Chapter Five #3
‘Oh là là!’ said the woman, as Olivia began to cry. She beckoned her inside.
But Olivia didn’t want pity or sympathy or consolation.
Nor did she want to step into the flat where she had been swept off her feet.
It had been an illusion, she realised now.
All based on a lie. He had not found her fascinating or irresistible.
All he had wanted was cold, hard cash, and he had gone off with her savings, no doubt to do the same to some other poor unsuspecting creature.
‘Non. Merci, mais non.’ Olivia put up an appreciative hand of farewell, tried to smile a thank you through her tears, and walked away.
She went back to the hostel and phoned her parents that evening, not caring about the cost of the call.
She wanted to go straight home, to a town where she knew the rules of engagement.
Where no one was going to sweep her off her feet, but they weren’t going to con her either.
She could go back to being herself, and keep herself safe.
Her father, bless him, transferred the money for the journey home straight away. She felt a fool, fleeing from Paris with her tail between her legs. The whole point had been for her to become a sophisticated, debonair adult, but she’d failed at the first hurdle.
As she got on the coach and searched for her seat, she tried not to imagine Marcus sunning himself on a beach on the French Riviera, his eyes roaming the crowds for his next victim.
She tried not to remember how he had made her feel, for none of it had been real.
She boxed up the memories – the giddiness, the exhilaration, the ecstasy – and tucked them away at the back of her mind, only to be revisited as a warning in case anyone sparked the same feelings in her.
She would never trust anyone again.
Olivia swam to the surface of her dream the next morning. Here she was, on her honeymoon in Venice, with her wonderful husband beside her. She reached out a hand to make sure he was there, and he was – solid, warm, reliable.
‘Hey,’ she murmured sleepily, squeezing his arm, hoping that the remnants of her dream would leave her quickly and not linger too long.
‘I thought you were never going to wake up.’ He sounded pleased. Christopher was always awake early. Six o’clock, usually. ‘Shall I have breakfast sent up?’
‘Perfect.’
As they waited for it to arrive, Christopher checked his emails on his iPad. His face clouded over.
‘Oh, hell,’ he exclaimed.
‘What’s the matter?’ Olivia felt a leap of anxiety, nerves still jarred from her night-time ordeal.
‘One of my assistants has uncovered a paper trail that compromises the figures we’ve put together for next week’s case.’ He ruffled his hair as he read the details. ‘It could really work in our favour, as it means the company we’re up against has been covering something up.’
‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. But I’m going to have to go through everything and call a meeting this afternoon.
We’ll have to redo all the calculations.
It’s my responsibility to double-check it all.
We can’t risk everything not being a hundred per cent accurate.
’ He looked distressed. ‘Seagull, I’m so sorry.
I’m going to have to spend the afternoon on this. ’
‘Darling, don’t worry at all. I can find something to do.’
‘Callum’s mortified as he knows it means interrupting my honeymoon, but this is going to make a big difference to our case.’
‘Bless him. Look, I can go shopping.’
‘Again?’ Christopher widened his eyes in pretend alarm.
‘Window-shopping,’ Olivia corrected herself. ‘And there’s a gallery I’d like to go to which probably wouldn’t interest you.’
‘You’re an angel for being so understanding.’
‘Yes, I know,’ she said, smiling, just as the waiter knocked on the door with their breakfast trolley.
Later, while Christopher was in the shower, she sipped her coffee on the balcony, watching the gondolas glide past. Marcus had promised her gondolas once, she remembered, and she had thought it the most romantic gesture in the world, not realising it had just been a carrot to tantalise her with.
She picked up her phone, turning it over and over in her hand as she recalled all the pretty pictures he had painted for her of what they would do together.
She’d believed every word because she’d had no reason not to, for her heart had been pure.
At least she had learned to trust again, thanks to the wonderful human being who was in the bathroom singing ‘O sole mio’ in an enthusiastic rather than tuneful baritone.
Before she could change her mind, she wrote a text.
I’m free this afternoon, if you’d still like to meet for coffee. It would be lovely to catch up. O x
She pressed send, and slid the phone into her dressing gown pocket, her heart pounding. She told herself it was the strong Italian coffee. But she nearly jumped out of her skin when her phone beeped a reply. She almost didn’t want to look at it. But she did.
2.30. See you there. M x