Chapter Eight
Rebecca knew, as soon as she walked into the apartment later that night, that it didn’t belong to Marcus.
It was decorated in rich, dark colours, with a faded opulence, a huge collection of books and the walls smothered in paintings.
And although he moved around it with ease, very much as if he owned the place, something didn’t smell right.
While he disappeared into the tiny kitchen to make them coffee, she did a little detective work, opening a few of the books until she found the evidence she needed. An inscription: To darling Sophia. Happiest of birthdays B xx
He could have picked the book up second-hand, but somehow she didn’t think so.
She opened the drawer of a console table and found a clutch of framed photographs that had been whisked off the top.
Most of them featured an elegant young woman, laughing at various social events.
Marcus wasn’t in a single frame. She found some business cards too, with Sophia’s contact details, confirming this was her address.
She took one, and slipped it into her pocket.
When he came back in with the coffees, she asked him the name of the tiny black cat who had appeared and was circling round her ankles. He hesitated a second too long.
‘Oh, that’s Indigo,’ he told her. ‘Hey, boy, where have you been?’
The cat ignored him. Of course, a cat’s indifference to a human being meant nothing. But Rebecca had never known a genuine cat lover who didn’t seek immediate reassurance and demand their cat’s affection. Marcus was more intent on lighting himself a cigar.
This wasn’t his apartment. He must be flat-sitting, or cat-sitting, for Sophia, whoever she was.
He was also assuming Rebecca was as drunk as he was after their evening at the bacaro, and that she wouldn’t notice the little clues.
But she was adept at feigning drunkenness, had perfected the art of seeming to keep up when the wine was poured.
She knew how to start to slur her words a little, to laugh a bit more loudly, to become languid, to maintain lingering eye contact full of suggestion.
It was a very useful skill, for when people thought you were as drunk as they were, they let their guard down.
And Marcus was in his cups. She knew the kind of drinker he was.
The kind that drank harder and faster as the night went on.
His eyes were getting smaller and redder and his teeth were stained from the two bottles of Amarone they had drunk – he had drunk, mostly.
And now he was sliding her a glass of grappa.
He threw his back with abandon, then topped himself up and flumped down on the sofa opposite her, raising his glass to her in a toast, with a vulpine smile.
No doubt he thought he had a careless charm, a playboy sophistication she would find irresistible.
She took a sip of her drink and shuddered slightly.
It was fiery, and she was not a spirit drinker.
And there, on the table in front of them, was the painting.
It was propped up against a pile of books and still bore a price tag on a piece of green velvet ribbon.
It was an oil of Venice, a classic canal scene with a gondola, but it had a vibrancy and fluidity to it that made it stand out.
She was beginning to learn what made a painting great rather than good.
They reached out and grabbed you, somehow.
They had a confidence and urgency; a ‘look at me’ quality.
They made you look at them twice; made you sit up, made you think.
This one was definitely special. Her heart began thumping.
‘Is that a new acquisition?’ she asked casually. ‘It’s very pretty.’
‘Well,’ he said, lurching forward. ‘Thereby hangs a tale.’ He almost spilled his drink as he put down his glass to pick the painting up. ‘This, my dear, is what’s known in the trade as a sleeper. On sale for a fraction of its worth, because the seller has no idea of its value.’
‘Oh.’ Could he be more patronising? She knew perfectly well what a sleeper was.
‘I found it in a little antiques shop. The irony is, everything else in there was wildly overpriced to rip off the tourists. But the owner knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.’ He chuckled softly as he gazed down at his purchase.
‘I’m pretty sure it’s a Francesco Bertorelli.
He’s starting to command high prices in New York and London.
I can get ten times what I paid for it.’
‘Wow.’ Rebecca looked wide-eyed. ‘I guess all that knowledge you have comes in handy for spotting bargains.’
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘You need the knowledge and you need an eye.’ He pointed vaguely at one of his own. ‘I’ll get it valued and put it up for auction. There’ll be a buyer willing to pay a good price.’
‘You don’t want to keep it? It would look lovely here. You have some beautiful art.’
He looked puzzled as she waved her hand around the walls, then obviously remembered this was supposed to be his apartment.
‘I have everything just as I want it. It’s perfect, don’t you think?’
‘Absolutely. You have great taste.’
He gave a self-satisfied smile. ‘It’s just evolved, you know, over the years.’
He completely believed his own fairy tale.
She saw his eyes were closing. Then he snapped them open again with a start. It wouldn’t be long, she knew, before he succumbed and fell asleep. Men like him were predictably tedious, sliding further and further into oblivion, while in his head he would think he was being fascinating.
‘How wonderful, though, to live full-time in Venice.’ She leaned forward and picked up the bottle of grappa. ‘May I? This is completely addictive.’
‘Of course!’
‘I must get a bottle to take home as a souvenir.’ She topped up her glass, and then his.
‘To London?’
‘Yes. Though I have a weekend place in the Cotswolds too.’ She could see it in her mind’s eye, her imaginary cottage. Two could play at that game. ‘Of course, I’ve had to downsize a lot, since the divorce. But, you know, as you get older you don’t need as much space, do you?’
‘Indeed. Small is beautiful.’ He waved his glass around proprietorially.
His movements were clumsy, and she bit her lip to stop herself from laughing.
His lids fluttered shut again. His cigar was perched in an ashtray on the arm of his chair, a plume of smoke curling upwards.
Indigo reached out a paw and rested it on her thigh, then dug his claws into her.
She put her hand down to remove it, wincing as her ten-denier stockings began to ladder, then stroked Indigo’s back, placating him until he began to purr with pleasure.
And soon Marcus’s snores began, rising and falling in perfect time with the purring. Snore snore. Purr purr.
After a few minutes, she lifted Indigo off her lap and placed him on the floor, then stood up, watching Marcus carefully.
The snores were getting more rasping. The last thing she wanted was for him to wake himself up.
Gradually, they subsided into something a little gentler as he went into a deeper sleep.
She took her phone out of her pocket and snapped a series of photos: Marcus fast asleep, a glass in one hand, several more on the table, the cigar burning in the ashtray, Indigo looking up at him for attention.
She picked up the painting and her coat and bag, then crept into the kitchen, where she shook out some dried food into Indigo’s bowl before tiptoeing gently to the front door.
The great thing about ballet flats was they made little noise and it was easy to make an escape in them, unlike four-inch Louboutins. She’d learned from that mistake.
She glided back through the narrow streets.
At two in the morning, Venice was deathly quiet, with no one to be seen.
Where had they gone, all those crowds that had jostled in the streets earlier?
The surface of the canal she was walking beside was as flat and hard as a mirror, with a ghostly mist floating a few inches above, softening everything into a blur.
The striking colours of the day muted into silver-grey and pewter and inky black.
In some ways, Rebecca preferred it. Darkness suited her modus operandi.
She didn’t look over her shoulder, or worry that she was being followed.
Even if Marcus woke up and realised she had vanished, he would have no way of knowing which way she had gone in the warren of streets that made up the city.
She wouldn’t know until she got back to London how much profit she had made. She would need to get a valuation, then see if she could get it into an auction. She had a good feeling about this little picture. A five-figure sum would change her life.
It was only as she moved away from the magic of the centre and towards the more downbeat area she was staying in that her mood dropped.
The adrenaline was fading, and the wine and the grappa, despite her restraint, had left her with a slight headache and a dry mouth.
What the hell was she doing, running through Venice with a stolen painting under her arm?
Why couldn’t she be like a normal person?
It proved her greatest fear to her: that she was a fake.
Why couldn’t she build an authentic, real Rebecca?
She could turn on that veneer, that false confidence, that air of sophistication, when she dressed for it.
But deep down she always felt unworthy. As if no one would value her if they looked close enough and saw beneath the facade.
She tried to imagine herself as quietly confident, warm and uncomplicated, someone who could open her heart to a kind man. Over and over she pictured Olivia and Christopher, both so different but so sure of themselves. Both one hundred per cent the real deal.
Yet there was obviously a crack in their relationship, or why would Olivia have met up with Marcus?
Did she really need his advice? Rebecca didn’t like to think of her betraying Christopher.
Yet she couldn’t forget the look on Olivia’s face when Marcus had kissed her goodbye. Pure revulsion. It was very confusing.
As she arrived back at her hotel, she realised the cold night air had needled its way in under her coat and into her bones.
She spent the next few hours huddled under the sheets, shivering, in slight shock at what she had done, counting the hours until daybreak.
She was still awake when dawn crept over the city with a pearly light that draped itself over the buildings, turning them gradually from grey to pink. And with it came a realisation.
If she was to become the person she wanted to be, she had to change inside as well as out.