She took the steps up and over the bridge two at a time.
4
‘Natalie!’ Eraldo called.
She did not turn around, hurrying over the bridge without a backward glance at the mask maker’s shop. She couldn’t bear to spend another moment with that thing – that creepy, nightmare mask with its hideous curved beak, sucking her back to the night she’d tried so hard to forget.
She found herself walking down a narrowcalle; in her haste, she’d turned the wrong way. At the end stood a courtyard flanked by two churches. A man sat on a bright-red bench smoking, a sad-eyed dog at his feet. She exited the square by a hexagonal newspaper kiosk, arriving on the side of a small canal, no longer caring where she was going; she just needed to put one foot in front of the other until she’d cleared her head. She followed thefondamentauntil it met a wide walkway lined with cafés and restaurants buzzing with life. Across the water, she recognised the grand Palladian church of Il Redentore erected by the Venetians in thanks to the Lord for delivering them from the Plague. She had reached the promenade separating the Dorsoduro region from the long sliver of land known as the island of Giudecca.
Chatter rose from the table behind her: two women eating forkfuls of coiledbucatinipasta, drinking white wine from large goblets. On an adjoining chair, a terrier poked its nose out of a logoed carrycase. Natalie couldn’t help but smile. Her heart rate gradually returned to normal, her breathing now slow and steady.
‘You have a reservation?’ A voice interrupted her thoughts. She hadn’t realised she was standing right next to a vacant table.
‘No, and I don’t want to eat…grazie.’
The waiter shrugged, clearing away two unused glasses from another table where an elderly couple shared a bottle of wine, forking up a saffron-yellow risotto. The scent of the sea mixed with garlic stopped Natalie walking away. It had been hours since she’d eaten breakfast: a quick cappuccino and pastry standing at a bar, Italian-style.
‘Please may I have a table? I’ve changed my mind.’
She expected a sigh or a raised eyebrow but the waiter merely gestured to an empty seat and departed with a cheerful, ‘Subito– I’ll be back.’
The menu was already lying open, a slim, oxblood leatherette with gold lettering, but she didn’t need to read it. When the waiter returned, she tilted her head towards the adjacent table.
‘I’ll have that risotto please and a glass of white wine.’
She spread out the city map her hotel had given her, waiting for her risotto to arrive. Eraldo’s voice came back to her, calling out to her as she hurried down the stairs. Floella’s old friend had been welcoming and kind. He must have been so bewildered when she jumped up and left. But she couldn’t have explained; she wanted to push the memories aside, not relive them. And it didn’t matter what he thought. She’d never go back to the mask maker’s shop, never have any reason to see him again. She shook her head to dispel the memory of dark, dark eyes looking out from behind tortoiseshell glasses, the passion in his voice.
The waiter set a bowl in front of her, a glorious heap of fragrant rice crowned with a pair of langoustines. She pulled back the head on one, dug out the pale-pink flesh, swallowing it with a sigh of pleasure before dipping her fingers in a small glass water bowl. She ate the rest of the risotto, fork in one hand, tracing a route on her map with the other.
Leaving the last few drops of wine, she took the bill inside to pay at the counter. She slipped her corporate credit card back into her red leather purse, stowed it in her tan bag and strode determinedly down the waterfront. By a white stone church, she took the turning into the slightly scruffy Campo Sant’Agnese cutting across it into a street lined with small trees. As she walked towards the brick bell tower on the horizon, the vista opened up, revealing the curve of a wooden bridge. She felt a tightening in her stomach but she walked on. They’d be filming on that bridge in a few days’ time; the view towards the iconic church of Santa Maria della Salute was one of the best in the city. When she went there with Cate and Phil, she’d have to be poised and professional. She couldn’t mess up. She couldn’t let Floella down.
Natalie gripped the handrail of the Accademia Bridge, put her foot on the first step. She was back in the spot where it had all begun.
5
Beautiful filigree balconies enlivened the soft apricot façade of the count and countess’s palazzo. Their four-storey home was one of the most splendid buildings that lined the Grand Canal. Natalie knew from her internet research that the magnificent properties rested on thousands of wooden pilings driven into the bed of the Venetian lagoon, but she still couldn’t wrap her head around it. Water lapping at the front wall of your house just seemed plain wrong, though it made for a great spectacle.
Lucia,Luxe Life Swap’s Italian fixer, gestured to the pointed archway over the front door. ‘That’s the entrance where Philip and Cate will arrive this evening on the private water taxi I’ve booked for them. You and I will be using the other entrance that can be reached from thecalle, around the side. All these properties that face the canal have a second entrance, although you might not spot it immediately.’
‘Of course,’ Natalie said, as if she had expert knowledge of the palazzi of Venice.
‘See the carving of the leaping goat? That is the symbol on the count’s family crest. And of course, the striped poles outside the entrance –pali di casada, we call them – are painted in the family colours of peach and gold. I think the contestants, they will like it?’ The young fixer furrowed her brow. ‘They have a big house in England?’
‘Yes, an old, restored vicarage outside Sevenoaks. Period features, a huge terrace on the back, a large pond and a weeping willow tree. I’m sure the count and countess will find it charming. But this…’ Natalie broke off, mentally listing all the superlatives she could reach for during filming over the next fortnight.
Lucia’s serious face brightened. ‘Just wait until you see inside. Shall we go in?’
Natalie followed her down the steps from the bridge, around a corner and through a maze of streets and over a narrowriobarely wide enough for a gondola to pass to the side of the property. Lucia produced a hefty iron key with a faded, red tassel to unlock the wooden door.
Natalie ascended a flight of stone steps to the first floor, stepping into a magnificent rectangular entrance space. Cherubs and lute players frolicked across the ceiling. On the far wall, an oil painting showed two women in long, velvety robes below a sky of gathering storm clouds, their faces glowing with a divine light.
‘A Titian, one of the finest in private hands.’
Natalie let out a breath. ‘Quite an entrance hall.’
‘This floor, thepiano nobile, is where the original owners would have entertained, so the most dramatic and expensive decorations are here.’ Lucia gestured at a hefty, gilded chandelier hanging by a long chain from the frescoed ceiling. ‘The lower floor would have been used for the family’s business, offices and so forth. The bedrooms were above, and of course the attic would have housed the servants.’
Natalie nodded, mentally adding Lucia’s comments to all the other information the young woman had imparted over the course of the morning.
