but she ran back into the house, through the winding corridor to the back stairs the servants used, and began the climb up to the bedroom floor.
Her nursery lay at the back of the house, overlooking the stable-yard, but when she paused at the top of the steep, narrow staircase breathing hard from the effort of the climb, she heard sounds from her mother’s bedroom at the other end of the landing. It was her father’s voice! Eagerly, Vittoria ran towards the open door only to stop dead. When the nurse wasn’t looking after the child she had other duties in the house. Once she would have refused to do anything but take care of Vittoria, but with Italy girding herself for war she had bowed to the inevitable. Every morning she made beds and dusted furniture upstairs. She was doing Anna Serrati’s elegant nineteenth-century bed now, with deft, quick movements.
As she leant over to plump up the pillows Leo Serrati watched the way the girl’s short lavender cotton print uniform slid up those slightly plump legs. He moved forward and ran his fingers up under the skirt.
The nurse straightened with a gasp. ‘No, please, don’t, Signore.’
He grabbed her by the waist and jerked her towards him, bent his head.
The girl wriggled in his arms, her head pushed back by the onslaught of his full, wet mouth. His free hand roamed over her buttocks, pulled her closer, then ran up to fondle her full breasts under the stretched cotton. She struggled uselessly.
He took a step, then another, still kissing her, pushing her backwards in front of him until she toppled on to the bed. He went down on top of her, fumbling underneath the full skirt. He pushed it up and Vittoria watched him pulling down white cotton knickers.
‘Don’t, oh, please don’t,’ the girl whispered, crying in husky, choked breaths, pushing at Leo Serrati’s fat shoulders.
Leo Serrati didn’t answer. A second later the nurse opened her mouth to scream, but the man on top of her put his pudgy hand over it and pushed himself down between her spread legs. Her naked white bottom writhed on the bed.
Grunting, panting, Leo Serrati was going up and down as if he was riding one of the horses in the stables. The girl had stopped struggling and just lay there with her eyes shut. She was making a funny little moaning noise, like one of the pigeons in the yard crooning to itself, and she was moving, too, her legs jerking.
Vittoria felt sick and frightened. She didn’t know what her father was doing but she hated the way it made her feel. She was trembling and sweating. She wanted to run away, but couldn’t move.
With a long, thick groan Leo stopped riding the girl and fell on top of her, while she writhed under him, one leg thrashing about as if she was having a fit, making a high-pitched whining noise.
‘You see, you wanted it,’ Leo Serrati muttered, his dark-haired hand caressing the girl’s thigh.
Vittoria began to scream. From that instant events moved too fast for her to remember just what happened. Her father leapt off the bed and began to fumble with his open trousers. The girl scrambled up, too, pulling up her knickers and bursting into tears.
‘Shut up! Stop that noise, you nosy little bitch!’ Leo Serrati yelled, slapping the child’s red, tear-stained face.
‘What the hell is going on?’ said Anna Serrati from the doorway, and then she stood, staring at them all, contempt flooding her eyes. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘I don’t care if you sleep with every one of the servants, but not on my bed, you bastard! Don’t ever bring one of them in here to fuck them, especially when my child is likely to walk in on you.’
He ignored her as if she hadn’t spoken, walked out of the room past her without a word or a glance.
Vittoria was crying in violent gasps, her cheeks burning from the vicious blow her father had given her.
Icily, Anna Serrati said to the nurse, ‘Take my daughter to her room, wash her face, comb her hair and get her out of those riding clothes.’
Vittoria never forgot her fourth birthday. She never rode the pony again and did not care when, years later, it was shot and eaten because food was scarce in the shops and many Italians were starving.
Venice, 1997
The sun was very low, far out across the misty reaches of the lagoon, as the gondola negotiated the crowded waters of the Grand Canal, slipping between water-taxis, refuse barges, private boats, vaporetti. Leaning against the padded back-rest, languorous with heat, the green cotton T-shirt sticking to her back, Laura stared up at the palazzi they passed; some had become hotels, or housed institutions others had been divided into apartments. Only a few were private homes. From the outside, though, they were still ravishing. The images of Venice are so familiar, even when seen for the first time: they are embedded in the European consciousness, their beauty timeless, unforgettable.
She and Sebastian sat side by side, their shoulders touching, but neither of them spoke or looked at the other although Laura was intensely aware of him. Miser-like, she had treasured every tiny contact they had ever had – at one time she would tell them over to herself in bed at night, how once he had run a finger along her face, from her temples to her mouth, a track of fire that burned long after he had moved away. Once he had smiled into her eyes while he explained softly what he wanted from a scene they were about to shoot, and her heartbeat had quickened until she could barely breathe. How tiny, how infinitesimal, were the gestures that could feed obsessive love.
Don’t think like that! she told herself sharply. She had no business loving him, any more now than she had had three years ago. The man who had married Clea might be guilty of her murder – had she ever had the faintest idea of what sort of man he was? Even to admit the possibility that he might be a murderer was to allow that she had thought herself in love with a stranger. She was still half in love with him and, knew that desire was dammed up inside her waiting for his touch to release it and drown her in a tidal wave of passion.
Deep inside she relived the shock of hearing how Clea had died, the terror when that old man with the blackened teeth had shouted, ‘Morte, morte violente!’ and ‘Assassinio!’ Sebastian had turned pale, looked haggard and haunted. Why would he have looked like that if he had not killed his wife?
Had Sebastian sent her that card this afternoon? GET OUT OF VENICE, BITCH, OR I’LL KILL YOU.
Looking sideways secretly, Laura tried to read his face, but that hard-edged profile gave nothing away, merely shut her out and made her feel young and stupid. What on earth had ever given her the idea that he might feel anything for her? They were light years apart. She had been a silly fool to let herself dream. Clea had been unforgettable, magnificent, a star of the first magnitude; the world was full of men who had adored her. No man who had been her husband would look twice at any other woman, let alone at one who was in many ways Clea’s very opposite – gauche, shy, with legs that were too long and clumsy, a skinny body, too wide a mouth, without sophistication, sex appeal or charm.
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘Nothing,’ she said hastily. ‘Why? What do you mean?’
‘You looked upset.’ His eyes skimmed her face. ‘You have an extraordinarily revealing face, you know. That’s why the camera loves you. You show the tiniest change of mood without speaking or even moving a muscle. It’s a rare gift – try never to lose it.’