28
Cate shrank back against the narrow passageway. Natalie hadn’t seen her; she let out a breath. She watched her old friend disappear back in the direction of thefondamentafrom where they’d entered the gallery. She waited another minute. Natalie did not return.
Cate knew she should head back to the palazzo and make a start on packing her bags but she wasn’t yet ready for Nunzia’s polite enquiries, and the thought of soaking in her ludicrously large bath before Phil arrived no longer promised to be the relaxing experience she’d envisaged. Instead, she followed the signs to the vaporetto stop, looking over her shoulder every few yards like a second-rate spy in a film noir – all she needed was an upturned collar and a cigarette. To her surprise, the signs led her down a narrow passageway from which she emerged onto a small bridge. Ahead of her rose the great dome of Santa Maria della Salute. On an impulse, she climbed the steps and slipped through the entrance door. The scent of the old church instantly calmed her, like the smell of books in the care home’s library.
There must have been several dozen tourists inside, eyes raised to the altar, but they barely disturbed the peace of the vast interior. She wandered in and out of the side chapels, eyes straying over the paintings. She stood for a while in front of Titian’sDescent of the Holy Ghost, marvelling at the rays of light emanating from the white dove, the apostles falling back in alarm. There wasn’t enough time to linger over Tintoretto’sWedding Feast at Cana; she’d have to come back another day. Except she wouldn’t. Tomorrow, she’d sweep up her bewildered husband and head back home without seeing half of the places she wanted to. Thanks to Natalie, she’d never return to Venice now, never share the fizz of a peach bellini at Harry’s Bar with Phil, never lean back against the crimson leather seats of a gondola steered by a man in a stripy top singing ‘O Sole Mio’.
An idea flicked across her consciousness. Quitting the TV show didn’t mean she had to leave Venice. She and Phil could move into the Hotel Danieli or The Gritti Palace for a short break. It would cost a fortune but she deserved a treat after the emotional upheaval of the last few days and it would solve the problem of where to stay whilst the old vicarage was still occupied by the Italian count and his wife. She shelved the idea as quickly as it came. Thanks to Nat’s allegations, even a stay in five-star luxury would be tainted. Nat wasn’t telling the truth, yet a tiny kernel of doubt remained lodged in Cate’s brain like the repetitive tune of an irritatingly catchy pop song. How many times had she switched on the television or opened a newspaper to see a wife or mother accompanying an abuser or murderer to court, convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was a good, kind, loving guy, only for their heart to be broken into a thousand pieces when the truth came out?
Cate could trace Phil’s tiny signals of discomfort – the fiddling with his belt loops, the nearly imperceptible foot jiggling, the flashes of impatience – back to the day the TV people sent the email revealing that Venice was to be their destination. And she didn’t believe for one moment that a last-minute work crisis had prevented him from boarding their original flight. Something connected to this city had disturbed his peace of mind and however infinitesimally small the chances were that Phil was guilty of such a sordid act, Cate couldn’t sit outside Caffè Florian gazing into his eyes whilst the orchestra played as if Nat’s words had never been uttered.
Cate couldn’t flee Venice and her old school friend, however much she wanted to jump on a plane. She needed to see Phil’s reaction the moment he and Natalie came face to face.
* * *
Natalie watched the small queue shuffle its way into the Guggenheim Collection. Phil’s plane would be touching down in not much more than an hour. She should be contacting Lucia, not wandering along a canal side in the back streets of Dorsoduro too cowardly to face the inevitable phone call with Floella that would follow. She had no one she could ask for advice, nowhere to turn. Her parents knew nothing about the world of television and she was reluctant to worry them. The motley collection of ex-colleagues and vague acquaintances who passed for friends wouldn’t care enough. There was only one friend she’d ever truly confided in: Cate, the best friend she’d lost and won and lost again.
She carried on down thefondamentain the direction of Eraldo’s workshop. Her heart gave a little skip at the thought of him, dark head bent over his workbench, beavering away up there. She stopped outside Pietro’s window. He’d changed the display again. A riot of gold, shocking-pink, royal-blue and white masks glittered enticingly. She’d probably never go inside and up the spiral staircase again. When she left Venice, she’d be leaving Eraldo for good. Tears pricked her eyes. She couldn’t understand why she felt so emotional about a man she’d only met a handful of times.
* * *
Nunzia had pressed Cate’ssilk shirt dress. At least she’d look in control tonight even though her insides were churning as though a fairground’s worth of bumper cars were hurtling round in there. Breathing slowly, trying to remember everything she’d read about the power of mindfulness, she began brushing her hair, focusing on the sensations of every stroke. Her colourist had done a wonderful job, but what did that matter now?
If Dad hadn’t kept her and Mum apart for so long, things would have been so different. After Nat’s revelations in the dormitory, Cate had confronted him the moment she’d walked through the front door. Dad had admitted everything. Her mother had gone travelling like he’d said but then she’d returned to Venice. For more than a decade, he had known exactly where she was. He hadn’t told her where to find Mum; he’d deprived her of a mother’s love, kept the two of them apart.
She’d cried and raged, spent her evenings shut in her room, headphones blocking out the sound of the telly blaring from the lounge. She’d shunned their Saturday-morning trips to Annie’s café for a hot chocolate, buried her head in her schoolbooks and danced for joy the day she got a place at Durham University more than two hundred miles away.
She’d taken the train up north, not letting Dad drive her there, pressing her arms to her sides when he went to hug her goodbye. In Durham, she’d reinvented herself as Cate. She’d persuaded herself she wasn’t lonely, batting away memories of Dad holding the back of her bicycle and cheering when she’d pedalled off all by herself, of him bringing her chicken Cup-a-Soup in bed when she’d felt unwell. Then one day in the college bar, she saw the boy she’d fallen for all those years before. The one Natalie had been talking to by the paintings of the Madonna in the Accademia gallery.
Phil hadn’t remembered Cate at all but by halfway through her second year – and his last – he’d proposed. It was a quick registry-office wedding so no one needed to give her away. Until Dad had fallen ill, she’d only seen him two or three times a year. Phil, Oli and Max were all the family she needed. They were her world. But once again, Nat’s words threatened to smash it to smithereens.
A ringtone blasted from her handbag. She threw down her hairbrush and grabbed her phone. Without looking, she knew it would be Phil telling her he’d got through security and was waiting to collect his bags.
‘Hi, darling!’ She could hear the shake in her voice.
‘Mum?’
‘Max? Is everything okay?’ Max only sent messages and memes. Like most eleven-year-old boys, he seemed astonished that anyone used their all-singing, all-dancing smartphones for making actual calls.
‘Yeah, ’course it is.’
Cate knew it wasn’t. She’d have to tread slowly, keep Max on the phone until he worked up the courage to tell her what was bothering him.
‘How’s cricket?’ Always a safe subject.
‘Great.’ His voice perked up. ‘We beat Harrow by sixty-three runs yesterday.’
‘How many did you score?’
‘Thirty-four, but Piers and Omar were really good too.’
‘That’s wonderful, darling. What did Nigel – I mean Mr Benn – say?’
‘He was pleased, he said he was ever so proud… but he wasn’t there. He’s taking some time off.’
‘He’s not ill, is he?’ She couldn’t imagine Hillingdon without Max’s House Master, a tall, thin man in corduroy trousers, such a stereotype of the kind, absent-minded teacher, Cate was surprised he didn’t have leather patches sewn onto the elbows of his jackets.
‘Mr Benn’s wife left him. They’re getting divorced; she’s been having an affair with the school gardener. They say Mr Benn collapsed. He’s gone into a clinic.’ Her son’s words came out in a rush.
