Deep and Silent Waters

‘Your roof, Mamma? My roof, you mean. I want them both here, especially that girl. I want her here especially.’

‘Nico, please … don’t …’ Her hands twisted together and she watched him with a fixed, anxious gaze.

‘Don’t keep arguing. Go and ring Sebastian now. You don’t want to make me angry, do you?’

Laura spent ten minutes unpacking, hanging up her clothes, filling drawers, but only after she had sat Jancy, the doll she had had all her life and was never parted from, on the end of the bed. She had been given her for Christmas when she was four and Jancy had sat at the end of her bed ever since. Eighteen inches high, soft-bodied, with a smooth, pink porcelain face, delicately modelled little hands and feet in the same material, curly blonde hair and blue eyes that shut if you laid her down and snapped open again when you sat her up, Jancy had always worn the same knee-length pleated blue dress, with pearl buttons from her waist up to a rounded collar. Now and then Laura took her clothes off and washed them, the dress, the white slip, the lacy panties and the white shoes.

Melanie always teased her about Jancy. ‘Aren’t you too old to be carrying a doll around with you everywhere? I’ve heard of people who still keep their teddy bears – but a doll, for heaven’s sake!’

‘Call her my mascot. She’s company for me when I’m alone in a strange hotel room.’

‘Get a man!’

‘Jancy’s far less trouble.’

‘That depends on the man. You choose the wrong ones.’

‘So do you!’

Melanie couldn’t argue with that and, anyway, Laura didn’t care what she thought. Wherever she went in the world Jancy went, too, a constant reminder of her home, her family, a silent reassurance that she was still the same person. When your life changed as much as Laura’s had over the past few years you needed that. There were so many temptations placed in your way that you had to build your own protective shell against the world’s attack, and Jancy was part of hers.

It would have been easy to take drugs instead – they were always around: a joint of cannabis between sessions, cocaine cut on compact mirrors, at some parties, with tiny coloured straws to sniff it through, a dozen different pills if you were tiring and the photographer wanted to go on for another hour. Easy to let drugs take the strain of that life, but Laura never had.

She had had a lot to prove to the world, to her family, herself – she saw too many other girls going down the drain and it wasn’t going to happen to her. So she clung to Jancy and photographs of her parents, her sister, her home, to keep her sane and above the dark waters of oblivion into which others sank.

At four o’clock that afternoon, she and Melanie took the hotel launch over to Venice, watching the well-known fabulous skyline appear through the heat haze, the lace-like white fretted stone of the Doge’s palace, the spire-topped pink marble Campanile, the crumbling, pastel-painted façades of houses and hotels along the canal. Melanie began a travelogue in Laura’s ear, a guidebook open in her hand.

‘That must be the part of Venice called the Dorsoduro …’

‘The what?’

‘It means backbone, it says here. Venice’s backbone, I suppose. Most of Venice is built up on wooden stilts but the Dorsoduro had a solid subsoil, it says. Anyway, that’s where the Grand Canal begins. And that’s the Dogana di Mare, the old customs house. The figure on top is Fortune standing on top of a golden ball and—’

‘Mel, stop it, will you? If I wanted to read a guidebook I’d buy one.’

‘How are you to know where you are if you don’t have a guidebook? Look, that must be Santa Maria della Salute, that big church. It was built to celebrate the ending of some plague or other, and when ships came home from sea that was the first thing they saw, the dome of the Salute.’

Against the blue sky the dove-grey dome was massive, yet seemed to float, insubstantial as a dream, above a huge baroque church, ornamented with white stone statues, pediments and little cupolas. Beyond it, incongruously, Laura saw a dredger sucking sludge out of the canal. A speedboat whizzed past, making the hotel launch rock dangerously as it nosed into the landing-stage at San Marco.

Melanie swore furiously, brushing water spots off her aubergine linen pants and matching shirt. ‘Look at that! I didn’t bring many clothes with me. This outfit will have to be cleaned before I can wear it again!’

Laura considered the barely visible stain. ‘Never mind, Mel, you can get it done at the hotel, and you know you’re going to spend all your time buying new clothes here.’

Melanie eyed her pale green cotton skirt and T-shirt with disfavour. ‘It wouldn’t hurt you to buy some good gear. That is hardly chic, darling.’

Laura’s eyes were invisible behind her dark glasses. ‘I want to be anonymous, not chic. I don’t want anyone recognising me.’

‘Nobody will in that tat, honey.’ A wistful look came into Melanie’s eyes. ‘I’ve had more calls from the press about you this afternoon than I’ve had for months – but all they want to talk about is Sebastian Ferrese and the way his wife died. It kills me to turn down all that PR but, just for once, it really wouldn’t be good exposure. I don’t want you tagged as the girl Ferrese killed his wife for.’

‘I couldn’t agree more. I am not talking to anyone about Sebastian.’

Melanie bit her finger thoughtfully. ‘Although, mind you, that’s a great shout-line – the girl he killed his wife for. A good PR firm could do something with that.’

‘No, Mel! Don’t even think about it.’

> ‘I was only kidding!’

Laura wasn’t so sure.