Chapter Two
‘Your hair’s longer.’
Leo was staring at her. He had taken his coat off to reveal a moleskin shirt: dark khaki, undone more than was necessary. The panel hadn’t started yet. Felicity and Valentina were hiss-whispering to each other at the lectern to the left of the table.
‘So is yours, a little.’
His arm was on the table, cuff risen to reveal his wrist. He was clean-shaven, a little tanned; his hair longer and wavier than would look right on any other man.
Olivia’s heart stepped into the front carriage of the familiar rollercoaster that was Leo Greene and strapped itself in, but how was his? she wondered. How had he been, really?
‘Can you even remember what your book is about?’ He smiled genially at her.
It was standard fare that once an author finished writing a book and it was published, they promptly forgot everything about it – character names, who said what to who, the plot .
. . ‘I can’t recall a thing, but I’ve made a list.’
He dived into his satchel and whipped out an A4 notebook she knew would be unlined inside. He placed it on the white tablecloth and tapped the matt orange cover. It had a hessian spine that was peeling off a little at the top, and a narrow press of graduated loose pages peeking out at the bottom.
‘You love a list,’ she said, foolishly divoting a piece of turf from the lawn of their past.
‘I do.’
He flicked it open, and there was his familiar handwriting, sprawling, leaning backwards on itself, as though trying to catch what had gone before. The page it had fallen to was a list of character names and occupations, some scruffily underlined.
‘And I guess you’ve done a mind map?’ he queried.
She nodded, compelled to pull a neat piece of paper from an orderly folder in her immaculate tote: colour-coded bubbles and arrows, zealous use of highlighters.
‘Very you,’ Leo commented, looking at her quizzically. The soft light from the window behind him rendered his hazel eyes almost a nutty brown and a distant, unbuttoned version of herself wanted to weep.
She nodded again. She leaned down to return the mind map to the folder in her bag. He crossed his legs under the table, one foot kicking up the tablecloth.
‘Cowboy boots,’ she observed, probably unwisely, but she hadn’t noticed them when he came in.
‘Impulse souvenir.’ He grinned at her. ‘I was at a book event in Texas recently. I’m quite attached to them, really.’
‘They’re not very author-y,’ she commented mischievously. ‘Surely a jacket with suede patches on the elbow wouldn’t have been too much of a stretch?’
‘I’m a crime writer, not a geography teacher.’ Leo’s eyes were dancing. The rollercoaster lurched forward and started rumbling up the track. What were they doing? Why were they falling back into this teasing and banter? Had they forgotten?
‘Or someone about to go to a dodgy nightclub.’ Clearly, she couldn’t help herself.
‘Would you like to go to a nightclub?’ he asked her, with one raised eyebrow.
‘No, thank you,’ she said archly. ‘I’ve seen your dancing.’
Leo’s face broke into the widest grin. They had forgotten, hadn’t they?
They’d forgotten how it had ended, and instead were blindly going back to the beginning.
The chemistry. The witty words. The high-flying delight in each other.
But no, they couldn’t go back. However tempting it was to return to their version of autopilot, familiar and heady; at some point they had to land the plane.
She thought of all the times she would have to see him this week – today’s panel, the signing at the bookstore tomorrow, the readings at the Guggenheim on Thursday, the Final Dinner on Friday night.
Until this moment, they had been mere events in the diary; now each was a bout of turbulence to be buckled in for.
‘So, how are you finding the hotel?’ he asked. ‘The converted monastery?’ Safer ground. Small talk.
‘You’re staying at the Figo, too?’ The rollercoaster, hesitating on the track, came to a stop.
‘Yes. We all are, aren’t we?’
If she were to turn in her seat and look out of the tall windows, she would be able to make out the hotel’s bell tower, the green of its shrubbery and manicured fig trees, the faded dollhouse pink of its stonework.
The Figo was on its own island, a few minutes by boat from St Mark’s Square – a seventeenth-century Augustinian monastery that had been converted into a hotel in 1985.
It had wide, carpeted corridors and sumptuously decorated rooms. A feeling of quiet elegance and history.
The hotel was beautiful, and it was huge, which could now only be a good thing.
This trip had, up until about ten minutes ago, been perfect for Olivia.
She had just finished her latest novel, which was currently with her agent, and she needed a break.
She was more than happy to fulfil her obligations here in Venice, but in her downtime she wanted to lie in her hotel room and think about nothing.
No chance of that now. Charming Leo Greene was here. Bright, lively and funny Leo Greene. Often kind, occasionally arrogant, sometimes unreadable Leo Greene. But still she remembered how he had once peeled back his skin and revealed his heart to her. How much of hers did he remember?
‘That’s good,’ he said, and she didn’t know why.
‘Good morning, everyone!’
‘Buongiorno!’
Felicity and Valentina were all smiles at the lectern: Felicity’s bland, pulpy face eager; Valentina’s set and schoolmistressy above an aggressively pink trouser suit.
‘Welcome to An English Writer in Venice, Day One,’ said Felicity, smiling sweetly.
‘Thank you to everyone for coming along to today’s Q he didn’t resemble Charlie Sackville at all – his face, or his hair, or his clothes – but something about his manner, and the way he sat in his seat, reminded her of home. Working-class Pimlico. Chip butties and tinned rice pudding and love.
‘Pleased to meet you, Sam.’
Leo flashed one of his stage persona smiles: personable, approachable, supersonic, and Sam beamed back at him.
Leo had the room in his hand already. Women were leaning forward.
Men were wondering how he did it. Olivia was wishing she was at the other end of the table, while her body did not.
Her heart did not. Because she knew. She knew who lay behind the stage persona.
The man within. It had been bittersweet when he had stepped out from himself and taken her hand, whispered her name; incredibly sad that she would never know that man again.
‘Well, this book has been a slight departure for me in that the hero, Ben Midnight, our furious chef’ – he gave another grin, bounced back by his audience – ‘discovers a murder himself whilst out on one of his nightly walks along the canal. A murder that both returns him to his past and threatens his future. I bring back the police constable who had been transferred out of the area and, oh, there’s a new addition: a scruffy mongrel called Peaches. ’
‘It sounds fantastic.’ Sam’s foxy features were animated. ‘I can’t wait to read it.’
‘Thank you, Sam,’ Leo replied engagingly. ‘I’ll be signing a few copies at the Acqua Alta bookstore tomorrow, if you want to come along.’
Sam nodded his assent. ‘Yes, I might do.’
‘Great!’
Another hand went up, pale and slim.
‘I also have a question for Leo.’ The woman was in her early twenties, pretty under a 1970s curtain fringe. ‘When are you coming to Verona?’
Leo laughed. ‘Well, thanks,’ he said. ‘I do hope to get to Verona at some point, but I’m here now, aren’t I?’ A froth of laughter spun around the audience like candyfloss. ‘And so are you. Anything else you’d like to know?’
‘When are you getting married?’ asked the woman coquettishly. ‘You are forty, now, right? Are you thinking about settling down?’