‘Who made it, anyway?’ demanded her father, as they drove home afterwards, along dark, mostly empty roads through remote villages.
‘Sebastian Ferrese, Dad.’
‘Who? An Italian. Well, it figures – he’s probably in the Mafia,’ he said in disgust.
‘You can’t say it was ever boring! And although it was violent at times, it seemed true to life.’
‘Not my life.’ He snorted, which made her laugh. He was so absolutely right. The Chicago they had just been shown was light years from the world her parents inhabited, but Laura had been to America now and had recognised some aspects of its modern city life in the film.
Her parents had never lived in a city. They worried about very different problems – sheep picking up one of the many diseases to which they were prone, ewes aborting if a dog got in among the flock and began chasing them, a sudden catastrophic drop in market prices, and the occasional scare about rustlers arriving with a lorry on a dark night, rounding up a whole flock and disappearing with them. The world Sebastian Ferrese’s film reflected was utterly foreign to them, and made them uneasy. But Laura had not only recognised in it something of the underbelly of London life: the grasp of human weakness, the forgiveness, the film’s wry elegiac tone had got right under her skin.
Ten days later Bernie rang and asked her to come back to London at once. ‘Someone has asked to meet you.’
‘Who?’ she asked warily, hoping that she was not going to have a problem with one of the executives from the perfume house whose face she had become. It had happened to her before. Some men seemed to think that if you modelled for their firm you were available to them personally, and they weren’t above trying to blackmail or bully you into bed.
‘Sebastian Ferrese,’ Bernie said.
Laura remembered thinking, Fate again. What else could it have been? Just when Sebastian was on her mind he turned up in her life. It had to be Fate; inevitable and inescapable.
She stared out of the hotel window at the hot blue Venetian sky and shivered at other memories: his mouth buried in her neck, between her breasts, his hands moving …
Behind her she heard a soft sound and turned in time to see a white envelope slide under the door.
It was from him, she knew it. She bit her lower lip, stared at it as if it were a snake. Then she walked slowly across the room to pick it up. Her name was printed on the front in large capital letters.
She tore open the envelope and found a sheet of hotel notepaper, covered in more printing.
GET OUT OF VENICE, YOU BITCH, OR I’LL KILL YOU.
Chapter Two
In his suite three floors higher, Sebastian Ferrese was standing by the window looking at the same view, absorbed in his thoughts. She had changed: he had known that from seeing her in the films she had made since they last met, but it was still a shock to realise that the sensitive, uncertain, gawkily beautiful girl he had met just four years ago had grown an outer gloss, an enamelled surface that had hardened to make her a guarded, remote woman. Four years ago she had had the unaware, vulnerable beauty of a flower. Now the flower had grown thorns to defend itself.
What had happened to her since they had last met? He knew what could happen to beautiful women in the film world: there were so many predators waiting in those deep waters to drag them down into the murky depths.
The air outside flickered in front of his eyes as if something had fallen through it.
Something – or someone.
She had screamed all the way down. Everyone for miles had heard her. People had stood and watched, as if it was a publicity stunt, not real. All the newspapers had commented on that. Even in her moment of death Clea had been performing, and in a sense that had probably been true, because she had always been conscious of being on display, night and day. Since she became a child star at the age of ten Clea’s whole life had been one long performance in front of an audience.
Nothing in her life had been natural, spontaneous, truthful. Like the princess in the old tale, she had been endowed – by fairies, or Fate, or nature – with blonde curls, enormous eyes like violets, a beauty that could stop traffic. She was irresistible to every man she met – from the age of twelve when the powerful, wealthy producer who saw that she got the part she wanted made sure he got her in exchange.
Clea had yelled it at Sebastian when he asked her to marry him, the morning after the first night they slept together. ‘What are you – crazy? You don’t have to marry me because we had sex, stupid! Where’ve you been all your life? Oh, grow up. You think you’re the first dirty bastard to fuck me? Don’t kid yourself. Old Buck Ronay, remember him? The great studio boss, the family man who was so hot on old-fashioned moral values? Fifty years old, bald and sweaty, and he had me on the couch in his office before he signed my first contract.’
Sebastian could remember the shock of that moment. He was in love with her: she was so beautiful, with the face of the Madonna, a smooth oval, creamy skin, blue eyes wide and radiant, pink mouth an innocent curve. He could not bear to think about what she had just said.
She had delighted in his pain and disbelief: she loved to get a strong reaction to anything she said or did. She was acting even when she was hurt or sad, her quick, intuitive mind instantly working out how to express what she experienced and get a powerful response from an observer. Later, Sebastian decided that she could not feel anything, unless she had an audience. When she was utterly alone would she sag like one of the puppets in Coppélia, face blank and wooden, body collapsed? He only knew that she could not tolerate solitude, would ask the room-service waiter in a hotel to stay and drink with her if nobody else was around to talk to, would ring friends or acquaintances, anybody who would answer their phone, in the middle of the night, beg them to come over, there and then, never mind if it was three in the morning. She was moody, difficult, charming, enchanting, a world full of women wrapped up in one troubled human being.
That night, in response to his shocked face, her mood had changed. She had laughed at him, boasting, ‘Sure! Old Buck always liked to try out the new kids on the block, and he liked ’em young. Twelve years old, never even had a boyfriend, because my mother wouldn’t let me go anywhere she didn’t come too. Buck told me, “Come, sit here by me on this couch. You’re a pretty little girl. I hope you’re a good girl and do what you’re told,” and I was dumb enough to say, “Yes, sir, I’ll do whatever you want, sir.” Well, that was what my mother had told me to say, so I did, and the next minute he was pushing me backwards and climbing on top of me.’
‘Stop talking like that!’ Sebastian had burst out, feeling sick.
‘It happened! Why the hell shouldn’t I talk about it?’ she yelled back.
Then her voice became a soft dovelike coo. ‘Gee, what’s the matter, honey? You look green around the gills. Too raw for you? I guess you’re the fastidious type.’ Then she was snarling again. ‘Well, buster, you’d better grow out of that if you want to make it in Hollywood. You’re living in the gutter now, big guy. They may wear designer gear and have perfect teeth but they’re predators, every one of them. Of course, I didn’t know that when I was twelve years old. But my mother did and she let me walk into Buck’s office alone.’
‘But afterwards … when you told her …’ He caught the sardonic look she gave him. ‘You did tell her, didn’t you?’