Heading Inland by Nicola Barker

them from the soil. ‘Such a meal I will make you!’ he exclaimed. ‘Such a feast!’
    By the time he’d straightened up again, Ralph had made himself scarce. Tina blinked and wondered if she’d dreamed him.
    She went home to change for dinner. Ralph was loitering outside her hotel. He was holding an open copy of La Moda in front of him but he wasn’t reading it.
    ‘What do you want, Ralph? Didn’t you get my note?’
    His face was pale and moist. He seemed distracted.
    ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘and to be honest . . .’
    ‘I don’t like being followed around,’ Tina said, emphatically.
    ‘So who the hell is that guy?’ Ralph interjected indignantly . ‘Christ, you’re a fast worker. Yesterday it was me, today it’s some fat Italian with hair sprouting out from his cuffs and his collar.’
    ‘It was never you, Ralph,’ Tina said haughtily as she pushed past him and stepped into the hotel’s revolving doors. Ralph was nimble though, quick on his feet, and he stuck to her, entering the same little segment of the doors. He was crushed up against the back of her as she pushed and walked. He smelled of Dettol. Then he stopped and the door jammed. Tina tried to keep moving but Ralph was too strong. The glass held fast.
    ‘Stop pressing against me! Let me out of here.’
    ‘Tina,’ Ralph said, ‘I regret what I did yesterday. And I want to give you that money I owe you from the Vatican Museum.’
    ‘Keep it. I don’t want it.’
    Ralph put his hand into his pocket and drew out an old tissue, a bus ticket, a couple of lire and a cheese straw. Tina blinked and focused. It wasn’t a cheese straw. It was a bone.
    ‘My God! What is that? Did you steal it?’
    ‘Uh . . . ?’ Ralph looked down. ‘It’s a cheese straw.’
    ‘Oh.’ Tina felt claustrophobic and slightly dizzy. ‘I thought it was the bone. I mean, I thought you had the bone.’
    Ralph guffawed. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’ He adjusted his position. Tina squinted at him, somewhat perplexed. Close up, she found his white skin, his dead eyes, particularly distasteful.
    ‘My friend thought you were a drug addict,’ she said, sharply. ‘You look a mess.’
    ‘Fine,’ Ralph responded. ‘So I’m sorry about the way things turned out yesterday. But that note you left . . . See,’ he bared his teeth, ‘my mouth is spotless.’
    ‘But your shirt,’ Tina smiled back, tight-lipped, jabbing at his chest with her middle finger, ‘isn’t Lacoste. It’s a second-rate impersonation. Which, to be brutally honest, Ralph, seems entirely appropriate.’
    While Ralph paused to digest this information, Tina took her chance and gave the door a violent shove, pushed it forward and snapped out of the restrictive glass bubble into the foyer. Ralph was disorientated for a moment but then quickly followed. He didn’t let up. He trailed her to the front desk.
    ‘Go away, Ralph.’
    ‘It’s only . . .’
    She spun around. ‘What?!’
    He was still holding the bus ticket and the cheese straw in his right hand.
    ‘It’s only, I mean . . .’ he said, shiftily. ‘Couldn’t we talk this over in private?’
    ‘Get lost, Ralph.’
    Ralph didn’t budge. Tina asked for her key and then pressed for the lift. ‘By the way,’ she said sharply, ‘Paolo said Sophia Loren never lived in the Piazza Barberini. She never even lived in Rome. It’s just a myth. My guidebook says the same thing.’
    Ralph opened his mouth to say something, but before he’d uttered a single syllable, Tina had swept off, up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
    The lift arrived. The doors opened. People got out. The doors closed. Ralph remained where he was. He grimaced, looked around him, cleared his throat and then gently, neatly, carefully , he folded up his copy of La Moda .
    ‘It looks fantastic, Paolo,’ Tina murmured. She was sitting in his spotless flat and staring down at a steaming plateful of pasta and mushrooms.
    ‘Tuck in,’ Paolo said, turning this little