Lose Yourself (The Desires Unlocked Trilogy Part Two) (3 page)

‘I’m thinking of closing down the club,’ he suddenly announces.

Valentina is so shocked that she almost chokes on her tea.

‘You can’t be serious!’ she exclaims, still coughing. ‘You’re doing so well.’

‘That’s the problem; too many people know about it.’

Valentina thinks instantly of Antonella. Ever since her friend was introduced to Leonardo’s private club, she hasn’t stop telling people about it every time they go out in Milan.

‘I’m sorry about Antonella; she’s got such a big mouth,’ Valentina says.

Leonardo puts down his tea and sinks lower into the water, so that only his head is bobbing above the bubbles. ‘I wanted to keep it exclusive but now more and more want to join—’

‘You could expand,’ Valentina interrupts, putting down her glass of tea and sinking beneath the bubbles as well.

‘I don’t want to . . . It’s too complicated.’

‘It’s such a shame. It’s good for Milan to have somewhere like this . . .’

‘I am sure someone else will fill the gap.’ Leonardo pauses as if he wants to say something else. Yet, instead, he submerges himself under the water, so all Valentina can see is his unfocused outline waving beneath her. She can’t believe that Leonardo wants to shut down. What will she do, if she can’t come here?

He emerges from the water, shaking his head like a wet dog and spraying Valentina with droplets of water. She splashes back, but she can see Leonardo isn’t in a playful mood. He looks serious.

‘There’s more, isn’t there?’ she asks instinctively.

‘Raquel wants to have a baby,’ he says bluntly. ‘So you see, this place is not the best environment for a child.’

‘You’re going to have a baby!’

Valentina feels a surge of disappointment. She can’t help it. Not another one of her friends ‘settling down’! And Leonardo, of all people.

‘She’s not pregnant yet,’ he says. ‘We’re just trying at the moment. You see, she’s thirty-six now. She’s worried she’ll run out of time.’

‘My God, she doesn’t look it.’ Valentina thinks of the last time she saw Raquel’s perfect figure and cellulite-free thighs. She had assumed they were about the same age.

Leonardo takes Valentina’s hand and pulls her towards him through the water. ‘She says that she has always dreamt of being a mother.’

She floats in the water in front of him. She cannot think of what to say.

‘You look shocked,’ Leonardo says finally. ‘Do you not think I’ll make a good father?’

‘I think you’ll be brilliant. Look at the way you’ve taken care of me . . .’

He smiles ruefully. ‘Mmm, that sounds a bit perverse, Valentina.’

She can’t be happy for him. She can’t help it. She knows she is being selfish but she doesn’t want Leonardo to have a baby with Raquel.

‘But what will you do if you close down the club?’ she says, trying to cast some doubt upon his decision.

‘Believe it or not, I do have other skills outside of the sex industry.’

‘I never doubted it,’ she says softly.

He grins at her. ‘I am a skilled masseur . . . which of course you know all about. I’ve also got into yoga lately. I think I’d like to train to teach.’

The last thing Valentina imagined Leonardo might be interested in is yoga. He just doesn’t seem the meditative type. She can’t picture it at all: Leonardo standing on his head.

‘Isn’t yoga a bit chilled out and slow for you?’

‘It depends what kind of yoga you are doing, Valentina. There is nothing slow about an ashtanga class, nothing chilled out about bikram yoga . . .’

Valentina can’t quite believe him. Gaby practised yoga for a while and tried to teach her some postures, but Valentina found the whole thing boring. She had no patience for it.

‘If you say so . . .’ she mutters, drifting away from him in the water, letting its scented ripples caress her.

‘You should try it sometime. It’s really great for your sex life,’ Leonardo says.

‘My sex life is doing just fine, as you know.’

Valentina’s fingers are pruning. She stands up in the pool, letting the water slide down her supple body.

‘So, when are you off to London?’ Leonardo says, but he is not looking at her face, he is looking at her body.

‘Monday.’ She cautiously steps out of the pool, turning her back to Leonardo. She doesn’t want him to read her expression. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask . . .’ Despite herself, her voice has a slight tremble.

‘Do you have Theo’s phone number in London?’

Leonardo says nothing for a second. She hunts around for a towel, confused by her spontaneous question. She is not going to actually call Theo but, just in case she changes her mind, there’s no harm having it in her phone, is there? She hears Leonardo getting out of the water. She decides not to turn around. For some reason she feels a little shy, even though they know every inch of each other’s bodies.

‘Sure,’ Leonardo says finally. ‘I’ll text it to you later.’

She wraps her towel around herself, ties it tightly and turns around to face him. Leonardo is wearing a white towelling robe. His black curly hair hangs in wet locks. She takes him in. When he is a father, he will never want to play with her again. She doesn’t need to ask him that to know. Yet it doesn’t matter anyway, does it? They have never been a couple, and they can still be friends after he has a baby. Even so, she knows that she will never be able to make demands on his friendship in the same way that she has until now. All of a sudden, she wishes it were Leonardo, not Antonella, who was accompanying her to London. If he were by her side, then surely she wouldn’t be tempted to call up Theo?

‘Will you come over to London for the opening of the exhibition?’ she asks her friend tentatively.

Leonardo looks surprised. ‘Maybe. If you need me, I’ll come.’ He steps forward. ‘Don’t worry, Valentina.’ He hugs her tightly. ‘Why do you always look so sad?’

She hides her face in the safety of his towel-clad chest and breathes in his scent. ‘I don’t know.’ Her whisper is muffled by their proximity. She feels so protected inside Leonardo’s hug that a part of her wants to hide in Milan and not face the test of London and her dilemma over whether to contact Theo or not. Surely her ex-lover has moved on by now? To call him would be pointless. And yet there is an ache inside her heart that tells her otherwise. Could a love like theirs die so fast?

The light of Venice is gone. Even when it rains
, Maria feels there is a luminous quality to her home city. She didn’t notice it until she left it behind her, but she has been thinking of it on her long journey, all the way to England.

It is spring in London, yet the sky is a dank grey and the air smells empty. The salty scents of home have evaporated. She walks alongside trees thick with cherry blossom, yet she cannot smell them. She is assaulted by noise. Cars: she is not used to them. The sheer aggression of them: honking, screeching to a halt, accelerating down the road. And the choking pollution of their fumes fills her lungs, making her feel poisoned. She hates them. Her mother had compared the boats of Venice to cars, but they aren’t the same at all. The boats are at one with their surroundings, gliding down the canals, rocking along the waves of the lagoon. These cars and trucks and buses, they are in opposition to any nature there might be in the city.

Still, for all of its intimidation – the noise, the crowds and the sheer vastness of this city – London excites Maria. Even walking down a bomb-ravaged street seems like such an affirmation of life.

They had been lucky in Venice, the treasures of the city protecting them from any significant bombing raids. She remembers only once seeing an attack on the docks. She, her mother and Pina had climbed on to the roof of their apartment, despite Pina’s reservations. Yet they had been perfectly safe, just like her mother told them they would be. The bombers dived almost vertically, pinpointing two big ships down at the docks. It had been like watching a spectacular firework display as the ships exploded, the only damage to the city a few broken windows.

London is a different story. Maria can see quite clearly how the city has suffered. She tries to imagine what it must have been like, hiding down in the filthy underground night after night to come up one morning and find that your house, street, neighbours have disappeared. And yet the people she sees on the streets of London in 1948 do not appear broken. They won the war. The spirit of the British got them through the Blitz. Maria finds this national pride fascinating; she remembers from her childhood the hatred her mother and Pina felt towards Mussolini, and their shame at Italy’s alliance with Germany. They said that this was not
their
Italy, especially when Jewish people started to be victimised.

‘Italians were never racists!’ her mother had declared roundly. ‘What is that idiotic man dragging us into?’

Her mother had done everything she could to undermine Mussolini and, after him, the Germans, but never openly, always covertly. She helped as many Jews as she could – not just Jacqueline – either to escape or hide. She risked all of their lives by doing so, yet they were lucky. Not once did Maria’s mammas fall under suspicion for the Germans never took Belle and Pina seriously. They were just two middle-aged women, dressed up in eccentric costumes, taking pictures of tourists – and, during the war, countless Nazis – enjoying the sights of their city.

Maria pauses at the crossing. She takes the envelope from her coat pocket and unfolds it. She looks up at the sign on the street corner: Ebury Bridge Street. The directions her mother wrote for her describe a little street off this one. She is nearly there, at last. Her back is aching from all the long hours of travel, and she is sure she must smell a little. She is longing for a wash.

She turns down the street and begins to count the house numbers. Jacqueline lives at number eighteen. The street is so very different from the wavering passageways of Venice. It is a straight line of red-brick houses, all more or less the same.

She stands outside number eighteen: her new home. The building is much grander than she expected. Well, from the outside at least. Its red-brick façade is punctuated by tall windows. She counts four floors. The front door is faded dusty blue, with a black lion’s head as the door knocker. A lion, how English, she thinks. She walks up to the front door, her lips a little dry. She hopes that Jacqueline is home. She has no idea who else lives in this grand house.

A few seconds after her third knock, the door is opened by a scrawny-looking young man, with wild, wiry hair. He looks at her suspiciously, not a hint of a smile, his face obscured by his round spectacles and thick moustache.

‘Yes?’

Maria coughs, composing her best English into a sentence. ‘Good afternoon,’ she says formally. ‘I am looking for Miss Jacqueline Mournier.’

‘She’s not home,’ he says. ‘Who are you?’

‘I am . . . I am . . .’ she stutters, unnerved by his directness. ‘My name is Maria Brzezinska.’

‘Polish?’ His tone is interrogative. ‘You don’t look Polish.’

Maria begins to feel a little annoyed. What right does this young man have to question her?

‘Can I come in, please? I can wait for Jacqueline inside.’

The young man cocks his head on one side and continues his ponderings on her nationality, as if she hasn’t spoken. ‘You’re not English,’ he says, ‘I can tell. So, where are you from?’

Maria sighs inwardly. Already she is being asked her country of origin. She has not even been in London twenty-four hours.

‘I am Italian.’

All of a sudden, much to her surprise, the young man flashes her a smile. It transforms his face. If he were to lose the spectacles and the moustache, he could be quite handsome, Maria thinks.

‘Me, also,’ he says in Italian. And, leaning forward with a flourish, he takes her case from her and ushers her into the house. ‘Welcome, Maria Brzezinska,’ he says. ‘Let me introduce myself. My name is Guido Rosselli and I am a neighbour of Jacqueline’s.’

Despite the grandeur of the exterior of the house, inside it is another story. The hallway is lit by one bare bulb that flickers intermittently, making the place seem creepy and uncared for. There is no carpet in the hall, just brown linoleum, much worn, and the wallpaper is peeling with damp. There is an odious smell, not just the damp but something rotten and penetrating. Maria can’t help but take out her handkerchief and bring it up to her nose.

‘Sorry about the stink,’ Guido says. ‘I am afraid it is our only English resident, Mrs Renshaw. We have asked her not to boil her cabbage for too long but she seems immune to the smell. I think she is trying to boil every last bit of goodness out of it. I cannot imagine what it must taste like.’

Guido leads her up three flights of stairs before pausing on the third landing and pointing to a door behind him. ‘This is where I live,’ he tells her.

She nods, waiting, not knowing what to say. She is suddenly overwhelmed with shyness. She is not used to talking to boys.

‘Jacqueline is not here at the moment. But she said, if you turned up while she was out, to let you in.’ He takes a key from his trouser pocket and waves it above his head. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Just one more flight of stairs to the top.’

On the top floor – Jacqueline’s landing, Maria supposes – the gloom of the house seems to have lifted a little. She can see a small skylight above their heads, with a square of sky above them. It is a tiny pocket of blue and yet it is some colour, at least. The boiled cabbage smell is not so strong up here, either.

Guido unlocks the door of Jacqueline’s apartment and leads the way inside. They are right under the eaves of the house, and Maria immediately walks over to one of the windows. Below her is London, ravaged and ruined from the Blitz and yet still thriving. She can feel the industrial hum of it below her and it excites her. Such a different energy from Venice, a city that floats in and out of time; London feels like it is marching forwards, wounded and yet heroic.

‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’ Guido asks her stiffly, in English.

‘What about some English tea?’ Maria ventures.

Guido shakes his head apologetically.

‘Sorry, I believe Jacqueline has run out of tea at the moment. Everything is still strictly rationed here. Tea is actually a luxury and it is easier to get hold of coffee, as it’s not so popular with the English.’

‘In that case, thank you; a cup of coffee would be lovely.’ Maria takes off her hat and places it on the sideboard, along with her gloves and handbag.

Guido disappears through a side door, Maria guesses, into the kitchen. She looks around her mentor’s living room. It is quite bare – unsurprisingly, since Jacqueline is a refugee. On the run for most of the war, her childhood home had been destroyed when she finally made it back to Bordeaux. Yet, despite the room’s sparseness – one table, two chairs and a shelf of books – Jacqueline has managed to add something a little exotic to her flat. On one of the walls is an impressive painting, vibrant with colour. Maria wonders if Jacqueline knows the artist; that would be just like her. On the other wall is a series of black and white photographs of dancers. Maria studies them, scrutinising their faces. In all of them, the dancers are in costume and heavily made-up, and she struggles to recognise Jacqueline. Their postures are in opposition to any traditional ballet pose. In one image, she sees a woman in footless tights, barefoot and wearing a long top, her head hidden by a scarf, adopting the pose of a tree, both her arms hanging out from her body, one with the hand pointing down, one with the hand pointing up. On the floor in front of her, two other dancers are on their backs, legs in the air, bare feet flexed, reaching out for the tree figure with their arms. It is almost ugly, the images of the women earthy and vulgar compared to the pretty photographs of ballerinas Maria is used to seeing.

The door behind her clicks open and Guido returns with a coffee pot and two cups on a tray. He carries it over to the sideboard, the cups clinking on the saucers. Maria watches the tray shaking in his hands, and she struggles not to rush over and grab it off him, but she doesn’t want to insult him. He places the wobbling tray down and Maria can’t help noticing that his hands are still shaking. She looks up at his face again, fixed in concentration now he is pouring the coffee. Despite the moustache, he only looks about two or three years older than her. She wonders what he is doing here in London.

‘So, where are you from?’ Guido asks her as he hands her a cup of coffee with shaking hands.

It sploshes over the side of her cup, but she politely says nothing, sitting down on one of Jacqueline’s chairs and holding the cup and saucer in both hands. ‘Venice.’

Guido’s eyes light up. ‘I went to Venice as a little boy,’ he says, ‘with my mother and my father . . .’ He pauses, looking away. ‘Before the war.’

‘And where are you from?’ Maria asks him.

‘I am from Milan,’ he says. ‘But right now I am a student at the university of London.’

‘What are you studying?’

‘Physics. My father sent me to England before the war . . . He was a scientist himself and he could see that my passion lay in that direction, so he sent me to school here in England. And then the war broke out and I couldn’t get home.’

‘And have you been back since?’

He takes a large gulp of his coffee and scowls at her. ‘No.’

The fierceness of his response silences her. Maria can feel herself colouring with embarrassment. She doesn’t know what to say to this young man. She wishes he would leave her alone to wait for Jacqueline.

‘She told me to welcome you.’ Guido suddenly says, as if he is reading Maria’s thoughts. ‘We are friends,’ he adds, by way of explanation.

‘Thank you,’ Maria replies curtly, still not knowing what to say. Guido Rosselli’s eyes are blinkered behind his glasses, impossible to read.

He gets up suddenly and slides his cup and saucer on to the tray. ‘We understand what it is like to be a stranger,’ Guido says, ‘Jacqueline and I. We are the same.’

He turns his back on her, walks over to the window and clasps his hands behind his back. Maria can see how narrow he is – his shoulders, his back, his hips – as if he has not fully broadened into a man yet.

‘No family left –’ he spins around – ‘so we make our own family here. Everyone in this building is some kind of abandoned soul . . .’

The words flow out of him, now.

‘Mrs Renshaw, for instance: her whole family was taken out one night during the Blitz. Husband, mother, children . . . She still can’t understand why she was spared. That’s why we don’t really mind about the cabbage. You have to make allowances, you know, if you live here.’

Maria nods. The intensity of Guido Rosselli makes her feel uncomfortable. She doesn’t want to know about the other people in this house. She doesn’t even want to know about him. She has a feeling he has a sad and sorry past and she is not ready to hear his tale of woe. She is tired and dirty. She just wants a bath and some rest while she waits for Jacqueline. She wishes all of a sudden that she had stayed home in Venice. She isn’t like her mother, Belle, although she had thought she might be. She is no adventurer. She is more like Pina, keeping the home fires burning.

‘And, on the second floor, there is Monsieur Leduc.’ Guido gives a short hard laugh. ‘Wait until you meet him!’ he exclaims, thrusting his hands in his pockets and pacing the room. He seems to have forgotten that she is still there as he races on. ‘He loved his France so much he sacrificed all, and yet he has to live in London. Explain that to me?’ He puts his head on one side and stares at Maria, yet he is not looking at her, but through her.