voice was beginning to wobble now, the tears beginning to come.
‘Van, where are you? What’s going on?’
There was silence. ‘Look, tell me where you are,’ said Camilla urgently. ‘I’m coming to get you.’
Venetia had never been to a mortuary before. Her mother’s death had been the only death she had experienced, and she’d been ten years old then. The nearest she had come to the body was seeing the walnut casket at the funeral from the front row of the church, festooned with lilies and roses the size of saucers. But she had seen enough crime dramas on Sunday-night television to know what to expect. A sterile, fluorescent-lit building, like a long, deserted school.
Venetia and Sergeant Finch were greeted by a mortician who led them silently into a cold, plain room. Her shoulders clenched with tension as the mortician led her to a slim table, on which a long shape was covered in a sheet.
‘It was the smoke inhalation that was fatal,’ said Sergeant Finch, trying to sound reassuring. ‘The face largely escaped burns.’
Her clammy palms gripped the leather straps of her handbag as Gillian Finch pulled back the sheet covering the top of the body. Instinctively Venetia flinched and looked away. Cursing herself, she forced herself to look at the face of the body. The eyes were shut, leaving two dark crescents beneath the forehead, but she would recognize the shape of Jonathon’s face anywhere: the high cheekbones, the continental nose, the stern lip. She resisted the urge to choke.
‘It’s him,’ she said, turning to look at the policewoman. The mortician slid the sheet back over his face, silently closing a chapter in Venetia’s life.
Camilla was sitting on the grey plastic chair in the reception area. As she saw Venetia, she stood up and walked slowly towards her, stilettos tapping on the bare floor.
‘I am so sorry, Van,’ said Camilla, hugging her. ‘Come on, I’m taking you to my house.’
Camilla looked at Sergeant Finch. ‘Is there anything else?’
The policewoman looked at Venetia sympathetically. ‘No, I have Mrs von Bismarck’s number and your address. I will have to come and speak to you later today or tomorrow to ask some more questions.’
Venetia looked at her. ‘What else is there? What more do you know? Please tell me,’ she croaked.
‘Early word from the fire investigation officer is that it was probably started by a cigarette down the back of the sofa. There were several wine bottles near where the fire had started. I think the two men had been drinking.’
‘Where were they found?’
Sergeant Finch avoided her gaze.
‘Where were they found?’ Venetia repeated, her voice trembling. She knew the answer. She predicted the words that were to come out of the policewoman’s lips before she had time to say them.
‘In bed,’ said Gillian Finch softly. ‘I’m sorry.’
Venetia clasped her sister’s arm as they walked across the car park towards Camilla’s Audi. It was drizzling, the lunchtime sunshine having given way to iron-grey clouds. They sat in the front seat of the car. The only sound was the tap-tapping of rain on the windscreen as the inside of the car steamed up. Venetia stared down at her lap, examining a piece of thread on the seam of her trousers, trying to remember the last thing Jonathon had said to her. She couldn’t remember. She laughed. It came out cruelly, like a bully’s laugh.
‘We were both having affairs, did you know that, Camilla?’ said Venetia. ‘Both with other men, as it turns out.’
Camilla remained silent.
‘I know things weren’t perfect between Jonathon and me, far from it. But what did I do that was so wrong? Why was he seeing Diego? A man?’ She gulped for breath and her composure crumbled, her head slumping to her chest as she sobbed. ‘What did I do?’
Camilla reached over and took her trembling hand. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault,’ she repeated quietly.
Venetia inhaled deeply and struggled to pull herself together, staring in front of her and trying to count the splats of rain falling on the glass. ‘It doesn’t matter now. I won’t be seeing Jack Kidman again.’
Camilla knew exactly what her sister was trying to do. Punish herself for Jonathon, punish herself for trying to find affection outside a loveless marriage. ‘Van, you don’t have to …’
‘I’ve got to cancel the show as well,’ said Venetia coolly.
‘Are you sure?’ asked her sister. ‘But you’ve worked so hard.’
‘I have to,’ said Venetia quietly, pulling at the loose thread until it came unravelled completely. ‘I have to do it for Diego.’
Camilla looked at her, not understanding her loyalties. ‘But he was seeing your husband.’ She stopped herself.
Venetia laughed sadly. ‘Doesn’t make sense, does it? Nothing makes sense.’
The show did go on. Oswald insisted on it.
‘Until Jonathon’s estate has cleared, I still have forty-five per cent voting rights in this company,’ he had told her, grinding down her best intentions until, ultimately, she was too weak to resist.
The timing of her debut collection couldn’t have been worse: the day after her husband’s funeral. Her world, once so calm, ordered and simple, was shifting beneath her feet like sand.
Venetia couldn’t spend a second at rest or her head would become a hive of guilt, doubt and pain. It wasn’t the grief that was unbearable, it was the betrayal. Had her husband really burnt to death? Was he really having an affair with another man – her own designer? Was it all her fault, some twisted retribution for her own infidelity with Jack? And Jack: she couldn’t allow him to creep into her thoughts. Not now.
As the show approached, Venetia’s legendary poise vanished. Her skin was sallow and dull, her hair untidy and her clothes creased. She was running on empty, and only the thought of bad reviews for the collection kept her going. Model castings, the fittings, all the frantic preparations for the debut collection were conducted in a fog of numbness and desperate energy. She couldn’t let herself fail at this, not when she had made a mess of everything else.
In the event, the tent at London Fashion Week was packed. Diego’s death was the best possible publicity for the show. The fashion rumour mill went into overdrive about how he died, and Venetia felt a fool. Brix Sanderson scotched much of the scandal, telling everyone that Jonathon and Diego had been together to discuss business. If the truth had got out, that the two men had been meeting for sex, Brix knew that Venetia would completely retreat from the world – and she was not going to let that happen to her friend.
At the start of the catwalk, Flower Productions’ elaborate waterfall effect had been replaced by a huge black-and-white portrait of Diego. Venetia simply nodded when she had seen it, managing to swallow the bile she had felt rising in her throat. But, as the show’s production manager had pointed out, they needed impact. And it worked. Half the people in the front row were crying as the models stalked the catwalk in the beautiful selection of clothes. The show got a standing ovation.
Backstage,
