“I never want to see you again, and don’t even think for one moment that you can sell my house. I had that house when we met, it is mine. In fact, I don’t even want you living in it. For once in your life do something for yourself and buy a new one. That house will stay as it is, with Charlotte’s pink bedroom, and her fairy princess duvet … oh God,” I sobbed into my Campari, tears streaming down my face.
“Jane, don’t do this. You need to get a grip you know. She’s not coming back, I repeat not coming back!” he was shouting too now. “She’s dead, someone grabbed her and murdered her. I know that is hard for you to accept but the sooner you do the sooner you can return to some sort of normal life. You can’t live here forever. You can’t wander around Venice for the rest of your life like some lunatic crone wafting in and out of churches. You haven’t got a visa for a start and quite frankly everyone thinks you are a total basket case, me included.”
“Better a basket case than a deluded man with an oversized ego. I hope you rot in hell back in New Zealand and when Charlotte does turn up I hope you feel like the absolute arsehole you are.”
“Take some more pills why don’t you? And don’t think I don’t know about your new boyfriend, or old boyfriend or whatever he is. How he finds anything attractive about you I’ll never know. You’ve let yourself go these past few years Jane and quite frankly I’d rather fuck a goat.” And with that he thumped down his half empty beer bottle and stormed out of the restaurant.
I didn’t care. I sat and sobbed for a few moments, feeling Sandro gently come up behind me and rub my back.
“I ring Marco. He come down and look after you,” he said soothingly.
Lawrence went home and never did sell my house because I bought him out. I needed to know that it was still there waiting for Charlotte and me when this nightmare ended.
And I wasn’t at all surprised after a couple of weeks to receive a letter from Daisy with a clipping from the Auckland Daily gossip pages which featured a very handsome picture of Lawrence with his new girlfriend, my deputy editor Shonagh Simmons, who was now ensconced in my office in my chair as the new editor of Fabulous Day. Lawrence had found another woman who could maintain his high profile to the standard he had become accustomed to. Daisy said in her letter that Shonagh was telling anyone who would listen that she and Lawrence had been “intimate” for 18 months before we left on our “family” holiday and Lawrence had been intending to “break it” to me while we were away that he was in love with her. I could barely summon the energy to care about the pathetic state of the two of them but the fact that their grubby little relationship was the reason my daughter had disappeared enraged me and only a good few hours with the Madonna settled me down. I should have hated them both with a passion but Venice wouldn’t let me. The only thing Venice and I cared about was when Charlotte would come home to me. That was my focus and as long as I had the churches, the Madonna, the candles and Marco, that was all that mattered.
13
Here’s another clipping I’ve kept. I remember Inspector Leggièri talking to me about this sighting, but to be honest it was one of many. I think I kept it because it echoed my frustration.
Charlotte Cunningham ‘sighting’ in the Balkans By Fiona Govan in Praia da Luz
Detectives involved in the hunt for missing five-year-old New Zealander Charlotte Cunningham are following up a claim that she has been sighted in the Balkans.
A New Zealand tourist believes he may have seen Charlotte while on a trip to the Roman Catholic shrine of Medjugorje in Bosnia ten days ago.
The man from Fermanagh in Northern Ireland reportedly became suspicious after seeing a little blonde, caucasian girl with a dark haired, dark skinned couple, who he felt could not be her parents.
“I’m sure that this child was not theirs and I’m convinced it could have been Charlotte,” he said at the weekend. “She was very agitated and sobbing.”
The man, a father of six, who does not want to be named, told police he heard the child say in English: “I want my Daddy,” before being “shoved” into a car and driven away. “The instant I saw her my heart skipped a beat because it immediately struck me that she looked like Charlotte Cunningham,” he said.
“I got very close to her, right up beside them and was about to speak to the child when the man put his hand over her mouth and shoved her into the car.
“He was pushing her into the back seat and was yelling in some language I didn’t understand that wasn’t English.
“But my blood ran cold when I heard her cry, ‘I want my daddy’.”
“I was filled with panic. I knew I had to do something,” he said.
He wrote down the number-plate of the car — a Volkswagen Golf — and went to the local police station to report the incident.
But he said that because of language difficulties he was unable to make a full statement.
The witness was on holiday in the Bosnia-Herzegovina town with his wife and two-year-old and had visited the church of St James. The place attracts Catholic pilgrims after a series of supposed apparitions of the Virgin Mary were reported there in the early 1980s.
On returning home he alerted New Zealand police and called a hotline that has been set up by Charlotte’s father, Two Twonight presenter Lawrence Cunningham. Her mother Jane Lyndhurst is still in Venice, where the child went missing on the overnight train from Paris at around midnight. The former magazine editor and her husband separated shortly after their child disappeared and she has not made any comment to the media since. Meanwhile her ex-husband is frequently in the media, anxious that the hunt for Charlotte continues.
This latest sighting comes after a long string of alleged sightings of the missing five-year-old, all of which have come to nothing.
In the six months since she disappeared from the train she has been “spotted” in neighbouring Spain and nearby Morocco as well as Malta and Belgium.
Lawrence Cunningham said yesterday: “We are aware that there has been a potential sighting in Bosnia and our investigators are treating it as a priority.
“But as with all these reports I will wait until it has been investigated fully,” he added.
It had been a long six months. I kept up my weekly meetings with Inspector Leggièri and we were now on first name terms. His name, it turned out, was Agapeto. We had grown close mainly because with every sighting, an investigation was made and with it I got fresh hope which never came to anything. This was hard for him to watch and for me to bear. It’s hard to describe the feeling I would get when the phone would go and it was Agapeto on the line.
“Jane, I have some news, are you free?”
Was I free? What else was I doing except living in exile waiting for my daughter to be returned to me. Agapeto would come straight over with the news and then we would look at each other.
“It doesn’t sound very strong does it?” I would concede.
“No, Jane it doesn’t, but we must not give up hope. The fact that there are so many people out there looking for your daughter is good news. But please don’t get your hopes up, it is just another sighting and we have had many.”
Agapeto and I would often meet in a cafe or an osteria and take long walks together through the streets of Venice, avoiding tourists and respecting the army of little old women in brown tights and sensible shoes making their way determinedly with their shopping trundlers to and from the markets.
We enjoyed each other’s company tremendously and while he helped me to learn Italian I helped his English refine itself. And on more than one occasion I had been forced to agree with Daisy’s first comment about Agapeto, that he was a very handsome man who turned heads wherever we went. He was a 6ft 4inch Italian, well built and walked with authority. His hair was almost entirely grey but he wore it quite long and this gave him a distinguished air along with his well-cut jeans and leather jackets which I knew must have cost him a fortune, not to mention the leather loafers. He was a man who took control and one long look from his dark
Italian eyes had your attention.
“Jane, I have been meaning to ask you this for a while. I can’t help but wonder why you don’t go back to New Zealand. You must have family there, and friends who can support you through this time. Why do you stay here with your friend Marco? Do you not have a mother?” he said one morning as we shopped in Billa, the local supermarket, and he was helping me learn how to ask the staff for 100 grams of proscuitto crudo, my new favourite food.
“Agapeto, of course I have a mother and yes she is worried about me. But to be honest they had me in their early 40s, I was a bit of a surprise and I don’t think they ever fully adjusted to having a child that late in life. I’ve never been very close to my parents, they live at the other end of New Zealand, and are so old now my presence would only worry them,” I reassured him, beginning to wonder if Agapeto thought I was a little mad. “I’m not sure why I am still here. At first it was because I wanted to be close if Charlotte turned up, and now I just feel stuck in this void where I feel so safe, and cared for and peaceful. I was a very busy woman in New Zealand, Agapeto. Maybe I just need some time to grieve and the light, the colours, the waters of Venice seem to be protecting and soothing me.”
“Well you are not the first person to find Venice so soothing, although how you can see all that past the tourists, I have no idea,” he laughed. “What about friends, do you not miss them?”
It had never occurred to me that I might miss friends. Apart from Daisy, I didn’t really have any friends who didn’t come with my work. Celebrities, publicists, agents all called themselves my friends, but they were really just acquaintances.
“If I went home there are so many people who know me and would ask me about how I was feeling all the time and keep reminding me of what I have lost. Here no one knows me except you and Marco and I like it that way. And I’ve become quite addicted to visiting churches and talking to Charlotte when I’m there and I’m not sure I could do that back home”, I reasoned. “And then there’s the food.”
As the shop girl handed over the beautifully wrapped 100 grams of proscuitto crudo, a wedge of gorgonzola and some baccala montecato, a salted cod concoction I was in love with, I was a happy woman.
“Well if you say so, Jane, you certainly seem very calm and I would like to say content, so as long as you aren’t avoiding things at home. I must say I am very happy you are here, I would miss you,” he smiled, his eyes wrinkling and at that moment in the middle of busy Billa I wanted to hug him. So I did.
“Ah, Jane, people will talk,” Agapeto giggled. And with that he slapped me on the bottom and we chuckled our way through the checkout where I understood for the first time in Italian how much money I needed to hand over without having to look at the register. That tiny glimpse of understanding made me realise how much of the language I was learning and without having any right to belong to Venice, I felt as though I belonged.
Agapeto wasn’t the only one wondering why I wasn’t going home. My boss Tim Holland rang after two months. We had talked immediately after Charlotte had disappeared and then again when I decided to resign two weeks later. At the time I think Tim just went along with what I had to say in the belief that I was having a breakdown, needed some time and would soon be back. I was sure this is what he had been told by my deputy Shonagh.
“Jane, I’m just calling to see how things are over there in Venice. I know you’ve resigned, love, but is there anything I can do to persuade you to come home. Your magazine needs you,” he began.
“Hi, Tim, how nice to hear your voice,” I meant it. I really did miss my boss who had always been my main supporter at the company.
“I miss you but I’m sorry. I don’t miss the Day, and haven’t since the moment Charlotte disappeared.”
“Yes, but surely this is just temporary. Don’t you want to be home with your family and friends where we can look after you?”
“It’s something I’m at a loss to explain, Tim, and until I get an answer I’m just going to stay here in Venice,” I replied doing my best to sound like the old Jane, the one in control.
“Well, I have to say I can’t believe it of you. You loved the magazine for so many years, and now you’ve just deserted it and quite frankly the sales figures are appalling,” he said.
I knew he was using his old trick of appealing to my competitive nature. I hated losing.
“If our sales continue to drop I’m going to have to fire that Shonagh, which would be a great pleasure. She is one hell of a bitch that woman, especially on the subject of you. She seems to have no sympathy whatsoever for the situation you are in,” he said.
Then his voice changed. “Jane, you and I know each other pretty well so I think I can say this. Are you sure you’re not staying there in the hope that she will turn up? It’s perfectly understandable but it’s been two months now and you really should start to think about getting back to normal, moving through the grief a little. Come home. We’ll look after you.”
“Tim, thanks for that. I would be lying if I didn’t wake up every morning wondering if today is the day I’ll get her back, but to be honest I’ll probably be doing that when I’m 90. I’ll never give up hope. Maybe I like living here because it suits where I am at the moment which is in a very calm place, I spend hours in church.”
“Church? Did I just here you say church? Jane, you don’t have a religious bone in your body.”
“Well I do now, well not a bone, more an eye. I’m not praying, Tim, I can’t believe in a God who would allow innocent children to go missing for no reason. But I love looking at all the paintings and the imagery and lighting candles for Charlotte. It’s working for me in a strange way. I’ve even taken to wearing a rosary.”
“Okay then, if that’s what you want,” said Tim now sounding as convinced as ever that I had indeed gone quite mad. “If you ever change your mind and want a return to normality, promise me you’ll call and tell me you’re back on board.”
“Don’t worry, Tim. If I ever return to ‘normal’, whatever ‘normal’ is you’ll be the first person I’ll call.”
“Okay, bye now and lots of love. You are missed here, Jane, don’t ever forget it. Oh and by the way you had a bonus coming to you when all this happened and accounts forgot to put it in with your final payment after you resigned. I’ll get them to deposit in your account tonight. You are now $20,000 richer.”
“Oh, Tim, that is such wonderful news. Thank you so much. And thanks for being such a great boss, you were the secret of my success you know.”
“No I wasn’t. It was all your own unique work. Look after yourself and don’t be a stranger.”
With that one phone call Tim had just given me the financial security to let me stay even longer in Venice if I wanted to. Not that it would have mattered, I just would have started borrowing against my house in New Zealand, so determined was I to stay.
That night I told Marco about my phone call from Tim and it was his turn to have concerns.
“Well, why are you here Jane? I can see that your life is very calm and quiet but surely you must be bored by now?” he inquired as he threw pasta in a pot and poured me a large glass of prosecco. “You are a woman who has always needed a lot of distractions, even when you were 16.”
He was right. There were days in Venice when I never left the apartment and simply sat in the old marble bath howling. Or moped around listening to Van Morrison or reading Pride and Prejudice in my pyjamas. But then there were days when Marco took me to Burano and the sheer energy and vibrancy of the bright blues, pinks and yellows the locals painted their houses restored me. And we hooted with laughter after a lace maker hauled me inside to watch some of the local lace being made, but first had to wake up an old woman who was sitting in the corner having a snooze to get cracking and make some lace for me.
“Do you want me to go?” I asked quickly suddenly worried that I had outstayed my welcome.
“Of course not, Jane. Having you in this place for the last two months has made my
life so different. I always have someone to come home to now and to cook for, and you are so much fun to be around, especially teaching you Italian and showing you Venice. How could I not want you here? I’m having the time of my life.”
“Oh good, I suddenly thought you might have had enough of me, and you must tell me, Marco, if I ever get in the way,” I said with a rush of relief. “Can I tell you that you have made me the happiest I could be in this mess, I feel like you have thrown your arms around me and given me support and kindness I have never had in my life. You are the only man who has ever just let me be me,” I muttered and as I looked up at him my eyes welled up and then suddenly I was in tears.
“Oh, Jane, please, Jane,” Marco rushed over to me and held me in his arms. “I could no sooner put you on a plane home to New Zealand than I could cut my right arm off. You have brought so much joy to my life,” he whispered into my right ear.
I pulled out of his embrace and looked into his now not so sparkly blue eyes. They had suddenly gone very dark and serious. And then I kissed him. Not in a friendly Italian way on both cheeks, but right on those gorgeous lips of his, long and hard.
For a moment I thought he was going to pull away, but then he responded gently, opening my mouth with his tongue and then touching mine. My tongue tingled, my toes tingled, my back tingled. It seemed to go on for hours but after what must have been only a few moments we pulled apart, and looked at each other.
“I’m sorry I didn’t mean to do that,” I stuttered. “This is very confusing.”
“Jane please relax. It’s fine. Really.”
I found Marco very attractive but did I really mean to kiss him? Hadn’t I moved on from him years ago?
“But Jane we should not do this. Not now. The important thing is that you get through your grief for Charlotte. You will have confused feelings at the moment and I don’t want to make them worse. My job is to look after you, support you and love you.
The Road from Midnight Page 10