Chapter Thirty-Seven
The Final Dinner was at the Palazzo Venetis, on the Grand Canal, in a waterside restaurant.
Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked ripples studded with the gleam of refracted lights.
Two grand fireplaces with fires roaring in their grates bookended a frescoed room decked with miniature winter trees and fairy-light arches.
Down its centre, a long mahogany table hosted towering candelabras, white lilies floating in silver bowls, and tableware that blinked in the candlelight.
‘Bloody hell, I’m blown away!’ Stella was shrugging off her coat and letting one of the attendants take it from her. ‘This is gorgeous!’
‘It really is,’ agreed Olivia. Admiring the decor was not the only reason she was looking all around the room; locating Leo Greene was the other. ‘Shall we get a drink?’
The bar was in a small anteroom with the soft red glow of bordello lighting, gilt cornicing and sensuous portraits on the walls of naked people drinking from brass goblets.
Another magnificent fireplace was chucking out heat, and behind an onyx bar with a marble top a pair of young bartenders giggled until they were asked to serve Olivia and Stella a glass of Prosecco.
‘Where is everyone, then?’ Stella asked. ‘All the other authors? I’m dying to meet Frances Holland.’
‘Yes, she’s great.’ Olivia kept her eye on the archway from the restaurant. ‘You’ll love her.’
They sipped at their Prosecco, wandered back out of the bar to the room that was filling by the second with the elegantly dressed bookish people of Venice.
Olivia noted velvet and silk, taffeta and lace, the low-level murmur of rarefied chat, the golden clink of toasts to herald in the evening.
Waiting staff glided round with trays of canapés – miniature salami on brioche, bite-size burrata on a thin springboard of bruschetta.
Tanya and Meryn arrived together, then Valentina and Felicity – both startled to be in red dresses – with Beth, in a long eighties-style puffball gown.
‘There she is!’
Frances had entered the room in a green satin dress and a mink stole. Olivia allowed Stella a full ten minutes before she let her rush over. She saw Stella touch Frances lightly on the arm, her face lit up, and Frances turn to her in pleasure.
Stella was lost to Frances, and Olivia was lost to herself and to Leo.
He was standing by one of the fireplaces, in a tuxedo and a gold bow tie, a glass of whiskey in hand and chatting to a dour-looking man in a grey suit.
The handsomest man in the room and the only one with the power to break her heart.
She made her way back into the bar, where they were now serving pale frothy concoctions with sugar-crusted rims; dozens were lined up.
‘What are these?’ she asked the aquiline bar boy.
‘Limoncello cocktails.’
Of course, she thought. She took one and sipped it slowly, savouring the lemon, the punch of alcohol, the tartness and the sweetness. Then a hand was on her arm.
‘There you are. Come and say hello.’
It was Beth. At the window were Leo, Anthony and Valentina.
‘Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?’ said a smiling Anthony, at Olivia’s reluctant arrival. ‘Am I allowed to say that these days?’
‘You can still say that.’ Leo spoke softly. ‘Especially if it’s true. You look beautiful.’
‘Thank you,’ she replied, not daring to look at him. ‘I think we’ve all scrubbed up well, haven’t we? The occasion certainly demands it, and the setting.’
‘It’s so stunning,’ agreed Beth. The room was full now.
Olivia could barely make out Frances, Felicity, and her traitor, Stella, at the other side.
‘And the view . . . Look!’ Down on the canal, the lit-up buildings were grand and solemn, toppling over each other to be reflected in the water.
A gondola transporting a young couple wrapped in blankets was meeting one coming the opposite way, hosting an older couple swaddled in furry coats.
Both men raised their hand in a genial salute, and Olivia could make out the older man nodding at the younger one as if to say, ‘This is what it means to go the distance.’
‘Only in Venice,’ Anthony observed. ‘What a truly miraculous city this is!’
‘Valentina, can you take a photo of me and Anthony?’ Beth asked, pulling her phone from her clutch bag. ‘My sister’s a really big fan.’
Valentina nodded. Beth threaded her arm through Anthony’s, grinning at his pudgy face stuffed into a stiff collar and the three of them peeled away, leaving Olivia and Leo on their own.
‘How was your day?’ Leo asked her.
Olivia answered without looking at him, her eyes still trained on the evening lull of the canal. ‘Good, thanks. Quiet.’ She’d spent the entire day in her room.
‘I went to Murano this afternoon, distracted myself with a glass factory.’
Distracted? ‘Was it good?’
‘Yes, very interesting. It would have been nice if you’d gone with me.’
‘I couldn’t have done that.’
‘Why not?’
Another wan smile. ‘I’m trying to avoid you.’
‘Yeah, I noticed that. I am noticing that.’
His hazel eyes were unblinking, and her heart was suddenly beating in her throat.
‘I hope I’m not sitting next to you at dinner,’ she said truthfully. ‘To be honest, I’d rather say goodbye now, be done with it. I wish you weren’t here.’ She wished she wasn’t there, either. She wished to be home in Marylebone. She wished she’d never come to Venice.
‘I’m glad that you are,’ he said, his gaze piercing right through to her soul. ‘We need to talk.’
‘I think we’re done with all that.’
‘Do you? Let’s see how we go, shall we?’
‘I know how we went,’ Olivia retorted. ‘And it’s always been in the wrong direction.’
He shook his head. ‘Maybe before a man in a red jacket announces that dinner is served, we could—’
‘Dinner is served!’ They both turned their heads and a man in a red jacket, with a bushy moustache, was theatrically banging a bronze gong with a felted mallet. ‘So, if you’d all like to take your seats . . .’
The murmuring crowd gravitated towards the table, finding their places, setting their drinks down in a buzz of anticipation. Olivia saw with dismay that she was seated next to Leo and there was no chance to swap the place cards without him seeing.
‘I know you were thinking about it,’ he whispered, gesturing at the cards as they took their seats.
‘Mind reader!’ she whispered back, her face burning.
‘Good evening.’ Philip Jackson-Wright, who Olivia recognised from the internet as the director of the festival committee, was at the head of the table.
‘Welcome, everyone. It’s lovely to see everybody here looking so elegant for our Final Dinner.
’ He beamed at all the faces around the table.
‘I think we can definitely say this has been a marvellous week. And I’d like to thank the authors from the UK who have come to Venice and made this book festival so enjoyable.
’ There was a smattering of applause. ‘We hope you enjoy tonight’s Final Dinner, and we wish our authors safe homeward or onward travels.
So, let’s raise a toast.’ He lifted his glass. ‘To books! And to Venice!’
‘To Venice!’ the diners echoed.
Dinner was served. First, a spicy tomato soup with toasted ciabatta.
Next, a fish course, with Parmentier potatoes and the finest of green beans.
Leo became quickly preoccupied by the chatty lady to his left; Olivia, by the man on her right – a book blogger called Nigel who had travelled to Venice from Birmingham via Berlin, arriving tonight with his winning ticket from an online competition to meet four British authors at a swanky dinner.
He was on an Interrail trip, next stop: Greece.
Olivia pretended to be fascinated by his tales of youth hostels and train stations, by the books he had read and what he planned to read next.
He hadn’t read her books, he told her, but he had read all of Leo Greene’s.
The man was a genius as far as he was concerned, couldn’t be bettered . . .
But she was hyper-aware of Leo Greene next to her.
Of the warmth of his body, the timbre of his laugh – shared with the woman to his left – of all the times she had kissed him, or nearly loved him.
Whatever Nigel said, she had one ear on Leo’s words, trying to catch them.
Her body was tilted slightly towards him; her left shoulder angled to his, her left hand flat on the tablecloth by his water glass.
She hated her body for its betrayal, for how it wanted him.
Stella winked at Olivia from across the table. Ensconced next to Frances, she had swapped place cards.
‘Alright?’ Stella mouthed.
Olivia nodded. ‘Fine,’ she mouthed back.
‘Could you please pass me the black pepper?’
Leo’s warm voice. Leo’s eyes shining in the candlelight. His throat blushed by the flickering flames at the centre of the table.
‘Of course.’
Their wrists brushed lightly as he took the pepper mill.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘You’re welcome.’
‘Great food,’ he added.
‘Yes, absolutely.’
She had barely touched hers, apart from the soup.
The fish, although flaky and tender, she had found hard to chew.
He smiled at her, and her mouth reciprocated, easy and yielding.
How very easy it was to smile at him, to look at his face, to be with him.
How very difficult it was to be anywhere near him again.
The lady to Leo’s left commandeered his attention once more and Nigel, to her right, started telling her that his fillet was very similar to one he’d had in Lucerne.
Olivia and Leo didn’t speak again until after the dessert of tiramisu, and coffee and petits fours, when Leo’s inquisitive lady got up from the table.
‘OK?’ he asked Olivia, far too kindly.
‘Yes, thank you.’ She could barely look at him.
‘I want you to pass the pepper, the sugar, the whatever, so I can brush my hand against yours again, but the meal is over.’