Chapter 226

• Estelio’s company in the car made the journey a whole lot easier for Charley because she could pretend to doze while he and Adelina talked. It vaguely occurred to her that the conversation was hushed and heated, but she assumed Adelina was keeping her promise to give him a hard time for the trick with the wine, so she didn’t listen.
• And anyway, she did have a headache, one of those dull, throbbing aches that came when you didn’t like yourself and knew the feeling was not going to change any time soon. When the two cousins decided to have a last drink in the bar before they went to their rooms, Charley made her escape and spent the night with her head stuffed beneath her pillow, trying not to remember what she had done.
• But she should have listened to what the other two had been saying, as she discovered early the next morning when hell arrived with the sound of urgent knocking on her door. If she’d listened, she might have been able to stop Adelina from making the biggest mistake of her life.