The Girl Behind the Mask (12 page)

Meanwhile, I had my favourite photographs of Marco bookmarked. There was a shot of him on top of a mountain, in ski gear, grinning at the camera with his ski goggles pushed back on his hair. I liked to think of him about to complete a black run back to the village. Of course, it went without saying he must be a great skier. He was a sailor, too. Another favourite was a shot of him on the deck of a beautiful old boat, perhaps one of his grandfather’s, hauling in a sheet. His face was taut with concentration. His jaw was square and strong. His arms looked magnificent. What I loved most about both these photos, however, was the fact that Marco was, unusually for him, alone in both shots. He had no beautiful woman draped round his neck like a living, breathing scarf, so I could imagine that I was on the other side of the camera lens. And I could imagine more clearly what it would have been like to share those moments with him.

At the same time, my imagination was straying in other, more exotic directions too.

Perhaps it was because I was spending my nights alone, having shared a bed with Steven for so many years. Perhaps it was all the spritzes I drank in the bar with Nick and Bea. Perhaps it really was the spooky four-poster. Whatever the reason, my dream life had become full of sensuality and sex in a way I had never experienced before. Night after night, I woke up twisted in the sheets, hot and yet shivering with the last shudders of a tremendous orgasm. When I tried to remember the dreams, the details were a jumble, but more often than not they now took place at the Palazzo Donato and Steven’s face was replaced increasingly often by that of the man in the mask, Steven’s upper-class English voice by an Italian one, whispering urgent instructions, telling me how much he wanted me.

‘You are so beautiful, Sarah. Your beauty is so pure it burns me.’

The stranger’s hand would slip between my legs. I would press myself hard against him. I didn’t care how greedy I seemed. I wanted him inside me. I grasped his buttocks, pulling him closer, closer, closer. I twisted my fingers in his jet-black hair. I begged him to put me out of my misery and fill me with his desire.

‘You are so wet. You really want me. You need me,’ the stranger murmured.

I definitely needed something. I was starting to go nuts. Three weeks in Italy and I had still heard nothing from Steven. It was now almost ten weeks since we broke up. Seven years can never be forgotten in the blink of an eye, of course, but perhaps it was time to start thinking more seriously about a life without him. About moving on.

But was I doing the right thing by transferring my affections on to Marco Donato? I was developing a full-blown teenage crush.

Chapter 18

About three and a half weeks into my time in Venice, Marco sent me an email that started to alter the way we communicated with each other.

‘These emails are OK,’ he wrote. ‘But they have some disadvantages compared to a real conversation.’

My heart leapt. He was going to suggest a meeting at last.

But no . . .

‘How do you feel about direct messaging?’ he asked.

Direct messaging? It was hardly ‘meet me at the station with a carnation in your buttonhole’. My heart did a bellyflop in disappointment. The best I could say was that it meant Marco wanted a conversation in real time.

I emailed him a response.

I don’t know. I can’t say I’ve lain awake at night thinking about it. As far as most people are concerned, I’d prefer to email. Easier to say what you want to say without being interrupted. I suppose direct messaging is useful in some ways in that it’s more like a conversation, but I worry it might be a distraction. Not that 33 emails a day aren’t a distraction.

This referred to the thirty-three emails he had sent in the last twenty-four hours. Some about my work, some about my life in Venice, some about nothing much at all.

Marco replied. ‘You’re right. I should not be suggesting any distractions when you have such a short time to finish your important work. I know you are a very dedicated scholar. However, I do so enjoy our correspondence and it would be fun I think to ‘‘chat’’ in real time, don’t you?’

‘Real time is very different from reality,’ I pointed out. ‘Why don’t we just email each other until we have a chance to meet in person?’

‘Who knows when that will happen?’

‘You’re a very busy man, I know. Too busy for direct messaging, surely?’

‘Indulge me,’ Marco wrote back.

How could I not?

Minutes later, we were connected by direct message and I sent the first missive.

‘Better?’

‘Much.’

‘Don’t you have work to do?’

‘Always, but it’s boring. Amuse me, Sarah.’

‘What about
my
work?’

‘Should I let you get on?’

‘I can give you five minutes.’

‘In that case, let’s make them count. Tell me about your first kiss.’

‘What? I’m not sure I can remember.’

‘Every girl remembers her first kiss.’

‘OK. His name was Ben. We were at nursery school.’

‘Your first
proper
kiss.’

‘Why should I tell you? How do I know you’re not really Marco’s cat?’

‘Speed of response. Cats are no good at touch-typing.’

‘All right . . . My first kiss was Jamie Elwood. We were twelve. I think he did it for a dare. He tasted of Juicy Fruit chewing gum. You?’

‘Today I am asking the questions.’

It felt as if that was always the case. Our sharing of information was feeling a little lopsided. While I knew all about Marco’s favourite childhood pasta dishes, I didn’t know what he did with his life these days. Apart from email me. Likewise, I assumed he was in Venice but I didn’t know for sure. I decided to try to draw him out.

‘No more questions today, please. I’ve got work to do and I’m sure you have too. It can’t be easy heading up the family business.’

Marco avoided giving me a straight answer.

‘You’re so dedicated to your work. I should not disturb you so often. But I so enjoy reading your emails. It amuses me to imagine you, the serious academic, as a flirtatious young girl, joining the choir so that you might be able to catch a glimpse of some undeserving boy.’

I replied, ‘How do you know he was undeserving?’

‘Trust me, all teenage boys are undeserving. I certainly was. There was a girl who once loved me. A friend of my cousin’s. She sent me a love letter. It had clearly taken her a great deal of time. She illustrated every capital letter. I showed it to my friends. We laughed at her purple prose for days.’

‘It was most unfair of you to share that love letter with your friends,’ I responded. ‘It makes me wonder if our correspondence is being read by strangers right now.’

‘You haven’t said anything you are ashamed of, surely?’

‘Yet,’ I responded, aware that it was a flirt.

‘Believe me, Sarah. I am a changed man. These days I fully understand the value of another person’s feelings. I would not betray any confidence you might decide to share with me. Should you ever decide to share a real secret, you would find me a very good confidante. As I am sure I would find the same of you.’

‘For now I am happy sharing Luciana’s confidences,’ was my bloodless response.

‘But I find I am just as eager to know more about
you
as I am Luciana,’ was Marco’s reply. ‘Indulge me just a little longer. I know a good deal about your past, but what about your future, Ms Thomson? What happens after Venice? There must be someone back in London eagerly awaiting your return.’

‘Alas,’ I responded. ‘There is not. Not any more.’

‘That is the kind of answer that invites more questions.’

‘You can’t expect to ask me any further questions over direct message,’ I wrote. ‘I don’t want to commit myself to print. But you guessed correctly. A recent break-up. Just six weeks before I came to Italy, in fact.’

‘Whoever he is, he did not deserve you. Tell me about him.’

‘There isn’t much to tell.’

‘There’s always a great deal to tell. And I may have a useful perspective on your situation.’

‘Who says I need a perspective? Perhaps it doesn’t bother me in the least.’

‘You’d be a very cold-hearted woman if that were the case. It’s only been a couple of months. Why don’t you try me?’

‘I don’t want to bore you.’

‘Nothing you say could possibly bore me. I find I want to know you, Sarah. I want to know you properly.’

A curious sensation crept over me. It was not unlike the feeling I’d had when Steven first told me he was interested in me, after that boozy Christmas dinner. Did I dare to think Marco was telling the truth? Did he really want to know more? It was certainly unexpected, the way our email relationship had blossomed. I knew I looked forward to hearing from him. The number of times he wrote to me seemed to suggest he felt the same. He’d suggested direct messaging. And yet, why not move it forward properly? Why not meet face to face? I asked him.

‘Confessions are easier when there’s a hint of anonymity, don’t you think?’

‘I have nothing to confess.’

‘Just tell me about your foolish ex-boyfriend, Miss Thomson. Consider it the price of your continued access to Luciana’s letters.’

‘That sounds like blackmail. But you asked for it. The man who just broke my heart . . .’

Broke my heart?

I found myself deleting those words and replacing them with, ‘The man who turned out not to be good enough for me was called Steven.’

The cursor blinked with disbelief. Why wouldn’t I admit to Marco that my heart had been broken? Was it because I didn’t want him to think of me as ‘taken’? Because even though Steven’s continued silence was making it clear he didn’t care whether I was waiting for him or not, I knew that to admit to Marco that my heart was broken was to admit there was still something tying me to another man. That might discourage Marco from continuing with our flirtation and our flirtation was something I did not want to have to do without.

For that reason, which I didn’t fully understand at the time, I gave Marco a heavily abridged version of my doomed love affair. I gave names and places and talked about Steven’s professional envy, but I definitely stopped short of telling Marco about the brief acrobatic renaissance of our love life that I now knew had only sprung from repressed disdain.

Marco responded.

‘Ah yes. If there is one thing that a man finds hard to bear, it’s a woman who is no longer impressed by him.’

‘Then we’re all doomed, aren’t we? Isn’t intimacy about showing our vulnerabilities and knowing that they won’t be held against us? Shouldn’t it be a relief to know the one you love has seen you as you truly are and yet still loves you?’

‘Perhaps. But we men more often find it hard to forgive our loved ones for uncovering those vulnerabilities in the first place. We don’t want to know it’s safe to be weak in your arms. We want to be the strong ones. We want to be perfect for you.’

‘Kind and faithful will do.’

‘You deserve that.’

‘But what about you? If you’ll forgive me saying so, you had quite the reputation as a party boy. In every photograph I’ve seen of you, you’ve had women draped over your shoulders the way other guys wear their jackets. You were obviously very popular with the girls. I can only assume it was one very special woman who persuaded you to take yourself off the market. Given the brace of supermodels you seem to have stepped out with, she must be an absolute stunner. Tell me more.’

There was no response. The DM window remained empty for far longer than I’d expected. The quickfire conversation that had taken up most of the afternoon had come to a halt. I reread my last message several times in an attempt to gauge just how badly I might have offended my correspondent. I couldn’t find anything that seemed an obvious trigger. I hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true, after all. And the one interview I had read online had suggested Marco was proud of his reputation as a ladies’ man.

I pulled myself up short for being so paranoid. Perhaps Marco hadn’t stopped messaging me because he was offended. Perhaps he had just stepped away from his computer for a moment. Even billionaires need to pee. And the kind of money that funded a lifestyle such as his needed management. He was probably placing a call to a business associate somewhere, of moving stock from one account to another. A man like Marco Donato didn’t have time to chat online all day long.

Of course that was the logical explanation, and goodness knows the same applied to me. That morning I had probably written three thousand words, but none of them had been on the subject of my thesis. I needed to get on with my own work but I found I could not concentrate at all. The only thought in my mind was what I had said that would make Marco log off so suddenly after he had been pestering me to move to DM. There were a thousand possible reasons why, from computer failure to the palazzo having caught fire, but the only one that seemed real to me was that I had in some way upset him. It was foolish thinking. It was self-obsessed. But that was what I thought all the same.