From Venice with Love

CHAPTER 1

Joanna

London

Joanna was hardly aware of the train leaving Waterloo station.

She supposed she was in shock – if shock was the right word for what she was feeling.

She’d known as soon as she walked in the door of their Victorian terrace in Crouch End that something was wrong.

It was in the atmosphere, lying in wait, and although it was only four in the afternoon, Martin was home.

‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ he’d asked her from the kitchen. His voice had sounded different from usual too – and not in a good way.

Joanna had felt the first shiver of foreboding.

Now, sitting in the train carriage, she let out a small noise that sounded a bit like a choked sob and the man at the table seat opposite her inched slightly away.

Joanna couldn’t blame him. No one needed to be landed with a hysterical woman at their table when all they wanted to do was read the evening paper on the train.

‘Or maybe a drink?’ Martin had called through to her. Which was even more worrying.

Joanna had put her bag down in the hall. ‘It’s a bit early, isn’t it?’ she’d said. And then he’d come to stand in the kitchen doorway and she’d caught his expression; noted the evasiveness in his pale blue eyes, a hint of guilt or regret, and . . .

She stared out of the train window at the tall office blocks and cranes as they passed by.

More building, always more building. Where she was going, there would be no tall office blocks or tenement buildings.

Where she was going, there would be green fields with grazing sheep and the acid yellow of rapeseed lined with dark blackthorn bushes.

‘I’ve got something I need to tell you, Jo,’ Martin had said.

She took a deep and steadying breath. ‘Go on then.’

They had been married for ten years. They hadn’t had children because of Joanna’s career as a freelance journalist, because Martin had kept saying they should wait a bit longer, and because .

. . it had never happened. They lived together in this skinny terraced house bought before house prices in the city rocketed and they had always been happy enough.

Well, hadn’t they? And what did it mean, ‘happy enough’?

she pondered. It definitely seemed to suggest something lacking.

There were more houses now that they were pulling into Clapham Junction and also more trees, already touched with the reds and yellows of early autumn.

Joanna sniffed loudly and the man opposite glanced at her briefly over the top of his newspaper.

Checking she was still keeping it together, probably. And she was – just.

‘The thing is . . . I’ve been seeing someone else,’ Martin told her.

Joanna stared at him, waiting for more information, waiting for this, the only piece of information that really mattered, to sink in.

‘I feel terrible,’ he said. He tore his fingers through his fair hair in a familiar gesture. ‘So guilty. So angry with myself. I can’t sleep, you’ve got no idea.’

Was she supposed to feel sorry for him? The anger flooded through her, a release. ‘Why?’ she managed to say. Wasn’t she enough for him, was that it? Didn’t he love her anymore? But the word emerged strangely devoid of emotion. He was right – she’d had no idea.

‘I couldn’t help myself,’ Martin muttered. ‘She was just there, throwing herself at me and you . . .’

Ah, she thought. Here we go then. The double-pronged defence.

She (whoever she might be) had thrown herself at Martin, poor defenceless lamb that he was, while Joanna .

. . Joanna was always too busy, too tired, too distant to give him what he wanted.

He was a man, wasn’t he? Who could blame him for succumbing?

Joanna could. ‘Who?’ Perhaps from now on, she would only be capable of one-syllable questions.

He took a step towards her and she took a step back. A dance of betrayal, she found herself thinking.

‘It’s come to a head.’ Martin was answering a different question. ‘Oh, God, now that Brian—’

‘Hilary,’ said Joanna. Her thoughts flitted back to that awful dinner party with Martin’s colleague Brian and Hilary, his wife, whose breathy voice set Joanna’s nerves jangling with irritation. And now she knew why. ‘Jesus, Martin.’

He looked offended. Only Martin could look offended at a time like this, she thought. ‘Brian knows,’ he said.

Which explained why Martin was now telling Joanna. She turned away, unable to look at him anymore. ‘You absolute bastard,’ she said.

‘Jo . . .’

The train didn’t stop at Wimbledon. Opposite Joanna, the man took slurps of his coffee and when his mobile rang loudly, she didn’t point out that they were sitting in the quiet zone. She felt unshed tears blocking her throat and she pushed them back down. She wouldn’t cry. At least, not yet.

‘How long?’ Joanna asked Martin. She kept her voice strong although she was shaking inside.

‘Hardly any time.’ He looked away when he said this and then straight back at her so that she knew he was lying. ‘I told you, it just happened, and now . . .’

‘Now?’ What was he saying? Was he leaving her? Did she want him to leave?

He grabbed her arm. ‘Admit it, Jo. It’s been a while since you and I . . . We have to face it. Maybe we’ve just grown apart.’

She shook him off. That stung. He was right, it had been a while. But had they grown that far apart?

It was leafier when the train passed through Weybridge and then stopped at Woking, although some of the leaves were already falling, horse chestnuts on the ground wrapped in green spiky jackets.

Joanna glanced at her watch. They had been travelling for less than half an hour.

There were more people milling on the platform here and the coffee shop was full.

The man opposite had finished his phone conversation and when the refreshment trolley passed by, he ordered a packet of crisps in an authoritative voice that made Joanna wish she’d sat somewhere else.

She’d never been good with authority – or so Martin had always told her.

But Martin had a point when it came to growing apart.

Hadn’t she been thinking the same thing – in the rare moments when she wasn’t researching a story, talking to people about a story or writing up a story?

She was fortunate to have work – and Toby, her editor, who had become a good friend over the years, sometimes reminded her about this, but with a wink so that she didn’t have to take it too seriously.

But had her work taken her away from Martin?

Was Joanna guilty too – of not giving her husband the attention he needed?

She snorted loudly – as if this justified his behaviour, for goodness’ sake! – and the man opposite offered her a steady look from dark brown eyes and opened his crisp packet. Crunch. Rustle. Crunch. She looked away.

But Martin was right, even though neither of them had openly acknowledged it before now.

There was distance between them, more distance than there should be between a married couple.

She had even been thinking that she should stay at home more – she’d said as much to Toby.

She’d half decided to cut down on the travelling blogs, maybe even find a permanent position in-house on some magazine or newspaper that would also offer her more financial security.

After all, if she could earn a bit more, then maybe she could give some to Mother and Harriet to help with the farm.

It would give her more time for her marriage, it would give Joanna and Martin more time to reconnect.

Oh, she had noticed the distance all right. She and Martin were hardly still in the first heady throes of romance. But when had they stopped talking about everything? When had they stopped sharing their dreams? She couldn’t even remember.

So yes, maybe she was partly to blame. Only it still stung. Because while she’d been thinking of ways to save her marriage, Martin had been breaking it into little pieces.

‘What do you want to do, Martin?’ she’d asked him.

‘It’s up to you,’ he said.

Was it? They stared at one another. Impasse, she thought. His hands on Hilary’s body. Her hands on his. She felt sick. ‘Have you stopped seeing her?’

He looked away and then back at her once more. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you and me to break up. I’m sorry, Jo.’

‘Perhaps you should have thought about that before.’ If Brian knew, then half the company where Martin worked as an accounts manager also knew. Martin had told Joanna simply because he didn’t want to risk her finding out from someone else.

The knowledge filled her head. This was what was happening to her marriage. This cliché. This was how it was. The distance between Joanna and Martin had grown because someone had slipped between them. And Joanna had never even guessed.

She glanced up at the case she’d heaved onto the luggage rack of the train.

She’d packed swiftly and carelessly, just wanting to get out.

It was all she could think of to do. And doing might stop her from thinking, from feeling.

She could have just walked straight out of the door again, but something practical and instinctive had kicked in.

It was autumn. She might be away for a while.

She needed different clothes, something warm to wear.

‘Jo . . .’ He’d followed her up to their bedroom, spread his hands. ‘You won’t leave me?’

‘I need time to think,’ she said. She looked at the bed, looked at Martin.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, of course not. Not here.’ Once again, he came closer, reaching out, wanting some sort of instant forgiveness, she supposed. Well, instant forgiveness didn’t grow on trees.

‘Don’t touch me,’ she warned.

‘But where are you going?’ He was wearing the yellow shirt that she’d always thought too young for him. He wasn’t quite manly enough, either, to pull off that particular shade.

‘I don’t know yet.’

‘But you’ll come back?’

She shot him a look. Did he really want her to? ‘I need to think about things,’ she repeated. Like, where did they go from here? She felt brittle enough to crack neatly into small squares. And Martin . . . Martin suddenly looked so helpless.

They were travelling through open countryside now.

The sky was a cool grey with that pinkish shade of autumn.

There were fields, a solar panel farm, dappled brown cows.

Bracken cloaked the high banks above the railway line and behind this came the odd farm building and yet more fields, a tractor, some sheep.

The familiar strains of ‘Daydream Believer’ by The Monkees cut into her thoughts. She groped in her bag for her mobile, saw the man opposite flinch with disapproval, so allowed it to play a few more bars. She glanced at the name on the screen. ‘Harriet,’ she said.

‘Jo?’ Harriet’s voice was blurred, as if she’d been crying.

‘What is it, Harriet? Are you OK?’ What now? Determinedly, she pushed the thought of Martin aside. Her sister had never been the emotional one. Was it something serious then?

‘Oh, I’m busy, that’s all.’

Clearly that wasn’t all. But despite everything, Joanna felt a dip of nostalgia.

Busy . . . She ignored the man sitting opposite her as he rustled his newspaper meaningfully and turned the page.

She thought of her father in the old days at Mulberry Farm Cottage – feeding the pigs, organising the sheep-shearing, flat cap, shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow; waltzing their mother over the flagstones of the kitchen floor.

Harriet and Father shaking the branches of the spreading mulberry tree.

You’re too young, Joanna. Harriet can do it.

Mother gathering mulberries from the nets with stained fingers, making sweet-sharp jam so dark red it was almost black.

Joanna remembered one, two, three, alive, the hide-and-seek game she’d played with Harriet.

And all the times she could never find her.

Joanna’s first kiss in Big Barn with Pete Painton from the year above her in school, Harriet’s face when she told her . . .

She blinked away a tear. Was she thinking about the old childhood days or was she thinking about her marriage falling apart? ‘Harriet . . .’ Terrible timing, Harriet.

Of course, autumn was a busy time at Mulberry Farm Cottage with all the fruit to pick from the orchard, bottling, jam-making and all.

But Harriet wasn’t talking about that – didn’t her sister always cope with all the work that needed to be done on the farm?

So much of their land had now been sold to the neighbours.

She must then be talking about their mother.

Harriet sounded as if she’d just about had enough and Joanna knew exactly how she felt.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m on a train.’

‘Oh, I see. Sorry.’ Her sister’s voice changed.

‘And . . .’ But she couldn’t tell Harriet what had happened – not here on the train with this awful man sitting opposite and besides . . . She sighed. She and Harriet had never been close.

‘Anyway, it’s a long story,’ Harriet was saying. ‘But we do need to talk, Jo. We need to discuss it properly – what to do about Mother. So, whenever you get to wherever you’re going, perhaps you can—’

‘Yes, of course.’ Joanna hadn’t known where to go. She could have gone to Lucy’s or maybe Steph’s. She could have stayed at the house and told Martin to leave – after all, he was the one who’d done the deed. But . . .

Mulberry Farm Cottage had always nestled in a corner of her mind, never forgotten, her haven, just as the cottage itself nestled deep in the protective folds of the hills and valleys of Warren Down in West Dorset – as tatty and ramshackle now as it had once been pristine.

It was a long time since it had been home in reality, but now, she felt catapulted back.

She didn’t want to be in London, she wanted to be sitting under the mulberry tree.

‘We can talk about it when I get there,’ she told Harriet.

‘Get there?’ Joanna could almost hear Harriet’s frown.

‘Can you pick me up from the station?’ Joanna asked her. ‘I’m on my way home.’