A Night on the Orient Express (34 page)

Yours, forever and always

Jack

He put down his pen and looked at the letter. He felt drained. He had resisted the urge to beg. After all, he wanted Adele to come of her own accord, not because she felt obliged. He pressed a sheet of blotting paper carefully over his words, folded the letter into three and slid it inside an envelope, then addressed it. That was further than any of his other letters had ever got. They were still in a stack, in the bottom left-hand drawer of his desk. He supposed it had been cheaper than a therapist, the ritual outpouring he had indulged in.

With a sigh, he swivelled round in his chair to look to the back of the room, where an easel stood. On it was a painting.

Petra, he thought, was a talented girl. One of the better students he had nurtured over the years. When he had asked her to copy
The Inamorata
, she hadn’t blanched at the task. She had done an excellent job. Only the most expert of analysts, the most exacting of critics, would have spotted the slight lack of confidence in the strokes, the merest hesitancy. It might not have the controlled abandon of a genuine Zeale, but it would fool ninety-nine per cent of viewers.

Yet despite this, for Jack, the spirit of the painting wasn’t there. It was too far removed from its subject. The source of the inspiration hadn’t been in front of the painter. He remembered Reuben’s words when he had handed over the painting once it was finished. ‘I feel as if I have painted true love,’ he told Jack. At the time, Jack hadn’t really understood what Reuben meant. By the time he had realised, Adele had gone and all he had left of her was the painting.

And so
The Inamorata
had given him both comfort and pain over the years. A reminder of what he had had and what he had lost. Even now, Adele’s eyes were upon him, shining with the mixture of adoration and desire that he hadn’t appreciated until it was too late.

There was a tap on the door, then Petra slipped in with his afternoon cup of tea.

‘Is everything all right?’ she asked him, sensing his mood. She was used to his capricious nature, knew that he could slip from convivial to sombre in the blink of an eye.

‘I . . . think I’m just tired,’ Jack told her. He managed a weary smile. ‘Perhaps one too many glasses of wine with lunch.’

She put the cup down on the desk in front of him. She saw the letter, and held out her hand.

‘Would you like me to post that for you?’

Jack stared down at it. It would be far easier to slip it into the drawer with all the others. That way he wouldn’t be left wondering. That way, he was in charge of his destiny. If he posted it, he would have the agony of waiting for a reply.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, please. That would be very kind.’

Imogen came out of Jack’s apartment in a daze. Outside, the bright sunshine hit her, and the white of the Zattere opposite rose up before her like a mirage. The sky and the water and the buildings were outlined with a sharpness that matched the clarity in her mind. A flotilla of gondolas glided past, serene yet totally focused on their destination. That was, she realised, exactly how she felt. Serene but focused. Suddenly the future was clear.

She wondered how much Adele had known this was what she needed, and if she had been sent to Jack Molloy to learn to recognise love when she saw it? Adele was wise and intuitive. It wasn’t beyond her to second-guess what Imogen had been going through. She would have known that a simple conversation wasn’t enough. That Imogen had to work it out for herself.

Either way, she didn’t care. She knew what she had to do. Danny had known better than her what they meant to each other, and hadn’t been scared to acknowledge it, yet Imogen had backed away. What had she been so afraid of? Love, when it was pure and right and tangible, didn’t need any justification or analysis. She always went with her gut when she bought a painting, so why hadn’t she been able to accept what they had for what it was?

Did she have some deep-rooted fear that the bad boy and the good girl couldn’t have a fairytale ending? Just because the rest of Shallowford might be sceptical? If that was what she was so afraid of, then why hadn’t she done what Nicky had done, and married someone predictably safe and dull and boring?

She hurried back along the cobbles to the hotel. She wondered what Danny had been doing while she was gone. She longed to touch him, and kiss him, and tell him what he had known all along. What he had already had the courage to declare, because he was a better person than she was. She burst into the room, the smile on her face wide, her eyes bright with anticipation.

It was empty. Still and silent. It was as if no one had ever been there. The bed was perfectly made up, the once-tangled sheets smoothed to perfection and covered over. Everything was in its place, as if the room was ready for the next influx of guests. There was no sign of Danny or his belongings. His clothes, his bag, were all gone.

She sat on the edge of the bed as the energy and hope drained out of her. She was too late. She had driven him away, with her prissy, middle-class career-obsessed life-plan that left no room for spontaneity or change or compromise. No wonder he’d scarpered. He was probably thinking he’d had a lucky escape. He was probably already in some backstreet bacaro, chatting up a sultry Italian girl with fire in her eyes and passion in her soul, who didn’t think she was better than she ought to be . . .

She let out a little scream as a figure stepped through the curtains of the balcony and into the room. She jumped up, her heart pounding.

It was Danny. He stood there, in his jeans and a tight T-shirt and bare feet, a cup in his hand.

‘You frightened the life out of me!’

‘Sorry. I was having a coffee on the balcony.’

‘I thought you’d gone.’

‘Course not.’ He frowned.

‘Where’s all your stuff?’

He laughed. ‘The butler came and unpacked it all. Everything’s hung up in the cupboard. He’s taken my jacket away to dry-clean it.’

Imogen didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She put her face in her hands.

‘What’s up?’ He came and sat beside her. He put his arm round her. She melted into him. ‘Didn’t it go well, the meeting?’

She managed to nod. ‘Yes, it was fine. It was . . . very interesting.’

She didn’t really know where to begin. Her brain was still processing everything: her grandmother’s affair, the fact that she would soon be in possession of a painting that would blow the art world’s mind. It changed everything.

‘Danny . . .’

‘Yeah?’

‘I’m not going to go to New York.’

Not a muscle in his face flickered.

‘What about . . . your career?’

‘I can still have that. I can work with Oostermeyer and Sabol, as a consultant. I’ve thought about it. I’m more use to them on this side of the Atlantic. I’m going to get a London office. Go to New York whenever I need to. Get some more clients.’

He was nodding, trying to keep up.

‘Well,’ he said finally. ‘Good for you.’

His voice was flat. She took a deep breath.

‘And I’m going to carry on living in Shallowford.’ She wriggled round so she was looking straight into his eyes. ‘With you . . . ?’

She couldn’t judge his reaction. He was the master of the blank expression, his features inscrutable, his eyes giving nothing away.

He stared at her for a moment. ‘I don’t know about that. I’ll have to think about it.’

She felt her heart deflate, and hope shrivel. It felt like a burst balloon inside her. She supposed she deserved nothing more. She couldn’t expect him to drop everything and welcome her with open arms. Then she saw the corner of his mouth twitch. He was, she realised, trying desperately not to smile. He looked up at the ceiling, but there was laughter in his eyes as he finally spoke.

‘I think Top Cat might have something to say about your demands on my attention. He gets very jealous, you know. He’s not good at sharing. He’d be a nightmare to live with—’

His words were cut off as Imogen gave a shriek of indignation and pushed him back onto the bed. She scrambled on top of him and pinned his wrists down with a mischievous grin. She looked down at him and his face was alive with joy.

‘Well, of course,’ she told him. ‘If you want your life to be ruled by a mangy ginger kitten, that’s up to you.’

He slid his hands up her thighs, under her dress. ‘Hell hath no fury like a kitten scorned.’

For a few moments they stared each other out. Then she felt his fingers slide under the lace of her knickers, touching the bare skin. She couldn’t keep up the pretence a moment longer. She melted down into him.

Danny McVeigh. She was going to live with him, in his fairytale cottage. They would walk hand in hand through Shallowford, proud to be together. She shut her eyes, and in her mind’s eye she conjured up her school exercise book, with its tattered red cover. And on the back page, in inky splats, was written, over and over, Imogen McVeigh. Imogen McVeigh. Imogen McVeigh.

B
y late afternoon, Emmie and Archie were exhausted. An opportunistic gondolier bore down on them just at the moment when their resistance was weakest. Minutes later, they found themselves lying back on a mound of richly upholstered cushions, gliding through secret hidden canals, miles away from the touristy crowds they had experienced earlier.

‘I sing for you?’ asked the gondolier eagerly. ‘I serenade you, yes? The happy couple?’

‘Oh no,’ said Archie hastily. ‘I think you’ve got the wrong end of the pole. Ha ha.’

The gondolier frowned. Emmie looked down at her lap and smiled.

‘It’s free,’ said the gondolier. ‘No charge.’

‘But we’re not an item,’ said Archie, pointing between him and Emmie. ‘We’re not a couple. Just friends. Amigos?’ He frowned. ‘No. That’s Spanish. How do you say “friend” in Italian?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Emmie.

‘Friends?’ said the gondolier. He shook his head. He didn’t look remotely convinced. ‘Not friends, no.’ He pointed between the two of them. ‘I can tell.’

Archie looked at Emmie. ‘He won’t be happy unless we let him sing.’

She shrugged. ‘When in Venice . . .’

Archie turned back to the gondolier and gave him the thumbs up. ‘Go for it, mate. Sing your heart out. Go for your life . . .’

The gondolier beamed and burst into joyful song. Emmie put her hand over her face, laughing with embarrassment. Archie chewed his thumbnail, his eyebrows raised, but he couldn’t help grinning too. The two of them exchanged glances, both equally self-conscious but amused.

‘We’ve been conned,’ said Archie. ‘I’ll have to give him a mammoth tip now. We fell right into that one.’

That evening, it took Archie and Emmie a while to find a place to eat they both agreed on. Eventually they found one, opposite a gondola repair yard – a proper authentic Venetian bacaro which served cicheti, the Italian version of tapas. They sat for hours, grazing on bruschetta and bocconcini and fritto misto, then a huge bowl of risi e pisi, the house signature dish, which was translated as rice and peas but was so rich and creamy and melting that seemed too prosaic a title. At the end, they forced down panna cotta with blackberries, and the owner stuck a bottle of grappa on their table.

‘Be rude not to,’ said Archie, and poured them each a glass of the fiery liquid.

By the time they came out, the sun had long gone from the sky. Emmie hooked her arm through Archie’s and they began to sway their way gently along the canal-side, languid with rich food.

Twenty minutes later they were hopelessly lost.

‘I’m sure that bridge there leads into the square that leads to the other square that leads to the bridge near the hotel,’ Emmie pointed vaguely.

‘It looks just like every other bridge to me.’

Several very large raindrops began to fall.

‘It’s going to pour.’

‘We’d better run.’

‘We don’t know where to run to!’

The sky opened and it seemed as if the entire contents of the lagoon was being emptied over their heads. They were surrounded by grey, infinite grey, the buildings closing in on them, the canal as black as squid ink beside them. There was no one in sight. Everyone had wisely vanished indoors. They opened their map but in seconds it was wet through and completely illegible. Archie took off his jumper and put it over Emmie’s head, pulling her into a doorway. There was just enough of a portico to shelter them. Next to him, she trembled with cold. He looked down at her, her hair plastered against her head, her mascara running down her cheeks. He felt an extraordinary urge he had never really felt with anyone before. Not in this way.

He wanted, more than anything, to kiss her.

She was looking up at him. ‘This is the wettest rain ever.’

He couldn’t stop staring into her eyes. She drew back a little, disconcerted.

‘Are you OK?’ she asked.

No. No, he bloody wasn’t. He’d been hit by a thunderbolt and he was going to do something very stupid if he wasn’t careful. He turned away.

‘Archie!’

‘We might as well just make a run for it,’ he said. ‘We’re soaking as it is.’

He stepped out from the doorway and into the deluge. Water was trickling down the back of his neck. He was freezing. Freezing outside – and in. His heart felt as cold as granite.

Emmie trotted beside him, anxious, trying to keep up, then her face lit up.

‘There we are!’ she said, pointing at a nearby passageway. ‘It’s this way. Definitely. I remember that fountain. We’re not all that far after all.’

He didn’t reply. She grabbed his hand, tugging him. ‘Come on!’ she urged him. ‘You’ll catch your death.’

Maybe, thought Archie, that would be the answer. A quick case of double pneumonia that would carry him off and put him out of his misery. Death in Venice. How very appropriate. He hurried along with her nonetheless, his chivalry overriding his despair. Emmie needed to get back – she needed to get warm and dry as quickly as she could.

When they got back to the hotel, Archie shot into his room. ‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ he mumbled. ‘I don’t feel too great, to be honest.’

He didn’t look at her before shutting the door. He sat down on the bed, dripping all over the eiderdown. He shivered. The sooner they got back to England, the better, he thought. Before he made a fool of himself.