Lose Yourself (The Desires Unlocked Trilogy Part Two) (17 page)

Valentina wakes. She is lying on her side, her knees up to her chest, her arms wrapped around her waist. She wonders why she is so compressed. She tries to stretch out her legs and realises that she is restrained from doing so by the edges of something hard. She unravels her arms and has the same experience. She feels the edges of what she is constrained in with her hands. It’s a hard box, lined with red silky material, and there are straps with little clips on them. It dawns on her that she is inside the very case the woman gave her in her dream. She is still asleep. And now she sees herself from above: a woman trapped in a suitcase. Why can she not climb out? She hears footsteps approaching, and next she sees a pair of shoes standing right beside the case: they are black leather, expensive, yet a little scuffed, the laces slightly lose. Whose shoes are these? She looks up, but all she can make out are a pair of legs in pinstriped trousers, and then they disappear into that London mist. Who is it? Theo? Francesco? She knows what will happen next and her throat is tight with anticipation. She cannot call out. Suddenly, the lid is slammed down on top of her and now she is in complete darkness. She is this man’s possession. It is her greatest fear.

She wakes standing. The empty case is discarded by her side and she is back inside the Tube train, trying to keep her balance as the train shuttles through the tunnels. She is still alone. Or is she? She feels that familiar prickle down her spine – the sense that someone is watching her. She holds her breath, afraid to turn and see who it might be. She can feel his breath now on her neck as he stands behind her, puts his arms around her waist and bends his head down to kiss her neck. His lips upon her tender skin make her shiver. He kisses her slowly; he keeps kissing her. She feels the skin on her neck puckering, and then a little stab of pain, something sharp cutting her. She struggles now, but he holds her even tighter in his arms; he is clamped on to her neck, sucking the love right out of her. The lights flicker inside the train and, for a moment, she sees herself and her assailant reflected in the windows. He finally lifts his head and stares back at her. Terror courses through her. It is Glen, his lips soft and red with her blood, his eyes gleaming.

‘I will take you from him,’ she hears him whisper, softly.

‘Valentina! Wake up, Valentina!’

She sits up with a gasp. The bedroom is almost dark, full of dusky shadows. Antonella is leaning over her, shaking her. ‘Valentina, are you OK?’

She comes to slowly, nodding mutely, looking around the room wide-eyed. It was only a dream. She is safe.

‘You were screaming,’ Antonella says. ‘You must have been having a really bad nightmare.’

Valentina nods, still feeling a shiver of fear when she remembers the vampire, Glen. ‘I was.’

‘What was it about?’

‘I can’t remember now,’ she lies. ‘It was just scary.’ She doesn’t want to start explaining about Glen to Antonella. She knows how easily spooked her friend can get. She pulls herself back against the headboard and looks out of the bedroom window. The curtains are still open. It is a bluey dusk outside, the street lights already on. ‘What time is it?’

‘Five to six. Can you believe it? We slept all day.’

It is an hour and a half before the opening – just enough time to get ready.

‘I’ll grab the bathroom first. You make some tea,’ Antonella orders, charging out of the bedroom.

Valentina sits for a few moments longer, letting her heartbeat slow. She is still shaken by those strange images in her dream. Tonight she will have to face Theo and Anita together. It could be her last chance to win her love back. She realises that it is more important to her than anything, even her debut as an erotic photographer in one of the hippest galleries in London. If she lets Theo go home with Anita tonight, she believes she will have lost him forever.

He has brought her to Paris with him. It is
beyond
anything she could have dreamt of. It is the shimmering silver lining to the very black cloud of her failure as a dancer.

After the disaster of her fall during
Pandora
, Maria had made matters so much worse by not continuing the duet. She had run off stage in a flood of tears, leaving poor Christopher stranded to continue the final act on his own. She had not only humiliated herself but shamed the whole company. She had let everyone down. She will never forget Joan’s shocked face. She dare not imagine how furious Lempert must be with her – not for the fact that she had fallen, but for running away. A real dancer would just get up again and continue. They were students, after all. It was the premiere. It was not a complete disaster if someone slipped up. And yet, to Maria, it was. She felt like she was falling apart. It was not just the dance but also the tumult of emotion she was feeling: the elation at her love for Felix, the desolation at his impending departure to France. She could not bear to face anyone, not even her beloved Jacqueline, who must have been sitting in the audience, horrified. So, before the final curtain had even dropped, she had fled the theatre, running alongside the Thames, wanting to hurl herself into its murky depths. It was at Waterloo Station that Felix caught up with her. He set the case with his camera down as she fell into his arms, sobbing desperately.

‘Shush,’ he said again and again, as he stroked her hair.

Eventually she calmed down and he loosened his hold on her, handing her a handkerchief. She wiped her eyes but, as soon as she remembered that dreadful moment again, as she felt herself falling, as she landed with a thump on to the stage, she buried her face in her hands.

‘Come, now,’ Felix said, gently, pulling her hands away from her face. ‘It’s not the end of the world.’

She shook her head mournfully.

‘Why did I run away?’ she wailed. ‘I can never go back now.’

‘Of course you can,’ Felix said. ‘You are an exquisite dancer. You must.’

‘I can’t face them,’ she said. ‘I have failed.’

‘My darling, we are meant to fail sometimes in life,’ Felix tried to explain, ‘so that we fight on, so that we can finally win . . .’

Yet his words did not console her. All she was thinking was that soon he would be gone to France and she would be all alone in London. She couldn’t face Jacqueline again . . . at least not for a few days. She couldn’t bear her mentor’s disappointment. Maria believed that if she really did have ambition, a burning passion to dance, then she would go back and face her failure and she would work hard to redeem herself. But she didn’t want to. She clutched Felix’s handkerchief, damp with her tears. It dawned upon her that she was not here in London fulfilling her own dream of being a dancer, but her mother’s dream that she might become a dancer. She wished she had never left Venice. And yet, if she had not, she would never have found Felix.

‘Bring me to France with you,’ she whispered.

Felix looked taken aback. ‘Darling, I’m sorry, that’s just not possible.’

She grabbed hold of his arm and pulled on his sleeve. ‘Please bring me with you.’

‘I can’t,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I have business there.’

‘I know,’ she said, ‘and I won’t interfere, I promise. I just want to be in another place for a week or two with you. I can’t bear to be without you.’

‘But what about your dance?’

‘Felix, I
can’t
go back.’

He shook his head. ‘Maria, darling, if you came with me, I would have to abandon you in Paris overnight . . . I don’t want to do that.’

‘I don’t mind. I’ll just sleep and rest and wait for you.’ She shivered in her scant Psyche costume and he pulled her to him. Neither of them noticed the curious stares of passers-by, for they were a small spectacle in Waterloo Station, Maria still dressed as Psyche, a white waif, in the arms of the stern, dark-haired man.

‘I love you, Felix,’ she whispered, and she felt him quivering in response to her words and, despite his age and his experience, she knew they meant so much to him.

‘All right,’ he said hoarsely, and her heart leapt with joy. ‘If you really are sure you don’t mind that I may have to disappear to sort out my business.’

She showered his cheeks with kisses. ‘Oh, yes . . . yes . . . I don’t mind.’

He pulled away from her and held her at arm’s length. ‘And no questions, Maria,’ he said, looking serious. ‘You must promise me that you never ask me anything about my affairs in France.’

She frowned, a little perturbed by what he had said. ‘But why not? You can trust me.’

His voice softened. ‘I know that, darling, but I just don’t want you to be concerned with things that have no meaning for us . . .’

‘Us?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, us. For are you not mine now?’

‘Oh, I am, Felix,’ she held him to her again.

All the way from Victoria to Folkestone, she sleeps in his arms. They stay the night in a dingy little bed and breakfast in Folkestone; she is so exhausted that she falls asleep immediately and he does not disturb her. They wake early the next morning, breakfasting on whale meat sandwiches provided by the landlady. Maria has never eaten anything quite so disgusting in her life, but she is hungry, so she forces it down. As they board the boat, she holds Felix’s hand tightly, her heart jittering with nerves. She is following this man back into his world, into the unknown. She is trusting him with all her heart. In her other hand, she grips her one small case – not even full. She had packed in haste, afraid Jacqueline would turn up and change her mind for her. She left her ration books on the kitchen table, with enough money to cover her lodging for the next month. Lastly, she had scrawled a note to Jacqueline – inadequate she knew.

Dear Jacqueline,

Tonight I understand I will never be the dancer you and my mother hope I might be. I am sorry to disappoint you but I do not want to continue my studies at the Lempert School. I am so grateful for all your help, but I need to go away for a little while. I am travelling with a friend who will take good care of me. I promise I will write and let you know where I am and I will write to my mother too. Please do not worry.

With all my love and affection,

Maria

She had not mentioned Felix by name, for she knew that it would make Jacqueline angry and worried to think she has fled with the Frenchman. In fact, she would not have been surprised if Jacqueline had followed her to Paris if she had known he was her companion.

On the boat, they eat lunch in silence. Maria is so shocked at her own actions that she is unable to speak, and Felix seems preoccupied, every now and again patting her knee or refilling her glass with water.

It is a calm enough crossing. Most of the five hours they sit on deck, holding hands, watching the English horizon disappear, searching for France to begin.

The scars of the war appear even deeper in Boulogne. The quays and all the neighbouring buildings are destroyed. She feels a twinge of fear in her heart. She is now in Felix’s country. She is now completely in his hands. After a wait of several hours, they board the train for Paris, squeezing into a compartment that they are forced to share with a couple and their five children. This experience seems to make Felix even more stern and taciturn, although Maria finds it a relief to chat with the mother, who is Italian – from Turin. She has spent the war years in England, her husband being English, but now her father is dying and they are returning to Italy to be with him in his final days, and hopefully to bring her mother back with them to their house in Surrey. Maria plays snap with the two eldest children as the others sleep, all apart from Felix, who is watching her with lowered lids as the train trundles through the night.

At Gare du Nord they say their goodbyes to the Italian family. The mother hugs her tightly, inviting her to their home in Surrey whenever she pleases. They disappear into the night, the mother’s Italian echoing after her, pulling on Maria’s nostalgia for home.

Felix leads her across the city of Paris. Unlike London, there are neon signs in the shop windows and young men and women bustling along the dark pavements. She feels a sense that the night has only just begun – so different from the dour evenings of post-war London. These people have just woken up; they are coming alive: intense-looking men with glasses and little beards, and gamine young women with loose dark hair, blunt fringes and heavily made up eyes. They are lost in their own dramas and hardly give her and Felix a second glance. She cannot help looking at them. They look so different from London folk.

Felix takes her south of the River Seine, into a district he calls Saint-Germain-des-Prés
.
They walk past cafés he tells her he likes to frequent. He names them, one by one: Café Flore, where Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir used to go before they became too well known; Deux Magots; Rhumerie Martiniquaise; and the Bar Vert. She wants to stop, eat something, have a glass of wine, but he hurries her along, telling her he wants to check into the hotel first.

She follows Felix down narrow cobbled streets, gently dipping between tall houses that lean this way and that. Everything is dark grey: the roofs, the walls, the cobbles, the shutters, the paintwork. Finally, he approaches a dilapidated-looking hotel.

Her stomach knots with excitement. It has been barely two days since he took her virginity on the river, since her disastrous performance as Psyche, and only twenty-four hours since they eloped. During all that time he has not touched her, apart from to hold her hand. Not on the train from Victoria to Folkestone, or in the bed and breakfast, not on the boat across the Channel, or the train from Boulogne to Paris. At the sight of the hotel, all thoughts of food are gone. What will happen now? Should she insist on her own bedroom? She knows, even before they walk through the door, she will not.

They enter a dimly lit lobby, thick with the odour of tobacco and cheap cologne. Maria takes in the peeling paint on the walls and the worn carpet. It is hardly the Ritz. She trails behind Felix as he approaches the concierge, a large woman with red hair piled on top of her head, and lips painted scarlet to match. She is smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper. As soon as she looks up and sees Felix, her eyes light up.

‘Monsieur Leduc! So long it has been since we saw you last. Welcome, welcome.’ She gushes in French, leaning across her desk, kissing Felix on both cheeks.

‘Good evening, Madame Paget. I would like to introduce you to my companion, Signorina Maria Brzezinska.’

In his native tongue Felix’s voice seems to have dropped an octave, and he appears even more refined a gentleman than he was in London.

Madame Paget looks at her with steely eyes, and Maria feels herself wilting under her gaze.

‘Good evening,’ Maria says, shyly in French. Despite the fact that the French Jacqueline taught her is nearly as good as her English, Maria and Felix always speak in English. Is it because they met in London, or is it the language of their love?

Madame Paget brusquely kisses her on either cheek. ‘Welcome,’ she says, immediately turning her attention back to Felix. ‘So is it your usual room you require?’ she asks Felix.

‘Yes, thank you.’

She takes down a key as he signs the register. ‘Things have changed, you know, since you were last here.’

‘How so?’ Felix asks her.

‘So many more foreigners in Paris now. Americans everywhere,’ she says, disdainfully, looking Maria up and down again, as she twists the key in her hand. ‘Everyone wants to come to Paris and, in particular, to our little district. They call themselves existentialists, but they have no idea what it means. All they really want is to dance all night and get drunk.’ Madame Paget sniffs, staring at Maria, her gaze arctic with disapproval. ‘And they closed down Le Tabou, did you hear?’

‘So where does everyone go now?’

‘There is a new club, just opened. All the great jazz will be there. It’s Vian’s place: Club Saint-Germain.’ She hands the key to Felix. ‘Enjoy your stay,’ Madame Paget says to Maria.

Maria heads towards the old cage lift, waiting dutifully at the gate for Felix as he gathers up their bags.

‘She is different,’ she hears Madame Paget say to him.

Her words unsettle her. Different from what or whom? Has Felix brought other women here? Of course he has, and what is wrong with that? He is so much older than her. How can she be so naïve as to think not? She should be glad to hear Madame Paget call her different. Doesn’t that mean she could be the
one
?

The room is tiny, the walls in as bad a condition as the lobby. It is completely dominated by a large brass bed. Maria notices that at least it is made up with clean crisp sheets. The room might be tatty but it is spotless. There is a sink in the corner, and a small window under the eaves of the sloping ceiling. She walks over to the window and opens it, leaning outside. Her chest constricts with excitement as she looks out across the skyline of Paris. It is a dream to be here, and with the man she loves – the man she hopes will marry her one day . . . maybe here in Paris?