Penult by A. Sparrow Page B

showers or even stripping off the covers. The sun was high
when I awoke to find Karla already clean and dressed and standing
by the door.
    “ I’m going off to look for
Gwen.”
    “ Why don’t you borrow my
phone? Try calling her first?”
    “ Can’t. Her parents monitor
her calls and texts. If they know I’m in town, this will be a
problem.”
    “ So where—?”
    “ I will go to her school.
Every day she goes home for lunch. I know the way she walks. I can
intercept her on the way.”
    “ Okay. Just … be
careful.”
    She scrunched her eyes at me. She
didn’t look pleased.
    “ You’re still going to the
church right?”
    “ Well, yeah.”
    “ Just so you know, you have
already missed the morning mass, but … no worries. Papa sometimes
holds meetings during the daytime. If he’s keeping Izzie out of
school, she’s likely to be with him. And if not, there will be
another mass at six.”
    “ How do we get word to each
other if we find her?”
    “ Just come back to the
hotel. Leave a note.”
    And with that she slammed the door and
left.
    ***
    It was the first minute we had been
apart since we met each in Rome, and I didn’t like the feeling one
bit. I was already anxious, and had to suppress an urge to follow
after her, so needy I had become.
    I washed up. It was too late for the
complimentary breakfast downstairs. They were already packing
things away, so I struck out at random until I came across a bakery
and picked up a couple scones in a waxed paper and a cup of
coffee.
    I took a deep breath and made my way
towards the River Ness and the ancient church that had been taken
over by the Sedevacantists. I turned right when I reached the
avenue that ran along the river bank. My heart began to pound as I
approached the hulk of lichened stone that had once imprisoned
me.
    Drugged, hauled to Inverness at night
and locked away in that dungeon, I had no idea that it could be so
pretty outside. The clouds had broken into shreds and allowed some
bits of sun to seep through to make the river shine and glaze the
wet trees until they glistened.
    I remember hearing traffic from my
cell, but at the time I had assumed that they had taken us to
another part of Glasgow. I passed the basement exit from which we
had made our escape, half expecting a mob of ardent Sedevacantists
to come bursting out to grab me. My pace picked up and I gave that
door a wide berth.
    When I came around the front I was
startled to find a crisp new sign on the front lawn. This was no
longer a Sedevacantist church. It now belonged to the Swedenborgs—a
Protestant denomination I knew next to nothing about. The
Sedevacantist Catholics were gone.
    It was with a strange mixture of
relief and dismay that I turned back to the hotel. My heart calmed,
but it meant we were no closer to finding out what had happened to
Isobel.
    I didn’t know what else to do, so I
went back to the hotel, went up to the room and flicked on the
tube. I felt guilty hanging around, watching TV, but I didn’t know
what else to do. It didn’t make sense to wander aimlessly around
Inverness.
    When I Googled “Sedevacantist” and
“Inverness” all I came up with was some island monastery in the
Orkney’s called Golgotha. The idea of going there horrified me and
I wasn’t even sure I wanted to share the information with
Karla.
    I got worried as the afternoon
lengthened and there was no sign of Karla. It sucked that I wasn’t
able to convince her to carry a cell phone. She had nothing, not
even a cheap slab phone on which I could contact her. That girl
could be so old school it was aggravating.
    She finally showed up about an hour
after I went downstairs to pace the front walk. She seemed a bit
more glum than usual, if that was possible. Our eyes met briefly,
before her gaze fluttered back down to her feet.
    “ No luck, I take
it?”
    She shook her head. “The house is
vacant. No furniture. Curtains. It seems Papa has
moved.”
    “ What about
Gwen?”
    “ She was not