~ * ~
2.20 a.m.
Here. There is no hotel that she can see, no welcoming light. There is no light, just the faint milky sheen from a half-moon high above night-white cloud. Caroline repeats the boy racer’s words as he picks up her bag and jumps up on to the canal side. There is apparently no dock either. Caroline had been envisioning one of the pretty little side-canal docks she’d seen from the Grand Canal, the lovely hotels with their own landings. She takes the boy’s hand and he hauls her up on to the waterside. She slips a little, grazes the hand he isn’t holding, brings it to her mouth without thinking, partly to stem the yelp she doesn’t want to let out, partly the animal desire to lick a wound. She tastes a little grit, unravelled skin, maybe a tiny touch of blood, but the predominant taste is the dark silty water of the lagoon, a flavour of algae too, that particular soft pale green that is the water of Venice on a bright blue day. Pete’s ex-wife had those light green eyes, the colour of the water. He told her, once, only once. She didn’t want to know and Pete never mentioned Susannah’s eyes again. The young man is standing her up straight now, looking into her eyes, she doesn’t understand the words, but she knows he is concerned. Caroline is exhausted, she has half-fainted, swooned - has she swooned? She thought women only did that in old romance novels, but then, she is in Venice, Venice is an old romance novel in itself - she stands straight. She is fine, assures the young man in English he, in his turn, does not understand. But the hotel, where is the hotel? she asks.
These are words he knows. He smiles, nods, leans down to tie up the boat, a rope procured in semi-darkness from a corner. He takes her bag with one hand and guides Caroline with the other. He holds the hand she has grazed and there is almost comfort in feeling his skin on her ripped skin, the sting of his hand’s moisture seeping in to the flesh of her own. One corner, another, and then, just at the point Caroline was going to dig in her heels, say no more, try to call Pete again, call out for anyone, worried, frightened, not wanting to follow this young man, with his warm hand and insistent yes/si/yes/ follow/andiamo, there it is, the Hotel Angelo. Tiny sparkling lights around a door and the windows on either side. A discreet sign and an older man in a dark coat in the doorway, waiting for her. He thanks the driver and pays him, taking Caroline’s bag and ushering her in, welcoming her, expecting her. “Benvenuta, Signora Caroline.” He pronounces the “e”. The man knows her name, her room is ready, come in.
~ * ~
2.30 a.m.
The man takes her passport, she signs a form, they show her to a room. Pete is not there. Caroline wants to cry. The room is beautiful, a suite not a room, a sitting room opening on to a bedroom opening on to a bathroom, all soft lighting and cool minimalism but warm too, comfortable, balconies from both sitting room and bedroom. There is a locked door, just off the sitting room, an extra bedroom for a family of guests, Caroline assumes. It’s more a small, elegant apartment than a hotel room, but there is no Pete. Caroline even goes outside on to the balcony, just in case he is hiding. He isn’t.
She sees the boy racer below, on his phone, talking in quiet, fast Italian, smoking. He unhooks the rope and, without putting down the phone, without taking the cigarette from his mouth, without stopping talking, he sets the boat into gear and drives away. She watches him go, then there is silence. Water, lapping, only just, and silence. Caroline shakes her head. This is insane, she is angry now, Pete’s just being stupid. It’s no fun without him. She will go in and call him and shout and they will have a row but it doesn’t matter, she wants to hear Pete’s voice. She wants Pete.
A knock at the door and she runs to answer it, calling his name, believing him to be on the other side of the door. A young woman stands there smiling, pushing a trolley. There is a huge bunch of flowers, spring flowers, a half-bottle of champagne - Caroline shakes her head, half-bottle again, a single glass she notes, her anger rising further, and an envelope. She points to the envelope and asks the girl about it. Did he leave this? My boyfriend? But the girl shakes her head, mi dispiace, non parlo ... She pulls out a plate of fruit from the bottom layer of the trolley, bread too, some cheese, and then leaves. Buona notte. Caroline doesn’t want her to go. She doesn’t want to be alone. The girl closes the door behind her and Caroline opens the envelope.
There is a single piece of paper inside, and a small pill, just one, in a foil wrapper. There is no writing on the foil.
The paper is a printed email : Sorry, I meant to be there waiting for you. Impossible delays here. I’m getting the first flight out in the morning. Eat, Drink, Sleep. Sleeping pill if you want. I’ll be there by the time you wake up.
Caroline opens the champagne, she eats a chunk of melon. She is close to tears. She tries Pete’s phone but it goes to answer. Tries again, leaves a message, trying not to sound angry, needy. Pete hates needy. Hangs up realizing she probably sounds both. She is lonely and tired; Caroline is not very good at her own company, not at night. In the day she can happily spend twelve hours at a stretch alone, but once dusk hits she hungers for other people, for noise, interaction, warmth. Pete. She turns on the TV and turns it off again. The middle-night Italian talk-show, women with their porn-star make-up and brash clothes, are not the warmth she wants. Caroline sighs.
She goes to the bathroom, takes off her make-up, checks all the doors and windows are locked, double locked, drops her clothes on the floor and takes the sleeping pill and the half-bottle of champagne to bed.
Caroline drinks, swallows, sleeps.
~ * ~
12 April, 11.15 a.m.
Caroline wakes, disoriented. Her head is fuzzy from champagne and the sleeping pill and no water, no food. No Pete. She has woken up and he isn’t here. Caroline sits and then falls back on to her pillows, these big, soft, white-cottoned pillows that are so ready for her tears. And then Caroline is standing and rushing for the bathroom, dizzy head and stumbling feet, arms out to find walls, doors, knee smashing into bedside cabinet. The blackout blinds kept night light, street light out last night, now they turn the room into a labyrinth. She finds a door, runs a sweaty hand up and down the wall, clicks a switch, light blinding, mouth open, kneeling at the toilet, throwing up. After she has washed her face, cleaned her teeth, Caroline takes the white towelling gown from the hook in the bathroom and walks into the bedroom.
She finds her phone and there are three texts from Pete, all saying the same thing. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Each one giving a later departure time. The last text says 6.15 p.m. arrival. He will be there for dinner. He. Will. Be. There. For. Dinner. Caroline is not sure why Pete is still trying to promise, when clearly he has no power to do so. Caroline knows how angry he must be, how Pete hates delays at the best of times. She wants to text him back, to placate him, to tell him it’s fine. And she doesn’t want to as well. She wants him to miss her as she is missing him, she wants to cry and shout and stamp her foot and complain. She texts back simply: Don’t worry. I love you. See you later.
Caroline is hungry. She has an afternoon in Venice, alone. She will go out, she will eat, she will enjoy herself. There are things she knows she wouldn’t do if Pete were here, tourist shops full of pretty little bits of Murano glass Pete would never go into, windows of carnival masks he loathes. Pete hates all that tourist crap. Caroline is sure he’s right, and yet a part of her, the part she doesn’t dare show Pete, is still attracted to it, to being - more honestly - the tourist she is. She will walk over the Rialto Bridge and go to San Marco and she will order insanely expensive coffee and cake that Pete believes only stupid American tourists would eat and leave the kind of tip Pete never would and look at all those shops that spin off the square. And when she has finished wasting money she will come back to the hotel and get dressed up and she and Pete will have dinner and they will come back to that big fluffy bed and fuck and sleep together and it will all be fine. She can bear being alone in daylight and Pete will be here by night.
~ * ~
12.55 p.m.
Caro
line walks downstairs. There is no one at Reception, no one to leave her key with, to return her passport. There is no bell either; it is all quiet, cool, the place feels empty. She imagines this is a good time for the staff to take a break, grab a rest between breakfast and checkout and cleaning the rooms and then the after-lunch rush as the morning flights that left London and Paris and Madrid land and the new guests check in. She puts the heavy room key in her bag and leaves the hotel, the door locking behind her.
~ * ~
1.00 p.m.
Caroline turns right. This is not the way she came in. She makes a note of the street name, and where the door is in relation to the water, to the canal off-shoot where the taxi dropped her. She looks up and can see, past the narrowing perspective of tall buildings on either side of the small street, that the sky is very light blue, high white cloud filtering the pure blue she remarked on the last time they were in Venice, and the first time in Venice too, that time with John. A city girl, Caroline always looks up to the sky. Not for her the checking of fields or flowerbeds or hedgerows to judge the weather or the season, it is all in the sky. She likes a high sky, and a lot of it. These narrow streets, narrow canals, make her claustrophobic.
She heads out of the small street and into a larger one and then another wider still. Across a bridge she finds a footpath leading alongside a canal, into another canal, broader now, and then sees what she is looking for, walks along and up to the Grand Canal. This is how she will find her way around, this is how she will orient herself. She will not get lost. She looks across the water, north-east to the Doge’s Palace, to her right the span of the Accademia Bridge; she knows the Rialto is all the way round to her left. She will go to the Rialto, because Pete would not. She will cross it and may even buy herself a mask, something that hides her eyes, with feathers perhaps, because Pete would not like it. She will waste money on things only stupid tourists do. Pete isn’t here and Caroline is.
~ * ~
2.15 p.m.
Caroline has eaten ice cream - cherry, rich, syrup dripping from the creamy vanilla ice, fat cherries squirting sweet juice into her mouth when she bites into them. She has stopped for coffee twice, both times an espresso, both times standing at the bar, paying the cheaper price, the price she cannot pay with Pete who likes to sit, take his time to look around. She has stood at the bar and talked to no one and sipped the bitter coffee made easier with sugar and been glad, almost glad, to be alone.
~ * ~
2.45 p.m.
Caroline is standing in front of the four horses, the ones from Constantinople they keep here, upstairs in San Marco. She’s been here with Pete but he wouldn’t let her touch them. He was right, no one is supposed to touch, there’s a sign saying no photos, no touching, and Pete wouldn’t let her take their picture either, led her outside to get close to the copies standing above the front doors to the big church. But Caroline has wanted to touch the originals since then, and now she does. She walks around the barrier, ignores the camera she knows is watching, and stands before each horse. There are a few other tourists in here, not many, it’s as if no one really cares about these horses. That’s one of the reasons Caroline wants to touch them. She thinks they should be outside, that they shouldn’t have to mind about the weather and the pigeons, wants them to be open to the world as they must once have been, long ago, far away. The other tourists are tutting, one uses it as a chance to take a photo, his camera flashes just as Caroline turns her head, a hand reaching out to the fetlock of the first horse, and from the light, from behind the light, blinded by the flashlight, Caroline thinks she sees a face she recognizes.
A security guard comes and Caroline is asked in very polite English to leave the building. The man with the camera is asked to leave too. She does as she is told.
~ * ~
2.58 p.m.
Outside, in the square, the bells about to ring, people gathering to listen, Caroline rubs her eyes. Behind her palms, behind her lids, she sees the negative image of the man with the camera that made the flash and also the man standing behind him, watching her, the man she thought she recognized. Caroline doesn’t know what John looks like now. The man she thought she saw looked like John might look, now.
Caroline feels sick. The ice cream and the bitter coffees and the adrenaline rush of getting kicked out of the church, it is that, it’s definitely that, it can have nothing to do with thinking she saw John behind the man, behind the light of the flash. That would just be paranoid.
~ * ~
3.01 p.m.
The bells have begun to ring and it’s too loud for her here, ears fuzzy with ringing, bile in the back of her throat. Caroline walks across the square, beneath the portico, takes a right down a street, any street, it doesn’t matter. She walks for ten minutes, fifteen. The afternoon sun is beginning its descent; light angles into the narrow paths between buildings, the high white clouds of earlier are burned off, and every now and then the sunshine catches a window, bouncing sunlight back into her eyes, and each time it’s like the flash going off, the man taking the photo and the man behind him, and now Caroline is sure it was John, looking, just looking, not surprised to see her, just there. Looking. Watching.
~ * ~
3.35 p.m.
The turn she just took has led her down an alleyway between two houses and to a dead end. Caroline stops as the alley peters out, falling into water. She can see where it would continue. Over there, across a narrow canal, just wide enough for two small boats to pass each other, over there is a cafe where people sit and chat, drinking coffee and wine, drinking spritz, the Aperol bitter in the bubbles. They are close enough for her to hear the American accents of the group of young people, talking about where they will go tomorrow, about a friend who will join them later. Two middle-aged women sit side by side. They speak more quietly, but even so, the canal here is so narrow that Caroline thinks she can hear their Italian lady voices, their soft, discreet murmurs in someone else’s language. Both women are beautifully groomed, each with a dog in her lap. The dogs should match the women, they too are beautifully groomed, coiffed hair poking out from little dog-shaped coats on their small, round bodies, but the women look as if they are holding the wrong dogs, each one holding her friend’s.
The street continues past the cafe, but Caroline cannot walk down it, the water is in the way. To her left, past a row of houses, is a bridge, but the houses are right on the water, there is no walkway alongside them. There are two boats moored here at her feet. For other people, for locals, this would not be a dead end at all, this would be an opening, an exit, a way out, a way home. For Caroline there is nothing to do but go back. She begins to turn, looking down the alleyway behind her, into a cooler darkness now. The lower sun can no longer reach down here and the alley looks dark, its distant opening into a broader street hidden in shadow. There is nowhere else to go but back and as she turns Caroline hears a loud laugh from the group of young people on the other side of the water. She doesn’t know why, but she feels like they are laughing at her. She twists around, and now she’s sure the young woman at the rear of the group, head thrown back in laughter, head leaning forward to kiss the young man beside her, kiss him long and hard... Caroline is sure she’s the chambermaid who brought the trolley last night, with champagne and food and the sleeping pill, the young woman who spoke no English. But the young woman’s face is obscured, by the young man she is kissing, and they were all speaking English she is sure, speaking with American accents.
Caroline takes a deep breath, she feels tears behind her eyes and she does not want to cry, doesn’t want to feel sick, is in danger of doing both. She plunges back into the alleyway, pushes past a Spanish couple who are clearly walking in the wrong direction, who are lost and start to ask her directions, pull out their map, and then they take a closer look at her face, step back, allow her to pass. Caroline rushes on, walking down streets and along narrow canals and across bridges, everywhere other accents, Spanish and French and E
nglish and American, is no one here Italian? She thinks of an Italian friend at home whose family come from Venice, who said no Italians can afford to live there any more. And then she shakes her head again. What is she thinking of her friend for? Why is she thinking of John?
~ * ~
3.55 p.m.
Caroline stops. She is in a small square. There is a bar at either end, a church in the middle. She goes to the closest bar, sits down, orders a coffee and a glass of prosecco. Her hands are shaking. What is she thinking of? She isn’t thinking at all. This is insane. Of course that girl wasn’t the same girl from the hotel, there must be hundreds of young girls in Venice, all of them tourists or students or here with boyfriends and girlfriends. All the young girls look the same anyway. Caroline is on the edge of calling herself a woman, not a girl any more. These days, when she sees a young woman she sees the fine skin, the fresh eyes, sees the new. Sees what Pete saw in her at first and what he maybe sees no longer. Sees what John saw in her. She smiles, the coffee and wine arrive, she takes a long slow sip of both, one after the other. Stop it. Stop it. Her hands slowly stop shaking. John always said she was paranoid, that he was not possessive, as she thought him, just loving, wanting to take care. Pete’s the other way; accuses her of jealousy sometimes. He says she has no reason for it, that she’s imagining things, imagining flirtations, potential. There must be hundreds of young girls in Venice, thousands. Caroline finishes the prosecco, orders another.
The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10 Page 62