about you, Guv?”
How to encapsulate in a few words, as she had done, the twisting path that had brought him to Hospital Lane? That would mean disclosure, exposure, confidences. His fault, he had asked the first question.
“Much the same reason as you. I’m not a desk person.”
She must have sensed his withdrawal, because she immediately turned away from him.
“Goodnight, Guv. The keys are in the car.”
Moretti watched her run lightly across the road and waited until she had unlocked the door of one of the terraced houses that curved along St. George’s Esplanade. In the night silence he could hear the clack of the door closing, shutting off the light in the passage beyond.
Chapter Nine
By the time Sydney woke up, it was late afternoon. Much of her hangover had dissipated, but she was incredibly thirsty. She pulled on her kimono and padded on bare feet to the adjoining bathroom to splash her face with cold water, then returned to the bedroom. There was no sign of Gil, and she wondered if he was on the patio.
Surely not, she thought. But she had seen little of him since the murder of Toni Albarosa, so maybe he had got over his fear and returned there. The very fact he had been advised not to do that would have been spur enough.
In the bedroom, she removed a jug of ice water from the fridge, poured herself a glass, and drank it. Refilling the glass, she took herself through to the sitting room. There was no sign of Gil there.
“Gil?”
No answer. Sydney shivered, the glass frigid against her fingers. Across the stretch of Turkoman carpet on which they had last made love she saw the closed doors to the patio, and just above the backrest of one of the chaise lounges she could see the top of Gil’s head, tipped to one side, motionless.
“Gil!” she called again.
There was no response. A chill of terror struck her, turning her stomach to ice. Dropping the glass on to the coffee table, Sydney ran to the door and threw it open.
“Gil!”
She flew across the patio and around the chair to face whatever was waiting there.
“Jesus Christ, woman! You scared the fucking daylights out of me.”
Puffy-faced with sleep, her husband looked up at her. The striations left by the marchesa’s nails were only just beginning to fade.
Sydney threw her arms around him. “I thought you were —”
“I’m not,” he interrupted her. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Don’t say that.” Overcome with relief, Sydney rested her face against his. “I was scared. What in the hell are you doing out here, anyway?”
“Trying to sleep before I was so rudely interrupted. It was stuffy inside, and I couldn’t work out how to unlatch the damn windows.” A lifetime of being picked up after and waited on had left Gil hopeless at many of the simpler technical manoeuvres that cropped up in everyday life.
“You should have come and woken me.”
“Be it far from me to disturb your post-coital slumbers. Besides, you’d locked the bedroom door.”
Sydney looked at her husband’s bloated, scratched face with concern. The Gil she was familiar with would have screamed and banged on the door, battering it down if necessary.
“What’s happened?” she asked. “Have you been out here all afternoon?”
“That I have not, and that’s why I’m shagged out. I got a limo and went out to the manor, to see Mario.”
“About the changes?”
“Right. I didn’t have the chance to tell you about Monty’s visit — just before you returned from your night of debauchery it was.”
“It wasn’t — I didn’t —”
“Belt up, baby. I’ve got bigger problems than whether you had it off with superwoman and supercop.”
The ice in Sydney’s stomach felt the same as the minute before, melting the tenderness of her relief at finding him alive, but this time it was the old familiar chill of a relationship on the rocks.
“Baby’ll belt up with pleasure on that subject. What problems?”
The chaise tipped perilously to one side as Gil swung his feet down. “Problems as to what the hell is going on.”
“Going on with what? Surely it’s just a question of a superstar director with a big head and big ideas? Maybe we should go home and let them get on with it — you know what it’s like for writers on a film set.”
“No.”
There was something about her husband’s unaccustomed gravity that made Sydney realize Gil was not off on one of his ego trips. “Mario seems — well, scared. Maybe he’s back on the hard stuff again, I don’t know. I had a hell of a time getting him on his own, then I cornered him in his trailer. He went all spiritual on me, told me he was being guided into the decisions he was making — went on about higher forces and trusting to other voices. It was like talking to a bloody yogi. When I tried my usual yelling and browbeating approach, he broke down, and next thing I know Monty’s sidekick, Piero Bonini, comes rushing in and orders me off the set. But I’m not leaving it there, and I think I’ve finally made that clear. Something is going on.”
“You’re paranoid, honey. What could be going on? What happened — out here — is making you imagine things.”
A cool wind was blowing in off the cliffs, and Sydney trembled in her flimsy wrap.
“Come inside, Gil. You shouldn’t be sitting out here.”
“Don’t patronize me, Syd. I’m right, I know I am. Besides, I gotta reason to hang about a bit longer, and I ain’t talkin’ script changes now.”
He was leering at her, but she knew the lechery in his eyes was not for her.
“Christ, I’m dying for a cigarette and a drink. Be a good little wifey, will you, and pour me a Scotch?”
He followed her inside, fumbling in his pocket for his cigarettes, humming to himself. All, or nothing at all. A spectacularly inappropriate choice, she thought, pouring a large Scotch into a large glass.
“I’m going back to bed,” she said.
“I’ll be going out again.”
“I’d figured that out,” Sydney said. “Research.”
“Clever kitten. Don’t you want to know who’s my research assistant?”
“No.”
“Pity. We could make it a threesome. Her idea — what a vixen! Vroom vroom! She likes you, sweetie-pie.”
Sydney
