Deep and Silent Waters

‘But Sebastian’s half his age, he has plenty of time to win awards, and I’m sure he will. He’s a great director, too. I learnt a hell of a lot from him.’

‘I bet you did,’ Melanie muttered, hailing the stewardess again to ask for a brandy.

Laura flushed angrily, but didn’t snap back, tried to be calm and reasonable. ‘You said yourself it would be good for my career to work with him on this film. I’m going to read The Lily again.’

‘You’re only taking the part if he comes up with a serious offer. However good the script is, he has to pay our price this time. You’re no beginner now so he isn’t getting you for peanuts.’

Laura didn’t argue but her face set obstinately. If Sebastian offered her that part she was going to take it, whatever Melanie said, in spite of her reservations about him, about the threats in the notes pushed under her door.

All of that weighed nothing in the scales against the heart-stopping prospect of working with Sebastian. He got the best out of everyone on a film – even if you didn’t get paid at all it would be worth doing, just for the sake of what you learnt about your craft.

A little voice in her head added, ‘You mean you can’t wait to sleep with him again!’

Her lips clamped together. No. She knew now that she was as weak as water where he was concerned but she wouldn’t let him seduce her again. He wouldn’t get the chance to catch her alone, for one thing: she would be careful and, staying at Ca’ d’Angeli, he couldn’t force his way into her room – he wouldn’t dare risk a scene under that roof. But then her mind filled with confused and sensual images, his hands, his mouth, his knees nudging her thighs apart … her body as he’d forced her down on the carpet, throbbing with desire for him, burning inside, needing the rhythmic massage of his hard flesh to soothe that terrible yearning.

Even if he did get in touch, send the script, make a deal with Mel, how long would it be before they began filming? She knew how interminable these negotiations

could be. It might be months, years, before they shot a scene. So much could go wrong – and probably would, with her luck.

The script might have to be rewritten, Sebastian might have to wait to get the right people. There were sound stages to book, sets to design, props to collect, other locations to choose – she was sure the hero of the book had travelled around Italy during the 1920s and 1930s, had been in Rome at one time, Milan at another, always on the move from job to job. And even if all that could be worked out, the money might be a problem. Backers were notorious for changing their minds, pulling out of a film, sometimes for other projects they thought less risky, sometimes because they didn’t like the director’s intentions.

The stewardess took away their trays and Melanie yawned. Suddenly she pointed over the shoulder of a man sitting in front of them. She strained forward to a newspaper he held open. He became aware of this and looked round, irritated.

‘If you want it, take it!’ He thrust it into Melanie’s hands and opened another the stewards had given him when they had boarded the plane.

‘Thanks,’ Melanie said, unruffled by his tone, and spread the paper on her lap. Laura glanced at it curiously, then gasped as she recognised the photograph at the top of the page – of herself and Sebastian in the hotel lobby the day she and Melanie had arrived in Venice.

‘What do they say?’

‘The usual innuendo,’ Mel muttered, closing the paper. ‘Don’t bother to read it. It will only upset you.’

‘About Clea?’ What else? That was all that interested them, wasn’t it? Rumours of sex, violence, drugs, murder – what else did they have to fill their newspapers? They knew what the public wanted.

‘Ssh,’ Melanie hissed, keeping her voice low so that none of the other passengers could hear her. ‘Of course. Don’t worry, it’s only the same old stories. They just about stay within the law of libel. The only new one is about you and Sebastian meeting up in Venice. It’s given them a chance to speculate about whether or not you’re going to make a film together, and if you do, will the affair be on again?’

‘We hadn’t seen each other for years!’

‘What do they care? It makes good copy, sells papers.’

Laura turned her head away. Clea had been dead for three years but the press kept writing about how she had died, rehashing old gossip. Why couldn’t they let her rest in peace?

Hypocrite! You don’t want peace for Clea, she thought bleakly, you want it for yourself. And you want Clea’s husband for yourself, too.

London, 1997

Two weeks later a parcel arrived at Laura’s London flat. It was not very heavy, wrapped in brown paper, stamped with a London postmark.

Laura’s heart lurched with excitement. The script at last! She had been looking out for it ever since she got back from Venice. She tore off the brown paper and found a cardboard shoe-box. She took off the lid and peered inside, then made a high-pitched, keening noise.

It was Jancy, come back to her. Jancy, with her face smashed in, one bright blue glassy eye dangling on a spring, her nose a jagged crater, her pink rosebud mouth deliberately beaten down inside her head.

Her blue dress had been ripped down the front, her underclothes torn and dirty, as if she was a rape victim.

Pinned to her chest was another of those notes, printed in capitals.

YOU’RE NEXT.

Chapter Seven