you know how to work an oil lamp? I do, so hand it over,’ said Delia. She sat down, with the oil lamp on the marble seat beside her, and removed the glass globe to get at the wick. ‘We used them at Saltford Hall when there were all those power cuts after the war.’
They retreated to the kitchen, where they sat at the scrubbed table and ate the bread, cheese and cold meat that had been left in the kitchen. Fortified with food and a glass of wine, Delia yawned. ‘What a day,’ she said. ‘I’m whacked. What we need is beds, which means upstairs.’
Jessica tidied the remains of the food away into the food safe. ‘Washing up can wait until the morning,’ she said. ‘Wasn’t there a staircase at the end of the hall with the wall paintings?’
They went up the stairs into a gallery and then came to a wide landing, with several large, polished doors leading off it. Opening them one after the other, they found four rooms ready for guests, with the beds made and clean towels hung over the rails at the washstands in the bathrooms.
‘They seem to be expecting us,’ Delia said.
‘Someone, anyhow.’ Jessica still wasn’t sure they were in the right place. ‘What if we wake up and find we’re at the Villa Ariosto, or the Villa Boccaccio?’
Delia said, ‘Then our hosts will be in for a surprise. It doesn’t matter; here we are, and here we stay, and if a claimant to my room turns up in the middle of the night, he or she can jolly well go and sleep somewhere else.’
‘I can’t see anyone being mad enough to be out in this wind.’
‘You have this room, and I’ll take the one next door. You have the oil lamp, I’ll have the candle.’
From what Delia could see by the light of her candle, she was in a large and grand room, the sort of room that would belong to the master or mistress of the house. Perhaps she shouldn’t be in here at all, but she was too sleepy to care.
The bed had an elaborate headboard, on which, in the flickering, shadowy light, Delia could make out the entwined initials, B M.
Beatrice Malaspina, she said aloud. Well, here I am at the Villa Dante. I do wonder what you want with me.
Until a week ago, Delia had never heard of Beatrice Malaspina, nor of the Villa Dante. She had been in her London flat when the postman’s whistle was followed by the bang of the letter flap and the thud as the post hit the doormat.
She went into the small hall and picked up the letters. A brown envelope from the electricity company. A white envelope, with a handwritten address. She knew who that was from, her agent Roger Stein’s wild scrawl was unmistakable. Her heart sank. He only wrote when he had something nasty to say, otherwise he’d be on the phone with a breezy, ‘Delia, dear girl …’
And what was this? She looked at the long envelope. It had to be a lawyer’s letter; why did lawyers feel the need to have different-sized stationery from everyone else? She turned it over. It was from Winthrop, Winthrop & Jarvis, the family solicitors—or at least, her father’s solicitors; they were nothing to do with her these days.
Was her father communicating with her now through his solicitors? Had things got that bad?
She began to cough, and cursed at the stab of pain in her chest. She took the post into the kitchen and put it down on the table. Then she went to the stove and turned on the gas under the kettle. Coffee would clear her brain and give her strength to open the letters.
She had her back turned to the window, and hadn’t seen the figure that was standing there, on the other side of the glass.
Jessica tapped on the window, softly at first, and then more loudly. Delia whirled round, startled and alarmed, then relaxed as she saw who it was. She hurried to the window, threw up the sash, and hauled Jessica in over the sill. A small black and tan dog jumped in after her, trailing its lead.
‘Jessica, for God’s sake, you nearly gave me a heart attack,’ she said, grabbing the dog’s lead and unclipping it from its collar. ‘What on earth are you doing climbing up my fire escape?’
‘I tell you what, it’s a miracle burglars aren’t in and out all day long. It’s hardly difficult.’
‘There’s an alarm I put on at night and when I go out,’ Delia said. ‘It makes a terrific racket, like an air raid siren. Good thing it wasn’t set, or you’d have had the heart attack and plunged to the ground. Oh, Lord; I can guess why you’re on my fire escape. Reporters?’
Jessica nodded.
‘Here?’
‘Staked out at the front, two of them, would you believe it? They know you’re a friend of mine; honestly, wouldn’t you think they had something better to do than follow me around?’
Delia went into her sitting room, edged round the Schiedmayer grand piano which took up nearly all the available space, and peered down into the square.
‘You’re absolutely right, there they are, bold as brass, not even bothering to lurk or look inconspicuous. The neighbours will be complaining, and pointing out that this is a nice area.’
‘Is it?’
‘Not really, or I couldn’t afford to live here. Respectable is what they mean. What’s up? You look all in. I can see your ghastly husband hasn’t agreed to give you a divorce. What’s he done now?’
‘Haven’t you seen the papers?’
‘Not that foul Giles Slattery again?’
‘No, although he’s one of the reporters hanging round the front door downstairs. No, this is important news, headlines in The Times kind: Richie’s been appointed a junior minister at the Foreign Office.’
‘Hell,’ Delia said. ‘That’ll make him even keener to stay respectably married, won’t it?’
Delia was Jessica’s oldest and best friend, and the only person who knew and understood her predicament, the only person whose advice she trusted. Despite the fact that their lives had taken such very different paths, and despite the fact that Jessica’s husband, Richard Meldon, disliked Delia almost as much as she did him, Delia and Jessica had remained the closest of friends. It was inevitable that if Jessica was in trouble she would come to Delia for refuge, advice, sympathy, good sense, and, Delia not being one to mince words, the truth.
‘How long have you got before he gets back from Hong Kong?’
‘One of the reporters outside my house shouted out something about him being back next week. Because of the new job, do you think? Or maybe just fed up with China.’
Jessica threw herself down on Delia’s large and comfortable sofa, and her dog jumped up beside her.
Delia’s sitting room was like Delia herself: exotic, larger than life and full of bright colours and untidiness. Delia, who was taller and had more curves than Jessica, liked bold colours on herself as well as in her surroundings, and she was dressed today in a huge scarlet
