A thin, brisk, down-to-earth woman, with a direct way of looking at anyone she spoke to, Valerie made a convincing witness. But Laura knew something that the coroner could not have known: Valerie Hyde would go to the stake for Sebastian; would cheat or steal for him. She might have been telling the truth, of course, but she would not have hesitated to lie.
Melanie said abruptly, ‘You must go to Venice, Laura – this is your first nomination, you have to be there.’
Laura shook her head. ‘Who am I up against?’
Reluctantly Melanie told her the names, and Laura threw up her hands. ‘Well, there you are! They’re all better actresses than me, and better known, too. I don’t have a chance.’
Furious, Melanie said, ‘Well, if you don’t go, I can’t. I’ve never been to the Venice Film Festival and I’m dying to. It’s a great excuse to buy a really stunning new frock on expenses. It’s not often I can do that. And you can’t wear just anything to Venice – it’s supposed to be even more glamorous than Cannes.’
Melanie loved clothes, far more even than films or plays. Her whole face lit up when she talked about them. She should have become a dress designer, but she had missed her chance, early on, by getting a job as a secretary to a theatrical agent instead of going to college to study art and textiles. Her Russian-Jewish father had been in the rag trade in the East End, and as a child, Melanie had been dressed like a little princess. It had left her with a passion for style and cut, and a taste for the exotic, which perfectly suited her long, straight black hair and huge leonine gold eyes.
Her skin was either olive or golden, depending on her health and mood, and Melanie needed colour to bring to life the beauty buried in her generously endowed flesh. She was larger than life, in every sense of the word, lion-hearted, a fighter, voluble and open-handed. She fell in and out of love with the same fierce concentration.
Over the last three years, she had built up Laura’s career with that same intense commitment, but it had been Sebastian who had made Laura an actress. Indeed, it had been Sebastian who had told her she needed an agent, when he first offered her a contract, and who has suggested Melanie, saying he had heard she was good. She didn’t have many clients yet, but would work harder for Laura than someone whose books were already full of stars. Some actors might have suspected a secret deal between Sebastian and Melanie, but they would have been wrong. Far from conspiring with him, Melanie couldn’t wait to get Laura more money from someone else. She had never had much time for Sebastian, and he knew it. That, to Laura, was testament to his integrity: he had picked Melanie as the best agent for her, in spite of knowing Melanie didn’t think highly of him.
Sighing, Laura said, ‘Mel, I really don’t want to go. It’ll be a nightmare – those occasions always are, noisy, overcrowded, flashbulbs going off all the time, hordes of people grabbing at you, … like going for a swim in a tank full of piranhas.’
‘You’re an actress, for heaven’s sake. How can you be afraid of an audience?’ Mel had never been shy or nervous in her life.
‘I’ve never been on a stage – you know that! Or had any training,’ Laura protested. ‘I’m not scared of cameras or film crews. They’re always too busy with their own job to have time to stare at me, and if I mess up or fluff a line I can always do it again. But on a stage it’s live. It can go wrong in front of hundreds of people. You can make a fool of yourself.’
She had learnt her trade by working at it, had picked it up as she went along, by making friends with the camera men, sound men, lighting men. She listened to everything they said and related it to what she already knew, watched them work with such open fascination that they were happy to suggest how she should pitch her voice, how she should move, and to show her how little she needed to do to make an effect. A sideways flick of the eyes could show fear, suspicion, jealousy without a word being spoken.
Melanie changed tack. ‘You won’t have to act, lovely, just stand there and smile, and say thank you if you win – and winning is a long shot, remember. But you’ll see Venice – and it’ll blow your mind. Sebastian was born there, wasn’t he? I read that somewhere. Born in Venice, but brought up in California, wasn’t it? They said he was born in a palazzo on the Grand Canal.’ She gave her cynical little grin. ‘I always said he was a fantasist, didn’t I?’
Had it been fantasy? When Sebastian talked about his childhood Laura had believed him. It had seemed the perfect place for him to have been born: a Renaissance palazzo in the most beautiful city in the world. Only later, when death had entered the equation, did she begin to doubt him.
During the months they were working together she would have refused point blank to believe Sebastian capable of murder – but after Rachel’s death she no longer knew what she believed. How much truth had he ever told her? she wondered and she kept thinking that once you have admitted one doubt you find more hidden inside you, which multiply like flies on summer evenings, becoming a buzzing, stinging multitude in your brain, driving you mad.
‘Venice is one of those experiences that change your life,’ Melanie said. ‘Once you see it, you’ll never be the same again.’
That was what Laura was afraid of. She was uneasy about going to a place that had been so important in Sebastian’s life. She remembered everything he had said about his childhood in the golden palace on the Grand Canal, with its marble floors and walls, hung with ancient, fading tapestries that made the rooms whisper and echo as they stirred in the chill breeze. Sebastian had talked of long, dark corridors through which you had to find your way, like Theseus in the maze, from room to room, and out at last into the garden full of orange and lemon trees five foot high, in great terracotta pots padded with straw to keep the chill of winter at bay.
It was based on a geometric pattern, he had said, narrow gravel paths between low box hedges within which stood paired statues of Roman gods: Jupiter and Juno, Mars and Venus. In the centre, standing on one winged foot, the other pointing backwards, stood Mercury, his staff angled at the window of one room from which over the centuries, family legend said, several members of the Angeli family had fallen to their deaths.
‘Murdered?’ she had whispered, ready to believe him if
he said yes. Everyone knew about Renaissance princes who bumped off their enemies – the Borgias, the Visconti, even the Doge of Venice himself.
‘Perhaps, or perhaps they jumped of their own accord.’
She remembered shivering at the cool, dispassionate voice but she had had no glimpse into the future. Rachel Lear had not fallen from that hotel window for another year.
‘Why would they kill themselves?’ she had asked.
He had shrugged. ‘Why do people ever kill themselves? They had their reasons, no doubt.’
At the time, she had listened like a child being told fairy stories. Now she had dozens of questions she wished she had asked. If he had been born in such a house why had he and his father ever left? Who else had lived there with them? He had never mentioned anyone. Why had they never been back to Venice? Why had he said that the family in the palazzo had the surname Angeli when his was Ferrese? Why had Sebastian so little to say about his family? Especially his mother. It was clear that he had loved his father, Giovanni Ferrese, but he had told her nothing about his mother, except that she had died when he was six. When she had asked what Giovanni had done for a living he had said curtly, ‘He had his own business.’ And when Sebastian’s dark eyes chilled, as they had then, you were wise to stop asking questions.
‘You owe it to yourself to go, you know. It’s a great honour,’ Melanie said.
And she might find the answers to some of those questions, Laura thought. She would look for the palazzo where Sebastian had been born: if it existed, it might tell her a lot about him.
That night she dreamt about him, not the nightmare but the wild sexual dream she had also had so many times. She was back again in the caravan she had used on that first film. Sebastian was with her, talking about the scene they would shoot next day, watching her take off her makeup in front of the scrappy mirror on the dressing table. Laura avoided his eyes, kept her attention on her face, her skin shiny with cream.
She looked like an awkward schoolgirl, like the girl her friends had once called Lanky and made fun of whenever she tripped over her own feet or had to stand up in class, looming over them all. She hated Sebastian watching her: compared to his beautiful wife she was ugly and clumsy. Hurriedly she wiped off the cream and picked up her normal makeup bag, but Sebastian took it from her and tossed it back on the dressing table.
‘Don’t put anything on your lovely face. Nothing ruins the skin faster than plastering it with makeup day and night. Clea has destroyed her skin with that stuff. It’s like orange peel now. Only wear it when you have to, in front of the cameras.’