sorry, I can’t explain.
She signed it with her name in a scrawl then read it and groaned. It was incoherent—he would think she’d been drunk when she wrote it, but it was the best she could do, and there was no time to try again.
She would put it into his mail-box at the apartment block on her way out of town—she knew the porter delivered all mail at eight o’clock, which was around the time the post office delivered it.
The wedding was due to take place at eleven-thirty—Stephen would have time to cancel the service and the reception before people began arriving. At least he would have help—he had a huge secretarial team in his offices; they could make the phone calls for him. Even so, she flinched from the thought of the chaos that was going to follow: the presents that would have to go back, the three-tiered bridal cake that nobody would want now, all the food for the reception.
It was going to be embarrassing and humiliating for Stephen and she felt a weary sense of shame at doing this to him as she stared down at the envelope on which she had written his name and address.
For a second she couldn’t decide what to do, then the panic began to burn in her stomach again and she swung away. She could not go through with it, that was all. Whatever the consequences, she could not marry him.
To calm herself, she concentrated on little details—went through her handbag to check that she had everything she would need, then put on a light summer jacket—black and white striped. Picking up her car keys, she was about to let herself out of the flat when she saw some letters on a table; she had written them yesterday morning, and forgotten to post them. Automatically she picked them up and was about to put them into her bag when her eye fell on the address on the top letter.
At that second, inspiration hit her. Paolo! In his letter he had said that he was staying at a villa on Lake Como; he would be there all summer, until September; he was painting a series of frescos on the walls of a small private theatre in the villa, which was owned by a world-famous opera director who liked to try out future productions in his own theatre.
It was like a signpost blazing her path. That’s it, I’ll go to the Italian Lakes, she thought. They’re hundreds of miles north of Brindisi. Stephen isn’t likely to think of looking there—why should he? I’ve never told him how important Paolo is to me.
Dropping the envelopes into her handbag, she let herself out of the little flat on the ground floor of an old Victorian house. Her car was parked in what had once been the front garden; now, covered in asphalt, it served as a car park for the tenants of the flats into which the house had been divided.
It was five-thirty in the morning; London was grey and dim, with few cars around, and even fewer people. The street-lights glowed yellow as she headed south towards the river. She pulled up beside a red postbox which she saw on a corner, and posted all the letters except the one to Paolo. There was so little traffic that it only took her ten minutes after that to reach the apartment block facing Hyde Park with views of the cool green shade under the trees.
It had been one of Stephen’s most prestigious projects, built five years ago right in the heart of London’s most expensive and fashionable area, with marvellous views. Even a small flat there cost the earth.
Stephen had moved into the penthouse apartment as soon as the building had been completed; he had always meant to live there, he had told her. He had worked on the specifications of the penthouse with the architect with his own tastes in mind, and had chosen the décor, creating a perfect home for himself.
Beyond his long, beautifully furnished lounge lay a broad terrace garden; it even had small trees growing in pots, and shrubs and flowers which breathed fragrance at night. She had loved walking out there at night, watching London far below, the sound of it muted, unreal.
Being so close to the park was wonderful too, almost giving one the feeling of being in the country. On hot days you could get cool in the shade of the trees, have a picnic, or row on the Serpentine. Stephen rode in Hyde Park at weekends, on a big black Arab horse which he kept in stables near by, and in the early mornings he jogged in a tracksuit to keep fit, following the twisting paths under the trees for half an hour.
It was lighter when she parked outside the apartment block, knowing that there were unlikely to be police around at that hour. It was the work of a minute to run across the pavement and drop her letter into the chrome letter-box on the front of the locked bullet-proof glass doors of the block.
The porter seated behind his desk looked up, recognised her, looked startled, but immediately gave a polite smile, and stretched his hand out ready to press the button that would open the doors electronically, if she wished, but she shook her head and turned away.
Behind her she sensed him walking towards the doors to collect the letter she had delivered.
Please don’t take it up at once! she thought, her heart going like a steam-hammer.
He wouldn’t, though, surely? Not at this hour! He would keep it and take it up with the rest of Stephen’s mail.
Although it was cool she was sweating as she got back into her car. She slammed the door, put on her seatbelt, and then risked a glance upwards to the soaring top of the forty-storey block, to where the penthouse rose against the early morning sky.
She had expected the high, wide windows to be dark too, but they blazed with light. Shock hit her. Stephen must be awake. Couldn’t he sleep either? It hadn’t occurred to her that he might be nervous too; might have doubts or uncertainties.
A shadow moved at one of the windows and her throat closed in fear. Was that him? Or was she imagining it? It was so far up that she couldn’t be sure. Was he looking out? Looking down? What if he saw her? What if he had spotted the car? Was he watching her, wondering what she was doing out there, and if she was coming up? Would he come down to find out if she had left a message?
Her hands shaking, she started her engine and stepped on the accelerator, shooting away as if the devil himself were after her.
She drove far too fast in sheer panic but there were no police cars around to notice her. She shot through comparatively empty streets down to the softly moving Thames with its glittering reflections of light from the embankment and the high-rise office blocks on each bank. A few moments later she was across Westminster Bridge, and driving into the southern suburbs, unnaturally quiet at this hour, the normally crowded roads almost empty, just the odd car passing her, and a bus lumbering into the city with a few sleepy passengers, workmen on their way home after a night shift.
I won’t ring Paolo from England, I’ll make for Lake Como, she thought. I’ll book into a hotel, and only then get in touch; that will be safest.
She had written to tell him that she was getting married and to invite him to the wedding but he had written back to say he was sorry but he couldn’t make it. He had hoped that she would be happy, and he had sent her an exquisite piece of Venetian glass—a candelabra, frosty and twisting, a centrepiece for a dinner-table, he’d said. She had only received it yesterday and she hadn’t yet told Stephen about it.
She didn’t remember mentioning Paolo to him at all, but his name had been on the list of wedding invitations under his home address in Rome. Stephen probably wouldn’t have noticed it, except to assume that he was one of her Italian relatives, and in a sense that was close in the truth. Paolo meant more to her than any of them ever had, anyway.
She arrived at Dover with half an hour to wait before she could board the ferry, and she
