Encounters. Barbara Erskine

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      ‘That you treat Davina like dirt,’ I replied. I had no intention of telling about my eavesdropping.

      ‘I see.’ He waited a moment, then he went to a cabinet beside the fireplace and produced a bottle. ‘Campari and soda?’ He put the glass in my hand. ‘What do you intend doing about it?’ A smile played across his lips for moment.

      ‘Do you know what happened this morning?’ I asked him suddenly, looking down at the glass in my hand without seeing it. ‘Your ex-girlfriend has gone off with my husband because she wanted to hurt Davina. Don’t you think that is rather funny?’ I heard myself laughing, a high nervous sound which bordered on hysteria. ‘Is that why you asked us here? So you could procure Tim for your wife and distract her from your illegal activities?’

      I could have bitten my tongue out. His face had not altered but I saw the knuckles whiten on his glass. Slowly he raised it and drank.

      ‘So. I ask you again, what have you found out, sweet sister-in-law?’

      ‘Enough.’ I stared at him defiantly.

      There was a long silence. He set down the glass and looked at me thoughtfully. ‘Do you love this husband of yours, Celia?’ he asked.

      ‘Of course I do.’ It was true. It was agonizingly true.

      ‘Then I suggest you keep very quiet about whatever it is that you think you have discovered, cognata mia, or I will break Timothy’s career. Do you understand me? I can do it, you know. I’ll see to it that he never gets another commission as long as he lives.’ There seemed to be no animosity in his voice, no violence, just calm certainty. And I believed him. I stared at him, my heart hammering uncertainly in my chest as I set my glass down without tasting the drink.

      ‘You bastard.’

      He bowed in acknowledgement as though I had paid him a compliment.

      When Tim returned Sarah was with him. The car crunched to a halt on the gravel outside the villa as I was descending the stairs from my room in search of a cup of coffee. I had had no lunch and my head was aching violently. I stopped dead as the ornate doors swung open and they appeared on the threshold. Sarah was laughing as the soft jacket thrown across her shoulders caught on the elaborate arrangement of flowers in the hall and a spray of stephanotis fell to the floor. Tim looked at me intently for a moment. The anger which had shadowed his face as he caught sight of me was replaced by concern. ‘Sweetheart, are you all right?’

      I glanced at the dining room door which stood open. Beyond it Simon was still in his study. ‘Come to the cottage,’ I whispered. ‘I must see you alone.’

      Sarah was watching me. I saw a slight sneer flicker across her lips. ‘Go on, Tim. I shall speak to Simon. I know exactly what this is all about. He tried it once with me.’ She kissed her fingertips and laid them quickly on his lips. Then she went through the door and closed it behind her.

      In the cool of the cottage Tim held me for a long time before he would let me speak. Then slowly he pushed me away, holding me at arm’s length. ‘I was only sketching her, you know. It never crossed my mind she was trying to make Davina jealous.’

      His eyes held mine steadily and I knew that I believed him.

      ‘And Davina? Did she have any reason to be jealous?’ I asked softly.

      ‘What do you think?’ He was holding me tightly again and his lips on mine were urgent and demanding. It was a long time before I remembered my excuse for bringing him back to the villa.

      ‘He said if I told anyone he’d see you never got another commission, Tim,’ I whispered when I had finished telling him what had happened.

      Tim laughed softly and the sound sent a shiver up my spine. ‘I think I’m prepared to risk that,’ he said.

      Half an hour later I was packing when the door of our room burst open. It was Simon and his face was puce. ‘Get up,’ he said roughly and he bent to pull me from the bed where I was sitting. ‘You silly bitch. You thought I didn’t mean it? You thought you could double cross me, is that it?’ He yelled at me. I heard a door open in the distance and I guessed it was Davina’s.

      ‘What do you mean?’ I pulled away from him angrily. ‘Take your filthy hands off me!’

      ‘Simon, let her go!’ It was Davina in the doorway. Her voice had risen to a scream.

      ‘You told Sarah. She’s just confronted me with my plans downstairs. She thinks I’m going to cut her in.’ He gave an unpleasant laugh. ‘I told her to go and screw herself.’

      I wrenched my hand free. ‘You’re mad. I haven’t told Sarah anything. I haven’t spoken to her. She must have guessed.’

      ‘I don’t care how she knew,’ his face was ugly. ‘But there’s nothing she can do. No one can, because it’s too late and my plans are always foolproof.’ He turned to look at his wife, then swung back to me. ‘If you want to stop your sister going to jail you are going to do as I say for the next few hours. That is all I ask.’

      Davina and I stared at each other. Her face was white and pleading.

      I subsided onto the bed. ‘What do you want me to do?’

      He lifted my bag off the side table and wrenched it open to look inside. Then he threw it in my lap. ‘Get downstairs and wait for me in the car,’ he said.

      In the hall the spray of fragrant white flowers still lay on the Bokhara rug where Sarah’s jacket had flicked it. I bent and picked it up then I went out and climbed into the blue Alfa Romeo which stood outside.

      He took the hairpin bends of the mountain road with screaming tyres as we swooped down towards Florence. The glare off the white road reflected through the windscreen and I closed my eyes.

      ‘Where are we going?’ I asked wearily.

      ‘England.’ He did not look at me.

      My eyes had flown open. ‘England!’

      He chuckled suddenly. ‘I told Davina that if anyone wanted to see you alive again they had better keep very quiet about what they know.’ He glanced up at the driving mirror and smiled at himself. ‘You could say, cognata mia, that I am using you as a kind of hostage.’

      A wave of nausea swept over me and I felt myself clinging to the sides of the seat. The palms of my hands were clammy with fear.

      ‘You’re going to kill me?’ I whispered in disbelief.

      ‘Of course not. I don’t want a murder charge hanging over me, Celia. I’m not that much of a fool. But they don’t know that do they!’ He laughed out loud. ‘And I know you will behave because of what will happen to your sister – and your beloved husband – if you don’t. You are merely an insurance policy, my dear. I have a plane waiting at San Giusto and like any good tourist you carry your passport in your handbag. So we should have no more problems.’

      ‘I don’t believe you. You’re kidnapping me!’

      ‘You are hardly a kid,’ the scorn in his voice flicked at me and I flinched. He was right. I was no kid, and I understood perfectly that I had no choice but to СКАЧАТЬ