Irresistible You (25 page)

She lay down on the bed, mask-less for the time being, and stared up at the white ceiling. Three large beams crossed the sloping ceiling and you had to be careful getting in and out of bed lest you knocked your head against one. Elena shut her eyes. It was a very comfortable bed and it was easy, after her day’s travel, to fall into a deep sleep. She didn’t hear Sandro coming back in, moving canvasses around. Nor did she hear Rosanna returning home and clattering dishes in the sink. It wasn’t until cat-child leapt up on the bed and placed a purring face next to her ear, that she awoke.

‘Oh my lord!’ she said, hearing Sandro and her sister talking in the next room. Leaping off the bed, Elena grabbed the mask and put it on as she hurriedly made the bed. She’d been asleep for hours and it was dark outside. She might have been caught there. How would she have explained herself?

Once invisible, she crept to the bedroom door which had been ajar all the time, cat-child following her and rubbing herself against Elena’s invisible leg. Elena tried to shoo her away but she remained, resolutely, by her side, making Elena wondered if she were, indeed, invisible to the cat.

Sandro sounded excitable and Rosanna’s voice was angry.

‘How many times do I have to tell you? I closed the door after me!’

‘You’re sure?’ Sandro asked.

‘It isn’t an easy door to leave open, is it? You can tell when you close it because the whole street vibrates! Of course I closed it! Stop questioning me about it,’ Rosanna yelled. ‘You probably left it open yourself.’

‘I did no such thing!’ he exclaimed like a wronged child. ‘I only hope it’s not been permanently open since I’ve been away.’

‘Of course it hasn’t! I’ve looked after your place as if it were my own.’ Rosanna sighed. ‘Look, have you checked that nothing’s missing?’

‘That’s just what I’ve been doing.’

Rosanna looked around the studio and saw that there were canvasses everywhere.

‘I don’t think anyone is going to walk through Venice with a canvas the size you paint them.’

‘They might have moored a boat at the canal at the end of the calle.’

‘It’s not very likely, is it?’ Rosanna said.

‘They’re very precious to me. They’re the most valuable things I have.’

‘And that’s why I always make sure the door is closed behind me.’

Elena cringed in the shadows of her invisibility. She’d known this would happen and she’d known Rosanna would get all heated up about it too.

‘Something strange is going on,’ Sandro said, looking around. For a moment, he stared right into Elena’s eyes. ‘I can’t quite put my finger on it but there’s something not quite right here.’

‘What do you mean? Everything seems perfectly normal.’

Sandro shook his head. ‘No. I can feel a change,’ he said.

Elena watched in horror as he walked straight towards her. Could he see her? Would he let on if he could?

‘
Bimba
!’ he cooed, bending down to pick up the cat that was still comfortably winding its way around Elena’s legs. ‘What are you doing, you silly
Bimba
?’

He picked the cat up and took it back to a sofa where he flopped down and placed it on his lap.

‘I think the open door was a sign,’ he said.

‘You think everything’s a sign.’

‘I think it’s a premonition of my leaving Venice. Don’t you?’

‘No,’ Rosanna said. ‘I think it was an unfortunate accident and that you should probably get your lock seen to.’

‘The door was open - representing my leaving - the start of a new life,’ Sandro said, suddenly looking animated.

‘Don’t be silly.’

For a moment, he looked crestfallen. ‘Well, that’s what I think,’ he said.

‘I’m going for a shower,’ Rosanna said. ‘And then I’m going to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.’

Sandro nodded. Elena watched as Rosanna walked right by her without any recognition whatsoever. It was the oddest feeling - as if she’d died and been forgotten already.

Suddenly, Elena’s stomach gave a volcanic rumble. Rosanna froze on her way to the bathroom, turning around with a look of surprise on her face. Elena bit her lip, wrapping her arms around her tummy in an attempt to stop it. Luckily, it did stop and Rosanna shook her head and disappeared into the bathroom.

Elena’s heart was pumping wildly. This business of being invisible was proving more risky than she’d first thought. Now, she was having grave doubts about being able to sneak into the kitchen and pinch some food in order to quieten her disorderly stomach. Sandro had left the cat-child licking its limbs on the sofa and was examining some canvasses at the far end of the studio so Elena was able to sneak through and find a bar of chocolate. Not very substantial but at least it wouldn’t make suspicious dishes.

She walked silently through to the living room and back to the spare bedroom. If Rosanna was going straight to bed, Elena thought she’d better be heading that way too because she wouldn’t want to be stumbling about in the dark, trying not to wake her up.

Entering the bedroom, she walked carefully towards her bed, aware that she couldn’t put the lights on and that there were low beams everywhere. Finding her bed, she sat on the edge, trying not to wrinkle the bedspread. She’d have to wait for Rosanna to get settled before she could think about making herself comfortable.

Luckily, she didn’t have to wait long. Rosanna came through, snapping on the light switch. She was wearing the dusky pink nightgown Elena had seen on the bed earlier, her hair newly washed and blow-dried. She turned down her bedding and then knelt on the floor, her hands pressed together in prayer. Blimey, Elena thought, did she still really do that? Elena strained to hear what she said but it was all whispered. At one point, she thought she heard her name but she couldn’t be sure.

Making the sign of the cross, Rosanna got up and turned out the light. Elena stretched out on her bed, adjusting the mask so that it felt comfortable and, soon, the two sisters had fallen asleep together.

When Elena had hung up on Prof, he’d felt stunned, betrayed and relieved all at the same time. He couldn’t quite believe it had happened and yet there’d been a little part of him which had expected it. His colleagues had warned him of the perils of passion with pupils, and even his mother had been a little concerned about the age difference. But Prof felt that this break hadn’t been anything to do with their ages. There’d been something Elena wasn’t telling him and, in his heart of hearts, he’d supposed she was never quite the one for him.

He’d been swept away by it all, of course. Which man of his age wouldn’t have been flattered by the attentions of a beautiful young woman? And he’d been willing to make changes for her: to give up his bachelordom and share his life with somebody. But that wasn’t going to happen now.

For a moment, he felt a hollowness like he’d never experienced before. He closed his eyes. He’d lost Elena and there was no getting her back. There was nothing he could do. His time in Venice had been wasted.

‘
Don’t you go forgetting me, will you?’

Prof’s eyes opened with a start. He felt sure he’d heard Anastasia’s voice as though she was in the room with him. It was as if she’d heard him thinking that his time in Venice had been wasted.

‘It hasn’t, has it?’ he said to himself. ‘God!’ He shook his head. This was confusing. He felt like he was betraying Elena by thinking about Anastasia so soon after their engagement had been broken off but he couldn’t stop himself.

He got up and began to pace the room. His plane tickets were booked for tomorrow. He’d be home by the afternoon. He picked up his
Selected Works of
Byron
and flicked through the pages. There was her number. He felt a small smile tickling the corners of his mouth. Anastasia didn’t really expect to hear from him, did she? Well, he thought, he might just prove her wrong.

*

The two young girls were playing outside in a sunny courtyard. They were laughing and smiling, their dark hair flying about their faces as they ran after each other.

‘Catch!’ the taller of the two girls shouted, throwing a custard-coloured teddy bear at her small sister. She caught it with ease and threw it back again.

‘Throw it again!’ the younger sister begged.

‘No. I want to play with it now.’

‘But I do too!’ the younger sister said. ‘
Please!
’

‘No. I was playing with it first. Go and find your own toy.’

‘That’s not fair!’ the young sister shouted, stamping her feet and crossing her arms over her chest. ‘Give it to me!’ she said, making a lunge towards the teddy.

‘Stop it!’ the older girl yelled.

Two pairs of hands clutched at the teddy bear, pulling the bright yellow fur in both directions at once.

‘You’re hurting him! Stop it!’ the older sister cried.

‘I’m not the one who’s hurting him.
You
are.’

Both girls tugged harder, their cries and screams escalating until the inevitable happened - one of the teddy bear’s arms tore clean off. They stared at the poor wounded bear: the older girl holding the main body and the younger holding the amputated limb.

‘Look what you’ve done!’ the older girl cried.

‘I didn’t do it!’ the younger girl said, her lip trembling. Then, without warning, she let out a scream.

‘What? What is it?’ the older girl asked. But she had her answer as soon as she looked at the bear clutched in her hands. Its face was no longer that of a teddy bear: it was a man’s…

*

Elena bolted up from the bed and knocked her head, hard, against one of the low beams. She let out a cry and instantly wished she hadn’t because Rosanna woke up with a start.

‘Who’s there?’ she called into the darkness.

Elena sat rigid, nursing her sore head in her hands. She had no idea what time it but it was still dark and, luckily, she was still invisible so she hoped that Rosanna would right-off her cry as part of a nightmare and go back to sleep without investigating too closely. But she didn’t. Of course she didn’t.

‘Is anyone there?’ she whispered across the room.

Elena so wanted to say, ‘No, there isn’t. Go back to sleep.’

‘Who is it?
Sandro?’ Rosanna asked, switching on her bedside lamp and swinging her legs out of bed. Her face was rosy with sleep but her eyes were wide and wild. She was frightened.

Elena kept absolutely still, hardly daring to breathe as Rosanna walked across the floor towards her. But there was nothing to see. Elena had made sure that her suitcase was well hidden from view and had quickly straightened the bedding underneath her and plumped up the pillow before Rosanna had turned the light on. There should appear to be absolutely nothing out of place.

Rosanna continued to move forward, her eyes searching every corner of the room in perplexity. It was obvious that she wasn’t going to let this get the better of her.

‘
Bimba
?’ she said and Elena winced, hoping she wouldn’t go poking around under the bed in search for the cat and then find her suitcase.

Finally, Rosanna gave a weary sigh and crawled back into bed, switching the lamp off and throwing them back into darkness. Elena breathed a sigh of relief and edged her way down the bed again, resting her head on her pillow. She shook her head as she recalled the nightmare from which she’d awoken. It didn’t take an expert in Freud to work out what it meant.

She was just on the edge of sleep when she heard a strange sound coming from Rosanna’s bed. She was crying. Elena opened her eyes but it was pitch dark in the room and she couldn’t see a thing. Even so, Rosanna’s crying sent a shiver through her body.

*

Elena woke up and saw that Rosanna was still asleep, her black hair spilled over her pillow and her mouth parted slightly. She looked like a little girl and Elena felt a stab of pain that they had fought so. She could see so clearly now that it wasn’t worth it. What had she been so angry about? So she’d lost Reuben. She’d never really loved him in the first place, had she? Not from the way she’d treated him. That wasn’t love, was it? And she’d risked the happiness of her sister and their friendship. Surely the whole trip to Venice had been about sorting herself out. She’d known that that would mean sorting her love life out. She’d known, for some time, that things weren’t really working out with the men in her life. They were all wonderful, of course but, by being involved with all of them, she’d diluted the special qualities of each one. In short, she didn’t deserve them.

It all seemed so simple now and yet she’d been so angry that Reuben had fallen for Rosanna when, in reality, it was perfectly natural: Rosanna was like Elena and yet different. Where Reuben and Elena had failed perhaps Reuben and
Rosanna
would succeed.

Making sure the mask was still firmly in
place, Elena got off the bed and straightened it so that it looked unslept on. Then, leaving Rosanna sleeping, she ventured through to the kitchen. Sandro was either still in bed or out and Elena used the chance to peek into the fridge to see if there were any opportunities for breakfast. She didn’t want to make a noise or lots of dishes and the one pot of strawberry yoghurt on the middle shelf seemed to have her name on it. It would mean only rinsing a teaspoon afterwards.

She took it through to the living room and sat on the sofa and then wondered how, exactly, she was going to eat it whilst wearing the mask. If she moved it slightly so that she had access to her mouth, would she remain invisible? In truth, she was desperate to take it off. It made her feel hot and her hair felt stuck to her skull. She wondered if she should take a chance. Yes. She would.

‘That’s better,’ she smiled to herself as she slipped the mask off and ruffled a hand through her hair. Opening the yoghurt, she sat back on the sofa and breathed a sigh of contentment. She’d never been a big yoghurt eater but the strawberry stung her tongue with freshness and made her feel all pink inside.

‘
Bimba
?’ Rosanna’s voice suddenly piped from the spare bedroom and Elena heard her footsteps approaching. ‘Are you there?’

*

Elena quickly dived behind the sofa, yoghurt pot in hand, just as Rosanna entered the living room. But there was a problem: she’d left the mask on the sofa.

She could feel her heart hammering inside her chest. Rosanna was only a few feet away. What if she saw the mask? She had only to look in the direction of the sofa and it would be sure to catch her eye: the bright golden face gleaming against the cream sofa.

Elena wondered if she could risk stretching a hand towards the mask and pulling it towards her. Rosanna was standing in the middle of the room now, examining her nails. Would she notice Elena’s hand whilst she was examining her own? Elena decided to take a chance and reached out.

‘Ah!’ Rosanna’s voice suddenly called. ‘There you are!’

Elena snatched her hand back and froze. Had Rosanna seen her? Or was she talking to that silly cat-child? She waited.

‘It’s no use hiding,’ Rosanna said and Elena grimaced. She’d been found out. She’d have to explain things now. This wasn’t what she’d planned at all. It was all going horribly wrong.

She would have to stand up and face her sister.

‘I can’t give you your breakfast if you hide under that chair, can I?’ Rosanna said and Elena’s eyes widened. She wasn’t under a chair - she was behind a sofa. Rosanna
was
talking to cat-child after all. She breathed a sigh of relief until she realised that the chair cat-child was under was terribly close to the sofa which she was behind and that Rosanna might still spot her.

‘Has Sandro forgotten to feed you again, eh?’ Rosanna said and Elena smiled. Rosanna’s voice was calm and friendly. She might pretend to hate the cat-child but Elena suspected that she was secretly fond of it, even though the animal made her sneeze.

Rosanna then did the thing Elena had been dreading: she knelt down to get to cat level. Elena moved round the sofa ever so slightly, trying to keep out of Rosanna’s eyesight until she could get hold of the mask. Her hand stretched, once again, over the sofa and, with a sigh of relief, she held the mask in her hand once more. It was so stupid of her to have taken it off in the first place and she supposed the shock of Rosanna coming into the room served her right.

Tying it on quickly, she watched in amazement as she slowly began to vanish. Standing up and rubbing her sore knees, she looked across the room to where Rosanna was making a fuss of the cat-child.

‘You might just have saved me from eviction,’ Rosanna was saying. Elena wondered what she meant. Had Rosanna argued with Sandro? Had she been threatened with eviction since Sandro had found the front door open? Elena immediately felt guilty.

She was just about to walk, invisibly, back into the kitchen when she stubbed her toe on the corner of the sofa and the spoon she’d been carrying flew from her hand.

It was the strangest experience because, when she’d been holding it, it had been invisible. She’d been able to feel it, of course, but it had shared her shield of invisibility. Until it had left her hand. She’d seen in metamorphose into a solid object again, just in time to hit the bare floorboards with a clink.

Rosanna instantly forgot about cat-child and glanced around to see the spoon on the floor. Elena winced and backed away quietly. It was in the middle of nowhere and obviously hadn’t fallen off a table or anything. She watched Rosanna’s face fall into frown-mode as she walked forward and picked it up, looking around as she did so. Where had it come from?
she seemed to ask. She looked bemused, angry and scared all at the same time.

‘Sandro?’ she called quietly, just as she had the night before when Elena had woken her by cracking her head on the beam. There was no reply. Sandro was out. Anyway, Elena couldn’t imagine that it was in his nature to throw spoons about whether it was for a joke or not.

Elena watched as Rosanna examined the spoon - holding it up to the light as if that might help her work out what had happened. She then looked around the room again, up into the beams as if it had dropped down from above. It was as if Elena could read her mind.
Something weird is going on here
, she was thinking. Maybe Sandro was right.

‘Come on,
Bimba
,’ she said at last, a visible shiver making her shoulders twitch. ‘Let’s get breakfast out of the way. I want to get out of here.’

Elena was still starving and had wanted to venture out to grab a bite to eat somewhere, and determined to follow Rosanna. At least she’d be able to close the front door properly if she followed her out of the apartment.

Getting washed and dressed as Rosanna ate breakfast, Elena was ready to leave at the same time as Rosanna. She had an inkling where she was going, of course: to see Reuben. This was the moment she’d been waiting for. This was the true test of the mask but would it show her what she wanted to see? Would it help her to make her decision?