Now, ironically, she was going to Italy after all. But not to Rome or Florence, the centres of art. Her new home was a villa on the Amalfi coast where the cliffs plunged dizzyingly down to the sea.
Anything was worth it, she told herself, if she could still take care of the old man who had offered her a home after her parents died when she was eight. They had been strangers, not having seen each other for five years.
‘Hello, I’m Sam,’ he’d said, refusing to have any truck with that ‘talking down to kids nonsense’, as he had called it. And Sam he’d been ever since.
They had been poor, and life had been a struggle, but they loved each other, and when Sam’s health had failed all she’d cared about was looking after him. For a while she had had a boyfriend, Gavin, who had dazzled her with his handsome looks, but she had broken up with him when he made it clear there was no place for Sam in their lives.
Hoping to win a little money, she had applied to enter a television quiz show. That was how she had met Joe Clannan, a shareholder in the production company that made the show. He was a property millionaire, and, when he had proposed, she had accepted for Sam’s sake.
Joe wanted a young sexy trophy wife, and he made her change her name. To him, ‘Angela’ was dull and provincial, but ‘Angel’ was the sexy, young ‘bit’ that he wanted.
He took her to every film premiere, every fashionable restaurant opening, and she was always dressed to the nines and dripping with jewels. The idea was to show the world that coarse, vulgar Joe Clannan had a wife that other men envied him for.
She did what pleased him because she was grateful that Sam now had a comfortable life with her, cared for by two nurses. Often he didn’t know who she was, but he seemed happy, and that was all she asked.
She became a minor celebrity, famous for being famous, appearing on reality TV, fluttering her eyelashes, giggling and doing all she could to make Joe proud.
But when she became pregnant Joe showed his true colours. He already had two grown sons from a previous marriage, and he wasn’t keen on Angel losing her figure. He even suggested that there was ‘no need to have it’. That provoked a fierce row in which she stood up to him so determinedly that he never mentioned it again.
But it was all for nothing. Two days later, she miscarried. In the weeks of depression that followed, she became, as he put it, poor company. He found a younger woman, a girl of twenty. He reckoned Angel was past her best, at twenty-eight.
She had always known that beneath the surface bonhomie Joe could be a very unpleasant man. Just how unpleasant she discovered during the divorce, when he drove her and Sam out of the house and gave her as little as he could get away with.
She cared nothing for the money. If it weren’t for her grandfather, she would have thought herself well rid of Joe.
After the hideously gaudy mansion in the heart of London’s West End where she’d once lived- ‘Nothing too good for my Angel!’-she now rented a small house on the edge of town, just big enough for herself, Sam and the two nurses. She’d taken it on a short-term lease, and in a few weeks she must have the Villa Tazzini ready for them all.
On the night before she left for Italy, she dropped in to Sam’s room.
‘I’ll be leaving very early tomorrow,’ she told him.
‘Why are you going away?’ he asked, puzzled.
‘Darling, I told you. I’m going to Italy, to see this house where we’re going to live. It’s my divorce settlement from Joe.’
‘Joe who?’
‘You remember Joe-my ex-husband.’
He frowned. ‘What became of Gavin?’
‘We quarrelled. Never mind all that now. We’re going to have a new home in Italy. Look, here are the pictures of it that I brought you. You’ll come and join me as soon as possible.’
He fixed her with the smile she loved, full of warmth and affection.
‘Why are you going away?’ he asked.
Vittorio Tazzini was waiting at the window, watching the street for the moment when his friend appeared. As soon as he saw Bruno he was at the door, almost pulling him inside.
‘Have you got it?’ he asked eagerly.
‘Vittorio, my friend, I’m still not sure this is wise. You’re obsessed, and that isn’t good.’
‘Obsessed! Of course I am. I’ve been cheated by two men: the first was one I called a friend, until he stole from me and vanished, forcing me to sell my home to pay his debts. His debts, Bruno, that he had persuaded me to sign for. The other was Joseph Clannan, who saw my desperation and used it to beat me down on the price. I sold for much less than the place is worth because I needed money quickly. If I could have got a fair price I’d have had enough to give me some hope for the future. I wouldn’t be penniless and living here.’ He cast a scornful look around the shabby rented room that was his home now.
Bruno regarded him with pity, which he was careful to conceal. They were both thirty-two, and had been friends since their first day at school. Nobody knew the fierce, embittered Vittorio better than his gentle friend. Nobody understood him as deeply, or feared for him more.
He was silent, watching Vittorio pace the narrow confines of the room, his tall, rangy body looking so out of place in it, after the spaciousness of the Villa Tazzini, that it was like seeing a wild animal trapped in a tiny cage. Sooner or later the animal would go mad.
Vittorio wasn’t a handsome man. His face was too harsh for that, his cheeks too gaunt, his eyes too fierce. His nose was irregular, so that people meeting him for the first time wondered if it had been broken. His wide, firm mouth suggested an unyielding nature, one that could love or hate with equal ferocity, and never forgive an injury from foe or lover alike.
Even Bruno, his closest friend, was slightly afraid of him, and pitied anyone who got on Vittorio’s wrong side.
‘Won’t you forget that man for a moment?’ he begged now.
‘How can I forget him?’ Vittorio asked savagely. ‘He forced the price down until he practically stole the estate from me! And do you know why? To impress a woman. To make her a gift of my home at the least possible expense to himself.’
‘You don’t know that,’ Bruno pleaded.
‘But I do. As I showed him round I heard him say, “My pretty lady will just love this. It’s just what she said she wanted.” All for a woman. So now I want to see that woman. You said your friends in England could send you something that would show her to me. Do you have it or not?’
‘Yes,’ Bruno said, reluctantly unwrapping the small parcel he carried. ‘This is a video of a television show called Star On My Team. It was shown last week, and they taped it for me. But I still wish you’d drop this. Hate the man if you must, but why blame her?’
‘Do you think they can be separated? Do you think I don’t know the kind of woman who puts a price on the bedroom door, and then ups the price again and again? We all know them. Give me the tape.’
Taking it, he pressed it into an ancient video recorder that stood in the corner of the room, poured two glasses of wine, and the two of them sat down to watch.
‘Here she is. The beautiful, the fabulous-Angel!’
Vittorio never took his eyes off the ravishing blonde, with her long hair, luscious make-up and a sexy pout, as she sashayed out to meet her audience.
Flaunting herself, he thought cruelly, taking in the golden figure-hugging dress and flashy jewels. A woman used to being waited on, who demands the best, and gets it.
‘Putana,’ he muttered. Prostitute.
‘That’s going too far,’ Bruno protested.
‘You think a wedding ring hides what she is?’
‘She may not be wearing it any more. My friends say there is talk of a divorce.’
‘So she demanded my home as her parting present? Is that supposed to make me feel better?’