Wounds of Passion

She went red then, angry and flustered. ‘You can’t break our contract, Patrick! The publishers wouldn’t let you walk away. You have a legally binding contract for this series, remember!’

‘If I had gone to prison for attempted rape, would you still have wanted me to illustrate your books?’ he bit out. ‘Would the publishers talk about legally binding contract

s? Or would you all get the best possible lawyers to find a way of breaking our contract?’

Rae stared at him without answering. She didn’t need to reply; they both knew what would have happened if he had been convicted.

‘Goodbye, Rae.’

He turned and walked away, down the alleys and winding streets of Old Nice, towards the blinding blue of the Baie des Anges. He didn’t know what he would do now. His future was utterly empty—without a job, without Laura, without any clear idea of what he wanted to do. All he knew was that he was angry; very angry. With Laura, with Rae, with fate, but most of all with that girl, Antonia Cabot.

He hoped he would never see her again, because if he did he wouldn’t be responsible for his actions, and, just though he felt his rage to be, the girl had been through a terrible ordeal, too. Whatever her reasons for accusing him, whether it had been conscious resentment or unconscious hostility, she had suffered enough; he had to walk away and just shrug off his anger with her, which did not make it any easier to bear.

Bottled up and suppressed, his rage simmered inside him for the next two years, fed by his nightmares, by his new realisation of just how fragile was the identity, how easy to break.

He drew on the savings he had, studied art in Rome for a year, and then moved on to Florence to study there, living in the cheapest student accommodation, eating bread and cheese and fruit, drinking rough cheap wine, and earning some money at weekends by working in a bar at night, painting portraits of tourists in the streets by day.

One of his tutors got him a job each summer, during the vacations, in Venice, as a courier with an international holiday company, shepherding tourists around the city, helping them find postcards, and presents to take home, finding them when they got lost, and getting them where they had to be each day.

And then one day as summer ended, before art classes began again, he was on a vaporetto crossing the Grand Canal, from St Mark’s square to the Accademia, where he meant to sit for an hour in front of the work of Giovanni Bellini, the artist he was concentrating on that week. He had his sketchpad under his arm, pencils, charcoal and crayons in his pockets; his mind was full of his favourite Bellini, the Virgin and child.

There was a little huddle of people on the riva, waiting for the vaporetto to arrive. Patrick idly glanced at them and then went rigid, staring.

Among them was Antonia Cabot.

There was no doubt about it, although she had changed. She didn’t look so young any more; she didn’t dazzle like a candle-flame. She was subdued, snuffed out, in a dark blue dress, cotton, a simple sleeveless tunic, and over that a short black cotton jacket.

Her pale gold hair had been cut very short, giving her the head of a boy; she had lost a lot of weight, was skinny, almost fleshless, and although this was a very hot summer she was pale, as if she rarely went out.

She was staring at the reflections on the water—the shimmering dancing images of churches, palaces, houses, rose-pink, aquamarine, cream.

As the vaporetto chugged slowly into place she stiffened, staring down at the reflection of it swimming towards her, the reflections of the faces of passengers. Of Patrick. Slowly, Antonia Cabot looked up, straight into Patrick’s brooding eyes.

He grimly watched the last vestige of colour drain from her face, the stricken look come into it, the darkening of her sea-coloured eyes, the trembling of her generous mouth.

Then she turned and fled, away from the Accademia, up a side-street, her small black shadow running ahead of her on the painted walls.

Patrick had to wait until the vaporetto had docked and the barrier had been raised before he could jump ashore and set off after her.

CHAPTER THREE

ANTONIA CABOT thought for a moment that she was seeing things. She stared down at the canal, watching his face quiver on the surface of the water.

It was the face she had seen so many times in nightmares, the face which had haunted her for the past two years. For a long time she had been afraid to go to sleep. She had sat up all night, heavy-eyed, white-faced, because she was afraid of meeting that face in her dreams.

Even now, although it happened less and less often, she still woke up shaking from one of those dreams every so often; and even when she was awake she wasn’t safe; something would trigger a memory and she would catch herself thinking about him.

Frozen, she had stared at the reflection, expecting it to disappear any minute. But it hadn’t. It had merely come closer, grown clearer.

Taking a deep breath, she had slowly looked up at last, and the hairs had risen on the back of her neck.

It wasn’t her imagination. He was there, a few feet away, staring back.

She hadn’t forgotten a detail of his face: the smooth brown hair, the threat of the brows over cold blue eyes, the strong nose, the mouth...

It was looking at that hard, angry mouth that ended her paralysis. She fled, bolted for home, like a hunted animal, getting curious looks from everyone she passed. It was rare to see anyone running in Venice. Tourists wandered along, staring; local people took their time too in that sultry summer heat. Antonia ran all out, hurled herself round the next corner, shot down an alley, through a shadowy court, across a bridge.

It was easy to lose yourself in Venice; there were so many ways to weave in and out between the blank-walled rear of buildings which faced the canals. It was a maze. Antonia already knew her way round it.