Irresistible You (18 page)

‘I wasn’t going to,’ she said hastily.

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

Elena looked down at the golden mask, feeling rather honoured. ‘Why did you choose me, then?’

‘I told you before - the mask chose you,’ he said quietly as he continued to work.

‘Are all the masks magical? For the right person, I mean?’

Stefano shook his head.
‘So many questions!’

‘But do you know the answers?’

He looked up at her and their eyes locked. ‘I don’t think I have the answers you want,’ Stefano said at last, breaking the spell with a blink and returning to his work.

Elena smiled. ‘I’d better be going,’ she said, putting the mask inside her coat pocket once more.

‘Good luck,’ he said as Elena made to leave the shop.

‘Thanks,’ she replied before realising that she hadn’t even told him that she needed any.

Elena couldn’t remember the last time she’d sat in a church. She had a feeling it had been the time Rosanna had visited one February and dragged her out on a Sunday morning, before her eyes were open, to sit in an Arctic-cold church.

She’d been so nervous at entering this one with the mask in her pocket that she’d taken it very slowly so she could turn and run if any bolts of lightning were thrown her way.

Now, sitting on a hard wooden pew and staring at the altar, Elena felt a little more at ease. Some time ago, and she couldn’t quite pinpoint when, she’d moved away from religion. It hadn’t been a case of getting out of bed one morning and saying, that’s it: I’m not religious any more - it had slowly crept up on her. But sitting in the church now, it would be easy to believe again. The very air seemed thick with Divinity. Perhaps it was the whiteness of the walls or the brightness of the candles, but there was an undeniable sense of peace.

On one of the walls nearby, there was a beautiful painting of the Virgin Mary set behind a little altar of its own. When Elena first noticed it, she felt herself blushing, hoping Mary wouldn’t turn her eyes towards her and punish her for her cruel revenge on Irma Taccani who was probably still working her way through her
Hail Marys
.

The Virgin’s dress was a startling lapis lazuli and it was that which had first caught Elena’s eye. She was holding the infant, Jesus, whose alabaster skin seemed to glow with holiness, but it was Mary who was the focus of the painting: she wore an expression of indescribable peace. Elena gazed at it and wondered what it must be like to feel that calm. She hadn’t felt calm like that for a long time - if ever. It was something which eluded Elena but this picture breathed peace: from Mary’s serene face and the gentleness with which she held her baby, to the pastoral landscape seen through the arched window behind her. Elena could feel her vision dissolve as she looked at it, allowing her eyes to be led out into the distant hills. It reminded her of somewhere: a somewhere she hadn’t seen for a long time; a somewhere far removed from the bustle of the world around her now.

‘Positano,’ she whispered. Positano. It was more than a place: it was a state of being and, as Elena thought about it, she could almost feel her feet beginning to itch. She could go there - to their mother’s. She bit her lip trying to suppress her excitement. Of course, she knew it was running away again and that Rosanna would be furious but, if she acted quickly, she could be packed and out of the apartment before Rosanna knew about it. Didn’t she have a date on the Lido that night? Elena looked at her watch. She could pack what she needed whilst Rosanna was out and leave first thing in the morning before her sister was even up.

Elena looked at the landscape in the picture and felt a sense of great calm washing over her. It was as if she was there already.

*

Rosanna was always surprised by her reaction to the Lido. It was just so noisy. The absence of cars and buses on Venice really made its mark and, whenever she visited the Lido or the mainland, she’d invariably get a headache. The main street was a migraine-generator and Rosanna could smell the pollution in the air. How could anyone live there?
she wondered, squinting her eyes against the onslaught of traffic and trying her best not to breathe. She really did think of herself as a true Venetian now. To her, there was no other place she could contemplate living and that was one of the deciding factors in breaking up with Corrado. His dream of a little place in the Umbrian hills made Rosanna’s spine constrict with fear. Goosebumps of revulsion would break out over her body at the thought of leaving her beloved city.

Corrado was waiting for her at the restaurant when she arrived, his hair newly-washed and his face clean-shaven. He looked sweet. He was wearing a new pair of jeans she hadn’t
seen before and a white shirt which, no doubt, had been pressed by his mother. He’d obviously made a huge effort for their date which made things far worse. He hadn’t picked up on what she was feeling at all, had he? He still thought of their relationship as something that was moving forwards.

Rosanna took a deep breath before walking over to his table.

‘Corrado,’ she said when he didn’t look up from the menu.

‘Rosanna!
You look lovely,’ he said to her softly as he got up and kissed her cheek before pulling her chair out for her.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You look nice too.’

He shrugged. ‘Mother picked out the shirt for me,’ he said and Rosanna felt herself wince. They hadn’t spent a full minute in each other’s company and yet Irma Taccani had already made her presence felt.

‘I’ve just got to -’ Rosanna leapt out of her chair and pointed to the back of the restaurant and headed quickly to the ladies’ before she had a chance to mouth off about Corrado’s mother.

Inside the ladies’, she gazed at herself long and hard in the mirror. She looked tired - as if she could quite happily fall asleep for a year. In fact, she had an overwhelming desire to go straight back to Sandro’s apartment right there and then and just hide herself under the bed covers. For a brief moment, she looked around, wondering if there was a back way out of the restaurant - a window in the toilets or something, but she shook her head. She was being ridiculous. She had to stay and sort this out. Wasn’t that what she was always telling Elena to do?

Washing her hands slowly to give herself a few seconds to compose herself, Rosanna psyched herself up for the evening ahead. She’d never broken up with anyone before - not like this, anyway. Previous relationships had either never taken off in the first place or had drifted, quite naturally, into non-existence without the need for a showdown. And what was the correct way to go about it? Should she wait until the main course or was it more polite to have finished dessert first?

As she dried her hands, Rosanna felt a deep frown embed itself across her forehead which she knew would not shift itself for at least a week now. She felt so wretched, and the beginnings of a headache were tap dancing at her temples.

Taking a deep breath, she opened the door, realising that she couldn’t spend the entire evening in the toilets. Corrado looked up and smiled as she crossed the restaurant.

‘I thought you’d fallen in,’ he said as she sat down.

‘I wasn’t that long,’ she snapped, in no mood to laugh.

‘I’ve ordered starters,’ he said.

‘How do you know what I want?’

Corrado frowned. ‘I guessed, based on the fact that you normally have the soup.’

Rosanna frowned back. ‘Well, I might not have wanted soup tonight.’

‘You want me to order something else for you?’

‘No! Soup is fine,’ Rosanna sighed, hoping it would come in a bowl big enough to drown
herself in.

There was a moment’s silence.

‘I
had
been looking forward to this evening,’ Corrado said, his voice shot through with hurt and, immediately, Rosanna felt riddled with guilt again. Why was she being so nasty? Couldn’t they just enjoy their last meal together? After all, they’d been together for two years and they’d been good years too.

‘I’m sorry,’ Rosanna said at last, and then immediately regretted apologising. If she started apologising, she’d get all emotional and that wouldn’t do. She had to remain strong and detached.

‘You’re not sorry at all, are you?’ Corrado said, surprising her by his intuitiveness. It was a quality she’d never credited him with before.

‘Corrado,’ she began and then stopped, not quite knowing what to say next.

‘What?’

‘I -’

Again, there was a pause which seemed to swallow huge chunks of time before one of them dared to speak.

‘You want to break up with me, don’t you?’

Rosanna’s eyes widened in genuine shock.

‘When does this date back too, then?’ Corrado asked calmly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I thought you were happy. I thought
we
were happy? And you can’t have been if you’ve been planning this.’

‘I haven’t been
planning
this!’

‘No?’

‘No!’

‘But you knew you were going to tell me tonight?’

Rosanna nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘
Merda
! Rosanna! You could have told me over the phone and saved me the expense of a meal!’

Rosanna stared at him as if she hadn’t heard him right. ‘Is that all you can think about? Is that all you have to say?’

‘God! You know I don’t earn enough for this kind of place. Especially if we’re not even going to bother enjoying the food!’

Rosanna stood up, scraping the chair back noisily and causing half the restaurant to turn and stare at them. ‘I didn’t want it to be like this, Corrado. We’ve had some good times together and I wanted us to be friends.’

‘Oh! Spare me the ‘friends’ speech!’

‘I’m only trying-’

‘Don’t!’

There was a prickle of ugly silence as they stared at each other. It was just the kind of uncomfortable moment that Rosanna had been so desperate to avoid but now she guessed it was unavoidable.

‘I’m going to go now,’ she said in a very small voice. Corrado said nothing and so she turned to leave the restaurant just as the waiter arrived with two bowls of soup. Rosanna just had time to see that Corrado had, at least, got her choice of starter absolutely right.

‘It’s so easy to get overweight in Italy, don’t you think?’ Anastasia asked Prof in a restaurant on the mainland.

Prof nodded, his mouth otherwise occupied with yet another glorious concoction.

‘I’m lucky,’ Anastasia continued. ‘I mean, I get paid to review this sort of thing as part of the travelling scene so my weight is an occupational hazard I’m quite happy to put up with.’

Prof’s eyebrows rose. ‘There’s nothing wrong with your figure, I can assure you,’ he said.

‘Thank you, darling!’ she said. ‘You are a sweetie.’

Prof smiled. So many compliments had been fired at him that day that he felt he couldn’t possibly take any more. ‘Please!’ he said, raising his hands as if he could deflect further praise.

Anastasia just laughed. ‘You are funny!’ she smiled, shaking her head so that her red curls bounced off her cheeks. ‘So,’ she added, ‘tell me more about these students of yours.’

‘What would you like to know?’

‘Everything! Have you ever had a difficult student? I imagine teaching to be one of the hardest jobs in the world.’

‘Well, when they come to university, most of them have gone through that difficult phase already and are actually happy to buckle down and work.’

‘So, you haven’t any juicy tales of student rebellion?’ Anastasia asked, taking a sip of wine, her eyes sparkling in the dim light of the restaurant.

Prof looked thoughtful. ‘There was one time,’ he began.

‘Go on,’ Anastasia said.

Prof grinned. If she sat any further forward on her seat, she’d be in his lap, he thought. ‘We were about half-way through our study of Charles Dickens,’ he said, ‘and I’d noticed that one of my students hadn’t been to any of the classes. I’d asked around and none of her friends seemed to know anything about it. As I was about to hand out the coursework assignments, I thought I’d better get things sorted out and so I left a note in her pigeon hole to arrange a meeting.

‘She came to my room at the designated time and I looked for any tell-tale signs of illness or work-overload but nothing seemed to be the matter. She’d never been the most out-spoken of students but it did seem odd that she should miss so many classes so I asked her why she had.’

‘And what did she say?’ Anastasia asked with the eagerness of a journalist scenting a story.

‘She said she didn’t
do
Dickens.’

‘Didn’t do Dickens?’ Anastasia repeated.

‘That’s right!’ Prof said. ‘I was somewhat dumbfounded and I waited for her to explain.’

‘And - did she?’ Anastasia asked when Prof paused for a moment.

‘Oh, yes! When I gave her another copy of the coursework I wanted her to do, she handed it right back and, when I asked her why, she told me that Dickens had killed her father.’

Anastasia’s eyes stretched in surprise.
‘How extraordinary.’

‘And,’ Prof said, ‘unfortunately, true. Her father had worked as a salesman and was obsessed with audio books. Apparently, he listened to them all the time and, well, he was listening to one when he hit a patch of ice travelling through Northumberland and came off the road down a ravine. The police reported that
Oliver Twist
was still playing when they arrived on the scene.’

Anastasia’s mouth opened a fraction. ‘That’s so sad!’ she said.

‘Isn’t it?’

‘And what did you say to her after she told you that?’

‘What could I say? I gave her an alternative essay to do.
Bugger the Dickens
, I told her!’

‘Oh!
You dear man!’

‘Other than that, I’ve had a long career with very little of interest happening to me. No major disruptions from students or fellow members of staff. In fact, put like that, I sound quite boring.’

Anastasia stretched a hand across the table and placed it on his. ‘You’re not boring,’ she said and her dark eyes sparkled at him. ‘You’re wonderful. Simply wonderful!’

*

Rosanna had had some headaches in her time but none quite like this one. What had started out as an anaemic tap dance had now transmogrified into an army of hammers in her head. With each step, her head reverberated with pain so that even the short walk down to the vaporetto was an unbearable torture.

She wished she could magic herself back to the apartment. No. She wished that she’d never come out in the first place. What on earth had made her think Corrado could behave in an adult way? He’d never needed to be an adult - not whilst he still lived under the same roof as his harpy of a mother.

She struggled on down to the vaporetto, the cool air doing nothing to ease her throbbing head. For a moment, she wondered if she’d actually be able reach home at all. She felt ready to collapse at any moment.
Don’t be silly
, she whispered to herself.
You’ll be home in less than an hour.

‘Are you all right?’ a voice suddenly asked. Rosanna could hardly see who it was through a veil of tears which she’d been trying not to spill.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘I said are you okay?’

The voice sounded familiar. Rosanna wiped her eyes, resolving not to be such a baby and, looking up, saw a dark figure standing next to her. It was Reuben.

‘You’re not all right, are you?’ he said. ‘What a bloody stupid question to ask.’

Rosanna felt her new resolve crumble in an instant and new tears sprung up in her brown eyes.

Reuben instinctively placed an arm around her shoulder. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘come with me. You’re not in any state to go anywhere on your own. You’re heading back to Venice, yes?’

Rosanna nodded.

‘Come back to my room and we can have something to drink and I’ll take you back to your apartment after that, okay?’

‘Yes!’ she cried, her vision blurring through more tears.

When the vaporetto arrived, Reuben helped Rosanna to a seat indoors and she closed her eyes as they sped over the lagoon back towards Venice. The rocking motion made her feel even
more queasy but, luckily, it was a short crossing.

‘Come on,’ he said a few minutes later. ‘We’re here.’

Feeling shaky and dazed, Rosanna allowed herself to be led out. ‘How far is it?’ she asked.

‘Not far. I’m at the Danieli. It’s not far,’ he assured her, and it wasn’t.

‘Here,’ he said at last, guiding her into a room just a short time later.

‘I’m so sorry, Reuben. I don’t want to bother you but I really don’t feel so good,’ Rosanna whispered, her hands seemingly trying to squeeze the pain out of her head.

‘Can I get you anything? Aspirin? Paracetamol?’

‘Please!’ she said.

Reuben rooted around in a toiletries bag and produced a packet of aspirin. ‘Two?’

Rosanna nodded lightly, feeling that two packets wouldn’t shift this particular headache. ‘Have you some water?’

‘Of course,’ he said, taking a new bottle from his bedside table.

Rosanna undid it, took the pills and had a good drink. ‘Would you mind if I had a sleep?’ she asked. ‘If I could just close my eyes for a while -’

‘Of course!’ Reuben said.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Reuben,’ she said again.

‘It’s okay -
really
,’ he said, motioning to the bed. ‘I’ll give you some peace.’

‘Oh! Please don’t let me disturb-’

‘It’s okay,’ he interrupted, ‘I usually go down to the bar at this time of night - it’s great for catching up on my sketches. Please, make yourself comfortable. I’ll see you later, okay?’

Rosanna heard the door close behind him and allowed her head to sink into the pillow on his bed.

*

‘This is amazing!’ Anastasia cooed as Prof escorted her through to the lobby bar.

‘It is rather special, isn’t it?’

‘Special! I feel like a movie star!’ she said.

Prof looked around the bar and immediately saw his English acquaintance, Reuben, sitting in the corner with his sketchbook out. For a moment, he wasn’t sure how to approach things. He’d told Reuben that he was engaged, hadn’t he? And now he’d brought back a woman to his hotel who wasn’t his fiancée. Not that there was anything going on between them, he assured himself. They were merely passing time in one another’s company - enjoying the occasional meal and drink together. He had no intention of it going any further than that. He was engaged, after all.

‘Are we going to get a drink?’ Anastasia asked.

‘Yes. Of course,’ Prof answered, hoping that Reuben would be too wrapped up in his art to come over and force an introduction.

*

Reuben liked his position at the back of the bar. He might just as well have been invisible, he thought, for the little attention he attracted. That was how he liked it, of course, but he had caught Sigmund’s eye as he’d walked into the bar with a gorgeous red-head he’d naturally assumed was his fiancée. He caught her vibrant elegance with a few quick lines on the page, and then he stopped. It was hard to concentrate when there was a beautiful woman asleep in your bed upstairs. He’d wanted to stay and watch as she’d curled up on the bed, her dark curls spilling out over the pillow and her large, brown eyes closing against the world. Her olive skin looked drained of colour and he’d wanted to make sure she was all right.

He whistled, long and low, between clenched teeth. That’s not what he’d wanted at all, was it? He’d wanted to undress her and leap onto the bed with her -
that’s
what he’d wanted!

His pencil pressed darkly into his sketchbook as he drew angrily, wondering what she’d been doing on the Lido. She’d been wearing a dress the colour of dark amethysts. Had she been on a date? He didn’t even know if she had a boyfriend or not. Perhaps that was why she was so upset - she’d argued with somebody. From what he’d seen of Rosanna, he knew she had a temper.

Reuben put his pencil down and looked at his watch. He’d been in the bar for over an hour now and really couldn’t afford to sit there ordering drinks all evening. In fact, he was planning on booking out of the Danieli in the morning as it was far too luxurious for his wallet.

Getting up, he left the bar and wandered outside the hotel where he stood and gazed out over the dark lagoon. There was a bitter chill in the breeze now which reminded him that summer was still a long way off.

Reuben’s mind ticked over the past few days. It had been extraordinary and not at all what he’d expected from a trip to Venice. He’d come in order to sort things out with Elena but he didn’t feel as if they’d got anywhere. And then, he’d met Rosanna. What exactly was going on there? He walked along the waterfront, his hands deep in his jacket pockets. He was engaged to Elena but he was falling in love with Rosanna.

‘Hell fire’ he exclaimed into the night air, turning round and marching back towards the Danieli. He was going to tell her. There was no other way around this: he was, for once in his life, going to give in to honesty - whatever the consequences.