Time Is a Killer
Chapters (84)
- Dedication
- Time is a Killer
- Contents
- Map
- 1
- Twenty-seven years later …
- IRevellata
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
- IISaint Rose’s Day
- 37
- 38
- 39
- 40
- 41
- 42
- 43
- 44
- 45
- 46
- 47
- 48
- 49
- 50
- 51
- 52
- 53
- 54
- IIISempre giovanu
- 55
- 56
- 57
- 58
- 59
- 60
- 61
- 62
- 63
- 64
- 65
- 66
- 67
- Twenty-seven years later
- Acknowledgements
- AFTER THE CRASH
- BLACK WATER LILIES
- DON’T LET GO
- About the Author
- Also by Michel Bussi
- More on W&N
- Copyright
Dedication
To the friends of our teenage years that we keep all our lives
Time is a Killer
MICHEL BUSSI
Translated from the French by Shaun Whiteside
Contents
Dedication
Title Page
Map
Chapter 1
I: Revellata
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
II: Saint Rose’s Day
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
III: Sempre giovanu
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Twenty-seven years later
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Michel Bussi
More on W&N
Copyright
Map
1
Arcanu Farm, 23 August 1989
‘Clo? Clo?’
Clotilde slowly slipped the headphones from her ears. Irritated. The voice of Manu Chao and the horns of La Mano Negra crackled in the silence of the hot stones, barely louder than the crickets thrumming behind the walls of the farmyard.
‘Yeah?’
‘We’re off …’
Clotilde sighed but didn’t move from the bench where she was sitting – a tree-trunk split in two that grated against her buttocks. She didn’t care. She liked the relaxed position, just short of provocative, the stones that cut into her back beneath her cotton dress, the bark and the sharp bits of wood that scratched her thighs every time her leg beat out the rhythm of the horns. With her notebook on her knees, her biro between her fingers. Curled up in a ball. Elsewhere. Free. In total contrast to her father’s family – stiff, Corsican, corseted. She turned the volume up.
These musicians were gods! Clotilde closed her eyes, opened her lips, she would give anything to be teleported to the front row of a Mano Negro concert, to be three years older, thirty centimetres taller and three bust sizes larger just for the duration of the lightning visit. To jiggle around good, big breasts beneath a sweat-drenched black T-shirt, under the noses of the spaced-out guitarists.
She opened her eyes. Nicolas was still standing in front of her, looking extremely annoyed.
‘Clo, everyone’s waiting for you. Papa isn’t going to …’
Nicolas was eighteen, three years older than she was. In years to come, her brother would become a lawyer. Or a union representative. Or a negotiator in one of the police’s special units, the kind of guy who would parley with criminals holed up in a bank, getting the hostages out one by one. Nicolas was like an anvil, absorbing the blows, taking it all on the chin. It must have given him the illusion that he was tougher than everyone else, more sensible, more trustworthy. Which would probably serve him well for the rest of his life.