Chapter Thirty-Two Venice Thursday 11 January 2018 #2
‘Oh. I didn’t know that . . . Anyway, I read that Isaac has just done some huge restaurant deal, something he’s been planning for years. There was a big photo of him, and one of Leo. You should look it up online.’
‘Oh, really?’ Olivia had no desire to see Isaac’s scowling face again.
‘Yes. It’s a great photo of Leo.’
She imagined that most were. Guests were arriving now. Seats were being taken. Olivia saw Leo was holding court. Shaking hands, doling out smiles, chatting everyone up – male and female. Everyone looked thrilled with him, as usual, including a man in elaborate mayoral robes.
Meryn caught Olivia’s eye and walked over. ‘Showtime,’ she said. ‘You ready?’
‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’
Olivia took her copy of The Curator on Church Street from her bag, then gave the bag carefully to Meryn, who hung it over her arm.
Felicity and Valentina went to the lectern and introduced the event, thanking everyone for coming.
The four authors gathered behind them, lambs to the slaughter – or at least, that was how Olivia saw it.
When she was announced as the first reader, the two organisers stepped aside, and Olivia walked forward to place her book on the lectern, opening it at the page she had marked.
She took a deep breath. Looked out into the crowd, and the first face she saw was Leo’s.
‘You got this,’ he mouthed and, a little surprised, she began.
‘When Kath arrived at the bus stop in the early hours of the morning, heading for the museum, Justice was waiting for her . . .’
She finished the excerpt to appreciative applause, Leo clapping the loudest. Blushing, she exited the stage.
Frances was next. She confidently read the lively prologue of her novel, Streatham, eliciting laughs and the occasional gasp from the audience, and ended to solemn admiration, when she spoke of her teenage character, Marie, and the father she cares for.
‘Marie locks up at night. She switches the dishwasher on, she turns off all the lights downstairs, she helps her father in the bathroom, and she draws the curtains across in her father’s bedroom before tucking him in and giving him a kiss.
There’s a photograph of them on the windowsill.
A photo of when Marie was a baby, and her father was well.
Her father is holding her up to the camera, their faces together.
And now Marie holds her father up. Now she tucks her father in, and kisses him on the cheek . . .’
Olivia thought of the roll of papers in her bag.
Her godmother’s receipts and miscellany, the snippets of her life here in Venice, and Olivia’s words among them.
She joined in with the applause for Frances when her reading came to a close, but she was listening for her godmother’s footsteps across the marble floors.
It was Anthony’s turn. He had everyone in stitches with an excerpt on his absent-minded valet, Terrence, falling into the pond at Cliftonville Manor.
Then Leo stepped up to the lectern with his book, joy in the eyes of everyone in the crowd. Handsome devil, Olivia thought, and not for the first time. There was a tab marked in his paperback copy, but he bypassed it, turning the pages instead to a later chapter.
It started with a scene at a market. The checking out of an alibi. But then Leo read on.
‘Ben had loved Martha from almost the first time he saw her.
Almost, because the first time he saw her she had been covered in engine oil and wearing a baseball cap that said, Eat Shit!
She worked the radio for the cab office but sometimes she fixed cars, too.
She had efficiently rolled out from under a Ford Mondeo on a dolly and Ben had been sunk.
‘He found her bewitching. Funny. Challenging. He had tried to fall back out of love with her three, maybe four times. He had tried to stitch up his heart inside the pocket of his army surplus coat and not let her get to it. But she already had . . .’ The crowd was rapt as Leo continued reading, the rumble of his voice undulating over them.
‘When he solved the crime on Lancaster Street, it was because of her. Her delicate silver bracelet, her skinny wrist, angled by the cab office mic stand, had triggered something in Ben’s brain – something about the victim – and had finally led Ben to the culprit.
He owed Martha, but he didn’t know how to repay her, as he didn’t know if she would ever forgive him.
But he had learned about forgiveness now, or at least, the way to try for it.
He could see the way ahead of him, if he made the right moves.
Took the right advice. Became a better man.
He hoped one day to be worthy of her, to have her look at his face and say, “You give me everything I need.”’
When he finished his reading, he closed the book and looked out across the crowd.
Olivia expected his smile to be cocky, but it wasn’t.
It was a slow, sad smile which was appearing to melt many hearts, including that of the mayor, but then he turned his gaze upon her, and he raised his eyebrows, just a touch, his eyes a slow fire.
‘Thank you very much, Leo,’ said Valentina, stepping up to the lectern as Leo receded from it. ‘And that completes our readings this evening. Let’s give another big round of applause for Olivia Sackville, Frances Holland, Anthony Beau and Leo Greene.’
There was polite, art-gallery applause. The line of authors fell away. Anthony grabbed Frances’s arm and started gabbling to her about her prologue. Valentina and Felicity began arguing about the configuration of the chairs. Olivia and Leo were left standing together.
‘Very nice,’ said Leo appreciatively.
‘And yours. Maybe I should read another one of your books sometime.’ She smiled shyly at him. He had spoken about love. About resisting falling in love. About seeking forgiveness.
‘I take it your two get together at the end?’ Leo’s eyes were gentle, his mouth a work of art. The soft lighting of the gallery only made him look more handsome.
‘Of course, the happy ever after and all that. Not yours?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘Oh, I thought you said Ben loses Martha?’
‘I’ve got several more books to go in the series. I may have changed my mind about their future. Can Ben prove himself to Martha?’ he asked, his eyes suddenly soft and serious.
‘Or can Martha prove herself to Ben . . . ?’
Leo gave her a look that made time stand still. ‘I like the idea of a definite ending for them though. A lasting one. Wouldn’t that be nice?’
‘It would.’
‘Why didn’t you join us for dinner last night?’
‘I was tired.’
‘Tired of me?’
‘Maybe.’ She would never be tired of Leo Greene.
‘It was fun. And I thought we had fun yesterday, at the bookstore.’
‘We did. Maybe that was the problem—’
‘Time to mingle!’ Valentina was in front of them, clapping her hands. ‘And then, later, it’s upstairs to the roof terrace for a little party! We have heating,’ she added.
‘Oh, great!’ said Leo.
‘Oh, great,’ echoed Olivia.
Valentina started talking to Leo about his reading, asking him about the cab office, what it meant, what was a ‘dolly’?
Olivia was approached by some people from the audience, eager to talk about the passage she had read, about happy ever afters, and her writing process.
Some champagne was served. The space buzzed with literary conversation.
Eventually, the champagne flutes were drained, and the audience trickled away, but the authors were still in demand.
Leo was commandeered by Valentina again.
Anthony and Frances started talking to Claire.
And Olivia found herself in front of Magritte’s ‘Empire of Light’, the famous, paradoxical painting of a nocturnal house under a sunlit sky.
A party on the terrace . . . She wasn’t sure she wanted to stay for it.
A party with Leo Greene was always dangerous, for starters.
And the roof terrace, where the interns had danced around her ailing godmother, light as air .
. . Gillian’s memories would be up there, memories Olivia wasn’t a part of.
The words ‘too late’ once again carried across the months and the years like a little boat on the sea of Olivia’s mind.
‘Just make your way up whenever you’re ready,’ said Felicity, tapping her on the shoulder. ‘There’s more champagne, and we have music.’
‘Music, champagne, and great company,’ said Leo, who had turned around from his conversation with Valentina. ‘What more can a man ask for?’ And Felicity actually blushed, but Leo was looking straight at Olivia.