‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-eight.’
‘Who knows you’re in Italy?’
‘Nobody. I have no family.’
‘What about your work colleagues?’
‘None. I’m not in work just now.’
‘There must be someone in England who’ll think it strange if you don’t return by a certain date.’
‘There isn’t. I live alone in a small rented house. I didn’t know how long I’d be away, so I told my neighbour to expect me when she saw me. I could vanish off the face of the earth and it would be ages before anyone noticed.’
She said the last words in a tone of discovery, as it was borne in on her how completely isolated she was. It was something she had vaguely recognised, but it was only now that the reality was brought home to her.
And if I’d had my wits about me, she told herself, I wouldn’t have admitted it to him. Now he knows how totally I’m in his power.
In the silence she could sense him surveying her, probably thinking how dull and unsophisticated she was for her age. It was true. She knew nothing, and it had left her vulnerable to Bruno Vanelli. Vulnerable in her heart and her life, in ways that she was only now beginning to understand.
When she’d met Bruno she’d been mostly ignorant of the world and men, and he had guessed that and played her like a fool.
Which was what I was, she thought bitterly. A fool.
‘Tell me about that suitcase you were so anxious to recover,’ the judge said. ‘Is there anything incriminating in it?’
‘No, I just didn’t like losing my clothes.’
‘Anything there that can identify you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘Because of Uncle Josh.’
‘Uncle Josh? He’s travelling with you?’
‘No, of course not. He’s dead.’
‘He’s dead but he tells you what to pack?’ he recited in a voice that strongly suggested he was dealing with a lunatic.
‘I know it sounds batty, but it’s the truth,’ she explained.
‘Batty? You’ll have to excuse me. I’m discovering unexpected holes in my English.’
‘It means crazy, weird. I feel a bit weird. In fact, very weird.’
His answer was to fill a glass and put it into her hand. It turned out to be brandy.
‘Give yourself a moment to calm down,’ he said in a gentler voice. ‘Then tell me about Uncle Josh and how he directs your packing from his grave.’
There was a slight quirk to his mouth that might almost have been humour.
‘Years ago,’ she said, ‘he went on holiday and on the journey someone stole his suitcase. There were some papers in it that contained his address. When he got home he found his house ransacked.
‘Since then none of my family have ever packed anything that could identify us. Papers have to go in a bag that you keep on you. It’s an article of faith. You swear allegiance to your country and you vow not to leave bits of paper in suitcases.’
Holly choked suddenly as the sheer idiocy of this conversation came over her. Now nothing mattered but a wild desire for maniacal laughter. She controlled it as long as she could, but then her resistance collapsed and she shook.
The judge rose quickly, rescuing her glass and setting it down out of danger.
‘I suppose this was inevitable,’ he said. ‘If you’re going to have hysterics you’d better have them and get it over with.’
She jumped up and turned away from him, unwilling to let him see how vulnerable she felt at this moment.
‘I am not having hysterics,’ she said firmly. ‘I just-don’t know what’s happening.’
‘Then why are you shaking?’ he said, moving behind her and placing his hands on her arms.
‘I’m-I’m not-I’m-’
He drew her slowly back against him and folded his arms across her in the front. It wasn’t a hug, because he didn’t turn her to face him. He was as impersonal as a man could be who actually had his arms about a woman. Even through the whirling in her head she knew that he was soothing her in a way that involved no suspicion of intimacy.
It was oddly reassuring. He was telling her silently that she was safe with him because there was a line he would not cross, while the warmth and power of the body behind her seemed to infuse her with new strength.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked quietly.
His breath fluttered heatedly against the back of her neck. She tried to ignore it, as she guessed he expected her to do. In fact, she doubted if he’d given the matter a thought.
‘I don’t know. I don’t even know who I am any more.’
‘That’s probably the safest option for you,’ he observed with a touch of wryness.
Releasing her, he guided her back to where she could sit down, and said almost casually, ‘I suppose it was a man who lured you into this?’
‘Yes, I suppose it’s that obvious. He gave me a line and I fell for it. I don’t know exactly what happened. Maybe they caught him and he managed to put the blame on me.’
‘My love, trust me-love me. Nothing matters except that we should be together.’
‘Saving himself by sacrificing you?’
‘Yes, I think he must have done that.’
‘How refreshing to find you so realistic.’
‘After what’s happened to me, I have no choice but to be realistic.’
His mouth twisted ironically.
‘Some are born realistic,’ he misquoted. ‘Some achieve realism, and some have it thrust upon them.’
‘Nobody is born realistic,’ she parried. ‘We all have it thrust upon us, in one way or another.’
‘How true! How bitterly true.’
He spoke so softly that she wasn’t sure she’d really heard, and when she regarded him with a questioning look he walked away to the window. He stayed there, not speaking, for several minutes. At last he said over his shoulder, ‘I dare say Anna has spoken to you of my wife.’
‘She did say that Signora Fallucci died in a train accident, and that Liza was also injured. Liza herself told me that her mother was English. I felt that she seized on me for that reason.’
‘You’re right. It struck me as soon as I entered the compartment. I saw something in Liza’s face that I haven’t seen for months. She was content, almost happy. And then, the way she clung to you-I suppose I made my decision then.’
‘The decision to take me over, lock, stock and barrel? The decision to acquire me at whatever cost, even if it meant out-bidding the police?’
‘That’s a cynical way of putting it.’
‘How else would you put it?’
‘I might say that you were in need of help, as am I, and we decided to assist each other.’
‘When did I decide anything?’
‘My dear signorina, forgive me if I have been too precipitate. Clearly I should have introduced you to the police and waited while you chose between us.’
Silence!
He was smiling, but behind the smile there was the steel of a man used to having his own way and determined that it was going to continue. He had her helpless, and he knew it.
‘In fact, neither of us made the decision,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Liza made it. I’m merely following her wishes. I admit that the circumstances aren’t ideal but I didn’t create them. I had to act quickly.’
It was true, and every instinct warned her to go carefully and not antagonise him. But too many years of going carefully rose up in defiance now, robbing her of caution.
‘No, you didn’t create them, but you knew how to take advantage of them, didn’t you? Despite your talk of following Liza’s wishes, I’m little better than a prisoner-’
‘Not at all. Walk out whenever you like.’
‘You know I can’t. I have no clothes, no money, no passport…’
His response was to reach into his jacket and hand her a fistful of notes.