by Lucy Gordon
Vincenzo frowned. 'For someone who's just lost everything you're astonishingly cheerful.'
'I'm not cheerful, just mad. Mad-angry, not mad-crazy I've been acting like a wimp, but now I'm done with weakness. When the pictures went overboard I was devastated for a whole minute, but then something inside me said, "That's it! Time to fight back.'"
'The man you're looking for,' Vincenzo said carefully, 'is he anything to do with-what you told me last night?
'Anything to do with my being in prison? Yes, he put me there. He cheated and lied and managed to get me locked up for his crime.' She surveyed them both. 'He's my husband.'
Piero turned his head slowly. Vincenzo stirred.
'My name isn't Julia. It's Sophie Haydon. My husband was Bruce Haydon. My mother warned me against him, but I wouldn't listen. We were always a little uneasy with each other after that.'
'What about your father?' Piero asked.
'I barely knew him. He died when I was a baby. Bruce and I were married over nine years ago. We had a daughter the next year, a gorgeous little girl called Natalie. I loved her to bits. She-she's almost nine now.'
Her voice shook on the words, and she hurried on as though to prevent the others noticing.
'Bruce had a little business, import, export. It wasn't doing well and he hated it that I earned more than him. I was working as an art restorer, getting plenty of clients, starting to be employed by museums and great houses.
'And then there was a spate of art thefts, all from houses where I'd been working. Of course the police suspected me. I knew all about the keys and burglar alarms.'
She fell silent again, staring into space for a long time. Then she jumped to her feet and began to pace up and down, her feet making a hollow, desolate sound on the tiles.
'Go on,' Vincenzo said in a strained voice. 'I was charged and put on trial.' She gave a harsh laugh. 'Bruce made me a wonderful speech about fighting it together. And I believed him. We loved each other, you see.' She gave a brief, mirthless laugh. 'That's really funny.'
She fell silent. Neither of the other two moved or spoke, respecting her grief.
'In the last few days before the trial,' she went on at last, 'my mind seemed to be working on two levels at once. On one, I just couldn't believe that they could find me guilty. On the other, I knew exactly what was going to happen. I knew they were going to take me away from Bruce and Natalie, and I spent every moment I could with them. Bruce and I-'
She stopped. It was better not to remember those passionate nights, his declarations of undying love, lest she go mad.
'We took Natalie on a picnic. On the way back we stopped in a toy shop and she fell in love with a rabbit. So I bought it for her and she hugged it all the way home. When the trial began I'd say goodbye to her in the morning and she'd clutch that rabbit for comfort. When I came home she'd still be clutching him. The neighbour who was looking after her said she never let go of him all day.
'On the last day of the trial I got ready to leave home and Natalie began to cry. She'd never done that before, but this time it was as though she knew I wasn't coming back. She clung to me with her arms tight about my neck, crying "No, Mummy. Mummy, don't go, please don't go-please, Mummy-'"
She was shuddering, forcing herself to speak through the tears that coursed down her cheeks.
'In the end they had to force her arms away from around my neck, while she screamed and screamed. Then she curled up on the sofa, clutching her rabbit and sobbing into his fur. That was the last time I ever saw her. All she knew was that I went away and never came back. Wherever she is now, whatever she's doing, that's her last memory of me.'
She swung around suddenly and slammed her hand down on the back of a chair, clinging onto it and choking in her agony. Vincenzo rose quickly and went to her, but she straightened up before he could touch her.
'I'm all right. Where was I?'
'The trial,' he said gently.
'Oh, yes. They found me guilty. Bruce came to see me in prison a couple of times. He kept promising to bring Natalie "next time", but he never did. And then one day he didn't come. My mother told me he'd vanished, taking our little girl.
'I don't remember the next few days clearly. I know I became hysterical, and for a while I was on suicide watch. That was six years ago, and I haven't seen either of them since.
'It was him, you see. He'd copied my keys, picked my brains. He'd drive me to work and ask me to show him around, "Because I'm so interested, darling." So he knew what to look for, how to get in, how to turn off the alarm. Sometimes there were security staff, but they trusted him because he was with me. And everything he learned he sold to a gang of art thieves.
'All the thefts happened over the same weekend, then they vanished abroad, leaving me to take the blame like a tethered goat. By the time I realised how Bruce was involved he'd vanished too.'
'But surely you told the police?' Piero asked. 'Of course, but even I could hear how hollow it sounded-clutching at straws to clear myself. My sentence was longer because I'd been "uncooperative". I couldn't tell them anything, because I didn't know.
'And all the time I knew he had my little girl somewhere. I didn't know where and I couldn't find out. She was two and a half when I last saw her. Where has she been all that time? What has she been told about me? Does she have nightmares about our last moments, as I do?'
Her voice faded into a despairing whisper. After a moment she began speaking again. 'Then a couple of the pictures turned up at an auction house. The police managed to trace the trail right back to the mastermind, and he told them everything. He hadn't long to live and he wanted to "clear his conscience", as he put it. He said Bruce used to laugh about how I trusted him, and how easy I was to delude.'
'Bastardo." Vincenzo said with soft venom.
'Yes,' she agreed, 'but I suppose I should be glad of it, because that story was what cleared me. It meant that. Bruce and I hadn't colluded. My conviction was quashed and I was released.'
She paced a little more before stopping by the window.
'My lawyer's fighting for compensation, but my only use for money is to pay for a proper search for Bruce, if I haven't found him by then.'
'Aren't the police looking for him?' Vincenzo suggested.
'Not as hard as I am. To them he's just another wanted man. To me he's an enemy.'
'Yes, I see,' Vincenzo said, almost to himself.
Her voice mounted in urgency.
'He wrecked my life, left me to rot in prison and took my child. I want my daughter back, and I don't care what else happens.'
'Have you no family to help you?' Piero asked
My mother died of a broken heart while I was in prison.She left me a very little money, just enough to come here and start searching for Bruce '
'So you came to Venice to find his relatives?' Piero asked.
'Yes. They are only distant,but they might know something that could help me. I had some good friends who visited me in prison, and they used to bring stories about how Bruce had been "seen". Some of them were wildly unlikely. He was,in Arizona, in China, in Australia.But two people said they'd spotted him in Italy, once in Rome, and more recently in Venice, crossing the Rialto Bridge.
'That's why I went straight to the Rialto that first night. Don't ask me what I thought I was going to do then, because I couldn't tell you. The inside of my head was a nightmare. Luckily the Rialto is near this place and Piero found me on his way home. If my friend really did see Brace it may mean nothing, or he may be living only a few minutes away. You might even have seen him.'
'It would help if you had some pictures of him,' Vincenzo observed.
'I know, but my pictures went to the bottom of the lagoon an hour ago.' She clutched her head. 'If only I'd shown them to you last week-'
'You were full of fever last week,' Piero said. 'You didn't know whether you were coming or going. It's just bad luck, but we probably wouldn't have recognised him anyway.'
She nodded. 'The M
ontressis are my best lead. They'll be back in January, and then I'll hunt him down and get my daughter back.'
'But will it be that simple?' Vincenzo asked. 'After six years she may want to stay where she is.'
She gave him a look that chilled his blood.
'I am her mother,' she said with slow, harsh emphasis. 'She belongs with me. If anyone tries to stop me, I'll-' She was breathing hard.
'Yes?' he asked uneasily.
She met his eyes. 'I'll do what I have to-whatever that might be-I don't know.'
But she did know. He could see it in her face and feel it in her determination to reveal no more. She wouldn't put her thoughts into words because they were too terrible to be spoken.
He didn't recognise this woman. She'd freely claimed to be 'as mad as a hatter', and there were times in her delirium and sleepwalking when she'd seemed to be treading some fine line between reality and delusion. But now he saw only grim purpose in her eyes, and he wondered which side of the line she had stepped.
And who could blame her, he wondered, if her tragedy had driven her to the wrong side?
CHAPTER SIX
'So,' Vincenzo said gently, 'when you find Bruce-'
'He's going to give her back to me. If he's reasonable I'll promise him twenty-four hours' start before I point the police in his direction.'
'But then he'll get away,' Piero pointed out.
Julia turned on him.
'You don't think I'm going to keep my word, do you?' she asked scornfully. 'As soon as I'm clear with Natalie I'll put them straight onto him. After what he did to me, I'll have no remorse about anything I do to him.
'I've had plenty of time to learn to be strong. I'm a different person now. Sophie was a fool. She thought feelings were wonderful because they made her happy.'
'She doesn't sound like a fool to me,' Vincenzo said quietly.
'Oh, she was worse than that,' Julia said with an edge of contempt for her old self. 'She needed people and she believed in them. She hadn't learned that that's the quickest way to hell. But Sophie's dead and good riddance to her. Julia knows it's better to use people than trust them. She's grown wise.'
'Too wise to love?' Vincenzo asked. 'Too wise to need?'
'Too wise to feel. The one thing she learned in prison was not to feel anything.'
'Not even for her child?'
She took a sharp breath. 'That's different. She's part of me, flesh of my flesh. It's as though someone had torn my heart out and wouldn't give it back.'
'So that's why you said you had nothing to give,' he reminded her in a low voice.
'Yes, and it was true, so believe it.'
There was a flash of anger in his eyes. 'And suppose I choose not to believe it?'
'That's your risk, but remember that I warned you.'
He was silent for a moment. Then he nodded.
'I'll be going now. Walk a little way with me.'
She followed him quietly, and as they neared the outer door he said, 'It's a long time between now and mid-January. How are you going to spend that time?'
'Sharpening my sword,' she said with grim humour.
'Don't talk like that,' he said harshly.
'Why? Because you've got some fairy-tale picture of me as sweetness and light? Maybe I was, then. Not now. Now I'm a monster who knows how to fight dirty. And I'll do it.'
He raised an eyebrow, dampening her agitation.
'I was only going to suggest a better way to pass the time. Come and work for me while Celia's away. Of course, for an artist, waitressing may seem like a comedown-'
'But for a gaolbird it's a step up,' she said lightly.
He refused to rise to the bait. 'Will you take the job?'
She hesitated. She had promised herself to beware of him. She made that promise often, and broke it constantly because he touched her heart, deny it as she might.
As if he could read her mind, Vincenzo said quietly, 'Never fear. I won't trouble you. In fact I ought to apologise.'
'For what?'
'Pressuring you. I guessed that something painful had happened, but I had no idea of anything like this.'
She smiled in mockery of herself. 'Now you know how I turned into an avenging witch. Not a pretty sight, am I?'
'I'm not judging you. What right do I have? But I can't believe that Sophie is dead. I think she's still there somewhere.'
'More fool you,' she sighed. 'You've been warned.'
'Let's leave that for the moment. You need peace and space, and I'll let you have them while you're working for me.'
'All right, I'll take the job.'
'Good. You can have the apartment over the restaurant.'
She shook her head.
'Thank you, but I'll stay here. I can't leave Piero alone now. I know he was alone before, but something's changed. I have a feeling that he needs me.'
'I thought you had no feelings.'
'This is family obligation.'
'And you two are family?'
'Not by blood, but in other ways.' She added quickly, 'And that's not an emotion either. It's survival.'
'And what about me? Am I part of the family?'
She didn't answer, and he knew he was excluded from the charmed circle.
It ought not to matter. He still had relatives with whom he would spend Christmas, leaving these two misfits to whatever comfort they could find with each other. And yet it hurt.
As the month moved towards Christmas, winking lights glinted everywhere, in shop windows, strung across the streets and over the bridges.
People called out of windows and across bridges, wishing each other, 'Buon Natale.' Merry Christmas, Decorated trees appeared in the squares, and red-robed figures strode about the little city, waving cheerily and talking to children.
'Father Christmas,' Julia exclaimed, pleased.
'Babbo Natale,' Piero corrected her. 'That's what we call him. Babbo means "Father".'
'I thought that was padre?'
'Padre means "father" too,' Piero agreed. 'But it's more formal. Babbo is a kind of affectionate diminutive. Some children use it to their fathers, especially when they're very young.'
'Did Elena do that?' she asked.
'Oh, yes. I've always been Babbo to her, except for- well, there was a time when we argued a lot, and she started calling me Papa. But that's all over now, and when she comes back I'll be Babbo again. Hey, look over there! A whole collection of them!'
He pointed to the Grand Canal, where six red-garbed figures were rowing one gondola, accompanied by blaring Christmas music, and the subject of Elena was allowed to drop.
The week before Christmas she awoke to find Venice under snow. Delighted, she and Piero went out and walked arm in arm through the city that had been totally transformed. Snow-covered gondolas bobbed in the water, snow-covered bridges glittered over tiny canals. A brilliant, freezing sun poured down blindingly on the white blanket, and she had to shield her eyes from the glare.
Now there were musicians wandering the alleys and the piazzas, wearing the traditional shepherds' garb of buckskins and woollen cloaks, and playing bagpipes. The sweet, reedy sound pursued them to St Mark's, where they threw snowballs, ducking and diving, laughing at each other like people who hadn't a care in the world.
Vincenzo had insisted on giving her a generous amount of money for saving his home from damage. 'Your caretaker's bonus,' he called it.
Julia had immediately passed it on to Piero. When he'd demurred she'd told him that this was only half the amount, and she was merely sharing with him. From his sceptical look she'd doubted that he'd been fooled, but he'd accepted the money.
'Get something warm to wear,' she told him.
But as the days went on there was no sign of new clothes. Evidently he had other priorities, which he was not prepared to discuss.
She was a huge success at Il Pappagallo. Venice was filling up with Christmas tourists, and the restaurant was crowded every night. Some of the customers insisted on being served on
ly by her.
She enjoyed this admiration, which made her laugh. Vincenzo, she was secretly pleased to note, didn't find it funny.
'You shouldn't let Antonnio monopolise you,' he said as they were walking through the dark calles one night. 'There are plenty of other customers.'
'He's the kind who always makes sure he's noticed,' Julia said lightly. Antonnio's persistent gallantry had done her ego a world of good.
'And you always make sure you serve him first,' Vincenzo growled.
'Only because he grabs that table near the kitchen.'
'Yes, so that he can grab your hand as you go past, and devour it,' he said, as close to ill tempered as she'd ever seen him.
'In future, I'll serve him.' She chuckled. 'He'll love that.'
'You're loving it.'
'Well, he did promise me a very special tip,' she mused.
'Be careful. Antonnio's "special tips" are legendary and they don't involve money.'
She took his arm. 'Oh, stop being so pompous. I'm just doing my job. And after six years shut up with women maybe I don't mind a little admiration.'
'A little admiration,' he scoffed. 'Another moment he'd have had you down on the floor.'
She didn't answer that with words, only with an ironic glance.
'I see,' he said grimly. 'Perhaps the woman who boasts of no feelings likes making me jealous?'
'The woman with no feelings says she doesn't belong to you, and you have no right to be jealous. What happened to your promise to back off and give me space?'
'I wouldn't be the first man to make a promise he can't keep.'
'Vincenzo, what are you hoping for?'
He shrugged. 'Maybe I'm waiting to meet Sophie.'
'She's gone. She died some time during my second year in gaol. She won't come back.'
'You're wrong. She never completely went away. That's why I can't free myself of you.'
They had come to a halt under a lamp that showed them to each other in bleached, unearthly hues. Her face, once too thin, had filled out a little, he realised, and lost some of its tormented look. She had fine, beautiful bone structure, and the slight extra flesh suited her, reclaiming some of her youth.