He called Rachel by a nickname her brother had given her when he was beginning to talk, lazily running her two names together. She preferred Clea to Rachel and even the press often used it now.
‘I’ll feel naked!’
‘There’s a thought,’ he said, his dark eyes teasing, and she felt her mouth go dry. His face changed; he leaned forward and kissed her softly. She shut her eyes, breathless, her whole body shaking.
In her dreams that was the moment she relived: the hunger and need that flared up between them then. Her arms round his neck, they had clung together as if they were drowning.
‘I want you so badly,’ he had groaned, his hands moving down her body, caressing her breasts, stroking her buttocks, pressing her even closer.
They had never been to bed together, but the intense attraction between them would have led to that before long if Clea had not caught them.
The caravan door had opened and a cold wind had blown over them.
‘So it’s true! You are screwing the little bitch,’ a hoarse voice screamed. Sebastian stiffened, his head lifting. He let go of Laura, moved away from her, his face dark red.
Laura wanted to die. She did not dare look at the woman in the doorway.
‘How long has it been going on?’ the famous whisky voice sneered. ‘Did you audition on the couch, darling? How many times did you have to satisfy him before you got the part?’
‘If you’re going to make a scene, make it at home, not here, with fifty people listening outside,’ snapped Sebastian.
‘Do you think they don’t all know what’s been going on?’
‘Get out of here,’ Sebastian muttered to Laura, who ran, hearing Clea yelling, swearing violently, and Sebastian shouting back at her. Crew and cast pretended to be busy doing something else but Laura felt their curious, amused, knowing eyes on her.
A few days later the film had wrapped and she had left for home, to stay with her family. She hadn’t been alone with Sebastian in those last days; nor had she heard from him since. When she first heard about Clea’s death she had been so shocked she hadn’t eaten or slept for several days. Haunted by guilt, she had been desperately afraid that Sebastian had killed his wife. She still was.
Venice, 1997
Melanie got her way. They flew to Venice on one of those August days during a heatwave when the temperature had climbed so high that people wore less and less each day and became more and more irritable. At the airport, everyone was flushed and perspiring. It was so overcrowded that people had to fight their way through, using their elbows, losing their tempers. Most men were in shirtsleeves, girls wore tiny shorts and even tinier cropped cotton tops.
Laura had put on a wickedly simple but expensive black linen tunic from one of London’s hottest young designers. Although it left her arms and most of her long, slender legs bare, it hadn’t kept her cool during the flight.
So many of the most famous faces in the film world were arriving at the airport that the paparazzi had the satiated expressions of sharks that had fed for days on the bodies from a great shipwreck. A few recognised her and snatched some rapid snaps before they hurried off to find more bankable faces coming along behind her. None of the reporters bothered to ask her any questions.
‘Nobody expects me to win,’ she told Melanie, as they climbed into a hotel launch waiting at the airport jetty to take arriving guests across the lagoon from the mainland to the city.
‘You had to be here, to get your face on TV, get talked about. How many times do I have to tell you? A career in films isn’t just about acting, you have to sell yourself.’
The launch set off, bouncing over the waves in a way that made Laura feel slightly sick. Outside she saw blue sky, blue water, so bright she was half blinded by the glittering light. Where was the city? She had imagined the airport would be quite close to Venice itself.
When, at last, the launch began to slow down, she could see a long, sandy outline, white buildings rising against the hot blue sky. That wasn’t Venice! Where were the spires, the domes, the canals, the coloured façades of the old buildings?
Melanie had been to Venice before, several times. ‘That’s the Lido, darling. I had a honeymoon here once, years ago, with Lewis.’ Melanie had been married several times over the past twenty years although she lived alone now.
‘Lewis? You never mentioned a Lewis.’
‘You never knew him, he was a bastard, but a rich bastard. I must say we had a terrific honeymoon, at the Hôtel des Bains. I’ve never been able to afford to stay there again, but it’s a dream of a place – the hotel Visconti used when he made Death in Venice, remember? Thomas Mann mentioned it in the book.’
Laura’s face lit up. ‘Of course I remember. Why aren’t we staying there?’
‘The Excelsior is where the final ceremony is held, so I booked us in there. As I said, we have to see and be seen.’
The boatman was calling out to a man on the landing-stage, his voice fluid and mellifluous. Laura picked out a word or two – she had learnt some Italian during the months she had spent working with Sebastian, so much in love with him that she was obsessed with everything about him. She had longed to be able to talk to him in the language he had first spoken; it would be a way of excluding everyone else. That was why she had learnt so much so quickly about making films; it had been another way of getting closer to Sebastian. Cinema was his obsession so it had bec
ome hers.
As they got off the boat, Laura screwed up her eyes against the glare of light outside, and asked Melanie, ‘Is this part of Venice?’