Liberate Yourself (The Desires Unlocked Trilogy Part One) (43 page)

The years spin by, and still Belle doesn’t give up hope that Santos will return one day. He promised her. She imagines him returning, and his joy when he discovers he has a child. And such a sweet, easy little girl, a lover of the sea and a dancer, just like her father. By the time Maria is four, she is so well behaved that she accompanies her mother and Auntie Pina on their photograph-taking excursions, tripping along
behind them like a little fairy in a tiny ballerina dress, or a miniature clown in a harlequin costume with a jester’s mask. She has no father with her, but that doesn’t matter, for the whole of Venice is Maria’s family. She knows every gondolier, every artisan and stallholder. They all keep a watchful eye on the little girl with the beautiful eyes. Everyone knows who her real father is, for Santos Devine is a legend in Venice. And just like Belle, the city waits for him to return.

Yet he never comes. The years turn and turn as Belle holds on. Despite the comfort Pina offers her, for her friend is deeply in love with her, Belle will not take it, not even a kiss. It is not fair to Pina to lead her on, for she is saving herself for Santos. Often at night she pushes his gold earring on to each finger one by one, trying to warm the cold metal with her hope, yet still it feels like a dead man’s ring. She strives to keep her faith in him, as the cracks in her heart multiply.

It is three days before Maria’s eighth birthday when Belle’s long vigil finally comes to an end. She is smothered with a heavy cold, and Pina insists she stay in bed while she and Maria go out and ply their trade. Her friend and daughter clatter out of the apartment, Pina dressed in Belle’s sailor boy outfit, and an adaptation of the black ballerina’s dress for Maria’s tiny frame.

Belle is listless. She cannot rest, and yet she is too ill to get out of bed. As she tosses and turns, she hears birdsong coming from the window. She recognises the flute notes instantly. She
sits up in bed and there is her little blackbird. She has not seen him since the day Lara brought him to her all those years ago. She listens to his song, and it is as if she can hear her lover’s words beneath it.

Here I am. Here I am
.

The blackbird flies away into the ethereal mists of Venice, and in his place stands Santos Devine. She cries out to him, in joy, in fear. He looks exactly how he did when she last saw him. His prowess, his power, his passion all perfectly combined. He walks towards her, across the shadowy room.

‘Santos? Is that really you?’

Her lover doesn’t speak, but still he comes towards her. She sits up in bed and holds out her arms to him. They embrace, her heart raw with the pain of the missing years.

‘Santos,’ she whispers, as she inhales his scent. She could never forget his sweet perfume. ‘Where have you been?’

Santos doesn’t reply. Instead he lifts her face to his and kisses her. She feels his love within their kiss, the burning power of it.

‘I have been waiting for you, my love,’ she whispers. ‘I knew you would return to me.’

Still he doesn’t speak, and yet the expression in his eyes tells her all she needs to know. He loves her.

Santos kisses each part of her, waking up her body, so long asleep, so long untouched. She curls around him, pressing into him, feeling their limbs entwine so that they become one beautiful, sublime pulsing heart. He pushes inside her, and she
opens her mouth and releases all the anguish of her long wait for this moment. Their eyes lock as they rock together on the bed. She looks love full in the face, commits to memory every curl of his hair, every freckle upon his skin, each crease around his eyes, that divine cleft in his chin. This is the mountain she has had to climb, yet she never gave up, and now she has her reward. In her head she composes a poem, just like Veronica Franco would.

All my life I have lived for this summit of bliss, when the love of my life tells me he loves me
.

I will write these words down, Belle thinks, so that I never forget the eternity of our love. She closes her eyes and loses herself to their passion.

As she and Santos climax in perfect, shimmering symmetry, she feels the rain of feathers upon her body, the slip and slide of his soul as it retreats back into the hazy land he now inhabits.

‘No!’ she cries. ‘My love, don’t leave me again.’

Yet when she opens her eyes, her arms are empty. She hugs herself, bereft with the knowledge of where her Santos is gone. It can be the only reason he has never come back for her. And now she realises that she knew it all along. Her love is gone, the air still spinning with black feathers like dying moths as the light fades from her heart. Beside her on the pillow is the blackbird, a bead of blood upon its yellow beak. She knows with certainty that her lover is dead. She does not know where or how, but Santos
is
dead, for this is how he
finally came back to her and made love to her as she always dreamed he would.

That night, while Maria sleeps beside her, Belle slides over into the middle of the bed next to her daughter, and pulls back the covers on the other side for Pina. It has taken her eight years to accept the woman who loves her best, yet at last she lets her in.

VALENTINA SITS OUTSIDE CAFFE FLORIAN WATCHING THE
dirty pigeons of Venice scavenge off the tourists in Piazza San Marco. She is sipping her cappuccino, slowly whiling away the day and waiting for Theo. He rose early this morning, before she woke, leaving a note on the bedside table explaining that he had gone to talk to this Glen character. He wrote that he would meet her here at Caffe Florian at midday.

Theo insists that Glen is not dangerous, but Valentina has a gut feeling about that man. She twists her napkin through her fingers. She hopes everything is okay. Despite the fact that she spent the night in Theo’s arms, she is still anxious. Now she knows all about the art thievery, she is not so sure in the cold light of day what she actually thinks about it all. If she and Theo are to become a proper item, that will be her life as well. She wishes he had talked to her about it before. In fact the whole of this week he has denied her any kind of communication or explanation about anything.
He has still left her hanging this morning.

He is trying to possess you, Valentina
. She hears her mother’s warning yet again.
He is controlling you by not talking to you
.

Is her mother right? Valentina chews her lip. Is Theo hoping to gain some sort of power over her? So that she is weak and needy, compliant? She thinks of everything that has happened this week. The mystery of the erotic photographs, the scenarios in the Atlantis Room, the Velvet Underworld and the Dark Room. Even being here in Venice. In every instance she has surrendered control over her own life. She has been silenced through his lack of communication. And yet as she sits in the Venetian sunshine, drinking her coffee, an uncomfortable prickle of memory comes to the surface. It is a rainy afternoon in Milan, herself and Theo sitting at the kitchen table, the food in front of them untouched. It is one week since she lost the baby, and still she is refusing to talk to him.

Don’t shut me out. Tell me how you feel
.

Yet she couldn’t tell him, because she didn’t want him to know the truth, that she had wanted his baby. She didn’t want him to think she was weak, or dependent. That is not who Valentina is.

Do you not want me to go away
?

He asked her that question more than once. In fact every time he went away after she lost the baby. She had forgotten that. And what did she do? That day she pushed her chair
back and walked out of the room, sweeping his questions away.

I don’t care what you do
.

That was what she told him. She drops her head, the sudden illumination of this memory too much for her. Something else occurs to her. Is it possible that she has hurt Theo? Has she been so busy trying to protect her own heart that she forgot he has feelings too? She struggles to understand. She finds it so hard sometimes to consider the feelings of men. She has always experienced the opposite, the male preoccupation with lack of commitment. And yet Theo is different. He asked her to be his girlfriend.

She pushes her hands into the deep pockets of her suit jacket, and from one of them she pulls out a card. She looks at it in surprise. It is from Mattia, her brother. He must have put it in the pocket of the jacket when he posted the package of clothes to her. What a strange thing to do? And how odd that she never noticed it before.

Valentina reads the card again in disbelief. Theo went to visit her brother in America and he
never
told her! Why on earth would he do that?

And the negatives! Of course, why didn’t she notice it before? She has been wearing the answer to the mystery almost every day. The lace scarf, the string of pearls, the sailor’s cap.

She has them all.

She opens her bag, and pulls out the black album. She flicks through the prints yet again. So this is Belle Louise Brzezinska, her great-grandmother. And it is most certainly not the version of her great-grandmother she has always believed true: the devoted wife of a Venetian entrepreneur, the widowed mother living a life of seclusion in her home in Castello. This is another story. It is the secret life of her great-grandmother. Valentina examines the erotic beauty of the close-ups in the book. She can see the artist’s eye in the composition of each picture. The play with the textures of the model’s body, the white skin and dark hair, and the stunning effect of suggestion within each image: a finger upon a lip, a downcast eye, a naked back, the naked breast and the draped
pearls in a gloved hand. There is the enticing picture of her staring into the camera, Venetian mask concealing her identity, her arm between her legs, her open mouth seducing the photographer.

Was he the owner of the gold earring
?

She knows instinctively that the man wearing the earring is most certainly not her great-grandmother’s husband, the seemingly conservative and uptight Signor Brezezinski. She flicks through the album again and again, hypnotised by the passion of the images she sees. What is Theo trying to tell her? She would not let him speak, so is he finding a different way of communicating with her?

Does he know how comforted the book makes her feel? She has never felt such a bond with anyone else in her family before. She never knew her grandparents, or her father, of course. Her brother has always been a distant presence. And her mother . . . well, she was too intense a force in her young life, so that Valentina has had to emotionally banish her. But this Belle feels like a kindred spirit. Valentina wonders if there is such a thing as genetic memory, and whether she could let her great-grandmother live her life of passion again through her. The thought amuses her, and makes her do a rare thing. She laughs. It is a small burst, almost under her breath, but nevertheless it is still laughter. So this is what Theo has done for her. He has made her realise that she is not alone.

‘Valentina, you’re laughing, and in broad daylight too!’

She looks up, and there, standing in front of her, is Theo,
smiling at her warmly. She was so engrossed in the book she didn’t even see him approaching the café. The sun is in her eyes, and she squints up at him, the brilliance of the basilica behind him. Theo Steen, her errant lover. There is his tall frame, dark looks and gentle demeanour so missed from her life these past ten days. She feels a rush of emotion. She wants to fling herself into his arms. Tell him how much she missed him. And yet she can’t do it. Even as she looks at him, her heart about to burst inside her, she starts to react as always, pulling down the shutters, trying to lock them tight. Instead of falling into his arms, she converts her emotion into anger.

‘Theo, where have you been? You’re nearly an hour late,’ she spits at him, her laughter gone.

‘I’m sorry, darling,’ he says, looking as if she has slapped him, holding back from her. Why can’t he lean down and hug her? ‘But it took longer than I thought to talk some reason into Glen.’

She calms down slightly.

‘Is everything okay? Is he going to leave us alone?’

He sits down at her table, so close to her and yet so far. She is craving to touch him. She looks at his hand, his long, elegant fingers as he waves over a waiter and orders a coffee for himself, and another one for her.

‘I hope so.’

She can’t help feeling a little alarmed.

‘Don’t you think we should report him to the police? Garelli?’

‘What for? He hasn’t actually done anything wrong, and in fact it could do me more harm than good if he decided to work with the police.’

He finally picks up her hand and squeezes it.

‘Don’t worry, my love. Everything will be okay.’

Why do people say that to each other, Valentina thinks crossly, when it is impossible to know?

She taps the black photograph album on her lap, deciding to change the subject.

‘So,’ she says. ‘Are you going to tell me what all this is about?’

The light comes back into his eyes as he takes the album off her lap and starts to flick through it.

‘You enlarged them all,’ he says, delighted. ‘God, they’re gorgeous.’

He pauses on the light box image, Valentina’s Dark Room fantasy.

‘This looks familiar,’ he says under his breath, looking up at her slyly.

‘You were watching me the whole time?’ she whispers.