here if you want to; I’ll give you sanctuary. You’ll be quite safe here—the grounds are patrolled by mad packs of hounds at night and the gates and walls are electrified—he won’t get in.’
Her pale mouth curved into a smile. ‘You’re a darling, Paolo. Listen, your phone might be bugged by now—he’s quite capable of it and he can afford to hire detectives who’ll do that. I’ll write. I’m OK, don’t worry. Bye.’
She hung up and lay staring at the ceiling. She would go down and get a postcard of the hotel; she had seen some on the reception desk. She would write a few apparently innocent words on it. ‘Having a lovely time, wish you were here!’ She would sign it, not with her name but with the word cara. It should reach him tomorrow. Paolo was quick-witted; he would understand at once and come to the hotel to find her.
She only hoped that Stephen had believed him and was looking for her somewhere else.
GABRIELLA woke next morning to the sound of a church bell chiming seven. An echo came from across the lake—or was that another church telling the hour? For a moment she lay there, dazedly remembering the incoherent dreams she had been haunted by all night—Stephen’s hard, dark face, his mouth, the heat of his body moving against hers, his hands…
Perspiration broke out on her forehead. With a low groan she sat up in bed and looked around the room. The walls were whitewashed. Last night they had looked rather stark, but this morning they were coloured pinky gold by the sun. She had not closed her shutters last night and had left the window slightly ajar; a gentle breeze was now ruffling the floor-length white gauze curtains.
Gabriella slid out of bed in her thin silky nightdress and walked over to the window, pushed it right open and went out on to her balcony, to be struck dumb by the beauty of the view.
She stood there, staring, blue eyes wide; she hadn’t expected anything like this. Her gaze moved over the ring of mountains, their indented line blue-hazed, majestic, stretching away out of sight, the morning light moving on their peaks where here and there snow still covered the upper slopes, a cloudless sky floating above them and below, on the surface of the lake, their shimmering reflections, white, gold and soft rose.
Como was not a huge lake; it had a domestic intimacy, and she could see the other side of it clearly enough to make out houses, red-roofed and white-walled, gardens with cypress and fir trees, and, on the winding roads along the lakeside, cars moving.
The hotel gardens ran right down to the lake to where she saw a wooden jetty, with a few people waiting on it—men reading newspapers, schoolchildren, women with shopping baskets chatting to one another. On the lake a small ferry boat was chugging towards them at a sedate speed. She watched it dock, nudging the old tyres tied along the jetty. A sailor tied up and the passengers boarded, greeting the jerseyed sailors on board like old friends—which they probably were.
The boat cast off again, crossing the lake again. Gabriella watched it leave. She could see why people who lived here would use the ferry if they wanted to cross the lake. Driving around those narrow, twisting little roads would be hair-raising even in daylight. That’s what I’ll do, she thought; I’ll leave my car at the hotel and explore the lake on the ferry.
She heard cheerful, murmuring voices outside in the corridor, then the whirr of the lift descending—other people going to breakfast, obviously—which reminded her that she had ordered a breakfasttray in her room for eight o’clock. Taking a last look at the view, she turned reluctantly away into her bedroom.
She showered, slid into a towelling robe hanging on the door and sat on the bed to blow-dry her long, silky hair; it took quite a time, so in the end she left it loose, to finish drying naturally, and dressed in a dark blue linen shift dress, leaving her slender legs bare but sliding her feet into white sandals with a tiny heel, a few fine straps of leather criss-crossing the foot, buckled at the ankle.
A few moments later the room-service waiter tapped on her door. He was a young boy in a spotless white uniform, as slender as a girl and doeeyed. He gave her an appreciative look, young though he was—he was, after all, an Italian and enjoyed the sight of a pretty woman. ‘Your breakfast, signorina,’ he said smiling as she admitted him.
‘Grazie,’ she said, leading the way out on to the balcony. In Italian she told him to put the tray down on the small white table.
‘A lovely morning for you,’ he said, as if he had produced that too. His dark eyes admiringly flicked over her from her black hair to her long legs. Clearly he was in no hurry to leave. ‘Is this your first visit to Como?’
‘Yes, and I’ve never seen anything so beautiful. Where does the ferry go?’ she asked, pointing to the jetty where a new string of passengers was boarding a different boat.
‘That one?’ He gave it an indifferent glance. ‘That sails between Menaggio, Bellagio and Varenna.’
‘Do all the ferries have the same route?’
‘Oh, no—some go right the way to Como itself, at the far end of one arm of the lake…’
‘One arm?’ she asked, puzzled.
‘The lake is a Y-shape, signorina.’ He pulled a pencil from his pocket and drew a rough outline on a notepad he also carried. ‘Like that. Como is at the end of this upper arm and Lecco is almost at the end of the other arm. The lake divides at Bellagio, then you come down here to Novate.’
‘What a strange shape for a lake! So which town is this?’
He gave her a startled look, his great dark eyes incredulous. ‘This is Menaggio, signorina! You didn’t know that?’
She grinned at him. ‘I drove in here on impulse last night; I was so tired that I didn’t even notice the name of the hotel, let alone the place.’
The boy was in no hurry to leave. ‘Where do you come from? I don’t recognise your accent. You sound southern—are you from Naples?’
She laughed. ‘Close—I was brought up in Brindisi.’
Another waiter appeared below, on the terrace steps, and whistled piercingly. The boy looked down, startled, was given a peremptory gesture and an angry glare, and hurriedly turned away.
‘I must go…Excuse me, signorina.’
He vanished and, smiling wryly to herself, Gabriella sat down and considered her breakfasttray—a glass of orange juice embedded in a bowl of crushed ice, a silver coffee-pot, rolls, a couple of little cakes, butter, a pot of jam, a bowl of fresh black cherries and some frosted green grapes.
She didn’t touch the cakes, but she ate a roll and some of the cherries, drank all the juice and a couple of cups of coffee while she gazed down at the lake, watching the changing reflections until a passing boat sent wide ripples to break them up. People on the jetty were talking to each other cheerfully, their voices drifting to her on the warm air. She thought that it must be nice to live in a small place where you knew everyone; big cities like London could be lonely places.
The telephone made her jump. She turned her head to stare at it in terror.
Who could be ringing her? Nobody
