Lucy Gordon - One Summer in Italy…

‘I took a refresher course so that I could start teaching and that’s when I met-’

‘Bruno Vanelli.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you fell for him because you’d never learned to be worldly-wise. I didn’t understand that until I spoke to Liza, and discovered that your life had given you little experience of the world, and of men. But why didn’t you tell me yourself?’

‘Didn’t we agree that the less I told you the better?’

‘True.’

She gave a brief, mirthless laugh. ‘Anyway, there isn’t much to tell. He sought me out. He was good-looking and I was flattered. And it seemed so romantic that he was Italian. That’s how stupid I was.’

‘Ah, yes, we have that image,’ he murmured ironically.

‘If I’d been a bit sharper I’d have known that the truth is different-nothing to do with amore.’

‘And what do you think the truth is?’

‘It’s a stiletto,’ she said bitterly, ‘a slim dagger, small enough to be concealed until the last moment. And then it slides in so smoothly, so easily, so cruelly. And the victim never sees it coming until it’s too late.’

Matteo gave a crack of laughter that, had she been in the mood to notice, matched her own in bitterness.

‘That may sometimes be true, signorina, but not always. It can be the poor, crazy Italian who is deluded, and the English enemy who deceives and tortures. The blow is so unexpected that it seems to come out of the sunshine, but afterwards there is only darkness. Where we use a stiletto, you use a bludgeon, but the destruction is just as final.’

Holly stared at him as it dawned on her that this was no idle speculation. He was speaking out of a savage misery as deep as her own.

‘Do you have an English enemy?’ she asked.

She saw him stop, tense and control himself before saying, ‘Go on telling me about Bruno Vanelli.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-’

‘I said go on.’ His voice was harsh.

Something had happened. She wasn’t sure what, but the air was jagged with anguish.

‘Go on,’ he said again, more calmly. ‘I need to hear the rest.’

She turned away, trying to escape the force of his presence. Now the hardest part of the story confronted her, and she could feel her courage ebbing away. It had been painful enough to live it. To relive it was more than she could bear.

‘Tell me everything,’ he commanded.

‘No,’ she choked, ‘not everything.’

‘Every last detail that you remember,’ he said remorselessly.

When she did not speak he came up behind her and seized her arms, trying to turn her towards him, but she resisted.

‘I can’t help you through the pain,’ he said. ‘I can only tell you to endure and not yield to it. It’s the only way to survive.’

Something in his voice made her relax, even against her will. He pulled her around to face him and she stood there, too distraught to move. He was watching her carefully, his dark eyes seeming to hold her even more firmly than his hands.

‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘The only way.’

‘So now tell me,’ he repeated. ‘Everything.’

AT LAST Holly nodded and he led her to a chair, urging her down gently, then retreating to stand by the wall a short distance away. After a moment she began to speak.

It was hard to talk about her happiness, now that it was gone for good. She tried to function as a machine, but she was remembering the sweetest time of her life.

‘He took me out to dinner, we were together all the time. He seemed to want nothing except to be with me.’

She fell silent as memories assailed her.

When I’m with you, love of my life, I seem to come alive. You’re there in my dreams. I think of nobody else.

‘He said such things,’ she whispered. ‘They sounded wonderful-’

‘And yet words mean so little,’ came his voice from just behind her. ‘We all know that in our hearts but we won’t let ourselves believe it, because when we do-there is nothing.’

‘Well, maybe “nothing” isn’t so terrible,’ she said, almost angrily. ‘Maybe it’s best.’

‘That depends on what you had before, or what you think you had before.’

‘Yes, I suppose it does,’ she said heavily. ‘I know now that he chose me because I’m good at copying other people’s work. He showed me a photograph of a miniature that he said belonged to his family and asked me to imitate it. He said the original was kept in a bank, because it was so valuable.

‘Then he invited me to come to Italy with him, to meet his family in a little town near Rome, called Roccasecca. I’d never heard of it before but when I got there I loved it. It was just like every romantic picture I’d ever seen of a small Italian town. I should have realised it was too perfect to be true.

‘When we got there, the family seemed to disappear. There was always some reason why the meeting had to be postponed, although he took the picture to them and told me they loved it.

‘I suppose I began to be suspicious then, but I tried to ignore it. It had been a lovely dream and I couldn’t face the fact that it was over-no, it wasn’t over. It had never started. It had been false from the beginning. He’d played me for a sucker, and boy, was I ever a sucker!’

She gave a hard laugh, looking into the distance, remembering.

‘I was the love of his life, his angel,’ her lips twisted in irony aimed at herself, ‘his beloved. Imagine that! Oh, I believed it. I ached to believe it. All the tired old clichés, amore, mia bella per l’eternità. And all the time his brain was calculating like a cash register.’

Holly stopped again, but held out a hand to ward him off, lest he dared insult her with sympathy. But he didn’t, only watched her with wary eyes.

‘I must have seen it then,’ she said at last, ‘but I blinded myself to the truth a little longer. After all, there was nothing specific, just vague suspicions. Then he told me to go home, and he’d join me later.

‘My flight left from Rome, so I had to get the train from Roccasecca. Bruno dropped me off at the railway station but he didn’t stay, even though there was a two-hour wait for the train. I guess he was anxious to get away from me. While I waited I remembered something I thought I’d left behind in my room. I checked my luggage, and that was when I found it.’

‘The original of the miniature?’

‘How did you know?’

‘It was fairly obvious where this story was leading. As you say, he came looking for a talented artist with a gift for copying. He chose England because he isn’t known there, plus you would be useful in getting the real picture out of Italy.’

‘It sounds so obvious,’ she said with a sigh.

‘Obvious to me, perhaps, but there’s no need for you to be so hard on yourself. What did you do next?’

‘I didn’t know what to do, so of course I did the wrong thing. I called him and told him what I’d found. He tried to sweet-talk me, and the more he talked, the more scared I became. I hung up. Then I ran out of the station, got rid of the picture, and went back.’

‘That wasn’t wise. You should have gone in the other direction.’

‘I know, but I’d left my luggage at the station. And when I got there the train was due out in ten minutes. It seemed best to get on it. I didn’t think anyone’s suspicions could have been aroused by then,’ she explained.

‘Bruno Vanelli is known in that area. He has a criminal record, and when that miniature vanished he was the first one they thought of. He was never more than one step ahead but he could have been safe if you’d got the picture out of the country. Hence his rush.’

‘But if you know all this, why am I telling you?’

‘Because there’s a missing piece of the puzzle that only you know. Exactly where did you leave the picture?’

Holly rose hastily and began to pace the floor, torn two ways, but he stopped her, fixing her with a gaze from his dark, brilliant eyes.

It came over her, with frightening intensity, how much trust she was being asked to put in this man. He was an officer of the law. If she told him what he wanted to know, what would happen next? Were the police waiting for her with handcuffs?

She looked up, terrified, and after a moment he nodded.

‘You have to trust me,’ he said. ‘I know that your experience has left you mistrustful, but if you don’t trust me, what will you do?’

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered.

Something in her rebelled at this situation. Inch by inch she was being drawn under his control and she would fight that to her last breath.

‘I don’t know,’ she cried.

Matteo took hold of her. His hands were hard and warm, reassuring even as they commanded.

‘Trust me,’ he said softly. ‘You must trust me. You do, don’t you?’

‘I-’

‘Tell me that you trust me. Say it.’

‘Yes,’ she whispered. She hardly knew she was saying the words. Something stronger than herself had taken her over, and it was no use fighting. She felt hypnotised.

‘Tell me where you left that package.’

‘There was a little church near the station,’ she said, trying to speak through her confused thoughts. ‘It’s very tiny with a-’

‘I know it well. I have friends in Roccasecca. Liza and I were visiting them, which is how we came to be on the same train. Go on.’

‘The church was empty when I went in, so I put the picture behind the altar. There’s a curtain covering a wall with a hole at the bottom. I slipped it in there.’

‘Are you telling me the truth?’

‘Yes-yes-’

‘Have you left anything out? Think hard.’

‘No, I put it there, I swear I did.’

At last he released her. ‘If you’re lying-heaven help us both.’

‘I’m not lying. But someone might have found it by now.’

‘Let’s hope not. You’ve been luckier than you know. Roccasecca was the birthplace of a mediaeval saint. The picture is reputed to be him, and it belongs to the very church where you left it. If we can find it, we can argue that no theft was committed, since it was returned to its rightful owners.’