The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10

COME AWAY WITH ME by Stella Duffy

11 April, 7.30 p.m.

CAROLINE COMES HOME to a quiet and empty house. This is no surprise, Pete has been working late most nights for the past month. He’s on a tight deadline, his own boss, and in this economy any work is good work. When Pete started out film editors were special, those with his broad training rare; now any kid with a Mac and half a brain can call themself an editor – and frequently do. Pete is that rare thing, old-school trained, with an old-school work ethic. This current job is taking much longer than he’d planned, longer than he quoted for as well. But he gets on fine with the director, and he says the project will be astonishing when it’s done. That’s all he says; Pete firmly believes that the director is the author of the piece. His job is to help the director bring the dream they once held in their mind to reality through the mess of rushes and retakes. He never talks to Caroline about the work until after she’s seen the final edit. He never talks to anyone but the director about it. Not even the writer. Old-school, pecking order, playing the game.

Some nights Pete doesn’t come home at all, texts Caroline at ten or eleven or later, when he’s finally managed to sneak out for a fag – a fag he promises Caroline he doesn’t have – and when he’s outside he texts to say he loves her, it’s looking like an all-nighter, he’ll sleep in the spare room if he comes home, sleep tomorrow if not, kip on the divan in his office if he gets a chance. Pete is twenty-three years older than Caroline, and more thoughtful than any of the young men she knew and loved before she met the one who calls himself her old man. He is not old at fifty-seven, but even Caroline sometimes wonders how it will be when she is fifty-seven and Pete is eighty. She thinks he might be her old man then.

7.35 p.m.

Caroline opens the fridge. It’s been a good day, lots done, lots ticked off on the to-do list. Caroline is a manager for an events company. She doesn’t do the running around, the charming and cheering of people, she does the ordering, the sorting, the arranging. Booking taxis and vans, planes and trains, ensuring deliveries get there on time, ensuring people get there on time. She and Pete met when he was editing a corporate video for one of her company’s clients. One of those ghastly ra-ra-ra corporate videos, inevitably underscored with Tina Turner belting out “Simply The Best”. The screening time had been brought forward by a day because the CEO had some emergency he had to attend to in the wilds of middle America and, with the client company terrified that online delivery wasn’t secure enough for their ground-breaking yay-us video (underscored with Tina Turner singing “Simply the Best”), Caroline had offered to go and pick up the edited video herself, take it directly to the conference centre the next morning. Which she duly did, having spent half an hour with Pete laughing at the absurdities of corporate paranoias, then another half-hour enjoying a small glass of the single malt Pete always allowed himself on completing a job, and then six hours in Pete’s studio, laid out on the divan he kept there for late-night naps, laid out for Pete, with Pete, Pete laid out for her.

She opens the fridge for a glass of the cold white left over from yesterday and finds instead a typewritten note, tied to a half-bottle of champagne with a thin red ribbon. The note says: “Drink Me. Drink Me First. Do Nothing Until You Have Drunk Me. Then Go Upstairs”.

Caroline smiles. He remembered. Today is the anniversary of that first night, that night in his studio, that night before the morning when she drove along the M40, exhausted, delighted, smiling and singing to herself, singing “Simply the Best”. What Pete has never known is it’s also the anniversary of the day she ran out on The Bloke Before a year earlier, Pete’s presence that night the perfect antidote to her anniversary-inclined mind.

She takes out a glass, opens the champagne, sits at the kitchen table and drinks it. Does as Pete’s asked. She knows he’d expect her to rush upstairs, she usually would, but this is so sweet, such a lovely gesture. She’ll drink the fizz and then go to see what’s next. What Pete has waiting for her.

The half-bottle lasts two and a half glasses; on the half she decides it’s time to go up. It’s 7.55 p.m. now and she’s slightly fuzzy. Happily fuzzy. Loving her old man, sure no man her own age would have remembered, made such a gesture, known how much she enjoys these games.

She does enjoy games. Pete and Caroline enjoy games.

7.58 p.m.

Caroline turns on the bedroom light. In the middle of the bed, slightly on Pete’s side of the bed actually, is an open suitcase. The small, wheelie suitcase they use when one of them goes away for a night for work. Caroline hates going away for work, Pete even more so, they both try to get out of it whenever they can, but sometimes needs must, and sometimes they have to go. They have been sharing this suitcase for almost five years; it doesn’t get a great deal of use.

Sitting in the open suitcase is an A5 envelope, and inside the envelope are tickets and her passport. Caroline’s name on first-class return tickets to Venice.

There is another note with the tickets, printed in blue this time. It says a car will be there to pick her up at 9 p.m. She has an hour to pack, bring clothes for two days, bring clothes for warm days and slightly chilly nights by the water. Bring herself. Bring love. Bring five years of them.

8.55 p.m.

Caroline has showered and packed. She is ready. She carries the little case downstairs, her handbag already on her shoulder, and a thought occurs to her. It’s a wonderful, wonderful gesture, but there is a tiny part of her that thinks it’s also a very little bit odd. They have played games before, ever so slightly scary games. Caroline doesn’t want this to be a game, she wants it only to be fun. She runs back upstairs, opens the drawers on Pete’s side of their shared chest of drawers. She checks. His passport is gone, good. She looks in the drawers below. She’s not sure, but she think some pairs of his boxers are missing, a couple of pairs of socks. The doorbell rings. She opens the wardrobe; his suit is missing, the not-quite-best suit he likes to wear out for a nice dinner. Not that they go out that much, his work, her work, recently they’ve been thinking it’s as nice to stay in for the night as go out. The doorbell rings again and Caroline calls that she is coming. She feels good now. Safe in the knowledge that, if this is a game, it’s one he’s playing with her. Safe in the knowledge that Pete will be waiting for her, at the airport, in the hotel maybe. Safe.

9.05 p.m.

Caroline is in the car, the driver knew her name and which airport she is going to – Heathrow, Terminal 2. Lucky, as she hadn’t checked herself. She wonders if the driver will hand her a package, more instructions, more messages. She texts Pete to tell him he is brilliant; there is no reply but she wasn’t really expecting one. She knows Pete likes to maintain the mystery of his games, when he plays games. They are on the M4 and almost at Heathrow before she has stopped wondering where Pete is now. She worries that perhaps she is meant to pay the driver. Pete’s not as good as she is with cash, with always making sure she has enough cash. Caroline has just-in-case ten- and twenty-pound notes tucked in the back of her wallet, in the zipped section of her handbag, in a little plastic purse in her make-up bag. Just in case. So Caroline knows she has enough cash, but she wonders if Pete has paid the driver anyway; she’s usually the one to pay the driver. They arrive at Heathrow. Pete has paid.

10 p.m.

This is the last flight to Venice tonight. There is no queue for First Class and Caroline slips through security quickly and easily, is directed to the first-class lounge.

10.45 p.m.

Boarding is announced and just as she walks the easy distance to the boarding gate a text comes. It is from Pete. “There will be a water taxi waiting for you. Look out for the sign with your name on it. I love you. Pete”.

A water taxi. Caroline and Pete haven’t used the water taxis before, they seem so extravagant, so unnecessary, when the journey on the vaporetto is easy and smooth anyway; when that round trip via Murano, past the cemetery, is so easy. They have been to Venice three times before now, have stayed in San Marco and Dorsoduro. She wonders if the taxi will take her to one of those hotels or somewhere new. Caroline is tired and boards the plane, happy to lean back in her seat, to take the meal offered, the wine, to eat and drink, and then she sleeps.

12 April, 1.15 a.m. local time

Caroline sleeps most of the flight and wakes groggy; the champagne and the wine have muddied her mind. And she’s very tired. It’s been a long week, tonight was meant to be Friday night nothing, Saturday sleep in. But her bag is the third off the carousel, and then she is through the green lane and out into arrivals where the nice young man holds a broad card with her name on it. CAROLINE HUNTER. He speaks almost no English and she has even less Italian but they know the international signs for yes, that’s me, and follow, and please take your seat, here, in this ludicrously luxurious little speedboat that is also a taxi, all wood panelling and lace curtains. And then they are off, he is driving the boat and Caroline is wide awake, can’t keep the grin from her face, they are powering down the channel to the island and she can see the old lights, and the towers, walls and there, just peeking over the wall, a spire, the top of the campanile perhaps, it might be San Marco, it might be another church, it is there and gone as the taxi speeds over the waves thrown by the boats it passes. He is a young man and he drives like a young man.

1.45 a.m.

The ride, the water, the waves, the wind are successful in their conspiracy to please; Caroline is wide awake and delighted. The taxi enters the Grand Canal; the Guggenheim palazzo is on her left. Caroline remembers when she and Pete went there, how they spent the whole dinner that night talking about what they’d do with a house like that, what it must be like to live in such a place, to have the water so close, so part of your home.

She thinks about the first time she came here, with The Bloke Before, with John. So many mistakes with him and then that last mistake, coming to Venice, agreeing to come away with him when she’d already had enough of his possessiveness, arguing with him and running out of the nasty little bed and breakfast he’d booked for her birthday treat, running out and leaving him. Calling the B&B owners and struggling for the right words, the language to pass on the message that she’d gone back to London, heart-wrenching messages from John begging her to come back, to try again, and then, as the days and weeks wore on, angrier messages, messages she has tried hard to forget.

She hadn’t gone back, she stayed on in Venice, furious with John for being so demanding and yet calling her possessive. Caroline was certain something had been going on and, sure enough, the next day, watching him across a square she’d seen him chatting with a couple of girls, chatting and then laughing and then, yes, just as he’d accused her of the day before, there was the exchange of numbers, then the kiss on both cheeks, too friendly, too lingering. John was the slut he’d called her, and she knew he was.

Caroline looked down at her handbag, Pete’s notes inside, with her return ticket. God, she was lucky she’d run from John. But that first time here with him, when they’d arrived at the airport and walked down to catch the vaporetto and she’d assumed they were riding the waves to an island… she hadn’t quite understood, not from the books or the movies, that it really was all water. No roads, no cars. Caroline had not been able to imagine no cars. And all those bridges, the dead ends, the alleyways that appeared to go somewhere and just returned to water instead.

That was then, with John. Caroline knows better now, knows Venice better. A little at least. She knows it with Pete, where they like to stay, to eat, to drink.

Caroline is now with Pete and this is a lovely gesture on his part, but actually she is starting to feel a little lonely. It is dark and colder than she expected and Pete’s surprises, his games, are all very well, but she prefers to play with him rather than for him. She will explain this, tomorrow perhaps, over breakfast; that she is grateful for his romantic gesture, and maybe, anyway, it would be more fun to be together than apart, in touch than not.

San Marco is on the right now, they are closer to the southern shore, so maybe the taxi is turning off soon. The boy-racer driver has slowed a little, Caroline is sure there must be laws about driving too fast here, though the canal is wide and virtually empty. It is late, later than at home. The Accademia Bridge and then an opening. The taxi turns south. He drives her down one wide canal then into another more narrow, then there are smaller turns, dizzyingly fast. Even though she realizes, technically, they must be driving slower, the boat’s speed seems faster. The canal is so narrow here she could reach out and touch the sides. The tide is out and the taxi is low in the water. The edges of the canal loom over her. Caroline does not want to touch the sides. It is dark, cold, wet. She looks ahead and now it seems as if they must have come back on themselves. If she leans to the side, if she looks past the young driver’s head, she can see the Doge’s Palace, more distant now, it is down one, two, maybe three widenings of this narrow canal they are in. Then under another bridge, very low this time, another left turn, another left, back in on themselves again, and then the taxi stops. It is dark, and the silence is sudden. He turns and smiles. Here.

2.20 a.m.

Here. There is no hotel that she can see, no welcoming light. There is no light, just the faint milky sheen from a half-moon high above night-white cloud. Caroline repeats the boy racer’s words as he picks up her bag and jumps up on to the canal side. There is apparently no dock either. Caroline had been envisioning one of the pretty little side-canal docks she’d seen from the Grand Canal, the lovely hotels with their own landings. She takes the boy’s hand and he hauls her up on to the waterside. She slips a little, grazes the hand he isn’t holding, brings it to her mouth without thinking, partly to stem the yelp she doesn’t want to let out, partly the animal desire to lick a wound. She tastes a little grit, unravelled skin, maybe a tiny touch of blood, but the predominant taste is the dark silty water of the lagoon, a flavour of algae too, that particular soft pale green that is the water of Venice on a bright blue day. Pete’s ex-wife had those light green eyes, the colour of the water. He told her, once, only once. She didn’t want to know and Pete never mentioned Susannah’s eyes again. The young man is standing her up straight now, looking into her eyes, she doesn’t understand the words, but she knows he is concerned. Caroline is exhausted, she has half-fainted, swooned – has she swooned? She thought women only did that in old romance novels, but then, she is in Venice, Venice is an old romance novel in itself – she stands straight. She is fine, assures the young man in English he, in his turn, does not understand. But the hotel, where is the hotel? she asks.

These are words he knows. He smiles, nods, leans down to tie up the boat, a rope procured in semi-darkness from a corner. He takes her bag with one hand and guides Caroline with the other. He holds the hand she has grazed and there is almost comfort in feeling his skin on her ripped skin, the sting of his hand’s moisture seeping in to the flesh of her own. One corner, another, and then, just at the point Caroline was going to dig in her heels, say no more, try to call Pete again, call out for anyone, worried, frightened, not wanting to follow this young man, with his warm hand and insistent yes/si/yes/follow/andiamo, there it is, the Hotel Angelo. Tiny sparkling lights around a door and the windows on either side. A discreet sign and an older man in a dark coat in the doorway, waiting for her. He thanks the driver and pays him, taking Caroline’s bag and ushering her in, welcoming her, expecting her. “Benvenuta, Signora Caroline.” He pronounces the “e”. The man knows her name, her room is ready, come in.

2.30 a.m.

The man takes her passport, she signs a form, they show her to a room. Pete is not there. Caroline wants to cry. The room is beautiful, a suite not a room, a sitting room opening on to a bedroom opening on to a bathroom, all soft lighting and cool minimalism but warm too, comfortable, balconies from both sitting room and bedroom. There is a locked door, just off the sitting room, an extra bedroom for a family of guests, Caroline assumes. It’s more a small, elegant apartment than a hotel room, but there is no Pete. Caroline even goes outside on to the balcony, just in case he is hiding. He isn’t.

She sees the boy racer below, on his phone, talking in quiet, fast Italian, smoking. He unhooks the rope and, without putting down the phone, without taking the cigarette from his mouth, without stopping talking, he sets the boat into gear and drives away. She watches him go, then there is silence. Water, lapping, only just, and silence. Caroline shakes her head. This is insane, she is angry now, Pete’s just being stupid. It’s no fun without him. She will go in and call him and shout and they will have a row but it doesn’t matter, she wants to hear Pete’s voice. She wants Pete.

A knock at the door and she runs to answer it, calling his name, believing him to be on the other side of the door. A young woman stands there smiling, pushing a trolley. There is a huge bunch of flowers, spring flowers, a half-bottle of champagne – Caroline shakes her head, half-bottle again, a single glass she notes, her anger rising further, and an envelope. She points to the envelope and asks the girl about it. Did he leave this? My boyfriend? But the girl shakes her head, mi dispiace, non parlo… She pulls out a plate of fruit from the bottom layer of the trolley, bread too, some cheese, and then leaves. Buona notte. Caroline doesn’t want her to go. She doesn’t want to be alone. The girl closes the door behind her and Caroline opens the envelope.

There is a single piece of paper inside, and a small pill, just one, in a foil wrapper. There is no writing on the foil.

The paper is a printed email: Sorry, I meant to be there waiting for you. Impossible delays here. I’m getting the first flight out in the morning. Eat, Drink, Sleep. Sleeping pill if you want. I’ll be there by the time you wake up.

Caroline opens the champagne, she eats a chunk of melon. She is close to tears. She tries Pete’s phone but it goes to answer. Tries again, leaves a message, trying not to sound angry, needy. Pete hates needy. Hangs up realizing she probably sounds both. She is lonely and tired; Caroline is not very good at her own company, not at night. In the day she can happily spend twelve hours at a stretch alone, but once dusk hits she hungers for other people, for noise, interaction, warmth. Pete. She turns on the TV and turns it off again. The middle-night Italian talk-show, women with their porn-star make-up and brash clothes, are not the warmth she wants. Caroline sighs.

She goes to the bathroom, takes off her make-up, checks all the doors and windows are locked, double locked, drops her clothes on the floor and takes the sleeping pill and the half-bottle of champagne to bed.

Caroline drinks, swallows, sleeps.

12 April, 11.15 a.m.

Caroline wakes, disoriented. Her head is fuzzy from champagne and the sleeping pill and no water, no food. No Pete. She has woken up and he isn’t here. Caroline sits and then falls back on to her pillows, these big, soft, white-cottoned pillows that are so ready for her tears. And then Caroline is standing and rushing for the bathroom, dizzy head and stumbling feet, arms out to find walls, doors, knee smashing into bedside cabinet. The blackout blinds kept night light, street light out last night, now they turn the room into a labyrinth. She finds a door, runs a sweaty hand up and down the wall, clicks a switch, light blinding, mouth open, kneeling at the toilet, throwing up. After she has washed her face, cleaned her teeth, Caroline takes the white towelling gown from the hook in the bathroom and walks into the bedroom.

She finds her phone and there are three texts from Pete, all saying the same thing. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Each one giving a later departure time. The last text says 6.15 p.m. arrival. He will be there for dinner. He. Will. Be. There. For. Dinner. Caroline is not sure why Pete is still trying to promise, when clearly he has no power to do so. Caroline knows how angry he must be, how Pete hates delays at the best of times. She wants to text him back, to placate him, to tell him it’s fine. And she doesn’t want to as well. She wants him to miss her as she is missing him, she wants to cry and shout and stamp her foot and complain. She texts back simply: Don’t worry. I love you. See you later.

Caroline is hungry. She has an afternoon in Venice, alone. She will go out, she will eat, she will enjoy herself. There are things she knows she wouldn’t do if Pete were here, tourist shops full of pretty little bits of Murano glass Pete would never go into, windows of carnival masks he loathes. Pete hates all that tourist crap. Caroline is sure he’s right, and yet a part of her, the part she doesn’t dare show Pete, is still attracted to it, to being – more honestly – the tourist she is. She will walk over the Rialto Bridge and go to San Marco and she will order insanely expensive coffee and cake that Pete believes only stupid American tourists would eat and leave the kind of tip Pete never would and look at all those shops that spin off the square. And when she has finished wasting money she will come back to the hotel and get dressed up and she and Pete will have dinner and they will come back to that big fluffy bed and fuck and sleep together and it will all be fine. She can bear being alone in daylight and Pete will be here by night.

12.55 p.m.

Caroline walks downstairs. There is no one at Reception, no one to leave her key with, to return her passport. There is no bell either; it is all quiet, cool, the place feels empty. She imagines this is a good time for the staff to take a break, grab a rest between breakfast and checkout and cleaning the rooms and then the after-lunch rush as the morning flights that left London and Paris and Madrid land and the new guests check in. She puts the heavy room key in her bag and leaves the hotel, the door locking behind her.

1.00 p.m.

Caroline turns right. This is not the way she came in. She makes a note of the street name, and where the door is in relation to the water, to the canal off-shoot where the taxi dropped her. She looks up and can see, past the narrowing perspective of tall buildings on either side of the small street, that the sky is very light blue, high white cloud filtering the pure blue she remarked on the last time they were in Venice, and the first time in Venice too, that time with John. A city girl, Caroline always looks up to the sky. Not for her the checking of fields or flowerbeds or hedgerows to judge the weather or the season, it is all in the sky. She likes a high sky, and a lot of it. These narrow streets, narrow canals, make her claustrophobic.

She heads out of the small street and into a larger one and then another wider still. Across a bridge she finds a footpath leading alongside a canal, into another canal, broader now, and then sees what she is looking for, walks along and up to the Grand Canal. This is how she will find her way around, this is how she will orient herself. She will not get lost. She looks across the water, north-east to the Doge’s Palace, to her right the span of the Accademia Bridge; she knows the Rialto is all the way round to her left. She will go to the Rialto, because Pete would not. She will cross it and may even buy herself a mask, something that hides her eyes, with feathers perhaps, because Pete would not like it. She will waste money on things only stupid tourists do. Pete isn’t here and Caroline is.

2.15 p.m.

Caroline has eaten ice cream – cherry, rich, syrup dripping from the creamy vanilla ice, fat cherries squirting sweet juice into her mouth when she bites into them. She has stopped for coffee twice, both times an espresso, both times standing at the bar, paying the cheaper price, the price she cannot pay with Pete who likes to sit, take his time to look around. She has stood at the bar and talked to no one and sipped the bitter coffee made easier with sugar and been glad, almost glad, to be alone.

2.45 p.m.

Caroline is standing in front of the four horses, the ones from Constantinople they keep here, upstairs in San Marco. She’s been here with Pete but he wouldn’t let her touch them. He was right, no one is supposed to touch, there’s a sign saying no photos, no touching, and Pete wouldn’t let her take their picture either, led her outside to get close to the copies standing above the front doors to the big church. But Caroline has wanted to touch the originals since then, and now she does. She walks around the barrier, ignores the camera she knows is watching, and stands before each horse. There are a few other tourists in here, not many, it’s as if no one really cares about these horses. That’s one of the reasons Caroline wants to touch them. She thinks they should be outside, that they shouldn’t have to mind about the weather and the pigeons, wants them to be open to the world as they must once have been, long ago, far away. The other tourists are tutting, one uses it as a chance to take a photo, his camera flashes just as Caroline turns her head, a hand reaching out to the fetlock of the first horse, and from the light, from behind the light, blinded by the flashlight, Caroline thinks she sees a face she recognizes.

A security guard comes and Caroline is asked in very polite English to leave the building. The man with the camera is asked to leave too. She does as she is told.

2.58 p.m.

Outside, in the square, the bells about to ring, people gathering to listen, Caroline rubs her eyes. Behind her palms, behind her lids, she sees the negative image of the man with the camera that made the flash and also the man standing behind him, watching her, the man she thought she recognized. Caroline doesn’t know what John looks like now. The man she thought she saw looked like John might look, now.

Caroline feels sick. The ice cream and the bitter coffees and the adrenaline rush of getting kicked out of the church, it is that, it’s definitely that, it can have nothing to do with thinking she saw John behind the man, behind the light of the flash. That would just be paranoid.

3.01 p.m.

The bells have begun to ring and it’s too loud for her here, ears fuzzy with ringing, bile in the back of her throat. Caroline walks across the square, beneath the portico, takes a right down a street, any street, it doesn’t matter. She walks for ten minutes, fifteen. The afternoon sun is beginning its descent; light angles into the narrow paths between buildings, the high white clouds of earlier are burned off, and every now and then the sunshine catches a window, bouncing sunlight back into her eyes, and each time it’s like the flash going off, the man taking the photo and the man behind him, and now Caroline is sure it was John, looking, just looking, not surprised to see her, just there. Looking. Watching.

3.35 p.m.

The turn she just took has led her down an alleyway between two houses and to a dead end. Caroline stops as the alley peters out, falling into water. She can see where it would continue. Over there, across a narrow canal, just wide enough for two small boats to pass each other, over there is a café where people sit and chat, drinking coffee and wine, drinking spritz, the Aperol bitter in the bubbles. They are close enough for her to hear the American accents of the group of young people, talking about where they will go tomorrow, about a friend who will join them later. Two middle-aged women sit side by side. They speak more quietly, but even so, the canal here is so narrow that Caroline thinks she can hear their Italian lady voices, their soft, discreet murmurs in someone else’s language. Both women are beautifully groomed, each with a dog in her lap. The dogs should match the women, they too are beautifully groomed, coiffed hair poking out from little dog-shaped coats on their small, round bodies, but the women look as if they are holding the wrong dogs, each one holding her friend’s.

The street continues past the café, but Caroline cannot walk down it, the water is in the way. To her left, past a row of houses, is a bridge, but the houses are right on the water, there is no walkway alongside them. There are two boats moored here at her feet. For other people, for locals, this would not be a dead end at all, this would be an opening, an exit, a way out, a way home. For Caroline there is nothing to do but go back. She begins to turn, looking down the alleyway behind her, into a cooler darkness now. The lower sun can no longer reach down here and the alley looks dark, its distant opening into a broader street hidden in shadow. There is nowhere else to go but back and as she turns Caroline hears a loud laugh from the group of young people on the other side of the water. She doesn’t know why, but she feels like they are laughing at her. She twists around, and now she’s sure the young woman at the rear of the group, head thrown back in laughter, head leaning forward to kiss the young man beside her, kiss him long and hard… Caroline is sure she’s the chambermaid who brought the trolley last night, with champagne and food and the sleeping pill, the young woman who spoke no English. But the young woman’s face is obscured, by the young man she is kissing, and they were all speaking English she is sure, speaking with American accents.

Caroline takes a deep breath, she feels tears behind her eyes and she does not want to cry, doesn’t want to feel sick, is in danger of doing both. She plunges back into the alleyway, pushes past a Spanish couple who are clearly walking in the wrong direction, who are lost and start to ask her directions, pull out their map, and then they take a closer look at her face, step back, allow her to pass. Caroline rushes on, walking down streets and along narrow canals and across bridges, everywhere other accents, Spanish and French and English and American, is no one here Italian? She thinks of an Italian friend at home whose family come from Venice, who said no Italians can afford to live there any more. And then she shakes her head again. What is she thinking of her friend for? Why is she thinking of John?

3.55 p.m.

Caroline stops. She is in a small square. There is a bar at either end, a church in the middle. She goes to the closest bar, sits down, orders a coffee and a glass of prosecco. Her hands are shaking. What is she thinking of? She isn’t thinking at all. This is insane. Of course that girl wasn’t the same girl from the hotel, there must be hundreds of young girls in Venice, all of them tourists or students or here with boyfriends and girlfriends. All the young girls look the same anyway. Caroline is on the edge of calling herself a woman, not a girl any more. These days, when she sees a young woman she sees the fine skin, the fresh eyes, sees the new. Sees what Pete saw in her at first and what he maybe sees no longer. Sees what John saw in her. She smiles, the coffee and wine arrive, she takes a long slow sip of both, one after the other. Stop it. Stop it. Her hands slowly stop shaking. John always said she was paranoid, that he was not possessive, as she thought him, just loving, wanting to take care. Pete’s the other way; accuses her of jealousy sometimes. He says she has no reason for it, that she’s imagining things, imagining flirtations, potential. There must be hundreds of young girls in Venice, thousands. Caroline finishes the prosecco, orders another.

4.10 p.m.

Her phone beeps. She is low on battery, should have plugged it in last night, wasn’t thinking, must start thinking. It’s Pete again: About to turn off my phone. Plane taxiing. Air steward has glared at me twice. I love you. Coming.

Caroline smiles, nods to herself, breathes out a breath she didn’t even know she had been holding. She rubs her neck, downs the now cold coffee, orders a third prosecco. She texts back, it doesn’t matter that Pete won’t get this, it doesn’t matter that he will only pick it up when his plane lands, it matters that she tells him. I love you. I’m waiting for you.

4.40 p.m.

Caroline pays for her drinks, stands; she’s actually a little drunk now, enjoying feeling a little drunk now. She should probably eat, will get back to the hotel, find her way through these insane streets and canals. She’ll stop on the way and buy something to eat from one of those shops that sell fat-filled breads to tourists hungry from sight-seeing, something with cheese and aubergine and courgette and salami. Antipasti in bread, that’s what Pete calls it, disapproving. He likes long Italian meals, each course an adventure in itself, doesn’t think the Venetians should accommodate tourist desires, doesn’t think of himself as a tourist at all. Caroline probably has three hours before she needs to be ready for Pete, two to be on the safe side. She will make her way back slowly, eat, sober up, wash and dress and be ready for the surprise he has been unready for. All will be well.

5 p.m.

Caroline has found her way back to the Grand Canal. She didn’t realize she’d come so far; there are signs for the Ghetto back behind her. She and Pete came here the first time they were in Venice together. It was sad, and lovely, to see the old synagogue, to see where the word came from, and then Pete found an amazing restaurant that night, quite close to the Ghetto, and they’d eaten so well, so happily. When they walked out into the night she was amazed it was so late, and so very quiet, so different from other parts of the city, busy until late at night. It’s quiet here now, too, quieter anyway than back where she thought she’d been heading, to the Rialto. She heads east again, a falling sun behind her, in and out. Unable to walk directly alongside the Grand Canal here, she tries to keep the sun behind her, even when she has to turn north again. Eventually there are more people, and signs, and a vaporetto stop, and Caroline buys her ticket, boards it, the beginning of a headache coming with sunset.

Caroline gets off at San Toma, between the Rialto and Accademia, it must be close to the hotel. She wishes she’d thought to bring a map, to ask the man at Reception for a map, but she didn’t. At home Caroline never gets lost, prides herself on knowing her way round London, even the farthest reaches, or the most winding parts down by Greenwich and Canary Wharf, prides herself on always knowing where the water is. Here she is where the water is, always. Her compass is waterlogged. She will wander and she will find it. She remembers the street name, the canal name, she will find it.

5.10 p.m.

Caroline has a feeling she is close. She is walking alongside a narrow canal, the footpath here is narrow too. She is behind two men, one older, greyer than the other. They have Australian or New Zealand accents, she can’t tell the difference, and they’re laughing about a girl they both know. You should have seen her face, one says. Mate, I don’t need to see her face, I can see your face! And they laugh and the greyer one slaps the other one on the back and they stop for a moment. One is lighting a cigarette and Caroline needs to get past them. She says, excuse me, excuse me, can I get past here? They shuffle to the side, she hears the match strike, the flare of warm light, and Caroline turns to thank the two men. She recognizes one of them. The older one, with greying hair, is the man from the hotel’s Reception. She knows for sure he is from the hotel and she knows this because he sees her, sees her looking, and nudges his friend and they both look up. Shit! the older one says. And he turns away, his head to the wall, but it’s too late and Caroline wants to throw up again, wants to grab him and ask what the fuck is going on, wants to reach out to the man, but her legs don’t want that at all, her legs and her gut are terrified, and she runs instead, runs away from them, rushing on to where she thinks the hotel is. Her head doesn’t want to go to the hotel at all, it isn’t safe, can’t be safe, but her legs and gut propel her. Now pushing past a young couple, Caroline shoves them both out of her way. They are English and yell at her in surprise, yell that she should be careful, there’s no need for that, what’s her problem?

Caroline doesn’t know what her problem is. And then she does. Running on, slowing, walking now, breath catching, a stitch in her side, walking towards the hotel anyway, sure she knows these streets now, sure she knows where she is… Caroline does know what her problem is. She knows she hasn’t been able to believe those messages from Pete, not really, knows Pete would never let her down like this, knows he would have been at the airport, in the hotel, would have been waiting. And now she stops, cold, sick to her stomach and bile rising again in her throat. Because she knows, actually, that Pete doesn’t really do surprises, that while they have their games, Pete has never really done surprises, that the real surprise she came home to on Friday evening was that it was so out of character for Pete. So in character for John.

5.40 p.m.

The sun is still lighting the sky, but it’s darker and cooler in the narrow street leading to the hotel. On the other side of the small canal just here, beneath a shop awning, standing with his back to her, Caroline sees a man texting. She sees the man and she is sure she knows who he is, knows the back of him. The man stops texting, watches his phone’s screen. A few seconds later her own phone beeps. A text comes through, from Pete’s phone. I’m here. Landed. Won’t be long. Can’t wait to see you. It’s been way too long.

The man turns; he doesn’t see Caroline looking. It’s John, Caroline is sure it is John. He looks in through the window of the shop, waves, walks on, away down the little walkway alongside the canal, down to a bridge that will bring him back to this side of the canal, where the hotel is.

The hotel has her bag and her things and her passport and Caroline wants nothing more than to run from here, run from this place, but her phone is almost out of battery and the charger is in her room and her stuff is in the room, and maybe, maybe she is as paranoid as John always said, maybe she’s just exhausted and maybe it will be all right, but whatever it will be she needs to charge her phone and she needs to get her things and so she runs back down the street to the hotel and opens the front door and lets herself in.

5.50 p.m.

There is no one in Reception, just as there was no one earlier. She runs upstairs and into the sitting room of the suite, slamming the door behind her, locking it. Caroline looks around. She takes in the room properly, sees that while it is a beautiful room, cool and clean, lovely lines, it is missing some of those things even the finest hotel rooms must have. The sign on the wall about emergency exits. The list by the telephone of charges, useful numbers to call. The explanation in five different languages of how to work the TV and satellite. She remembers there were no signs downstairs either. Nothing on the reception desk that was, after all, just a counter really, a plain counter, with nothing on it, no message about breakfast or checkout, no handy pile of maps and leaflets for unprepared tourists. Caroline realizes she has seen no other guests. The only people she has seen are the chambermaid and the man behind the desk. And that she did see them when she went out today and they were speaking English, she wasn’t mistaken. Caroline has let herself believe. And now she lets herself understand. She walks over to the locked door; it opens. Behind it is a kitchen. A normal, elegant, newly fitted kitchen. This is not a hotel room. It is an apartment.

Her phone beeps. She doesn’t want to look. Can’t stop herself looking.

I’m in the bedroom. Waiting.

And even though she doesn’t want to go, and even though her gut and legs are trying to hold her back, Caroline overrules them this time and walks herself to the bedroom door.

She opens the door.

Pete is on the bed. And a lot of blood. Pete’s blood, on the bed, bloody Pete.

And the phone beeps again and she hears the sitting-room door, the door from the corridor, the door she locked, she hears it being unlocked.

And she looks at the phone as the door handle turns and her phone says: See? I told you it was a surprise.

And Caroline wants to move, to scream, to run, but nothing is working, her legs, her mouth, nothing is working, nothing can move her, she is stuck staring at Pete, Pete’s blood, stuck waiting as the steps come closer behind her

And then a hand is on her shoulder and still her mouth won’t open, her voice won’t come and John says, See? I told you I’d always remember you.