the pain and heartache she’d felt that night, the utter despair. Except all that seemed a distant shadow now, now that he was standing in front of her, this beautiful man with the strange-coloured eyes and the earring that made him look like a pirate. Her pain alleviated, as if she wasn’t only waking from a deep sleep but also from her old, outdated life. Gilbert Lockhart had used to talk about rebirth. Baptism. Emerging from the water and into fresh air, beginning again.
‘I’ll leave you to rest,’ said Dr Moretti, drawing the curtain back. Vivien wanted to speak but no words came, though whether this was a physical non-starter or a state of being tongue-tied she didn’t know. ‘Forgive the nurses if they get excited,’ he said before leaving, with a sideways smile that thawed the hardest, furthest part inside her that no one on earth had touched before. ‘It’s not usual for us to care for somebody famous. But the good news is, Vivien, you’re going to be absolutely fine.’
*
Over the next few days, she drifted in and out of sleep, torn between the urge to get up, get dressed, stalk out of there, and the pull of being tended to, cared for, looked after. The doctor came and went, a perfect vision, and as Vivien’s strength slowly returned so did her voice. Until, one morning, she found the courage to speak to him.
‘You must think me a terrible mess,’ she said. Humiliation burned when she imagined being brought into hospital, a ruined starlet, selfish and spoiled, while Dr Moretti was a disciplined medic, concerned with saving lives, not wrecking them.
He was about to leave, but stopped at the door. ‘Not at all,’ he replied.
‘I don’t know what I was thinking,’ Vivien stammered. ‘I guess, I – I wasn’t thinking at all. I was upset, that’s all. Well, that’s an understatement.’ She laughed emptily but Dr Moretti’s face gave nothing away. Those eyes took her in, those strong, stormy eyes, with barely restrained feeling, like a stallion roped to a gate.
‘I’d had a telephone call and it threw me,’ she went on, unable to stop and yet conscious she was spilling too much, spilling it all, but now she’d started there was no way back. ‘I’ve been pretending for a long time,’ she explained, somehow feeling that she had to explain, she had to make this man understand her just the tiniest bit because if she didn’t then what was the point of anything in the world, anything at all? ‘I’ve been surviving without joy,’ she choked. ‘I’ve forgotten how to feel joy, how to feel happy about anything. Did I ever know how? I seem to be better at knowing sadness, and destroying everything I touch. Oh, God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m talking and talking and everyone thinks they know me but they don’t know me at all. I’m not even sure that I know me. I thought it would be easier for everyone if I just…’
She trailed off, feeling as though she had bared her soul in a way she had never expected to again: she had trained herself to be wiser, instructed herself to know better and she did know better. But how strange was the human heart. It told itself to close and yet still it opened, time and time and time again, in faith, towards the light.
He was silent for a long time.
Then: ‘Can I call someone for you?’
‘I don’t have anyone,’ she said.
His expression shifted in surprise. Those eyes again: how could she not fall into them? ‘No family?’ he pressed softly. ‘A mother, father… a friend?’
Vivien thought. ‘You can call my agent,’ she said. It sounded hopelessly sad, this brittle, proud star, with no one to call but her manager.
Dr Moretti came to her. He put a hand on her shoulder and it was the loveliest, tenderest touch she had ever received. A tear seeped down her cheek.
‘You’ll be all right,’ he told her gently.
She blinked and another tear fell. ‘Will I?’
He smiled. ‘Without doubt,’ he said. ‘I know a fighter when I see one.’
*
It was with some regret that Vivien was discharged a fortnight later, for she feared she would never see him again. She tried to occupy herself with getting back to work, and in true agent style Dandy leaped back on the wagon, seeing dollar signs where she saw redemption – she was surely hotter now than ever, the diva who had cheated death.
But Vivien couldn’t concentrate. It all seemed meaningless. The movie business no longer held her in thrall, the competition and rivalry that had charged her ambition dissipated like a whisper on the wind. Her life thus far had been about chasing the next prize, the next key, so that she could keep opening those doors and slamming the past shut behind her. But there were more important things than fame and money, things she had never contemplated before: things she hadn’t been able to contemplate before, because she had never met anyone with whom to share them.
She couldn’t stop thinking about Giovanni Moretti. She remembered how he had stirred emotions in her that she thought she had lost, his compassion, his patience, how he had drawn her honesty without even trying. Now she had uncovered that intimacy, she was frightened she would never find it again. In the short time she had spent with him, she’d felt a connection she had only read about in books. Had it been real? Had she been foolish to trust it, or had she been right this time? Was it still possible for her to know a good thing when she found it? Physically, too, he cast her under his spell. She woke in delicious sweats and ached to be kissed by him.
Months passed. Vivien had all but given up hope of ever renewing contact, when, out of the blue, he got in touch. She received the note through Dandy.
Vivien, I have to see you again. Meet me at Rococo’s, Friday, 8 p.m.
She didn’t need to be asked twice.
*
Their relationship began in earnest. Giovanni Moretti was, without doubt, the best thing that had ever happened to her. He was a strong, fine man in a reef full of sharks – intelligent, courageous and loyal, but with a mysterious, bruised soul that kept her guessing, kept her wanting, and she knew he would reveal it to her in time. She, after all, had revealed herself to him. Not since Jonny Laing had she been so truthful about her history – and she knew this time was different. She knew Gio Moretti wasn’t like other men. She told him everything, from Gilbert’s beatings through to her escape, from her nights at Boudoir Lalique to that sick advance in Jonny’s office and everything in between: the fact she kept on running but could never outrun her past.
He didn’t judge her, just took her in his arms when she had finished her story and stroked and kissed her hair. ‘It’s over now,’ he said. ‘I promise, it’s over.’
She sensed that her vulnerability mattered to him, though she couldn’t say why. He seemed to understand her in a way that no one else did, as if she reminded him of someone, as if they had perhaps known each other in another life.
Vivien’s only white lie was that it wasn’t just her mother who had died, but her father too. Both her parents were dead. She figured they might as well have been – Gilbert had ceased to exist for her that very same day she walked out of his house. Had her father been to visit her in hospital? Had he called? Had he cared? Had he sent even a card or a flaky bunch of flowers to wish her well? Had he hell. She owed him nothing. It was easier, cleaner, to cut all ties. To pretend there was zero left.
When she disclosed she was an orphan, Gio searched her eyes. There was something he ached to tell her,
