Migliora il tuo inglese con letture graduate gratuite! ‘A Very Private Investigation’ è un testo semplificato con audio. Leggi ora il capitolo 4 e inizia ad imparare l’inglese!
Transcript
Chapter 4. Follow That Car!
Over the following few days, Gianna, growing more and more anxious to find out the truth, watches her husband’s every move, hoping to find further conclusive evidence of his betrayal.
But Eugenio is behaving normally.
The only strange thing, she decides, is his excessive use of his phone. He’s continually sending and receiving messages, and his phone is always in his pocket. Usually, when he’s at home, he leaves it lying on the table, but no longer.
One evening, while Eugenio is in the bathroom and Gianna is already in bed, she hears the ping of a text notification.
She turns and notices her husband’s phone on the bedside table. Unable to resist temptation, she quickly reads the message.
“See you tomorrow then. Same time, same place.”
There’s no name on the screen, just a telephone number that Gianna doesn’t have time to copy down.
“Darling, I’ll be out all day tomorrow,” says Eugenio, as he gets into bed beside her. “I might not even be back for dinner.”
“Where are you going?” asks Gianna, trying to remain calm.
“There’s a Finnish artist in town, at the Contemporary Art Museum. He’s presenting a very complex and transgressive installation: hipster animals, with long beards and turn ups. His hipster hippo has already been published in a few catalogues.”
That night, Gianna is too wound up to sleep, even for a few hours. She’s now sure that her husband is cheating on her.
The next morning, as soon as Eugenio leaves the house, Gianna waits a minute, then gets her bag and coat. She has decided to secretly follow him.
As he gets in the car and is about to leave, she runs to the taxi rank on the corner of the street.
“Quick, follow that car!” she tells the taxi driver.
Gianna is incredibly nervous. She expects the car to screech into action at a supersonic speed just like in the movies. Instead, absolutely nothing happens.
“Hey, didn’t you hear me? Follow that grey car! Come on!”
The taxi driver, takes his glasses out of the glove box extremely slowly, puts them on, starts the engine, puts on his seatbelt, starts the meter, looks both left and right and finally pulls away, also very slowly.
Only then does Gianna notice that the man is probably over seventy. Sighing, she makes herself comfortable and tries not to lose sight of Eugenio’s car. She’s impatient, and gets even more frustrated when an elderly woman on a bicycle overtakes them.
“Can’t you go any faster? Please?” she implores.
The taxi driver doesn’t reply. And doesn’t speed up, either.
For once, Gianna is grateful for the morning rush hour traffic. Because of it, she can still see her husband’s car.
Gianna soon realises that Eugenio is not heading for the museum. Just as she had suspected, he has told her another lie. Eventually, Eugenio parks his car opposite a beautiful building in one of the nicest residential parts of the city.
“We’re here! And thank goodness he didn’t see me.” she says to the taxi driver. “Please, stop the car a little further ahead.”
After she has paid, Gianna gets out of the taxi and hides behind a parked car.
Scopri i nostri .pdf ebook per chi sta studiando inglese.