Liberate Yourself (The Desires Unlocked Trilogy Part One) (32 page)

‘Make love to me,’ she whispers.

Santos shakes his head, his jewel eyes gleaming at her wickedly. He hasn’t finished taking pictures. He pulls a lace scarf from the washing line and binds it around her breasts. He takes a picture, and kisses her nipples, which have pushed through the fabric. And so the game continues. He puts her in position, takes a photograph, and she begs for him to make love to her, yet all he will give her is a kiss on whatever part of her anatomy he has photographed. He unwinds the scarf, takes a jug of rainwater from the terrace and tips it over her naked breasts, before taking a picture. He kisses her wet breasts, and Belle wonders if that image will look like her spent tears upon her naked flesh, the sunshine sparkling through the drops of water like shards of broken heartache.

Now he makes her lie down on the blinding white stone of the terrace. It is hot from the sun, and warms her naked skin. He takes a picture of her lying on her side, with her back to him. Now she lies on her back and he takes a picture of her stomach and navel with one of the white roses upon it, petals scattered. He pauses for a moment, and she sees him picking up a sack he slung on his back before they left her bedroom.

‘What’s in there?’ she asks.

He smiles enigmatically at her, opening the sack and pulling out a Venetian mask. He hands it to her.

‘It is one of Lara’s masks,’ he says.

She stiffens at the mention of her rival’s name.

‘I don’t want it if she made it,’ she says, trying to hand it back to him.

He looks amused.

‘But she made it for you, Belle.’

Belle frowns.

‘Why would she make me a mask?’

‘Because she is my
friend
, not my lover. She is one of my oldest friends here. I always stay with her when I come to Venice.’

‘Oh,’ says Belle, fingering the mask. She remembers the red-haired woman and her hostility towards her. ‘It didn’t look like that to me, Santos. I think she is in love with you.’

Santo shakes his head.

‘Maybe,’ he sighs. ‘But she understands how I am. That is why she made you this. It is a token of her respect. You should not reject it, Belle.’

Belle looks at the mask. She has to admit she has never seen anything so finely crafted. It is light as a feather in her hands. Its surface looks like porcelain, covered in tiny black lines, the eye holes delineated with long black lashes. It is decorated around the edges with swirling gold patterns filled in with the palest lilac, white and black spirals, petals, curves and dots. In the centre of the mask, between the eyes, is set a crystal, from which plumes a peacock’s feather.

‘Put it on,’ Santos commands.

She holds it to her face, and he ties it snugly at the back of her head.

‘Now,’ he whispers into her ear, ‘you really are free, my blackbird. You can do whatever you wish.’

Her anonymity makes her bolder. She sits with her back against the terrace wall, facing Santos. He picks up the camera again and waits for her. She raises her knees, slowly moves her legs apart to reveal herself. He pauses, looks at her with interest.

‘Tease me, Belle,’ he says.

Instinctively she brings her right arm down between her legs, pushing her fist against the white stone, grinding her flesh into it, so that her knuckles are grazed. She wonders if the most private part of herself will be visible in the picture. The thought thrills her. She feels it igniting the expression in her eyes behind the mask, so that she challenges the camera with her gaze.

You are all to me
.

Santos takes his picture.

‘Again,’ he says. ‘Tease me again, Belle.’

She flips over on to her stomach on the hot stone, so that she is facing the wall. She spreads her legs again and bends her knees, twisting her neck and head around to look at Santos, bringing her right arm behind her and touching herself with her hand. She pushes her index finger into her soft self, and makes a tiny gasp. Click. Santos has caught it. She pushes herself again with her finger, and she can hear Santos’s breath quicken. He puts the camera aside and crawls towards her across the hot terrace.

‘That is a very provocative pose,’ he says, leaning over her, kissing her neck.

‘I thought that was what you wanted,’ she replies, twisting her head around further so that she finds his lips, silencing him.

He peels his trousers off, lies on top of her. She feels the length of him in the small of her back. She wants to offer herself up completely to him. She puts both her hands behind her back and guides him into her. She doesn’t care about the hot stone rubbing her stomach and breasts, or the glare of the sun emblazoning them; all she wants is to feel Santos inside her. If they could take a picture of this, how she would treasure it. The moment he comes inside her, when she can feel him at his most vulnerable and yielding. All hers.

Afterwards they lie side by side, hand in hand, staring at the gulls circling in the blue sky. Her heart is flying with them, dancing in the sky above. This is her and Santos’s Venice, a paradise of passion. Despite her abusive marriage, she feels free inside her heart because of the love she has for this man, lying beside her on the hot stone.

‘I love you, Santos.’ She leans up on her elbow and looks down at her lover, trying to imprint the image of his face inside her memory.

The silence hangs between them. What she wants now is for him to say those words to her. She waits, yet Santos remains silent, looking up at her with an unfathomable expression.

The tension is unbearable. She turns away from him, and
sees her little bellows camera, sitting where he left it on the terrace. She leans over and picks it up, and without looking through the lens hastily turns around and takes a picture of Santos.

‘Oh no you don’t,’ he says, grabbing it off her. ‘Pictures of me are not allowed.’

‘Well that’s probably of your ear anyway. I didn’t even have a chance to see what I was taking a picture of.’

Santos sits up and closes the camera, clicking the lid shut.

‘I’ll take this with me tomorrow,’ he says, pulling on his trousers. ‘I’ll try to find a discreet pharmacy where I can get the film developed.’

She sniffs at him in mock disdain.

‘If you get those pictures developed in Venice,
everyone
will know about them.’

Santos never takes the film to be developed. It is something Belle does later, when she has finally built up the courage to do so. This day will be the last she ever spends with the love of her life. It is a golden fragment of her existence that she peruses time and time again in years to come. As if this white terrace in the sun is a promised land she has lost the way to. For this last day is an erotic memory made poignant by loss. Each time she relives it, she is fortified and has no need for another man. She will wait for Santos to return. And buried deep within her womb, unbeknownst to them, is the token of their love.

This faith in Santos is what saves Belle, for when she leaves her apartment today, she will face the hardest trials of her life. And always when she remembers her walk home from Belle’s apartment to Louise’s house, from joy to pain, she remembers the seagulls screaming.

SHE IS SWIMMING WITH THEO. IT IS THE SUMMER JUST
past, and they are in Sardinia. She swims behind him, watching the light dancing on water, its blue as brilliant as his eyes when he turns to her. The sun has turned him as brown as a native of the island; it looks incongruous when he speaks with his American accent. They wade out of the water, pick their way across razor-sharp rocks and lie down on the sand to dry off. There is no one else on this strip of beach, the rocks putting off any others. Theo and Valentina have it to themselves. They could make love. They did so just the day before, under the sun, with the steady crash of the waves urging them on. Yet today the two lovers lie side by side, naked as the day they were born, holding hands, wordless and staring at the unblemished sky. Valentina realises she wants to hold the purity of this moment for ever. The simple pleasure of being in the present, feeling her fingers curled inside Theo’s warm hand, of connecting her life to his,
of not worrying about tomorrow.

Yet Theo sits up and pulls his hand away from hers. She feels a little grief at losing his touch, and yet she doesn’t reach out for his hand again. She has too much pride. He picks up his snorkel.

‘I’m going back in,’ he says.

‘Don’t go out too far,’ she warns him.

He cocks his head on one side, smiles at her.

‘Are you worried about me?’ Always there is this game between them. Theo trying to pull her out, make her admit she cares more than she says she does.

She shakes her head, trying to feign indifference.

‘I just don’t want to have to go in and rescue you. That’s all.’

She watches him saunter off towards the waves admiring his tall, lean figure, and wonders what he sees in her. She looks at him for a while, flipping under the water and up again, but the sun is so bright it hurts her eyes, and she finds she has to close them. The heat of the late afternoon seeps into her bones, and she imagines herself sinking into the warm sand beneath her, drifting away under the shade of their parasol.

When she wakes, it is cooler. She shivers and opens her eyes. There are clouds now in the sky, and the sun is sliding behind one of them. She sits up and looks out to sea. It has turned from serene blue to stormy grey. She has no idea how long she has been asleep. She stands up and walks towards the water. There is no sign of Theo. She glances back at the beach,
but his towel is exactly where he left it next to hers. She steps into the sea, letting the water lap her ankles, and peers towards the horizon. All she can see are the buffeting waves, and blankness. No Theo. She turns and looks behind her at the beach again, but it is definitely empty. Where is he? She tries to remain calm, but there is a voice in her head berating her.

Why did you let yourself fall asleep? You should have watched him
.

He is not as strong a swimmer as her. She has been warned of rip currents off this beach. Why did she let him go in alone? She begins wading out to sea, looking into the clear blue water, but of course it is a ridiculous thing to do. If he is gone, he is gone. Fear strikes her heart, panic fills her mouth. She can’t lose him, not him as well.

‘Valentina!’

She spins around. There, standing on the beach, a net full of shells in one hand, is Theo. He is waving to her with his free hand. The relief rushes through her, so that she feels her legs almost buckle. In the same moment, anger courses through her, as she launches herself through the offending waves back to shore.

She runs towards him across the beach, and half of her wants to hurl herself into his arms and cling to him. He is waving to her, smiling innocently, unaware of her terror. She strides towards him, and instead of embracing him, she swings her arm through the air and slaps him across the face with all
her force. He steps back in shock, slowly raises his hand to his cheek.

‘Where did you go?’ she screams, unwanted tears sprouting in her eyes. She is so angry with him for making her lose her cool. She tries to calm down, but she can’t.

‘I just climbed over those rocks to some pools.’ He waves his arm behind him and lifts the net. ‘I was collecting some pretty shells for you.’

She grabs the net and smashes it against the rock.

‘You should have told me where you were. I thought you had drowned,’ she continues to yell.

‘You were sleeping, I didn’t want to disturb you,’ he says carefully, looking at her as if she is a wild animal he has to tame.

‘Well you should have woken me up,’ she shouts at him. She is shaking with the force of her emotions, and it makes her even more enraged.

She has to get away from him now. She has to be on her own. She turns to walk back to the towels, but he grabs her by the arm, forces her to turn around and look into his piercing gaze.

‘Valentina,’ he says gently. ‘It’s okay.’

‘No it’s not.’ She pulls away from him, swallowing down her tears. She stomps back to her stuff on the beach and hastily packs it up. She is shocked. She hit him. And instead of getting angry with her, he looked at her so tenderly. He looked at her with love. It frightens her more than anything.

As they pick their way across the rocks, back towards the car, she hears a distant roll of thunder, and sees a flash of lightning far out to sea. That night, as the rain pounds upon the roof of their little seaside villa, Theo makes love to her with such passion it takes her breath away. She is beginning to unravel, and as she trys to gather herself up, he is undoing her all over again.

She hears that thunder again as she lies in her bed in Milan. She packed away her incomprehensible behaviour that day in a box inside her head. When they returned from their trip to Sardinia, it was never mentioned again. She has never wanted to revisit it. She is ashamed of her hysterical outburst. Now, weeks later, she is lying in bed on her own, remembering her terror at the thought that he might have drowned. She turns on her side, squeezes her eyes shut and tries to go back to sleep, yet the thunder is still drumming in her head. In fact the thunder isn’t in her head at all. It is a real noise. And it is not thunder. She rolls on to her back, opens her eyes and listens carefully. There it is again. A heavy, dragging sound, as if someone is moving furniture in the flat. She feels her breath quicken. Is there someone in her apartment? No, she is just imagining it. Yet there is the sound again, followed by a click, as if someone has opened a door. She holds her breath. What should she do? Should she get out of bed and investigate? Or should she ring the police? Her phone is in the kitchen, so she is trapped if there is someone in the apartment.

She sits up in bed, listens intently. She can’t hear anything now. She must have been mistaken. If there was a noise, it was probably her neighbour banging around upstairs. She is just about to get out of bed and check the apartment when she hears someone outside her bedroom door. She is sure of it. Shuffling footsteps. She flops back down on the bed and closes her eyes. She tries to make sleep-breathing noises, steady, deep breaths. She imagines the intruder opening the door, shining a light on her face. But is he really there? She is too afraid to open her eyes and look. She lies like this for several moments, tight with anticipation, her ears straining for sound. Gradually she begins to relax. She can hear nothing, and when she opens her eyes she can see there is no one in her bedroom. She sits up again, and listens. The apartment is completely silent, except for the tick of the clock in the hall.