinctively that she had to hold her nerve in presenting an unruffled and cool front. She stood straighter and found herself exaggerating the natural rhythm of her stride. It was all very primeval, but the attention invited blood back into her veins. She had allowed herself to become sexless since leaving Rome.
    One evening, having stayed out longer than usual, Emma was walking back along the waterfront to her room. The night air was warm and the entire town had come out to enjoy the change. They had converged upon The Promenade of the Heroes, which was the name of the large piazza Emma had found when she first arrived, mingling and strolling with no greater purposethan to mingle and stroll. Emma had found it hard to tear herself away. She hadn’t even minded the unsolicited attention of the men.
    By the time she left, the street lights were on and the lingering dusk had become night. The further from the old town she went the fewer people on the