Wounds Of Passion
Charlotte Lamb

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

PATRICK OGILVIE flew into Nice Airport on a hot summer afternoon. As he headed towards the taxi ranks, walking fast, his tan leather suitcase in one hand, he heard someone calling his name.

‘Patrick! Hey! Patrick!’

Stopping in midstride, startled, he turned and saw a girl hurrying towards him, looking more like a thin, graceful boy, in a black velvet jacket and sleek black jersey leggings, the only feminine thing about her outfit the jabot of white lace cascading down the front of her shirt.

‘Rae! What the hell are you doing here?’ Patrick was so taken aback that he couldn’t even pretend to be pleased to see her, his brows heavy over his blue eyes; but Rae Dunhill didn’t seem to notice; she flung her arms around him and hugged him.

‘Graham rang early this morning and told me you were on this flight.’ She was out of breath, laughing up at him. ‘Thank heavens I spotted you; I was sure I was too late and had missed you. I got caught in a traffic jam on the motorway.’

‘Our plane was delayed; we should have been here half an hour ago,’ Patrick explained unsmilingly, his body rigid as he disengaged himself. ‘You aren’t staying in Nice too, are you? I thought you were somewhere on the Italian Riviera?’

‘I am,’ Rae nodded, and he caught the secret glance she gave him.

Patrick’s frown deepened. He should never have told their joint editor, Graham Clive, that he was going to Nice, or at least not mentioned the time his plane left Heathrow. He might have known Graham would get in touch with Rae and tell her. What else had Graham told her?

‘I’m staying at Bordighera, not far from the French border, with my American friends, Alex and Susan-Jane Holtner,’ Rae told him. ‘You remember Alex? He’s the cartoonist. He does that very funny series about the American Indian in New York...you know, the one with the wigwam on top of a skyscraper.’

Patrick nodded indifferently. ‘Oh, I know, yes, crazy sort of humour.’

‘I love them,’ Rae said indignantly. ‘I was at school with Susan-Jane; she was my best friend. We’ve always kept in touch. She and Alex have a wonderful villa just outside Bordighera, on the coast road. They come every summer, for three months; they’ve been inviting me to stay for years, but I’ve always been too busy. This year, though, I finally managed to get some time off while they’re here.’

‘You certainly need a good break; you’ve been working hard for months,’ Patrick said.

‘So have you, Patrick. A few weeks in the sun is what you need, too,’ said Rae, sliding her hand through his arm as they emerged into the hot sunshine of Nice. Patrick crinkled his eyes to peer at the ultrablue sky, and, half blinded, slid dark glasses on to his nose.

‘Yes, I am tired. That’s why I’m here, to have a few weeks’ peace and quiet.’ He firmly pulled his arm free of her fingers, hoping she would get the message.

Rae wasn’t that easy to discourage. ‘You won’t get that in a Nice hotel! You must come back to Bordighera with me—it was Alex’s idea. He and Susan-Jane love to fill the villa with friends; they’ve been dying to meet you ever since I first mentioned you to them.’

Patrick’s face set like concrete. ‘No, thanks, very kind of them, but I’ve booked my hotel; I can’t change the arrangement now.’

Rae fizzed with impatience. ‘Of course you can! Don’t be silly! And the villa is so comfortable—much nicer than some impersonal hotel. We can ring up and cancel your hotel room from the villa. It will only take us a few hours to get to Bordighera; the motorway’s very fast.’

Typical, he thought grimly. There she goes again—trying to order me around! Ever since they’d started working together she had given him orders, rearranged his life, made decisions for him, as though she had some God-given right to do it, and he had never argued, because Rae Dunhill was someone he admired.

Only twenty-eight, she was already a best-selling writer. He had been a fan of her work long before he had met her and been invited to illustrate a new series of books she was working on.

Her children’s books were extraordinary: original, sensitive, clever. Like Rae herself, he had to admit. She was fascinating—but she was also a woman of incredible energy and drive, who liked to run the lives of everyone around her, and Patrick didn’t want to be managed by women any more, even for his own good.

‘Very kind of your friends,’ he curtly said, ‘but I would rather go to my hotel. Sorry.’ He didn’t even try to look sorry, glowering into the blue distance of sea and sky. ‘Look, Rae, I’m tired. I couldn’t cope with having to make polite conversation with strangers.’

‘I really think you should, Patrick,’ Rae began, and he suddenly lost patience, and turned on her, with an angry snarl.

‘Stop trying to run my life, will you?’

He felt her tense, staring. She had a memorable face, if not a beautiful one: thin, mobile, high-cheekboned, with brilliant dark eyes and thick, curly black hair cut short like a boy’s, flicked back behind small, neat ears.

Carefully, she said, ‘Sorry. Was I?’

‘Yes, and please stop it; I can run my own life!’

Patrick turned away, shifted his case to another hand, and walked over towards the scrimmage which was what passed for a taxi queue outside the airport, hoping she would take the hint and go. She didn’t, though; she followed him, watching him sideways. Patrick ignored her.

‘Graham told me about Laura,’ she softly said. ‘I’m so sorry, Patrick.’

His profile tensed, dark colour invading his face. ‘Graham talks too damn much!’

He had had lunch with Graham the day after his engagement was broken off; he couldn’t think, talk, about anything but Laura. Graham was a good listener; he had made quiet, comforting noises, and Patrick had talked until he was hoarse. Now he wished to heaven he hadn’t.

‘I suppose you told your friends all about it, which is why I’ve been invited to their villa?’ he bit out. ‘Well, I don’t need their sympathy—or yours, either, come to that. I’m not the first guy to get dumped by a woman, and I won’t be the last! I won’t die of it.’

‘Of course you won’t, and I didn’t tell anyone else about Laura!’ she said, her voice soothing; and that made him feel as edgy as a cat whose fur was being stroked the wrong way.

‘I don’t want to talk about her!’ Patrick muttered. He couldn’t bear to talk about Laura, and yet he couldn’t stop thinking about her. How long did it take to get over this sort of pain? It wasn’t like a headache, or even like a migraine—he had bad ones, sometimes, when he had been working very hard, whirring yellow lights and zigzags in front of his eyes turning him almost blind. At least you always knew they would be over within a matter of hours. You took a couple of pills and lay down in a darkened room to wait.

You couldn’t do that with the sort of ache he had at the moment; there was no way of knowing how long it would last, and no pill you could take.

‘It will take you ages to get a taxi in this mob,’ Rae pointed out. ‘At least let me drive you to your hotel.’

He hesitated, which, with Rae, was always fatal. ‘Come on,’ she coaxed, sliding her hand through his arm again, and he let her lead him across the road into the car park lined by palm trees.

As Rae unlocked her little red Fiat, he said roughly, ‘But only if you promise not to ask any questions!’

‘I won’t even mention Laura,’ Rae reassured, as they both got into the car.

But she had. Laura, he thought, the mere sound of the name opening a new wound in his heart. Oh, Laura, how could you do this to me?

When he was younger, he had never had a problem attracting girls—not that he was handsome; he had never been that. He had learnt in his teens, though, that he had something—he wasn’t sure what it was, but he did know that for some reason girls liked him. Maybe it was his build—he had shot up when he was sixteen, to almost six feet, and he had a good body, because he liked sport, especially at school. He wasn’t a beefy, hefty man, but he was wiry, his arms and legs tough and muscled, and he dressed well, kept his brown hair smoothly brushed.

But he had often thought it was his temperament girls went for—he was light-hearted, liked life on the sunny side, enjoyed being with other people, smiled a lot; and he hadn’t taken anything seriously until he’d met Laura Grainger and fallen in love like Humpty Dumpty falling off a wall.

And now, like Humpty Dumpty, he was in pieces, and not all the King’s horses or all the King’s men could put him together again.

He had known from the start that Laura didn’t love him as much as he loved her, and perhaps it was even her coolness that first attracted him? She was a challenge after years of finding it easy to get girls. One look at her, and Patrick had actually heard his heart beating. It had been an odd experience. That was how he’d known he was in love. What else could make you suddenly aware of your own heart beating? He’d never been aware of it before.

He had soon realised that Laura didn’t just look cool—she was cool. She was beautiful and clever, quite accustomed to being chased by men; and very different from the other girls he had dated. They had been eager to wait on Patrick hand and foot—done his washing, cleaned his flat, cooked him meals. Laura hadn’t; she was far too busy running her public relations agency. She wasn’t the domesticated sort, either. They ate out quite often, and when they ate at home it was usually in Patrick’s immaculate flat, and Patrick cooked the meal.

He had always enjoyed looking after himself; he was a practical man who was good at doing practical things.

Whether it was painting or modelling in clay or bronze, or ironing, cooking and cleaning, he was deft, with quick, capable hands; and he was intensely interested in detail. He had endless patience with objects, and people. Whatever the work, Patrick enjoyed the sense of satisfaction he got from a job well done, but it was even more of a pleasure to him when he was doing it for Laura.

Her name carried so many echoes, like remembered music—Laura, he thought; Laura, cool as a winter morning, distant as the dark blue horizon he saw as Rae’s red Fiat turned into the Promenade des Anglais and sped along beside the sea.

He had always had a dream girl at the back of his mind, the sort of girl he wanted to marry one day, and the minute he had seen her he’d known Laura perfectly matched that image—with her cat-like green eyes and pale golden hair, the slender elegance of her body and that fine-boned face.

He’d once asked Laura, ‘Did you ever daydream about the sort of man you wanted to marry?’ Of course, he’d hoped she would tell him he was her dream come true.

‘Of course, doesn’t everybody?’ she had smiled. ‘I knew it would have to be a man who was ready to share everything with me—fifty-fifty. Who was cheerful about cooking supper if I was tired, or would do the shopping for me when I had to work late, who didn’t expect me to wait on him the way my mother waited on my father, as if she were a servant and he were the lord and master. I made up my mind when I was very small that I’d never put up with that sort of relationship.’

How stupid could you be? he thought, his eyes dark. He had made himself everything he’d thought she wanted him to be; but she had still left him. Well, he’d never turn himself into a doormat for another woman. Doormats just got walked all over—the way Laura had walked all over him.

He had been a fool. He’d lied to himself, told himself she was too busy to have time for love; Laura was a high-powered and ambitious woman whose business drained all her energy and attention. Her emotions had been in deep freeze, but one day, he had believed, she would suddenly thaw, and he would be there.

He had been wildly wrong. Oh, she had suddenly thawed, but not for him—for another man.

For all Laura’s talk about being a modern woman who would only marry a man who treated her like an equal, for all her claim to want a modern man who was ready to share the jobs around their home, who would happily change a nappy or do the ironing, who could be gentle, sympathetic, caring...for all that, she had ended up by dumping him for a man who was the exact opposite of everything she had said she wanted.

Patrick was still reeling from the shock. Who could have guessed? Oh, now and then he had worried that one day Laura might meet someone who really got to her in a way that Patrick knew he didn’t. But never in a million years would he have suspected it could be Josh Kern.

The man Laura finally flipped over was an aggressive Yorkshire farmer who had put Laura’s back up the minute she met him. It had never occurred to Patrick that she might actually find Josh Kern attractive. Laura was sophisticated and clever—what could she have in common with a farmer Patrick saw as some sort of Neanderthal, who rode over anyone who got in his way, who certainly showed no signs of being gentle or caring? Patrick couldn’t even imagine the guy changing a nappy, let alone cooking or doing the shopping.

From the first day she met Kern Laura had been very vocal on the subject of how much she disliked him, and Patrick had believed her until the other day, when he had arrived at her flat to find Kern there and to see the way they looked at each other. He had known in a flash, and hadn’t needed to hear Laura admit she had fallen in love with the guy.

It showed in her eyes, in her face, even in her body. She had been alight with passion.

Patrick’s jaw clenched. Rae caught sight of his tense face and instinctively put out a hand, touched his arm. ‘Oh, Patrick, don’t! I hate to see you so miserable!’

He jerked his arm away, scowling. ‘Oh, for God’s sake! How many times do I have to tell you? Leave me alone, can’t you?’

Her kindness was like a fingertip laid on raw, burnt skin; the lightest brush was agony to him. He needed to be alone, to be quiet, to be still. Pain throbbed in his head, his veins, his heart. He wished to God Rae had not come to the airport.

‘Which hotel?’ Rae asked huskily a moment later, and when he told her, ‘Oh, yes, I know it, one of the nineteenth-century hotels, lovely ironwork balconies,’ she assured him, weaving in and out of the fast, busy traffic pouring along the Promenade des Anglais, the blue of the Baie des Anges on the right and the elegant façades of Nice hotels on the left.

‘How’s the new book coming?’ Patrick asked curtly, and Rae accepted the change of subject, beginning to talk about her work.

She had written her first children’s book when she was at university. A modern fairy-story, it was a runaway bestseller and was later made into a very successful film, with spinoffs from toys and games, making Rae Dunhill a very wealthy and famous writer.

Patrick had been very excited when she had asked him to illustrate the new series of books she was writing—international stories of mythology and legend. He’d leapt at the chance to work with a writer he admired, and he hadn’t argued when Rae insisted he did everything her way.

Maybe that was my trouble! Patrick thought, his eyes moody. Maybe I was too eager to please; both her, and Laura. I never argued with either of them, let them ride roughshod over me. Did Laura come to despise me in the end? Stop thinking about her! he angrily told himself.

They left the Promenade, spun round a corner and then another; the sea breeze blew his brown hair across his face, and he raked it back with an impatient gesture, felt Rae giving him sideways glances, and sensed her trying to read his mind, which made his profile harden, resisting her.

‘Here we are,’ she said, pulling up outside his hotel.

‘Thanks for the lift,’ he said and managed a reluctant, apologetic smile. It wasn’t Rae’s fault that his engagement had been broken off, after all; and it had been very kind of her to drive all this way, across the Italian border, to come to the airport to meet him. He shouldn’t have been so surly with her.

‘I enjoyed the drive,’ she assured him, then put a hand on his arm. ‘Patrick...’

‘Yes?’ Not more questions! he thought, a little nerve twitching beside his mouth, while behind his sunglasses his blue eyes burnt fixedly on the bluer sky.

‘Will you at least come over to Bordighera for the weekend? Alex gives famous barbecue parties on the beach; he’s planning one for Saturday, and it will be terrific fun. Do come!’

‘How many times do I have to tell you?’ he broke out, then his voice shook and he had to stop speaking. He felt her watching his averted face and wanted to scream at her, Stop staring! Will you just leave me alone? But he couldn’t; it would have been too much of a self-betrayal. He struggled to contain his rage, but felt as if his bones were pushing out through his tense skin. Then he caught sight of Rae’s small hands trembling on the wheel, her knuckles showing white. There was a silence for a few minutes and Patrick stared out of the window without seeing anything.

Why am I taking it out on her? he thought. She’s only a little thing, for all her bossiness and her self-assurance. It isn’t her fault.

‘OK,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll come for Saturday night, but just for the weekend, Rae!’

‘That’s fine,’ she said, breaking into a smile. ‘I’m so glad, Patrick; I’m sure you’ll have a great time, and you’re going to love Alex and Susan-Jane. They’ve got a terrific sense of humour.’

‘They’ll need it, if they’re to put up with me for a weekend,’ Patrick said with bitter humour.

Rae laughed, then said hurriedly, her voice husky and unsure, stammering so that it didn’t even sound like Rae talking, ‘Patrick, I know you said you don’t want to talk about it, but I have to ask...it wasn’t...Laura wasn’t...well, lately, I did wonder if...if she resented you being with me...being away so much, I mean? I remember she was upset when you had to change your plan to meet her in Amsterdam because I insisted we went back to Rome to do some more work there. That wasn’t what you quarrelled over, was it? She wasn’t...’ She broke off, very pink, then went on, ‘She wasn’t jealous over me, was she, Patrick? I’d hate to think I’d been the cause of you two breaking up.’

Patrick gave a curt bark of angry amusement. ‘Odd you should say that. Laura did make some stupid remark about you and me, hinting that I might be interested in you.’

Rae’s face turned scarlet. ‘Oh, no...’

‘There’s no need to look like that—that wasn’t why we split up! She was just using you as an excuse, and I told her she needn’t try to pretend she believed anything so crazy!’

Rae’s hot colour drained away, leaving her pale. ‘Yes, of course—it would be crazy,’ she said flatly.

Patrick was scowling up at the elegant white façade of the hotel, built during the Second Empire, with that faint trace of fantasy, of over-decoration.

‘She couldn’t possibly have believed it; she was only trying to use you as an excuse,’ he said grimly. ‘She wouldn’t have to feel guilty if she could kid herself I was interested in another woman.’

‘She must be out of her mind, preferring someone else to you!’ Rae broke out, and he laughed harshly.

‘I won’t argue with that!’

Rae watched him anxiously. ‘Patrick, I’m so—’

‘Don’t say sorry again!’ he snarled, and she flinched as if he had hit her.

The blare of a horn made them both look at the road. Nice was a parking nightmare, too many cars looking for too few parking spaces, and sometimes people double-parked, even triple-parked if they dared.

Rae’s car was blocking the narrow road, which was already crammed with parked cars. Another car wanted to get past—it was wider, and the driver was incensed.

Rae hurriedly dragged on the wheel, moving up on to the pavement to let the other car pass. The driver leaned over to bellow something very rude in French as he shot through, and Rae made apologetic gestures at him. Being a Frenchman, he mellowed enough to give her a forgiving wave and a shake of his head; she was, after all, chic and very female.

‘I’d better get out, before you get fined for parking on the pavement!’ Patrick said, opening the car door.

‘I’ll come and pick you up here, on Saturday morning, OK?’ Rae said as he collected his suitcase from the car. ‘Ten o’clock sharp? Then we can get to the villa in time for lunch. Make sure you have your passport.’

Patrick nodded and ran into the hotel. Minutes later he was in his room, which had a sideways view of the Baie des Anges through palm trees. He undressed and took a long, cooling shower, lay down on his bed wearing only a towel, and went to sleep with the shutters of his room closed, excluding the hot afternoon sun.

He had decided to go to the Côte d’Azur because it was not a place he knew well, and he had hoped he wouldn’t run into anyone he knew. He was still trying to make sense of what had happened to him, but it was hard when he felt as if he had broken into pieces—little jagged, dagger-sharp pieces that hurt like hell whenever he tried to touch them or explore the damage that had been done to him.

All he knew so far was that nothing in his life would ever be the same again, especially himself, and that he needed to be alone for a long time, to come to terms with what had happened to him.

He ate dinner in a little restaurant near his hotel, which, like many small French hotels, did not have a restaurant, went for a stroll in white jeans and a thin T-shirt, sat at a terrace bar drinking a beer, then went to bed listening to the constant hum of Nice traffic.

In the morning he got up, ate croissants, drank coffee, went for a walk down to the beach, and sunbathed until lunchtime. He ate lunch on the beach at a busy restaurant—a salad niçoise and French bread, a glass or two of white wine, a coffee. Then he went back to his room and closed the shutters and took a shower and went to sleep on his bed again, got up as evening began, ate dinner at the same restaurant, went for a stroll to the same bar, drank a beer, went to bed.

The days passed in a dull routine which soothed the anger and the pain in him by sheer monotony, and then it was Saturday and Rae arrived, as she had promised, her short black hair windblown after her drive across the border, her eyes bright, her smile warm. She was wearing a light summer dress in white cotton printed with violets and soft green leaves.

She gave him a wary look which tried to assess his mood. ‘Ready?’

He had bought himself a new overnight bag, which he had packed with a few things. He threw them into the back of her car, nodding, climbed in beside her, and they set off. In a short time they were on the toll road, heading along the coast, towards the Italian border. Rae drove with skill and daring, talking all the time about her ideas for the illustrations to the next set of stories.

They arrived at the border and queued up for nearly half an hour before they got through.

‘The border is always busy on a Saturday. Weekends are the worst times to cross,’ Rae said, then asked casually, ‘What are you going to do when we’ve finished the work on the books? Will you go back to York to live?’

He shook his head without looking at her. He wanted to be a thousand miles away from anything that could remind him of Laura. If he returned to the city where he had lived for years he would be bound to run into her all the time.

‘What will you do, then?’ Rae persevered.

‘I thought I might settle in Italy.’

He felt Rae’s leap of surprise, caught the quick sideways look she gave him. She hadn’t expected that. Well, good. He meant to be unpredictable and unexpected in future; he might as well start now.

They were waved through the border a few minutes later and drove along the autostrada to Bordighera, then turned down the hill from the old town towards the sea. Slowing, Rae leaned out of the car and tapped a security number into a panel beside a high metal gate, operated electronically. The gates swung open and they drove through, down a winding path between cypress trees, olive trees and bougainvillaea.

Patrick stared up at the villa they were approaching; it was enormous, built on a number of levels, a confusion of white walls, red-tiled roofs, dark window-frames and black-painted shutters. A fir tree grew close to the house, dropping pine cones on the paving-stones; geraniums tumbled out of pots, a tortoiseshell cat slept on a stone seat by the front door, and roses and lavender filled the air with fragrance; it was a lovely place.

‘Isn’t it magic?’ asked Rae, observing his reaction with pleasure.

Alex and Susan-Jane Holtner came out to meet them as they parked outside the villa.

‘Hi, there, welcome,’ Alex said, shaking hands warmly, smiling. He was a very tall, thin man of over forty, with reddish hair, a thin moustache, dark glasses and freckles.

‘Hallo. I’m Patrick Ogilvie—it’s very good of you to invite me,’ said Patrick, trying not to stare at the man’s wife too much. It wasn’t easy; she was stunning, in one of the tiniest bikinis he had ever seen.

Tall, sexy, with a ravishing model figure, she was years younger than her husband. Her rich chestnut hair framed her face in a wild tangle of curls, and she had wide blue eyes, a classical nose and a full, generous mouth.

‘Susan-Jane, my wife,’ said Alex Holtner, a gleam of humour in his eye, and Patrick shook hands with her, struggling not to look down at the warm ripeness of the body spilling out of the bikini.

‘Rae never stops talking about what a genius you are; we have been aching to meet you,’ she said, then, mischievously, ‘Alex is quite jealous of you!’

‘I wish I could paint half as well, but all I can do is draw cartoons,’ her husband said complacently, sliding an arm around her and patting her on the bottom.

‘Brilliant cartoons,’ Patrick said, smiling. ‘I’ve followed them ever since they started appearing.’

Alex grinned at him. ‘Why, thank you. Now the compliments are over, Rae will show you your room. If there’s anything you need, just ask. Oh, and we were going to eat lunch on the terrace—just salad and bread. Is that OK with you, Patrick?’

‘Sounds wonderful to me; it’s much too hot to eat much down here, I find,’ Patrick said.

‘And the wine makes you sleepy,’ said Susan-Jane.

‘But it’s such a good excuse for going to bed in the afternoon,’ her husband said wickedly, grinning down at her, and she gave him a little punch.

‘Don’t be naughty!’

Patrick felt a stab of pain at the intimacy between them; that was something else he was going to miss.

The party began before it grew dark that evening; people began arriving in cars or on foot from nearby villas, flocking into the villa gardens which tumbled down to the beach. The barbecue site was just above the beach, and close to the enormous blue-tiled swimming-pool set into a wide terrace, where they could set out chairs and tables around a bar counter from which drinks could be served. Earlier, Patrick had helped carry chairs, knives and forks, trays of glasses and plates down to the terrace, and watched Alex testing the lighting, setting up the music system.

Now there were brightly coloured lights strung through the trees and pop music floated out into the darkening sky. Some guests were swimming in the pool, a few were dancing, some wandered under the trees, and others sat by the bar and talked.

Patrick wandered between the various groups, took a glass of red wine, sipped it as he walked, paused to watch a girl swimming in the pool, strolled on to stare at the dancers, and felt his heart turn over violently as he caught sight of long, pale gold hair, a slender body in a silky white dress which ended at the thighs, and below that, long, elegant legs.

For a moment he thought it really was Laura. He took three hurried steps towards her, barely breathing.

Then the music stopped and the girl and her partner broke apart; she turned and Patrick hungrily stared, but her face was nothing like Laura’s. The thick beating of his heart slowed; he felt a burst of rage, as if the girl had deliberately deceived him.

She was staring straight at him now, as if she had picked up his intense concentration on her, half smiling. Her eyes were blue, not green, he noted dully. She was young, not more than twenty, her face heart-shaped, with a softness in the curve of the cheek and jawline, a fullness in the mouth, that was completely different from the delicacy of Laura’s features.

He turned away, heart-sick, finished his red wine, and put the glass down.

‘Come and dance!’ said a voice beside him, and he swung round, stiffening.

He knew it was her before he saw her; she had a light, young voice with a distinct accent. American, he thought. Some relative of Alex Holtner? He remembered over lunch some talk of a niece, a young art student, coming down that day for the party from Florence, where she was spending the summer studying Renaissance art. He had barely listened, indifferent to everything they said.

‘You do speak English?’ she asked, watching him secretly, her eyes half veiled by long, curling lashes loaded with mascara; shyness mingled with silent invitation in the way the full mouth curved in a smile.

The neckline of the silk dress was low; you could see a lot of golden tanned flesh, the cleft between her small, high breasts.

She moved closer, put out a hand to him; and he was tempted for a moment. He could pretend, just for a little while, hold that slender body in his arms, touch her and pretend she was Laura. It would be so easy.

Her fingers brushed slowly along his bare arm, sending a wave of self-disgust through him.

‘I don’t dance, thanks,’ he said brusquely, and turned and walked away. It would have been madness, like an alcoholic taking just one more drink, kidding himself it wouldn’t be a risk. He would never forget Laura that way, and it would have been unforgivable to use that girl as a puppet in his private fantasies. She was so young, skin like a peach, tiny fair hairs giving her that shimmer, that radiance; and she had had an unconscious sensuality in the swing of her hips, in the rich curve of her mouth.

She had aroused him with her faint resemblance to the woman he loved. He was too restless now to stay around at the party. He walked out of the glare of lights, away from the blare of the music, the laughter and voices, into the shadows of the trees, down through the gardens to the beach, took off his sandals and walked barefoot through the creaming surf. He headed off along the beach with no real idea of where he was going, sat down on the sand to stare out over the sea for half an hour or so, then got up, brushed the sand off his jeans, and walked back up through the gardens to the villa.

Everyone seemed to be down around the pool, eating and drinking; he skirted the lights and managed to slip into the house without running into anyone, went to his room, took off his clothes, dropped them on a chair, and got into bed, naked, because it was so hot.

Outside the party was in full swing, noisier than ever; but Patrick’s shutters were closed and he was so exhausted, emotionally and physically, that he drifted off to sleep.

He woke up some time later when the door burst open with a crash and men poured into the room.

Dazed, blinking, as the room light was switched on, Patrick sat up in the bed, a sheet falling off his smooth brown shoulders.

‘What the devil do you think you’re doing?’

The intruders fanned out around the room, watching him as if expecting him to do something violent. They were wearing uniform. His mind, still half asleep, registered: wasn’t that Carabinieri uniform? Policemen? he thought blankly; what on earth was going on? Had somebody burgled the villa while the party was going on, while he slept?

‘Patrick Ogilvie?’

Patrick’s head jerked round towards the man who had spoken in English, a short, broad man in his forties, black-haired, pugnacious-looking, who needed a shave, his olive skin rough around the jaw.

‘Yes, I’m Patrick Ogilvie. Who are you? What is all this? What are you doing, bursting into my room like this in the middle of the night?’

‘I am Brigadier Saltini of the Carabinieri. Please get dressed; I cannot interview you while you are naked in bed—do you always sleep naked?’ The man’s black eyes focused on Patrick’s clothes, thrown across the back of the chair. ‘Is that what you wore last night? What are those stains on the jeans? Salt water? Sand? You went down to the beach, then?’ He jerked his head, and one of the other men produced a plastic bag, put on transparent white plastic gloves, and began carefully sliding Patrick’s clothes into the bag.

‘Why is he doing that? Why are you taking my clothes away? What’s going on?’ Patrick was feeling chilled, distinctly disturbed now. He didn’t like the way these policemen watched him; there was a coldness in their eyes.

Calmly, Brigadier Saltini said, ‘How long have you been in bed, Mr Ogilvie?’

‘I don’t know—I’ve been asleep.’ Patrick looked at the time shown on his watch, which he had left on the bedside table overnight. ‘Two hours, maybe?’

‘Are you sure? You didn’t come to bed just around an hour ago?’

‘No, longer than that.’

‘Well, will you get up and get dressed, and come down to the station house, please?’ the brigadier asked him.

‘Not until I know what this is all about, and not in front of all these people!’ Patrick said stubbornly.

The brigadier nodded his head towards the door, and the other men filtered out.

‘A girl has been attacked,’ the brigadier said quietly, and Patrick looked at him in shock and disbelief.

‘Rae? Not Rae?’

The brigadier slowly shook his head, and watched him, frowning, as Patrick relaxed again on an unconscious sigh of relief.

‘That was not her name, Signore. She was a guest at this party—an American girl, with blonde hair. You spoke to her, I think. Do you remember talking to her?’

Patrick sat very still. ‘Yes,’ he whispered, sickened. ‘That girl?’

‘You were seen watching her,’ said the brigadier. ‘Staring fixedly at her, some witnesses said.’

‘She looked like...like someone I know...knew.’

Patrick pushed aside memories of Laura, thought of the other girl: her shy, half-veiled eyes, her young, golden skin, the beauty of her slim body, her instinctive, innocent sensuality.

‘She was so young,’ he said, to himself. ‘Barely out of her teens.’ Then he was struck by a new idea and looked sharply at the other man. ‘I hardly even spoke to her! Why do you need to talk to me?’

The brigadier’s hard black eyes watched him closely. ‘Her description of the man fits you exactly.’

CHAPTER TWO

TWO years later, Patrick was still having nightmares about what had happened to him over the hours that followed. Not every night, just whenever he was tense over something, worried, upset. On a night like that he would find himself back there, in that time, dreaming it over and over again, in slow, terrifying sequence.

The brigadier had left one of his younger officers in the room to watch him dress, and Patrick had instinctively hurried, putting on the first clothes that came to hand—clean underwear, clean jeans, a crisp blue T-shirt, socks, and another pair of trainers since the police had removed the sandals he had been wearing last night. He had needed to go to the lavatory urgently, been allowed to do so after the brigadier was consulted, had washed his hands and face and combed his hair, but he had had to leave the bathroom door open, and the officer had stood outside and watched him out of the corner of an eye.

‘Do you have to stand there?’ Patrick had burst out, and the man had nodded.

‘Orders, my orders,’ he said in thick English.

All that had been mere pinpricks; yet already Patrick felt uneasy, off balance; he was sweating, and yet he didn’t know why.

He knew he was innocent, after all. He hadn’t done anything to that girl. Yet his stomach was queasy, he felt his nerves jumping, and his mouth was dry. And his head buzzed with questions.

Why had she given them his description? What was going to happen now? Where were they taking him? What ought he to do?

‘OK, let’s go!’ the young officer said, grabbing his arm as he came out of the bathroom, pushing him towards the stairs. As Patrick stumbled he thought he heard the other man mutter, ‘Mi dispiace molto per lei!’ and only later understood what the officer had said—I’m sorry for you!

Patrick wasn’t sure what he had meant and couldn’t ask, but it had not been a friendly remark. It wasn’t pity or compassion he meant; there was hostility, distaste, in the young man’s eyes. It had been a veiled threat, meaning Patrick was going to be sorry for himself.

Self-pity wasn’t what Patrick was feeling, though. He was worried, he was frightened, but most of all he was angry; blazingly angry.

He hadn’t done anything—so why was this happening to him?

As he was hustled through the villa they passsed one of the main rooms of the house, a huge marble-floored lounge hung with cartoons, modern paintings and mirrors, where Patrick had sat earlier, talking to Rae before the party began, drinking chilled white wine.

It was full of people now—the guests from the party, he imagined—all seated, none of them talking. Faces turned towards the door; he recognised some of them, couldn’t put names to them. They stared at him, and he felt himself go dark red, in spite of knowing he was not guilty. Their eyes made him feel guilty.

That was when he realised they believed he was guilty—and the cold sweat sprang out on his forehead.

Alex Holtner was there, a jacket round his shoulders as if he was cold, sitting on a stool, looking pale and haggard. He stared across the room, and his eyes were full of loathing. He glared, clenched his fists on his knees as if longing to hit Patrick, then half rose as if to cross the room to get him. Susan-Jane Holtner was curled up on the floor next to her husband, leaning on him; she put her hands over Alex’s, whispering something, and Alex looked down at her, subsiding again.

A second later Patrick was past, being rushed towards the open front door. It was night, yet the front of the villa was ablaze with light. The police had set up floodlights; there were police cars parked everywhere; policemen moved to and fro, absorbed in whatever they were doing. But they all looked round as Patrick came out of the front door, froze, staring. He was pushed into the back of a police car just as another drove away, past him; and with a pang of shock he saw Rae in it. Her face was chalk-white, her eyes like bruises in her skin. She saw him at the last moment, turned her head to stare back, her pale lips parting, her eyes urgent, as if trying to say something to him.

Did she, too, believe he was guilty?

She knew him, for God’s sake! Patrick thought. She couldn’t possibly believe he would do something like this, surely? Surely.

He wished he could have talked to her, told her... But would she believe him? She looked so shocked. He felt sick. If even Rae believed he had done it! He was almost coming to believe he had, himself! It was the way people looked at you, the waves of hatred coming from them.

* * *

Years later, dreaming about it, he had the same disorientating impression of being trapped in a living nightmare; he kept hoping he was asleep and dreaming, that this couldn’t really be happening to him.

The difference was, years later, that he did wake up.

At the time, there was no escape for him. He had to go where they took him, helpless in their hands.

As the car drove out of the villa the policeman sitting in the back with him grabbed the back of his neck with one large hand, pushed his head down, and held it there. ‘Paparazzi!’ he grunted in explanation, and Patrick was feeling so dazed that for a moment he didn’t get the point.

Then, as the car slowed to turn out into the road, he heard an outburst of noise: people pressing around the sides of the car, pushing and rocking it, hands banging on the windows. Flash bulbs went off, the car was full of brightness exploding like lightning, people shouted and yelled; then the car shot forward at great speed and he was thrown forward too, and hit his head with a thud on the back of the seat in front. The policeman beside him hauled him up by the slack of his shirt, almost tearing it. Patrick felt dizzy, and his forehead hurt, throbbed. He would have a bruise there tomorrow.

The drive was a short one, and he was forced to go through the same humiliating procedure of crouching down out of sight as the car shot into the police car park, then the officers put a blanket over his head and ran him into the building.

The first person he saw was a man in a white coat who seemed to be a doctor. He told Patrick to strip again, then gave him a medical examination in great detail. To Patrick it felt as if the man was crawling over his body with a microscope; every orifice was examined, every pore in his skin, every hair on his head, it seemed. Samples of his blood, urine, even his perspir ation, were taken.

Swabs were taken, too, from under his nails, in his mouth, and other places, while Patrick suffered it, white-faced and dark-eyed with humiliation.

By the time he reached the brigadier’s office he was even angrier, and he was thinking coherently again. The first shock had worn off; he was fighting back.

‘I want a lawyer,’ he said as soon as he saw the senior officer again. ‘I’m entitled to a lawyer; you can’t refuse to let me see one—an English-speaking one—and I think I’d better speak to the British consul first and ask his advice on who should represent me.’

‘All in good time. It’s your right, of course, but this is only a preliminary interview—we aren’t charging you yet—so first we have to establish that you are going to need a lawyer, surely?’ The black eyes were shrewd, watchful, hard. ‘Or are you admitting your guilt?’

‘No!’ The word exploded. Patrick paused, flushed and tense. ‘No,’ he said more calmly. ‘I haven’t done anything to be guilty about.’

‘Well, then, no need for lawyers and consuls,’ smiled the brigadier bluffly, and Patrick almost began to feel easier, then the man added, ‘Yet!’ and the fear kick-started into life again.

‘Sit down, Mr Ogilvie,’ the brigadier said. ‘I am going to have some coffee—would you like some?’

Patrick nodded.

‘Black? Milk? Sugar?’

‘Black, sugar,’ Patrick said, and the brigadier lifted a phone, gave an order, leaned back in his chair, and tapped a pencil on the desk in front of him.

‘This interview is being recorded...’ he began. ‘Those present are...’

There were two other men, as well as the brigadier, one in uniform, one in civilian clothes. Their names were given; Patrick didn’t ever consciously remember them later. He remembered their faces, most of all their eyes, watching him.

Patrick was to spend hours in that room that night, endlessly going over the same ground. The brigadier was a thorough man, patient and obsessed with detail.

He kept coming back to Patrick’s behaviour at the barbecue, asking him why he had stared at the blonde girl.

‘It was noticed, the way you couldn’t take your eyes off her. We have lots of witnesses.’ He picked up a pile of typed pages; the leaves of paper fluttered as his fingers riffled them.

‘All these people saw you staring fixedly at her. Why were you staring, Mr Ogilvie?’

It was the one point on which Patrick felt any guilt. He was uneasy every time they went back to that. Half sullenly, he muttered, ‘I told you—she reminded me of someone.’

‘Who?’

Patrick’s upper lip was sweating. ‘A girl I know.’

The brigadier watched him relentlessly. ‘Miss Laura Grainger?’

It was like cold water in the face. Patrick sat still, white. ‘I never told you her name. Who told you...?’ Rae, he thought; Rae told him. Did Rae see me staring at that girl? Did Rae pick up that haunting similarity, the shifting, fragmentary likeness to Laura which had deceived him for a moment? One minute it had been there, the next it had gone, dissolving like a reflection when a hand broke the still surface of the water, yet leaving ripples and broken particles where it had been.

What had Rae thought when she saw him staring at the girl? What had she thought when she heard the girl had been attacked, that the girl had given Patrick’s description to the police?

Was that why she had told them about Laura? Did Rae think he was guilty, that he had attacked that girl because she reminded him of Laura?

And that was the core of his uneasiness: that in his mind now he was confusing her with Laura. He had to keep reminding himself that it wasn’t Laura who had been attacked, but some other girl, a stranger, someone he didn’t even know.

He tried to stop muddling them up like that, but as the night wore on and he got more and more tired he kept forgetting. His mind blurred their images; they merged inside in his head—pale, slender girls with long gold hair and lovely bodies. They danced in his mind like candle-flames; dazzling and blinding him, making it even harder to think clearly, to keep his attention on the questions being asked.

‘You were very distressed by the ending of your engagement to Miss Grainger,’ the brigadier softly insinuated. ‘Angry and humiliated. Any man would be—to lose his woman to another man! You must have wanted to kill them both.’

His face tightened, white and bitter. He had. Of course he had. Not Laura! he thought quickly; he would never have hurt Laura. But Kern. He could kill him, and feel no flicker of regret.

‘And then at this party you saw a girl who reminded you of the woman you loved, the woman who had betrayed you, rejected you. How did you feel, Mr Ogilvie? What were you thinking as you stood there staring at her so fixedly?’

He had thought it was Laura; for one crazy, terrible second he had thought she had followed him to Italy, had come to say she had changed her mind, that she had realised she loved him, not Kern, after all.

All that had gone through his head in a flash as he stood there staring, and then she had turned and he had realised his mistake. He had fallen from a great height at that moment: all the way from heaven to hell.

He stared at the brigadier, not really seeing him.

‘You had a strange expression on your face, some witnesses say,’ the policeman said, flicking through the reports again, without taking his eyes off Patrick. ‘You turned away, and then the girl walked over to you—what did she say to you, Mr Ogilvie?’

‘She asked if I wanted to dance,’ Patrick absently said, had already told him a hundred times. Sometimes Patrick almost invented something new to say, simply to break the monotony; but he wasn’t crazy enough, yet, not stupid enough, yet. Once he did that he was lost.

‘Is that all she said?’

Patrick’s temper snapped again; his mouth writhed in a sneer. ‘Surely your observant witnesses have told you that!’

The brigadier gazed stolidly at him. ‘If you would bear with me, Mr Ogilvie. I have to be certain about details. So, Miss Cabot came over to you—’

‘Cabot?’ It was the first time the girl’s name had been mentioned; Patrick couldn’t help the startled question.

The brigadier waited, watching with the patience of a fisherman who thought he might have got a bite on his line.

‘That’s her name?’ Patrick asked.

‘Antonia Cabot,’ the brigadier told him, and there was a strange echo inside Patrick’s head, as if he had heard the name before; and maybe he had, from Rae, or the Holtners, when they had spoken about Alex’s niece, the art student, coming from Florence.

‘Antonia Cabot,’ he said huskily, aloud, and shivered. It was a beautiful name and she was lovely—what had happened to her last night?

The brigadier watched him shiver, his eyes narrowing.

‘A beautiful girl,’ he said softly. ‘Young, blonde, desirable...’

Patrick thought of her as he had first seen her, dancing with another man, her body moving sensually, lightly, with gaiety.

She had come over to him, smiled at him, with that shy, unconscious invitation; and he had been bitterly angry because she looked so much like Laura, but wasn’t Laura, and because...

He swallowed, feeling sick, perspiration on his face.

‘You wanted her,’ the brigadier said, and the words echoed what he had almost thought just now, what he wished he could pretend he had never thought.

He almost screamed, Yes! because it was true, although he wished it weren’t. Yes, he had wanted her. He had looked at that lovely face, that lovely body, and wanted her, but she wasn’t Laura, and he wasn’t interested in a one-night stand with some unknown girl just because she looked like Laura, so he had turned his back and walked away.

Why had she told the police that the man who had attacked her looked like him?

Or was him? Had she actually said it was him? Why would she say that? Had she lied? Or simply been confused? The questions ran round and round inside his head.

‘Why won’t you tell me exactly what happened?’ he broke out. ‘You keep asking me questions, but you never answer mine. Was the girl attacked at the party? In the gardens? In the house? Didn’t anybody see, hear, anything? There were all those people around; surely somebody must have seen something?’

‘They saw you, Mr Ogilvie,’ the brigadier said, ‘walking down through the gardens, to the beach. They saw you. She saw you go, too, the girl, Antonia Cabot. She was sorry for you. She thought you looked unhappy, and her uncle later told her about your broken engagement. So she followed you, down to the beach, with some idea, I suppose, of talking to you, comforting you. She saw the trail of your footsteps along the sand and followed them, fitting her own feet into them, she said; it was some sort of game, I gathered.’ The brigadier looked faintly indulgent. ‘She is very young. And then suddenly someone jumped out at her from behind a boat; she caught a brief impression by moonlight of a face, light brown hair, a T-shirt, jeans. She thought it was you, playing a trick on her; she began to laugh.’

‘It wasn’t me; I never saw her on the beach!’ Patrick said.

The brigadier just watched him, then went on, ‘Then something hit her on the head, and she lost consciousness. She doesn’t know how long she was out, but when she came round she had been gagged with sticky tape; she couldn’t scream, and her attacker had taped her eyes, too, so she couldn’t see him, but he spoke to her, she said. In English; it was an English accent. She said it sounded like your voice.’

‘I only spoke to her once; I said one sentence to her! How could she possibly know what I sound like from that?’

‘You were on the beach, Mr Ogilvie?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Your clothes were covered in sand and salt water.’

‘I sat down on the sand for a long time, but I didn’t see that girl, and I did not attack her!’

‘Tell me again why you went down to the beach, Mr Ogilvie,’ the brigadier began again, and Patrick felt as if his head was going to explode.

‘I’m tired; I need sleep,’ he said wearily. ‘You can’t keep me here all this time without letting me see a lawyer. I insist you let me make a phone call to the British consul.’

‘We have telephoned a lawyer on your behalf and he will be coming to see you quite soon,’ the brigadier promised. ‘And the British consul will see you in the morning. After the identity parade.’

Patrick froze. ‘Identity parade?’

‘Miss Cabot is in hospital tonight, but I’m told she is prepared to see if she can identify you in a line-up tomorrow. She is a very brave girl.’

* * *

Patrick saw an Italian lawyer, small, thin, dark, and red-eyed from being woken up in the middle of the night, who had a thick summer cold, which made him sneeze constantly and depressed him.

‘The girl’s evidence is bad news, Signor Ogilvie. She identifies you almost certainly, by sight, and by sound, places you on the spot at that time, as do a number of other witnesses, and you yourself admit you were there on the beach at that time. Nobody else from the party was down there on that part of the beach. They all have alibis; they were all with other people at the relevant time. And you had recently broken up with your fiancée, which makes the police feel they can prove motive as well as opportunity.’

‘I didn’t do it!’ Patrick hoarsely said.

‘Of course,’ the lawyer said, smiling indifferently. ‘They haven’t yet got the forensic results—the various tests on you and the girl. They will come in tomorrow or the next day. The problem is...the attacker was scared off before he actually raped the girl; apparently he heard voices, people coming towards them, and ran off, and then the girl ripped off the tape on her mouth and eyes, and crawled into the sea—’

‘Why on earth did she do that?’

The lawyer looked coolly at him. ‘Common behaviour pattern in these cases. She felt dirty; she wanted to wash herself clean; the sea was the nearest place. She says she swam for some time. She may have been feeling suicidal, of course. The police didn’t mention that, but I’d say it was on her mind.’

Patrick leaned forward, feeling sick, dropping his head into his hands. ‘And I thought I had problems,’ he muttered. ‘God, what a mess.’

His lawyer said quietly, ‘Unfortunately, she practically wiped out most of the forensic evidence—which would be good, if you were guilty, because it would mean they couldn’t prove it, but as it is our case that you are innocent it makes our job harder as we can’t prove you didn’t!’

‘Are you saying it’s hopeless?’ asked Patrick, and the lawyer shook his head.

‘Of course not. No, but let’s hope she doesn’t pick you out at the identity parade.’

‘She will,’ Patrick said with grim certainty.

‘Be careful—that sounds like a confession,’ his lawyer quickly said.

‘I can’t help what it sounds like—I can only keep telling you, I didn’t do it. But she thinks I did. I told you what happened at the party. I wouldn’t dance with her; I turned my back on her and walked away. She’ll pick me out.’

The lawyer looked shocked. ‘Are you saying that she lied to the police? That she knows it was not you, but has accused you of it, deliberately, just because you wouldn’t dance with her? I find that very hard to believe, Mr Ogilvie, and so will the police.’

‘Women do unbelievable things,’ said Patrick bitterly. ‘You can’t trust them or rely on them. She’ll pick me out, you’ll see.’

She did.

Patrick stood in a line of other men of roughly his build and height and colouring, staring straight ahead. First of all, the girl must have looked at them through a two-way mirror on the wall opposite—then after a few moments some policemen and two policewomen came out of a door, and she was with them, walking slowly, unsteadily.

Partrick kept his eyes ahead, as he had been ordered to do; she walked along the line and looked at the men one by one. Patrick’s heart began to beat hard and thickly as she came nearer, then she was in front of him and he looked straight at her.

She was deathly pale, her gold hair tied back starkly from her face, dark glasses on her nose, hiding her eyes. But he saw the evidence of what had been done to her, and his stomach clenched in sickness. There were bruises like blue stains on her cheekbones, under her eyes, around her puffy, discoloured lips, and bite-marks on her neck above the high-collared cotton sweater she wore.

There was a heavy silence; the policemen all looked at Patrick. She looked at him, too, her eyes hidden by the dark glass shielding them.

Then she put out a hand that shook visibly, almost touched his shoulder, then turned away so fast that she almost fell over. A policewoman put an arm around her and helped her out, her body limp and trembling.

‘I didn’t do it!’ Patrick called out after her; but he was grabbed, hustled back to the cells, and locked in until the brigadier was ready to talk to him again.

Patrick spent another day in custody, of relentless questioning, while they waited for the forensic evidence to be analysed. Halfway through the long, long evening, when his eyes were drooping and he was shaking with exhaustion, the brigadier was called out to take a phone call.

He came back looking shaken. He stood in front of Patrick, staring at him, very pale, while Patrick, even paler with nervous dread by then, stared back at him.

‘What?’ he broke out. ‘What’s happened now?’

The brigadier took a deep breath and said rather stiffly, ‘Mr Ogilvie, it is my duty to offer you a most sincere apology on behalf of myself and this company of Carabinieri. We accept your innocence of the charge, and you are entirely free to leave.’

Patrick was so tired that for a minute he didn’t understand. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘You are free to go, Mr Ogilvie,’ repeated the brigadier. ‘The man who attacked Miss Cabot is in custody in San Remo—he raped another girl, there, last night, and was caught, and, during interrogation, confessed to having tried to rape Miss Cabot. When his hotel room was searched certain objects were found, which had been taken from Miss Cabot during the attack; a ring and some underwear. There is no doubt—he was the man.’

Patrick sat as if turned to stone. ‘Was he English?’

The brigadier nodded. ‘I gather he does have a superficial resemblance to you, too. The same colouring, build, height. That must have been what deceived Miss Cabot into believing it was you.’

Patrick did not believe that. She had described him to the police because she had resented the way he walked away from her after she asked him to dance. Oh, it might have been an unconscious response; but Patrick did not believe it was pure coincidence.

‘We will be happy to drive you back to the villa in a police car, right away,’ the brigadier said.

Patrick shook his head. ‘Am I free to leave Italy? I would rather return to my hotel in Nice immediately, if that is OK with you. I don’t want to go back to the Holtner villa. Could my belongings left there be sent on to me? Could you arrange that? I don’t want to see any of those people again. If you need my evidence later, of course, I’ll come back, any time.’

The brigadier was eager to cooperate, to do as he wished. A car took Patrick over the border that night, back to his hotel in Nice. He stayed there a few more days, mostly alone in his room, lying on his bed, sleeping and waking, obsessed with the events of those days and nights.

They never did call him to give evidence; Patrick read about the case later, in the Italian papers, and discovered that the arrested man had been convicted of a series of rapes along that coast that summer. Antonia Cabot’s name was only one among many and she had not even been called to give evidence.

Rae came to see Patrick in Nice a few days later. She had rung first, found him out, and left a message to say she was coming. He was waiting.

They went for a walk through the narrow, labyrinthine streets of the old town, with its medieval houses and street markets, crumbling plaster on walls, geraniums tumbling down from pots on balconies and ancient shutters with cracked and blistered paint, and made their way up alleys and through tiny cobbled squares.

‘I don’t know what to say; it’s been terrible. It must have been a nightmare for you,’ Rae told him, giving him uncertain, nervous sideways looks.

‘Yes,’ said Patrick grimly, unsmiling.

‘They questioned me about you for hours,’ Rae said.

He had guessed that, guessed where the brigadier was getting all his inside information from, who was giving them clues about his mental condition, his possible motive for attacking a woman. There was only one person who knew all about Laura, all about Patrick’s moods since his engagement was broken off.

Rae stared at his hard profile, burst out, ‘Oh, Patrick, I’m sorry. I feel so badly about this. I never thought you did it; I know you better than that! But...but...they seemed so sure; they said she had identified you, and you were in such a strange mood, you were angry over Laura, you were upset—I didn’t know what to think.’

He stopped, his hands driven deep into the pockets of a black linen jacket he was wearing over black jeans, and stared broodingly over the steep streets of old Nice falling away below them.

‘What do you want me to say, Rae? That I understand? That I forgive you for believing I could have tried to rape a young girl?’

‘I didn’t believe it, Patrick!’

He turned and looked at her directly, his face bleak. ‘Oh, yes, you did, Rae. I saw your face when they were driving you away. That girl identified me, God knows why. You believed her, although you’ve known me pretty well for a long time, and you fed the police with the sort of evidence they needed to convince them I had a motive, too. If it wasn’t for sheer damned luck I might be waiting trial now, on that charge, with very little hope of getting off. So if you’re expecting me to say I forgive you and it doesn’t matter that you believed I was a vicious rapist, I’m afraid you’re out of luck.’

She bit her lip, very pale. ‘Of course I know how you must feel—’

‘I doubt it! A month ago I would have described myself as a very happy man—I was about to marry the woman I loved, I was doing work I found exciting, I had friends I thought liked me, cared about me. And then it all fell apart. I found myself in a police cell, my engagement off, Laura gone, being accused of attempted rape, and finding myself suddenly without any friends, not even you, Rae. No, I don’t believe you have a clue how I feel.’

Rae looked uneasily at him. ‘You’ll get over this; work is what you need to help you forget. Maybe you should start work on the next set of illustrations sooner than we planned?’

‘No,’ Patrick said with force. ‘I’m not working with you any more, Rae.’

‘Don’t be too hasty about this; you’ll feel differently when you’ve had a few weeks to get over the shock.’ Rae was still trying to tell him what he felt, what he thought.

He looked coolly at her. ‘No, Rae. I have made up my mind.’

She went red then, angry and flustered. ‘You can’t break our contract, Patrick! The publishers wouldn’t let you walk away. You have a legally binding contract for this series, remember!’

‘If I had gone to prison for attempted rape, would you still have wanted me to illustrate your books?’ he bit out. ‘Would the publishers talk about legally binding contracts? Or would you all get the best possible lawyers to find a way of breaking our contract?’

Rae stared at him without answering. She didn’t need to reply; they both knew what would have happened if he had been convicted.

‘Goodbye, Rae.’

He turned and walked away, down the alleys and winding streets of Old Nice, towards the blinding blue of the Baie des Anges. He didn’t know what he would do now. His future was utterly empty—without a job, without Laura, without any clear idea of what he wanted to do. All he knew was that he was angry; very angry. With Laura, with Rae, with fate, but most of all with that girl, Antonia Cabot.

He hoped he would never see her again, because if he did he wouldn’t be responsible for his actions, and, just though he felt his rage to be, the girl had been through a terrible ordeal, too. Whatever her reasons for accusing him, whether it had been conscious resentment or unconscious hostility, she had suffered enough; he had to walk away and just shrug off his anger with her, which did not make it any easier to bear.

Bottled up and suppressed, his rage simmered inside him for the next two years, fed by his nightmares, by his new realisation of just how fragile was the identity, how easy to break.

He drew on the savings he had, studied art in Rome for a year, and then moved on to Florence to study there, living in the cheapest student accommodation, eating bread and cheese and fruit, drinking rough cheap wine, and earning some money at weekends by working in a bar at night, painting portraits of tourists in the streets by day.

One of his tutors got him a job each summer, during the vacations, in Venice, as a courier with an international holiday company, shepherding tourists around the city, helping them find postcards, and presents to take home, finding them when they got lost, and getting them where they had to be each day.

And then one day as summer ended, before art classes began again, he was on a vaporetto crossing the Grand Canal, from St Mark’s square to the Accademia, where he meant to sit for an hour in front of the work of Giovanni Bellini, the artist he was concentrating on that week. He had his sketchpad under his arm, pencils, charcoal and crayons in his pockets; his mind was full of his favourite Bellini, the Virgin and child.

There was a little huddle of people on the riva, waiting for the vaporetto to arrive. Patrick idly glanced at them and then went rigid, staring.

Among them was Antonia Cabot.

There was no doubt about it, although she had changed. She didn’t look so young any more; she didn’t dazzle like a candle-flame. She was subdued, snuffed out, in a dark blue dress, cotton, a simple sleeveless tunic, and over that a short black cotton jacket.

Her pale gold hair had been cut very short, giving her the head of a boy; she had lost a lot of weight, was skinny, almost fleshless, and although this was a very hot summer she was pale, as if she rarely went out.

She was staring at the reflections on the water—the shimmering dancing images of churches, palaces, houses, rose-pink, aquamarine, cream.

As the vaporetto chugged slowly into place she stiffened, staring down at the reflection of it swimming towards her, the reflections of the faces of passengers. Of Patrick. Slowly, Antonia Cabot looked up, straight into Patrick’s brooding eyes.

He grimly watched the last vestige of colour drain from her face, the stricken look come into it, the darkening of her sea-coloured eyes, the trembling of her generous mouth.

Then she turned and fled, away from the Accademia, up a side-street, her small black shadow running ahead of her on the painted walls.

Patrick had to wait until the vaporetto had docked and the barrier had been raised before he could jump ashore and set off after her.

CHAPTER THREE

ANTONIA CABOT thought for a moment that she was seeing things. She stared down at the canal, watching his face quiver on the surface of the water.

It was the face she had seen so many times in nightmares, the face which had haunted her for the past two years. For a long time she had been afraid to go to sleep. She had sat up all night, heavy-eyed, white-faced, because she was afraid of meeting that face in her dreams.

Even now, although it happened less and less often, she still woke up shaking from one of those dreams every so often; and even when she was awake she wasn’t safe; something would trigger a memory and she would catch herself thinking about him.

Frozen, she had stared at the reflection, expecting it to disappear any minute. But it hadn’t. It had merely come closer, grown clearer.

Taking a deep breath, she had slowly looked up at last, and the hairs had risen on the back of her neck.

It wasn’t her imagination. He was there, a few feet away, staring back.

She hadn’t forgotten a detail of his face: the smooth brown hair, the threat of the brows over cold blue eyes, the strong nose, the mouth...

It was looking at that hard, angry mouth that ended her paralysis. She fled, bolted for home, like a hunted animal, getting curious looks from everyone she passed. It was rare to see anyone running in Venice. Tourists wandered along, staring; local people took their time too in that sultry summer heat. Antonia ran all out, hurled herself round the next corner, shot down an alley, through a shadowy court, across a bridge.

It was easy to lose yourself in Venice; there were so many ways to weave in and out between the blank-walled rear of buildings which faced the canals. It was a maze. Antonia already knew her way round it.

Instinctively as she ran she kept listening for the sound of following footsteps. Sound was magnified by high walls, by water; you could hear a whisper on a quiet day.

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