Читать книгу The Italian's Token Wife - Julia James - Страница 6

‘WHAT the hell do you mean, you won’t sign?’

Rafaello di Viscenti glared down at the woman in his bed. She was a voluptuous blonde with flowing locks and celestial blue eyes, her naked body scantily covered by the duvet.

Amanda Bonham slid one slim, exposed thigh over the other, and widened her eyes.

‘It’s so sordid, darling—signing a pre-nup,’ she said purringly.

Rafaello’s sculpted mouth tightened.

‘You agreed to all the terms in the pre-nup. Your lawyer went through it with me. Why are you balking at it now?’

Amanda pouted up at him. ‘Raf, darling, we don’t need a pre-nup! Wasn’t last night good for you?’ Her voice had gone husky, and she let a little smile play around her generous mouth. ‘I can make it that good—every night.’

She nestled back into the pillows invitingly and slid her legs again, simultaneously letting the duvet slip to reveal one delectable breast.

‘I can make it that good right now,’ she went on, her eyes lingering over her lover’s lean, honed body, with her sensual gaze openly stripping him of his extremely expensive hand-made suit of such superbly elegant tailoring that it screamed a top designer name.

Rafaello slashed an impatient hand through the air. He was immune to Amanda’s plentiful bedroom charms—he’d had his fill of them for most of the night, and enough was enough.

‘I don’t have time for this, Amanda. Just sign the damn document, as you said you would—’ In his obvious anger his Italian accent was pronounced.

The inviting look vanished from the blue eyes, which were suddenly as hard as jewels.

‘No,’ said Amanda, yanking the duvet over her breast with a sharp motion. ‘You want to marry me—you do it without a ridiculous pre-nuptial contract.’

Her lush mouth set in an obstinate line.

Rafaello swore beneath his breath, drawing on his extensive range of native Italian vocabulary unfit for polite society. He really, really could do without this.

His obsidian eyes bored into his bride-to-be.

‘Amanda, cara,’ he said with heavy patience, ‘I have explained this to you already. I want a temporary bride only—you’ve gone into this with your eyes open; I have never attempted to deceive you. I want a bride for six months and then a swift, painless divorce. In exchange you get living expenses—very generous ones—for half a year, following one brief…very brief…visit to Italy, and you leave the marriage with a lavish pay-off. A pre-agreed lavish pay-off. Capisce?’

‘Oh, I capisce all right!’ Amanda’s voice sounded hard. ‘And now you can capisce me! The only pre-nup I’ll sign is one with twice the pay-off!’

Rafaello stilled. So that was the way it was. She was upping the ante. He should have seen it coming. Amanda Bonham might be the ultimate airhead, but she had a homing instinct for money.

But no one, no one manipulated him—not this avaricious bimbo, not his perdittione father. No one.

A shutter came down over his face, and his olive-toned features became expressionless.

‘Too bad.’ His voice was implacable. Anyone who had ever done business with him would have known at that point to back off and give in if they still wanted to do a deal with Rafaello di Viscenti. Amanda was not so wise. Her blue eyes flashed.

‘Seems to me you don’t have a choice, Rafaello, cara,’ she said bitingly. ‘You need a wife in a hurry—well, that’s fine by me—but I won’t be hemmed in by a stupid prenup!’

He answered with a careless shrug as he made to turn away. ‘Your choice.’ He glanced back at her. ‘I’ll phone for a taxi for you.’

He walked across to the pier table set against the wall of the bedroom and picked up his mobile. Amanda scrambled out of bed.

‘Now, wait just a minute—’ she began.

Unperturbed, Rafaello went on punching numbers into the phone.

‘Deal’s off, cara. Better get your clothes on.’

A hand clawed over the fine suiting of his sleeve.

‘You can’t do this. You need me.’

He brushed her off as though she were a pesky fly.

‘Wrong.’ There was adamantine beneath the accent. ‘Joe?’ His voice changed. ‘Call a cab, will you? About ten minutes.’

He glanced back to where the naked blonde stood quivering in outrage in his bedroom. Casually he slipped the phone inside his breast pocket.

‘You can cool down under a shower—but make it quick.’

He turned to head to the double doors that led out into the rest of the apartment.

‘And just what do you think you’re going to do for a precious bride, huh?’

The voice behind him was taunting, and vicious. He didn’t even bother to turn round.

‘I’m going to marry the first woman I see,’ he answered silkily, and was gone.

Magda flexed her tired fingers in the rubber gloves and set to work in the lavish marble-walled bathroom, wishing she didn’t feel like death warmed up. Benji had been awake for two hours in the night—his sleep patterns were hopeless—but at least, she thought, smothering a yawn and brushing back a rogue wisp of hair from her forehead with the back of her wrist as she paused in rubbing at the porcelain with her cleaning sponge, it meant he was sleeping now.

A frown furrowed her brow. She wasn’t going to be able to keep going with this job for much longer, she knew. While Benji had been younger it had been simple enough to carry him round with her, propping him up in his folding lightweight baby chair while she cleaned other people’s luxury apartments, but now he was toddling he hated being strapped in and confined. He wanted to be out exploring—but in apartments like this, where everything from the carpets to the saucepans was excruciatingly expensive, that was just impossible.

She squirted cleaning fluid under the rim and sighed again. What kind of job could you do with a toddler in tow? Leaving him with a minder while she worked was pointless—what she earned would go to pay for the childcare. If she had any kind of decent accommodation she could be a childminder herself, and make some money by looking after other people’s children as well as her own little boy, but what mother would want to park her child in the dump she lived in? Even she hated Benji being in the drab, dingy bedsit, and took him out and about as much as she could. She’d grown adept at making the hours pass in places like libraries, parks and supermarkets—anywhere that was free.

A smile softened her tired face. Benji—the light of her life, the joy of her heart. Her dearest, dearest son…

He was worth everything, everything to her, and there was nothing she would not do, she vowed, for his sake.

Rafaello strode angrily across the wide landing towards the open-tread staircase that led down to the reception level of the duplex apartment. Damn Amanda for trying to hold him to ransom. And damn his father for putting him in this impossible position in the first place.

His jaw tightened. Why couldn’t his father accept there was no way he was going to be forced to marry his cousin Lucia and provide the rich husband she craved? Oh, she had looks, all right, but she was vain and avaricious and her temper was vicious—though she veiled it successfully enough from his father, who was now convinced she would make the perfect bride for his recalcitrant son. When orders and lamentations hadn’t worked, his father had stooped to the final threat—selling Viscenti AG from under his son’s nose. Dio, Lucia knew every weak spot a man had—from his father’s obsession with getting the next-generation Viscenti heir to his own determination to keep Viscenti AG in the family. She’d played on both like a maestro.

His father’s parting words rang in Rafaello’s ears. ‘I want you married or I sell up. And don’t think I won’t. But—’ the older man’s voice had turned cunning ‘—present your bride to me before your thirtieth birthday and I make the company over to you the same day.’

Well, thought Rafaello grimly, he would, indeed, present his bride to his father on his thirtieth birthday. But not the bride his parent had in mind…

A bride that would meet the letter of his father’s ultimatum, but nothing more.

Anger spurted through him again. Amanda Bonham would have been the perfect bride to parade in front of his father—a fitting punishment for forcing his son to this pass. She’d have sent the old man’s blood pressure sky-high. A born bimbo, with hair longer than her skirts and nothing between her ears except conceit in her own appearance and a total devotion to spending her innumerable lovers’ money.

And now she’d blown it and he was back to square one. Looking for a bride who would infuriate his father and wipe the smirk off Lucia’s face. A frown crossed his brow. It had been all very well calling Amanda’s bluff just now, but getting hold of a bride in a handful of weeks was going to be a challenge—even for him.

He walked down the stairs with a lithe, rapid step, a closed, brooding look on his face—and stopped dead.

There was a baby asleep in the middle of the hallway.

Magda gave a final wipe to the pedestal, and reached into her cleaning box for the bottle of toilet freshener. At least bathrooms in luxury apartments were a joy to clean. All the fittings were new and gleaming—and top quality, of course. On the other hand, in luxury apartments there were always an awful lot of bathrooms—one per bedroom plus a guest WC like this one, tucked discreetly off the huge entrance hall.

For a moment she wondered what it must be like to live in an apartment like this. To be so rich you could have a two-storeyed flat as big as a house, overlooking the River Thames, with a terrace as big as a garden. The rich, Magda thought wryly, really were different.

Not that she ever saw the inhabitants. Cleaners were only allowed into the apartments when the owners were absent.

She flicked open the cap of the toilet freshener bottle and upended it, ready to squirt the contents generously into the bowl.

‘What are you doing here?’

The deep, displeased voice behind her came out of the blue, and made her jump out of her skin. The reflex action made her squeeze the bottle prematurely, and turquoise fluid spurted out of the bottle onto the marble floor.

With a cry of dismay Magda fell on the blue puddle and mopped it furiously with her cleaning sponge.

‘I spoke to you—answer me!’

The voice behind her sounded even more displeased. Hurriedly Magda swivelled round, and stared up.

A man stood in the doorway of the bathroom, looking down at her. Magda stared back, blinking blindly. Her dismay deepened into horror. The apartment was supposed to be empty. The caretaker had told her so. Yet here, obviously, was someone who definitely did not use service lifts.

And he was quite plainly furious. With dismay etched on every feature, she just went on kneeling beside the toilet pedestal, cleaning sponge in her hand.

‘I’m very sorry, sir,’ she managed to croak, knowing she had to sound servile for someone like this, even though it was not her fault that she was where she apparently should not have been. ‘I was told it was all right to clean in here this morning.’

The man’s mouth tightened.

‘There is a baby in the hall,’ he informed her.

With one part of her brain Magda registered that the man could not be English. Not only was his skin tone too olive-hued, but his voice was definitely accented. Spanish? Italian? Too pale to be Middle-Eastern, he must definitely be Mediterranean, she decided.

‘Well?’ The interrogative demand came again.

Clumsily Magda scrambled to her feet. She could not go on kneeling on the floor indefinitely.

‘He’s mine,’ she blurted.

Something that might have been a flash of irritation showed in the man’s dark eyes.

‘So I had assumed. What is it doing there? This is no place for a baby!’

A child that age should be at home, not being dragged around at this hour of the day? What kind of mother was this girl? Irresponsible, obviously!

‘I’m very sorry,’ she said again, swallowing, hoping some more abject servility would soften his annoyance at finding her cleaning when he was in residence. Clearly he was furious his pristine apartment was being cluttered up by something as messy as a baby. She bent to pick up her cleaning box, cast a swift glance around the bathroom to make sure it was decent, and said, as meekly as she could manage, ‘I’ll go now, sir. I’m very sorry for having disturbed you.’

She made for the door and he stood aside to let her pass. It was uncomfortable passing him so close. He was so immaculately attired, obviously freshly washed and showered, and she had just spent several hours cleaning. She was dirty and sweaty, and she had a horrible feeling she smelt as bad as she felt. She hurried out to Benji, who, blessedly, was still asleep, and made to scoop up his chair.

‘Wait!’

The order was imperative, and Magda halted instinctively, Benji a heavy weight on her arm. Hesitantly she turned round.

The man was looking at her. Staring at her.

Magda froze, as if she were a rabbit caught in headlights. Or rather an antelope realising a leopard had just come out of the undergrowth.

Oh, help, she thought silently. Now what?

Rafaello let his gaze rest on the girl. She was slightly built, drab in the extreme, with hair the colour of mud and unmemorable features. She also—his nose wrinkled in disdain—smelt of sweat and cleaning fluids. There was a smut of dirt on her cheek. She looked about twenty or so.

He found himself glancing at her hands. They were covered by yellow rubber gloves. He frowned. His gaze went back to her face. She was looking at him with a look of deepest apprehension.

‘You don’t have to bolt like a frightened rabbit,’ he said. Deliberately he made his voice less brusque, though it didn’t seem to alter her expression a jot. She still stood there, poised for flight, baby in one hand, cleaning materials in the other.

Rafaello took a couple of steps towards her.

‘Tell me—are you married?’

The brusqueness was back in his voice. He didn’t mean it to be, but it was. It was because part of his mind was telling him that he was completely mad, thinking what he was thinking. But he was thinking it all the same…

A blank look came into the girl’s eyes, as if he had asked her an unintelligible question.

‘Well?’ demanded Rafaello. The woman seemed beyond answering him.

Jerkily, the woman shook her head, her eyes still with that fixed, blank look to them. Rafaello’s gaze focussed on her more intently. So, she wasn’t married—he hadn’t thought so, even without being able to see if she wore a wedding ring. And despite the baby.

His eyes glanced across to the sleeping infant. He wasn’t any good at telling the ages of babies, but this one looked quite big. Too big for that chair, in fact. It was dark-haired, head lolling forward, totally out for the count.

But a baby was good—however irresponsible the mother! A baby was very good, he mused consideringly. So was the rest of her. Once again his eyes flickered over her, taking in the full drabness of her appearance, and he thought he could see her wince.

‘Boyfriend?’

Her eyes widened and then went even blanker. With the same jerky movement she shook her head. She also, Rafaello spotted, edged very slightly closer to the front door. He frowned. Why was she being so jumpy?

‘I have a business proposition to put to you.’ His voice was clipped as he banked down the anger at his predicament that still roiled within him like an injured tiger.

A noise came from her that might have been a whimper, but that seemed unlikely since there was no reason for such a sound. Rafaello walked to the door leading into the kitchen and held it open with the flat of his hand.

‘In here.’ He gestured.

The strangled croaking noise came again, and this time the woman definitely shrank back towards the door.

‘I have to go!’ Her voice came out high and squawky. ‘I’m very sorry!’

Rafaello frowned again. Just then a door slammed on the upper floor. The next moment Amanda was descending as fast as her four-inch heels and very tight short skirt would permit. As she saw the tableau below her face lit up with a vicious smile.

‘Why, Raf, darling,’ she purred venomously, ‘how galling for you. “The first woman I see”.’ She gave a bad imitation of his Italian accent. ‘And that’s what you get. Bad luck.’

The man’s accented voice answered the woman. He was purring, too, but it was the purr of a big cat, and it made the hairs stand up on the nape of Magda’s neck.

‘Yes, indeed, Amanda, cara, and she is just perfect for me.’

The look that crossed the other woman’s face was a picture. Fury mingled with disbelief.

‘You’re joking. You have to be.’

For his answer, Rafaello simply lifted one darkly arched eyebrow and gave the woman a mocking look.

‘Your taxi will be waiting downstairs, cara. Time to go.’

For a moment the woman just stood there, fizzing with fury. Then with a tightening of her face she marched to the front door, shoved Magda aside, and flung it open.

‘Wait!’ squawked Magda, and tried to rush after her. What possible reason could the apartment owner have for wanting to know if she were married or had a boyfriend? No good ones she could think of—and plenty that were bad. She’d heard enough stories from other cleaners about men who liked forcing their attentions on vulnerable women in lowly jobs.

‘Get away from me, you disgusting creature,’ snapped the other woman. She stormed off. Desperately Magda tried to catch the front door, but it was taken from her abruptly.

‘I said I had a business proposition for you. Have the courtesy to hear me out.’ The accented voice dropped into a sardonic range. ‘It could be to your financial advantage.’

Magda flung him a terrified look. Oh, God, she was right. He was about to make some kind of obscene proposition. ‘No, thank you—I don’t do that sort of thing.’

The man frowned again. ‘You do not know what I am about to ask you,’ he countered brusquely.

‘Whatever it is, I don’t do it. I’m just a cleaner. It’s all I do.’ Her voice was a squawk again. ‘Please, let me go—please. I do the cleaning. That’s all.’

The man’s expression changed suddenly, as if he finally realised the reason for her near panic.

‘You misunderstand me.’ His voice was arctic. ‘The business proposition I want you to consider has nothing to do with sex.’

Magda stared at him, taking in his expensive male gorgeousness. Reality came back with a vengeance. Of course a man like him would not sexually proposition a woman like her. Seeing herself through those disdainful eyes, suddenly she felt as if she were two inches high. Mortification flooded through her.

Abruptly, she felt the weight of her cleaning box taken from her.

‘Come into the kitchen,’ said the man, ‘and I will explain.’

Magda sat, completely frozen, on one of the high stools set against the kitchen bar. Benji miraculously slept on, snug in his baby chair on the floor.

‘Say…say that again?’ she asked faintly.

‘I will pay you the sum of one hundred thousand pounds,’ the man spelt out in clipped, accented tones, ‘for you to be married to me—quite legally—for six months, at the end of which period we shall file for divorce by mutual consent. You will need to accompany me to Italy for…legal reasons. Then you will return here, and your living expenses will be paid by me. On our divorce you will receive one hundred thousand pounds, no more. Do you understand?’

No, thought Magda. I don’t understand. All I understand is that you’re nuts.

But it seemed unwise to point this out to the man sitting on the other side of the bar from her. She was acutely, utterly uncomfortable being here. And not just because the man was making such an absurd proposition to her.

It was also because he was, quite simply, the most devastating male she had ever seen—inside or outside the covers of a glossy magazine. He had lean, slim looks, very Italian, but with an edge about him that kept his heart-stoppingly handsome face from looking soft. He had beauty, all right, but it was male beauty, honed and planed, and the long eyelashes swept past obsidian eyes that had an incredibly dangerous appeal to them.

‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

The question caught her on the hop, interrupting her rapt, if surreptitious gazing at him, and all she could do was open her mouth and then close it again.

A tight, humourless smile twisted at his mouth, changing the angles of his face. Something detonated deep inside Magda, but she had no time to pay any attention to it. He was speaking again.

‘I would be the first to concede the situation is…bizarre. But, nevertheless—’ he spread his hands above the bar, and Magda noticed how beautiful they were, long and slender, with a steely strength to them despite their immaculate manicure ‘—I do, as it happens, require a wife at very short notice, for a very particular purpose. Perhaps I should point out,’ he went on, in a voice that made her feel ashamed of her own lack of physical appeal in the presence of a man with such a super-abundance of it, ‘that the marriage will be in name only. Tell me, do you have a passport?’

Magda shook her head. A look of irritation crossed the man’s face, then he moved his right hand dismissively. ‘No matter. These things can be arranged in time. Now, what about your child’s father? Is he still on the scene?’

Magda tried to think what on earth to say, but failed miserably.

‘I thought not.’ The expression of unconcealed disdain for her child’s fatherless state silenced her even more than her inability to provide an answer under such circumstances. ‘But that is all to the good,’ he swept on. ‘He will not interfere.’

A dark glance swept over her, as if he were making some kind of final internal decision. ‘So, altogether, I can see no obstacles to what I propose—you are clearly extremely suitable.’

Panic struck Magda. He was sweeping ahead, dragging her along as if she were nothing more than a tin can rattling on a piece of string behind a racing car. She had to stop all this right now. It was too absurd for words.

‘Please,’ she cut in, ‘I’m not suitable at all, really. And I’m sorry, but I have to go now. I have other apartments to clean and I’m running late—’

She didn’t, this was the last one, but there was no need to let him know that.

His voice came silkily.

‘If you accept my proposition you will never clean another apartment in your life. For a woman of your background you will live in comfortable circumstances—if you are financially prudent—for several years simply on what I shall pay you for six months of your life.’

Emotions warred inside Magda. Uppermost was umbrage at the way he had said so disdainfully ‘a woman of your background’, as though she came from a different species of humanity. But beneath that, forcing its way to the surface, was something more powerful.

Temptation.

Comfortable circumstances…

The phrase jumped out at her. What on earth had the man said—something about a hundred thousand pounds? It couldn’t be true. The thought of so much money was beyond her. With a hundred thousand pounds she could move out of London, buy a flat, even a little house, stop having to depend on state income support, stop work, look after Benji properly…plan for the future.

For a moment, so intense that it hurt, she had a vision of herself and Benji in a nice little house somewhere, with a little garden, on a nice road, and nice families all around. Nothing spectacular, just normal and ordinary and…nice. Somewhere decent to bring him up. Somewhere that was a real home.

She saw herself in the kitchen, baking cakes, while she watched Benji tricycle round a little paved patio, with a swing-set on the lawn beyond, a cat snoozing on the windowsill, washing hanging on the line. With next-door neighbours who had children, and hung up their washing, and baked cakes. Who lived normal, ordinary lives.

An ache of longing so deep inside it made her feel weak swept through her.

Across the bar, Rafaello’s dark eyes narrowed. She was taking the bait; he could see. It had been hard work to get her to this point—far harder than he had envisaged. But at last she was responding.

And the more time and effort he put into persuading her, the more he was convinced she was perfect for the job.

Dio, but his father would be apoplectic! His son presenting him with a bride who had a fatherless kid in tow and who cleaned toilets for a living. Who looked as drab and plain as the back end of a bus. That would teach him to try and force his hand—

Magda saw the gleam of triumph in the obsidian eyes and quailed. She must be insane even to think of thinking about what he had offered her! A hundred thousand pounds—it was ridiculous. It was absurd. Almost as absurd as the notion of a female like her marrying a man like that…for whatever lunatic reason.

‘I really do have to go,’ she said with a rush, and got to her feet. As she did so she must have jogged Benji’s chair, because he gave a sudden start and woke up. Immediately he gave out a little wail. Magda stooped down and cupped his cheek. ‘It’s OK, Benji. Mum’s here.’

The wail stopped, and Benji reached out one of his little hands and patted her face. Then, promptly, he started wriggling mightily, trying to free himself from his bonds.

‘It’s all right, muffin, we’re just going.’ She hefted him up onto her arm, shifting her leg to balance the weight. She picked up her cleaning box with her other hand.

‘I’ll…er…let myself out…’ she said awkwardly to the man who had just asked her to marry him, and who was still sitting on the other side of the bar, watching her through assessing eyes.

‘A hundred thousand pounds. No more cleaning. No more having to take your son around like this. It’s no life for him.’

His words fell like stones into her conscience—pricking it and destroying it at the same time.

‘This isn’t real,’ she said suddenly, her voice sounding harsh. ‘It can’t be. It’s just nuts, the whole thing!’

The thin, humourless smile twisted his mouth again. ‘If it’s any comfort, I feel the same way. But—’ he took a deep, sharply inhaled breath ‘—if I don’t turn up next month with a wife, everything I have worked for will be wasted. And I will not permit that.’

There was a chill in his words as he finished that made her shiver. But what could she say?

Nothing. She could only go. At her side, Benji wriggled and started to whimper.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said helplessly, but whether to Benji or this unbelievable man with his unbelievable proposition, she didn’t know.

Then she got out of the apartment like a bat out of hell.

Music thumped through the thin walls of the bedsit, pounding through Magda’s head. She’d had a headache all day, ever since finally making her escape from that madman’s apartment.

But what he had said to her was driving her mad as well. She kept hearing it in her head—a hundred thousand pounds, a hundred thousand pounds. It drummed like the bass shuddering through from next door, tolled like a bell condemning her to a life of dreary, grinding, no-hope poverty.

Would she ever get a decent home of her own? The council waiting list was endless, and in the meantime she was stuck here, in this bleak, grimy bedsit. When Benji had been a baby it hadn’t been so bad. But now that he was getting older his horizons were broadening—he needed more space; he needed a proper home. This wasn’t a home—it never could be—it was barely a roof over their heads.

Not that she was ungrateful. Dear God, single mothers in other parts of the world could die in a gutter with their children without anyone caring. At least here, the state system, however imperfect, provided an umbrella for her. Not that she hadn’t been pressed to give Benji up for adoption.

‘Life as a single mother is very hard, Miss Jones,’ the social worker had said to her. ‘Even with state support. You will have a much better chance to make something of yourself without such an encumbrance.’

Encumbrance. That was the word that had done it. Made her stand up, newborn baby in her arms, and say tightly, ‘Benji stays with me!’

Encumbrances. She knew all about them.

She’d been one herself. An encumbrance so great that the woman who had given birth to her had left her to die in an alley.

Well, no one, no one—neither man nor God—was going to take Benji from her!

Through the wall the music pounded, far too loud. None of the residents dared complain. The man with the ghetto-blaster was on drugs, everyone knew that, and could turn ugly at the drop of a pin. Eventually he would turn it off, but often not till the early hours. No wonder Benji had broken sleep patterns.

Knowing there was no way she could get him to sleep, even though it was gone eight in the evening, Magda let him play. He was sitting beside her on the lumpy bed, quite happily posting shapes through the holes in a plastic tower and gurgling with pleasure every time he got it right. It was a good toy, and Magda had been pleased to find it in a charity shop. All Benji’s toys and clothes—and her own clothes and possessions—came from charity shops and jumble sales.

As she played with him, trying to ignore the pounding music, her mind went round and round, thinking about that extraordinary encounter this morning.

Had it actually happened? Had a man who looked like every woman’s fantasy Latin millionaire really suggested she marry him for six months and thereby earn a hundred thousand pounds? It was so insane surely it couldn’t have happened.

The knock on her door made her start. On the bed, Benji looked round interrogatively. The knock came again.

‘Miss Jones?’

The voice was muffled and she could hardly hear it through the racket coming from next door. Was it the landlord? He turned up from time to time to check up on his property, from which he made a substantial living by letting it out to those on state benefits. Cautiously she went to the door. She’d fitted a chain herself, not feeling in the slightest secure with neighbours like hers.

Bracing her weight against the back of the door, ready to slam it shut, she opened it a crack.

‘Yes?’

‘It’s Rafaello di Viscenti. We spoke this morning. Please be so good as to admit me.’