‘And the child’s name?’
‘My daughter’s name is Molly.’ Nell had drawn herself up, thinking she was ready for him. But the moment she spoke Molly’s name her self-assurance disappeared. Molly was the one fixed point in her life, a point around which everything else in her world revolved. Everything she did, thought, or planned was for Molly. As tears welled behind her eyes, she only managed to hold herself together by staring fixedly at her baby.
‘Molly Foster,’ he murmured. ‘Very nice.’
The tender note in his voice took Nell by surprise. Her mouth tightened. She didn’t want his smiles or reassurance. She wanted the answer to one simple question: why had Molly been taken ill?
‘So, Molly…’
She refocused, hearing his crooning tone. No one spoke to Molly like that except for her.
‘Is this your first visit to Venice, Molly?’ he continued, oblivious to the distress he was causing.
‘Yes, it is,’ Nell answered for her daughter stiffly. The rational side of her brain told her that he was watching for signs as he spoke to Molly, clues that might help him to arrive at a diagnosis. The emotional side of her brain didn’t trust him to get it right. She didn’t trust any doctor.
And then he glanced up as if sensing her appraisal. She must have swayed, because the next thing she knew his free hand was under her arm and he was steadying her, and the sensation was shooting up her arm like…
She pulled free with surprise. It was hard to believe his touch had affected her so acutely. How could she respond to a man at a time like this? It disgusted her. It was as if her body was tuned to a different frequency from her mind and she had no control over it. As he moved she was forced to move with him to stay close to Molly, but she took care to keep her distance from the man holding her.
‘That’s better,’ he said infuriatingly, as if Nell had moved into the very spot he would have chosen for her. ‘You should stand well back from the canal. You’ve had a shock and we don’t want any accidents.’
We? She guessed that was the type of nursery-speak he used in the hospital. It was exactly the type of thing she had made it her crusade to abolish.
‘Molly needs you to be strong. She’s very poorly. You do understand that?’
Nell’s stomach clenched with fear. ‘Of course I understand.’ But she didn’t understand any of it. How could Molly be so sick? She wanted him to say it was a mistake. She wanted Molly to wake up.
‘Take some deep breaths, Nell. It will help.’
Nell’s face was hostile as she stared up. She wasn’t the one in need of help here! And she felt Barbaro’s use of her first name as another outrage. While she had been waiting in the hospital for Jake she had noticed that all the patients were addressed by their first names. She had also noticed that no one called out, ‘Hey, John,’ to Jake’s consultant, but had addressed him respectfully as Mr Delaware. She had resented it then, she resented it now. But she had to let it go. Resentment didn’t help Molly. She recommended breathing exercises to her volunteers to use in moments of stress, and tried them now. Gradually the muscles in her chest began to release—but he was leaning over the canal again.
‘Must you do that?’
Rocking back on his heels, Luca Barbaro stared down at her. ‘I’m looking for the ambulance.’
Did that give him the excuse to expose Molly to risk? ‘Well, don’t do it while you’ve got my daughter in your arms. Or give her back to me.’
‘No.’
She couldn’t risk a tussle that might land them all in the water. She had to content herself with stroking Molly’s brow, which had grown warm and clammy. Her chest was working like a miniature bellows, while her cheeks were unnaturally pink. ‘Does she have a fever?’
‘I’ll know more when we reach the hospital and I can run some tests.’
‘So, in fact, you know damn all?’ Hot and cold waves of terror were washing over her. She knew she shouldn’t shout, or lose her cool, but some atavistic instinct was shouting at her to take Molly and run…find help. But where would she run to? She was lost in the maze of backwaters that made up the hidden face of Venice. This calle was a long way from the regular tourist trail with its friendly vendors and signposts to the main attractions. Her knowledge of Italian was minimal, and she would lose valuable time trying to find her way back to the Grand Canal…time Molly might not have.
Nell’s heart pounded as her mind filled with a deep and unreasonable hatred of Venice. Everything that had seemed so beautiful, so charming when they had first arrived had turned an ugly face on them. She glanced around, wondering if the dilapidation harboured the blight that had infected Molly—or the water, perhaps? The unusual silence of the traffic-free centre, which so recently she had enjoyed, now represented isolation; the lack of signposts seemed now to be a ploy to confuse the unwary tourist. And worst of all, Venice had welded her to this stranger, a man who said he was a doctor. And even if he was a doctor, for all she knew Luca Barbaro was a podiatric surgeon, happier sawing off bunions than treating children! But she was stuck with him. She couldn’t risk setting out on her own with Molly and getting lost.
It was her fault. She shouldn’t have brought Molly so far from home for a holiday. But then Jake’s accident had happened at the end of their road—on familiar territory…The policewoman sent to break the news and comfort her afterwards had said that was where so many accidents happened, when people let their concentration slip after a long journey. And of course, it hadn’t helped that Jake had had a secret life to distract him. It was hardly surprising he’d gone off the road.
The accident had happened on a Friday night, when Casualty was like a war zone. She had been locked inside her thoughts, fearing the worst, hoping for the best, when the scream came. It had been a woman’s scream, a scream that connected with Nell on so deep a level she had known her whole life was somehow wrapped up in it. When they finally allowed her into Jake’s room, no one had warned her that he wasn’t alone. The last thing she had been expecting to find was a young woman with a tiny baby in her arms, weeping by her dead husband’s bed.
Chapter Two
‘WHAT are you doing?’ Nell refocused as Barbaro fished out his phone again.
‘Calling the ambulance service.’
Was it possible to edit the information he gave out any more? ‘Why?’ she pressed insistently.
‘To make sure there isn’t a hold-up. My patient needs proper care, which I can’t give here.’ He glanced around then held Nell’s stare as if daring her to argue.
Nell had to force herself not to shout. He was talking about Molly so impassively, as if he were a puppet master working them from the remotest reaches of his ivory tower. She shuddered involuntarily. The past, horrific as that had been, was nothing compared to this.
‘Tell me everything you can remember about the day.’
To keep her busy and distracted, Nell suspected as dark eyes probed her thoughts. She wanted time to collect herself, to examine her own actions. If she had done something wrong to bring Molly to this point, then she wanted to be the first to know. ‘Molly was quite well when we woke up this morning.’ A faint smile touched Nell’s lips as she remembered the lighthearted start to their day.
‘Cast your mind back to the moment when you first noticed signs of deterioration.’
‘Deterioration?’ The ugly word wiped out anything good about a day earmarked for pleasure that had tilted on its axis to reveal a face as sinister and outlandish as any of the painted masks she had seen in Venice.
‘Can’t you remember when she first slipped into this state?’
‘If you mean, do I remember when Molly fell so deeply asleep I couldn’t wake her?’ The way he was speaking…so remote, so detached. She couldn’t bear it. She wouldn’t bear it.
‘That’s right,’ he went on. ‘Tell me when the patient—’
‘My daughter’s name is Molly.’ She would not have him discussing Molly as though she were some test case in a tex
tbook.
‘When Molly first became sleepy.’
Nell shook her head as she thought it through out loud. ‘Why did I wait for a problem to become a crisis?’
‘Because you thought she was only sleeping.’
She hadn’t been speaking to Luca Barbaro but to herself, and turned on him angrily. ‘I should have picked it up.’
‘Get over the guilt and tell me what you remember.’
His sharp voice shook her into gear. ‘It happened so gradually I hardly noticed.’
‘Until you couldn’t wake her, I presume? Has anything like this ever happened before?’
‘Never.’
‘This is important, Nell,’ he warned.
‘Do you think I don’t know that? And it’s Ms Foster, thank you.’ She stared at him with hostility. But for Molly’s sake she had to go over everything again. Nell started to snatch at whispery strands of recollection from the day—the simple breakfast, the cappuccino froth lodging on her lip, which Molly had wanted to copy…dabbing it on, holding her up to laugh at her reflection in the mirror…Nothing to give warning of what was to come. And why was he examining Molly’s fingertips again? Was she getting worse?
The fear was rising again. It sat on her thought processes like a heavy weight. This was far worse than Jake’s accident, even though she’d been pregnant with Molly then, and still had everything to learn about betrayal, loss and loss of trust. She had survived the disillusionment of discovering Jake’s double life, survived having everything she believed in ripped away, and with no warning at all, but, staring at Molly lying lifeless in Luca’s arms, she wasn’t sure she was equal to this.
She wanted to ask more questions, but remembered from her experience with Jake that doctors were masters of deception. What would this man tell her that she could believe? She had been told so many lies. Where there’s life, there’s hope—that was just one of the many platitudes she had been fed in the hospital. No one told her before she went into Jake’s room that he was already brain-dead, and that his body only lived on thanks to the machines breathing for him.
‘Have you come up with anything yet?’
Dragging herself back to the present, Nell realised that Luca Barbaro had a frighteningly similar manner to the doctors she had encountered in the hospital following Jake’s accident. ‘I’m trying to remember.’ She was struggling with every atom of intellect at her command to try and pin down a trigger. If she could just identify the moment when things had changed…
She’d been over and over it, and still nothing new, and now the past was sucking her down again like quicksand. Jake’s death had flung back the curtain on his secret life, proving she hadn’t known the man she loved, the man she believed loved her and their unborn child. But Jake was wild, a free spirit. He would never have been content with a conventional life with her…
Barbaro was staring at her, Nell realised, his eyes hypnotic, demanding. He’d guessed something was chipping away at her mind. She didn’t want him climbing inside her head, reading her thoughts.
‘Tell me everything you did from leaving the hotel,’ Barbaro prompted.
His manner rankled. He was so sure of himself, so altogether comfortable in his deeply tanned skin. But however much she wanted to hit back, this was for Molly, and she would give him every bit of help that she could. ‘She became sleepy about half an hour after we boarded the gondola. At first I thought it was because she found the ride soothing. I was day-dreaming too…’ Nell stopped abruptly. Help was one thing, sharing her personal impressions with this man was something else.
‘And before that?’
‘Nothing. She was fine.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure. Will you give her to me?’
‘No. You might drop her.’
‘Drop her?’ Was he mad? ‘I can assure you, I won’t!’
‘You look light-headed to me.’
‘Is that in your professional opinion?’
Ignoring the sarcasm, he leaned out again, and so far this time, Nell grabbed him by the sleeve.
He looked down at her hand on his arm and she quickly drew it back.
‘Will you please try to calm down?’
‘How do you expect me to be calm when you take chances with my daughter—when you stand there saying nothing, explaining nothing?’ Nell shook her head. She would never get through to him. As far as Dr Barbaro was concerned, she was the unavoidable encumbrance that came with each of his patients—their relative or friend.
Digging in her pocket, she found her phone. Relief flooded through her; she could do something now. She could ring the emergency services—take over. And the number was…?
Why hadn’t she thought to ask at the hotel about the local emergency number? Because an emergency was the last thing you thought about on holiday…because all it took was one ray of sunshine and your brain shut down.
‘What are you doing?’ Luca Barbaro said sharply.
She ignored him and kept on punching numbers. ‘I’m ringing our hotel.’
‘Why?’
‘To ask them for the number of the emergency services.’
‘I’m perfectly capable of handling this. It’s too late for them to do anything, and you’ll just complicate everything. It will be quicker if we wait.’
‘For how long?’ she almost shouted.
‘You’d make better use of your time if you could remember something.’
Their voices were rising over Molly’s head, Nell realised, clamping her mouth shut. Did he think she was being deliberately obstructive?
‘Where did you start your day?’ he demanded.
She thought back to St Mark’s Square: grandeur and scale beyond imagining. Pigeons wheeling over their heads like dull grey streamers. The cafés, the crowds. Molly eating ice cream, pasta…She blenched. ‘Molly doesn’t have food poisoning, does she?’
He frowned, but didn’t answer.
‘Don’t you know?’
‘I’m sorry, I’m not prepared to confirm or deny anything until I’m certain.’
He was sorry? She doubted that somehow. ‘You must be able to tell me something.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t.’
She gritted her teeth. ‘How far away are we from the hospital?’
‘Not too far.’
‘Then why don’t we walk?’ she said with exasperation.
‘Not too far by boat,’ he clarified.
Nell felt as if she was tearing up inside with frustration. She wanted to do something. Most of all, she wanted the ground to open up and swallow him, leaving Molly safe and well in her pushchair. With an angry sound she raked her hair.
‘If this is getting too much for you, I could always help you down to that ledge and you could sit down.’
Too much for her? Sit down? She couldn’t believe he was pointing to a seat cut into the rock beside the steps rubbed smooth by countless weary travellers—as if she could relax like them. ‘I’m not tired!’ She ignored his outstretched hand. The last thing she wanted to do was sit down. No, not the last thing. That had to be taking his hand. She had no intention of touching any part of him.
The black-gold gaze lingered on her face. ‘Worrying will only sap your energy.’
‘Thanks for the advice.’ Nell raked her hair again until it stood in even angrier spikes. ‘Why don’t you save the platitudes, and give my daughter back to me?’
‘Bad temper won’t help either…’
He was looking at her hair. Let him look. It perfectly mirrored her feelings. Doubtless Barbaro preferred his women to have long, silky tresses he could wind around his fist…
A siren blasted and Nell exhaled with relief. At last something was happening.
The launch painted in orange and white had Ambulanza emblazoned along the side and across the front. Moving steadily towards them, it finally slowed beside the steps.
‘Be careful when you climb on board,’ Luca Barbaro advised. ‘Leave Molly’s pushchai
r to one of the men. We haven’t time to deal with a second emergency.’
And then he was gone—with Molly. When she went to follow, one of the paramedics got in her way. Nell panicked, the past mocking her, reminding how they had kept her away from Jake. But then Barbaro stuck his head out of the cabin to see where she was and shouted something in Italian. She didn’t wait to work out what it was. The man moved out of the way, and she hurried on board.
The fear that she would be separated from Molly was so real Nell had to ram the past back in its box and lock it up again. She had to tell herself that this wasn’t a replay of Jake’s accident, but something entirely different, and that she had to keep a clear head if she was going to stay on top of this new nightmare.
As she ducked her head to enter the cabin she could see Luca Barbaro was already treating Molly. He was clearly in his element, moving purposefully, calmly. The men knew him and watched him confidently. Their attitude relaxed her a little.
‘Sit here, please.’ Without taking his attention from Molly, Barbaro directed her to a bench seat on the opposite side of the cabin. As far away from Molly as possible.
He’d shifted up a gear, sloughing off all the irritation she’d sensed on shore. He was delivering instructions into his phone now, as well as to the men on board, and she didn’t need to understand the language to know who was in charge, or to gather that this was a full-blown emergency and there was no time to lose.
The creeping cold that had started down her spine spread to Nell’s shoulders as she sat watching. She didn’t even know that she was shivering until Luca Barbaro turned in the middle of attending to Molly and murmured something to one of the paramedics. Then the man tossed a blanket over her shoulders and she drew it tight.
Nell watched him work with a mixture of awe and dread, all the time willing Molly to wake up. But it didn’t take long for her to lose her flimsy faith. She was stung into speech by the sight of a syringe in his hand.
‘Are you sure all this is necessary?’
‘Yes.’ He glanced over his shoulder too briefly to make eye contact.
She had only wanted him to explain what he was doing. He had checked Molly’s vital signs, listened to her chest, checked her pulse, her blood pressure, tapped her back, scrutinised her fingernails for the umpteenth time and shone a light into her eyes. And now she wanted to be with Molly, holding her…
A Venetian Affair Page 19