Читать книгу Bartering Her Innocence - Trish Morey - Страница 8

ARRIVING in Venice, Tina thought, was like leaving real life and entering a fairy tale. The bustling Piazzale Roma where she waited for her bag to be unloaded from the airport bus was the full stop on the real world she was about to leave behind, a world where buildings were built on solid ground and transport moved on wheels; while the bridges that spanned out from the Piazzale crossing the waterways were the ‘once upon a time’ leading to a fairy tale world that hovered unnaturally over the inky waters of the lagoon and where boats were king.

Beautiful, it was true, but as she glanced at the rows of windows looking out over the canals, right now it almost felt brooding too, and full of mystery and secrets and dark intent …

She shivered, already nervous, feeling suddenly vulnerable. Why had she thought that?

Because he was out there, she reasoned, her eyes scanning the buildings that lined the winding canal. Luca was out there behind a window somewhere in this ancient city.

Waiting for her.

Damn. She was so tired that she was imagining things.

Except she’d felt it on the plane too, waking from a restless sleep filled with images of him. Woken up feeling almost as if he’d been watching her.

Just thinking about it made her skin crawl all over again.

She pushed her fringe back from her eyes and sucked in air too rich with the scent of diesel fumes to clear her head. God, she was tired! She grunted a weary protest as she hauled her backpack over her shoulder.

Forget about bad dreams, she told herself. Forget about fairy tales that started with once upon a time. Just think about getting on that return plane as soon as possible. That would be happy ending enough for her.

She lined up at the vaporetto station to buy a ticket for the water buses that throbbed their way along the busy canals. A three-day pass should be more than adequate to sort out whatever it was her mother couldn’t handle on her own. She’d made a deal with her father that she’d only come to Venice on the basis she’d be back at the farm as soon as the crisis was over. She wasn’t planning on staying any longer. It wasn’t as if this was a holiday after all.

And with any luck, she’d sort out her mother’s money worries and be back on a plane to Australia before Luca Barbarigo even knew she was here.

She gave a snort, the sound lost in the crush of tourists laden with cameras and luggage piling onto the rocking water bus. Yeah, well, maybe that was wishful thinking, but the less she had to do with him, the better. And no matter what her frazzled nerves conjured up in her dreams to frighten her, Luca Barbarigo probably felt the same way. She recalled the vivid slash of her palm across his jaw. They hadn’t exactly parted on friendly terms after all.

Tourists jockeyed and squirmed to get on the outer edge of the vessel, cameras and videos at the ready to record this trip along the most famous of Venice’s great waterways, and she let herself be jostled out of the way, unmoved by the passing vista except to be reminded she was on Luca Barbarigo’s patch; happy to hide in the centre of the boat under cover where she couldn’t be observed. Crazy, she knew, to feel this way, but she’d found there were times that logic didn’t rule her emotions.

Like the time she’d spent the night with Luca Barbarigo.

Clearly logic had played no part in that decision.

And now once again logic seemed to have abandoned her. She’d felt so strong back home at the kitchen sink, deciding she could face Luca again. She’d felt so sure in her determination to stand up to him.

But here, in Venice, where every second man, it seemed, had dark hair or dark eyes and reminded her of him, all she wanted to do was hide.

She shivered and zipped her jacket, the combined heat from a press of bodies in the warm September air nowhere near enough to prevent the sudden chill descending her spine.

Oh God, she needed to sleep. That was all. Stopovers in Kuala Lumpur and then Amsterdam had turned a twenty-two hour journey into more like thirty-six. She would feel so much better after a shower and a decent meal. And in a few short hours she could give in to the urge to sleep and hopefully by morning she’d feel halfway to normal again.

The vaporetto pulled into a station, rocking sideways on its own wash before thumping against the floating platform and setting passengers lurching on their straps. Then the vessel was secured and the gate slid open and one mass of people departed as another lot rushed in, and air laced with the sour smell of sweat and diesel and churned canal water filled her lungs.

Three days, she told herself, as the vessel throbbed into life and set course for the centre of the canal again, missing an oncoming barge seemingly with inches to spare. She could handle seeing Luca again because soon she would be going home.

Three short days.

She could hardly wait.

The water bus heaved a left at the Canale di Cannaregio and she hoisted her pack from the pile of luggage in the corner where he’d stashed it out of the way. And this time she did crane her neck around and there it was just coming into view—her mother’s home—nestled between two well-maintained buildings the colour of clotted cream.

She frowned as the vaporetto drew closer to the centuries-old palazzo. Once grand, her mother’s house looked worse than she remembered, the once soft terracotta colour faded and worn, and with plaster peeling from the walls nearly up to the first floor, exposing ancient brickwork now stained yellow with grime at the water level. Pilings out the front of a water door that looked as if it had rusted shut stood at an angle and swayed as the water bus passed, and Tina winced for the once grand entrance, now looking so sad and neglected, even the flower boxes that had once looked so bright and beautiful hanging empty and forlorn from the windows.

Tourists turned their cameras away, searching for and finding more spectacular targets, an old clock tower or a passing gondola with a singing gondolier, and she almost felt ashamed that this was her mother’s house, such an unworthy building for a major thoroughfare in such a beautiful city.

And she wondered what her mother could have done with the money she had borrowed. She’d said she’d needed the money to live. Clearly she hadn’t spent much of it on returning the building to its former glory. She disembarked at the next stop, heading down one of the narrow calles leading away from the canal. The palazzo might boast its own water door but, like so many buildings fronting the canals, pedestrian access was via a rear courtyard, through an ornate iron gate in yet another steeply walled lane, squeezing past clumps of strolling tourists wearing their cruise ship T-shirts and wielding cameras and maps, or being overtaken by fast moving locals who knew exactly where they wanted to go and how to get there in the shortest possible time.

For a moment she thought she’d found the right gate, but ivy rioted over the wall, unkempt and unrestrained, the ends tangling in her hair, and she thought she must have made a mistake. Until she peered closer through the grille and realised why it looked so wrong.

She remembered the courtyard garden being so beautifully maintained, the lawns mowed, the topiary trees trimmed to perfection, but the garden looked neglected and overgrown, the plants spilling from the fifteenth century well at its centre crisp and brown, the neat hedge along the pathway straggly and looking as if it hadn’t been clipped for months. Only two bright pots spilling flowers atop the lions guarding the doorway looked as if anyone had made an effort.

Oh, Lily, she thought, looking around and mourning for what a sanctuary this garden had once been. What had happened to let it go like this?

There was no lock on the gate, she realised, the gate jammed closed with rust, and she wondered about her mother living alone, or nearly alone in such a big house. But the gate scraped metal against metal and creaked loudly as she swung it open, a sound that would no doubt frighten off any would-be thief.

It wasn’t enough to bring her mother running, of course—Lily was too much a lady to run—but Carmela, the housekeeper, heard. She bustled out of the house rubbing her hands on her apron. Carmela, who she’d met a mere handful of times, but greeted her now with a smile so wide she could have been her own daughter returning home.

‘Valentina, bella! You have come.’ She took her face between her hands and reached up to kiss each cheek in turn before patting her on the back. ‘Now, please …’ she said, wresting her backpack from her. ‘I will take this. It is so good you have come.’ A frown suddenly came from nowhere, turning her face serious. ‘Your mother, she needs you. Come, I take you.’

And then she smiled again and led the way into the house, talking nonstop all the time, a mixture of English and Italian but the meaning perfectly clear. And Tina, who had been on edge the entire flight, could finally find it in herself to smile. Her mother would no doubt treat her daughter’s attendance upon her as her God-given right; Luca Barbarigo would probably see it as a necessary evil, but at least someone seemed genuinely pleased to see her.

She followed Carmela across the threshold and, after the bright autumn sunshine, the inside of the house was dark and cool, her mother still nowhere to be seen. But, as her eyes adjusted, what little light there was seemed to bounce and reflect off a thousand surfaces.

Glass, she realised, remembering her mother’s passion for the local speciality. Only there seemed to be a lot more of it than she remembered from her last visit.

Three massive chandeliers hung suspended from the ceiling of the passageway that ran the length of the building, the mosaic glass-framed mirrors along the walls making it look as if there was at least a dozen times that. Lily blinked, trying to stick to the centre of the walkway where there was no risk of upsetting one of the hall tables, also heavily laden with objets d’art, trying to remember what this hallway had looked like last time she was here. Certainly less cluttered, she was sure.

Carmela led her through a side door into her kitchen that smelt like heaven, a blissful combination of coffee and freshly baked bread and something savoury coming from the stove, and where she was relieved to see the only reflections came from the gleaming surfaces, as if the kitchen was Carmela’s domain and nothing but the utilitarian and functional was welcome.

The older woman put down Tina’s pack and wrapped her pinny around the handle of a pan on the stove. ‘I thought you might be hungry, bella,’ she said, placing a steaming pan of risotto on a trivet.

Tina’s stomach growled in appreciation even before the housekeeper sliced two fat pieces of freshly baked bread and retrieved a salad from the refrigerator. After airline food it looked like a feast.

‘It looks wonderful,’ she said, pulling up a chair. ‘Where’s Lily?’

‘She had some calls to make,’ she said, disapproval heavy in her voice as she ladled out a bowl of the fragrant mushroom risotto and grated on some fresh parmigiano. ‘Apparently they could not wait.’

‘That’s okay,’ Tina said, not really surprised. Of course her mother would have no compunction keeping her waiting after demanding her immediate attendance. She’d never been the kind of mother who would actually turn up at the airport to greet her plane or make any kind of fuss. ‘It’s lovely sitting here in the kitchen. I needed a chance to catch my breath and I am so hungry.’

That earned her a big smile from the housekeeper. ‘Then eat up, and enjoy. There is plenty more.’

The risotto was pure heaven, creamy and smooth with just the right amount of bite, and Tina took her time to savour it.

‘What happened to the gardens, Carmela?’ she asked when she had satisfied her appetite and sat cradling a fragrant espresso. ‘It looks so sad.’

The housekeeper nodded and slipped onto one of the stools herself, her hands cupping her own tiny cup. ‘The signora could no longer afford to pay salaries. She had to let the gardener go, and then her secretary left. I try to keep up the herb garden and some pots, but it is not easy.’

Tina could believe it. ‘But she’s paying you?’

‘She is, when she can. She has promised she will make up any shortfall.’

‘Oh, Carmela, that’s so wrong. Why have you stayed? Surely you could get a job in any house in Venice?’

‘And leave your mother to her own devices?’ The older woman drained the last of her coffee and patted her on the hand as she rose to collect the cups and plates. She shrugged. ‘My needs are not great. I have a roof over my head and enough to get by. And one day, who knows, maybe your mother’s fortunes will change.’

‘How? Does it look like she’ll marry again?’

Carmela simply smiled, too loyal to comment. Everyone who knew Lily knew that every one of her marriages after her first had been a calculated exercise in wealth accumulation, even if her plans had come unstuck with Eduardo. ‘I meant now that you are here.’

Tina was about to reply that she doubted there was anything she could do when she heard footsteps on the tiles and her mother’s voice growing louder … ‘Carmela, I thought I heard voices—’ She appeared at the door. ‘Oh, Valentina, I see you’ve arrived. I was just speaking to your father. I would have told him you were here if I’d known.’

Tina slipped from her stool, feeling the warmth from the kitchen leach away in the uncomfortable assessment she gauged in her mother’s eyes. ‘Hello, Lily,’ she said, cursing herself for the way she always felt inadequate in her mother’s presence. ‘Did Dad call to talk to me?’

‘Not really,’ she said vaguely. ‘We just had some … business … to discuss. Nothing to worry about,’ her mother assured her, as she air-kissed her daughter’s cheeks and whirled away again with barely a touch, leaving just a waft of her own secret Chanel blend that one of her husbands had commissioned for her in her wake. Lily had always loved the classics. Labels and brand names, the more exclusive the better. And as she took in her mother’s superbly fitted silk dress and Louboutin heels, clearly nothing had changed. The garden might be shabby, but there was nothing shabby about her mother’s appearance. She looked as glamorous as ever.

‘You look tired,’ Lily said frankly, her gaze not stopping at her eyes as she took in her day-old tank top and faded jeans and clearly found them wanting as she accepted a cup of tea from Carmela. ‘You might want to freshen up and find something nicer to wear before we go out.’

Tina frowned. ‘Go out?’ What she really wanted was a shower and twelve hours sleep. But if her mother had lined up an appointment with her bank, then maybe it was worth making a head start on her problems. ‘What did you have in mind?’

‘I thought we could go shopping. There’s some lovely new boutiques down on the Calle Larga 22 Marzo. I thought it would be fun to take my grown-up daughter out shopping.’

‘Shopping?’ Tina regarded her mother with disbelief. ‘You really want to go shopping?’

‘Is there a problem with that?’

‘What are you planning on spending? Air?’

Her mother laughed. ‘Oh, don’t be like that, Valentina. Can’t we celebrate you being back in Venice with a new outfit or two?’

‘I’m serious, Lily. You asked me to come—no, scrub that, you demanded I come—because you said you are about to be thrown out of this place, and the minute I get here you expect to go shopping. I don’t get it.’

‘Valentina—’

‘No! I left Dad up to his neck in problems so I could come and sort yours out, like you asked me to.’

Lily looked to Carmela for support but the housekeeper had found a spot on her stove top that required serious cleaning. She turned back to her daughter, her voice held together with a thin steel thread.

‘Well, in that case—’

‘In that case, maybe we should get started.’ And then, because her mother looked stunned, and because she knew she was tired and jet-lagged and less tolerant than usual of her mother’s excesses, she sighed. ‘Look, Lily, maybe once we get everything sorted out—maybe then there’ll be time for shopping. I tell you what, why don’t you get all the paperwork ready, and I’ll come and have a look as soon as I’ve showered and changed? Maybe it’s nowhere near as bad as you think.’

An hour later, Tina buried her head in her hands and wished herself back on the family farm working sixteen-hour days. Wished herself anywhere that wasn’t here, facing up to the nightmare that was her mother’s accounts.

For a moment she considered going through the documents again, just one more time, just to check she wasn’t wrong, that she hadn’t miscalculated and overestimated the extent of her mother’s debt, but she’d been through everything twice already now. Been through endless bank and credit card statements. Pored over loan document after loan document, all the time struggling with a dictionary alongside to make sense of the complex legal terms written in a language not her first.

She had made no mistake.

She rubbed the bridge of her nose and sighed. From the very start, when she’d seen the mass of paperwork her mother kept hidden away in an ancient ship’s chest—almost as if she’d convinced herself that out of sight really was out of mind—the signs had been ominous, but she’d kept hope alive as she’d worked to organise and sort the mess into some kind of order—hope that somewhere amidst it all would be the key to rescuing her mother from financial ruin.

She was no accountant, it was true, but doing the farm’s meagre accounts had meant she’d had to learn the hard way about balancing books, and as she’d slowly pieced the puzzle together, it was clear that there was no key, just as there would be no rescue.

Her mother’s outgoings were ten times what was being earned on the small estate Eduardo had left her, and Luca Barbarigo was apparently happily funding the difference.

But where was Lily spending all the money when she was no longer paying salaries? She’d sorted through and found a handful of accounts from the local grocer, another batch from a clutch of boutiques and while her mother hadn’t stinted on her own wardrobe, there was nowhere near enough to put her this deep into financial trouble. Unless …

She looked around the room, the space so cluttered with ornaments that they seemed to suck up the very oxygen. Next to her desk a lamp burned, but not just any lamp. This was a tree, with a gnarled twisted trunk that sprouted two dozen pink flowers and topped with a dozen curved branches fringed with green leaves that ended in more pink flowers but this time boasting light globes, and the entire thing made of glass.

It was hideous.

And that was only one of several lamps, she realised, dotted around the corners of the room and perched over chairs like triffids.

Were they new?

The chandelier she remembered because it was such a fantastical confection of yellow daffodils, pink peonies and some blue flower she had never been able to put a name to, and all set amidst a flurry of cascading ivory glass stems. There was no way she could have forgotten that, and she was sure she would have remembered the lamps if they had been here the last time she had visited.

Likewise, the fish bowls dotted around the room on every available flat surface. There was even one parked on the corner of the desk where she was working. She’d actually believed it was a fish bowl at first, complete with goldfish and bubbles and coral, rocks and weed. Until she’d looked up ten minutes into her work and realised the goldfish hadn’t moved. Nothing had moved, because it was solid glass.

They were all solid glass.

Oh God. She rested her head on the heel of one hand. Surely this wasn’t where her mother’s funds had disappeared?

‘Are you tired, Valentina?’ asked Lily, edging into the room, picking up one glass ornament after another in the cluttered room, polishing away some nonexistent speck of dust before moving on. ‘Should I call Carmela to bring more coffee?’

Tina shook her head as she sat back in her chair. No amount of coffee was going to fix this problem. Because it wasn’t tiredness she was feeling right now. It was utter—downright—despair.

And a horrible sinking feeling that she knew where the money had all gone …

‘What are all these amounts in the bank statements, Lily? The ones that seem to go out every month—there are no invoices that I can find to match them.’

Lily shrugged. ‘Just household expenses. This and that. You know how it is.’

‘No. I need you to tell me how it is. What kind of household expenses?’

‘Just things for the house! I’m allowed to buy things for the house, aren’t I?’

‘Not if it’s bankrupting you in the process! Where is the money going, Lily? Why is there no record of it?’

‘Oh—’ she tried to laugh, flapping her hands around as if Tina’s questions were nothing but nuisance value ‘—I don’t bother with the details. Luca keeps track of all that. His cousin owns the factory.’

‘What factory? The glass factory, Lily? Is that where all your money is going as quickly as Luca Barbarigo tops you up? You’re spending it all on glass?’

‘It’s not like that!’

‘No?’

‘No! Because he gives me a twenty per cent discount, so I’m not paying full price for anything. I’ve saved a fortune.’

Tina surveyed her mother with disbelief. So very beautiful and so very stupid. ‘So every time you get a loan top-up from Luca Barbarigo, you go shopping at his cousin’s factory.’

Her mother had the sheer audacity to shrug. Tina wanted to shake her. ‘He sends a water taxi. It doesn’t cost me a thing.’

‘No, Lily,’ she said, pushing back her chair to stand.

There was no point in searching for an answer any longer. Not when there wasn’t one. ‘It’s cost you everything! I just don’t believe how you could be so selfish. Carmela is working down there for a pittance you sometimes neglect to pay. You can barely afford to pay her, and yet you fill up this crumbling palazzo with so much weight of useless glass, it’s a wonder it hasn’t collapsed into the canal under the weight of it all!’

‘Carmela gets her board!’

‘While you get deeper and deeper into debt! What will happen to her, do you think, when Luca Barbarigo throws you both out on the street? Who will look after her then?’

Her mother blinked, her lips tightly pursed, and for a moment Tina thought she almost looked vulnerable.

‘You won’t let that happen, will you?’ she said meekly. ‘You’ll talk to him?’

‘For all the good it will do, yes, I’ll talk to him. But I don’t see why it will make a shred of difference. He’s got you so tightly stitched up financially, why should he relax the stranglehold now?’

‘Because he’s Eduardo’s nephew.’

‘So?’

‘And Eduardo loved me.’

Indulged you, more like it, Tina thought, cursing the stupid pride of the man for letting his wife think his fortune was bottomless and not bothering to curb her spending while he was alive, and not caring what might happen to his estate when he was gone.

‘Besides,’ her mother continued, ‘you’ll make him see reason. He’ll listen to you.’

‘I doubt it.’

‘But you were friends—’

‘We were never friends! And if you knew the things he said about you, you would know he was never your friend either, no matter how much money he is so happy to lend you.’

‘What did he say? Tell me!’

Tina shook her head. She’d said too much. She didn’t want to remember the ugly things he’d said before she’d slapped his smug face. Instead she pulled her jacket from the back of her chair. ‘I’m sorry, Lily. I need to get some fresh air.’

‘Valentina!’

She fled the veritable glass museum with the sound of her mother’s voice still ringing in her ears, running down the marble steps and out past the five-hundred-year-old well with no idea where she was going, simply that she had to get away.

Away from the lamps that looked like trees and the goldfish frozen in glass and the tons of chandeliers that threatened to sink the building under their weight.

Ran from her mother’s sheer naivety and her unbelievable inability to read the terms of an agreement and then to blithely disregard them as unimportant when she did.

Fleeing from her own fear that there was no way she could sort out her mother’s problems and be home in a mere three days. Her mother was drowning in debt, just as the ancient palazzo itself was threatening to collapse into the canal and drown under the weight of tons of expensive but ultimately useless glass.

And there was not one thing she could do about it. This trip was a complete waste of time and money. It was pointless. There was nothing she could do.

She turned left out of the gate, heading back down the narrow calle towards the canal and a vaporetto that would take her somewhere—anywhere—her mother was not. And at the next corner she turned tight left again, too suddenly to see anyone coming, too consumed with her thoughts to remember she should be walking on the other side of the path. And much too suddenly to stop until his big hands were at her shoulders, braking her before she could collide headlong into his chest, punching the air from her lungs in the process. Air that had already conveyed the unmistakable news to her brain.

Luca.