The Girl Behind the Mask (16 page)

Or your eyes. Who was behind the camera that day? What had he said to make your eyes crinkle at the corners like that? You were trying not to laugh – I can tell – but your happiness still radiates from you like sunbeams. There is mischief in those perfect blue irises. Blue like a pair of old Levi’s. That is a great compliment, I hope you know.

As I read those paragraphs, I remembered the day the photograph had been taken. Steven had been the cameraman, of course.

Marco continued.

Why did I let you come here? Why you and not any number of young women eager to learn more about the romantic past of my house? It was your eyes, dear Sarah. They are full of kindness and trust. You have the eyes of someone who would feel guilty if she so much as stole a flower. I hope.

I blushed at that last line. Marco’s dissection of my photograph had been enough to disconcert me, but the idea that he knew about the rose completely threw me. Thank goodness he couldn’t see me as I sat at my desk. Perhaps it was a coincidence but it was such a random accusation to make, I was sure he must know about my petty theft. How did he know? Had Silvio seen me? Had he seen me himself? Was his the shadow that lurked in the gallery? The idea that it might be excited me. Especially now that he had told me he liked the way I looked. Things were definitely warming up.

‘I’m sorry about the rose,’ I wrote. ‘It was so beautiful.’

‘It was waiting just for you,’ he said. ‘But what will you give me in return for my most precious possession?’

I started at the appearance of the words from my dream, which were in turn words from the version of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ I had loved and treasured as a child. I did not answer them quickly enough for Marco. He continued.

‘I think the story of your virginity is a small price to pay for my forgiveness. Particularly given I’ll be sharing my story with you too.’

‘How can I refuse?’ I typed back.

‘Good. We’ll talk some more about my garden later.’

Chapter 23

Though Marco’s email explaining why I had been allowed into the library had gone some way to unlocking my inhibitions, I still felt a little unsure that describing the day I lost my virginity to him could be a good idea. But I knew that my tale – even if I included every detail I could remember – would hardly be
The Story of O
. There was none of the intrigue or danger that surrounded Luciana’s first experience of love. The day I lost my virginity was all very ordinary. I looked out of the window at the grey, late January day and tried to remember a summer day some twelve years earlier, somewhere far less glamorous than Venice.

I started to write.

Where shall I start with my story? A girl and her virginity should not be easily parted and I like to think I stuck by that maxim. Compared to Luciana, I was a late starter.

That’s as far as I got before Nick wandered into the office, looking for someone to accompany him to the café on the corner for the second time that morning.

‘Important email,’ I responded, quickly closing my open computer window in case Nick was minded to take a peek over my shoulder.

‘So important you can’t spare five minutes to have a coffee?’ Nick pleaded. ‘It’s always much less fun alone.’

‘Funding,’ I lied.

‘Ah.’ That was an excuse any academic would understand.

When I was sure I was alone again, I reopened my email to Marco and continued to type.

I still can’t believe I’m actually writing this down. It feels quite strange to think about how I lost my virginity. Though in the years running up to it, losing your virginity seems like quite the most important thing that could ever happen to a girl, all these years later on, I remember the event itself far less clearly than I would have imagined. I can, at least, tell you exactly with whom I shared this coming of age. His name was Jason Edward Greening. He was one of the boys from the grammar school on the other side of town.

He was two months older than me and we met, in a sweetly romantic way, at rehearsals for the harvest festival service at the cathedral. One of the perks of being in the choir was getting to escape from school for a while. We were singing something by Handel, as I recall. Jason and I were seated directly across the nave from one another. Whenever I looked up from my hymn book, he was looking straight back at me. When the time came for us girls to get back on the bus and be driven back to school for the last lesson of the day, Jason tucked a piece of notepaper into my pocket. It had his phone number on it. Neither of us had a mobile, of course. I called him from the telephone box near the post office to avoid having to explain things to my parents.

It was a very romantic courtship, beginning the very next weekend with a midday Saturday rendezvous in the town centre, where we went for fish and chips. His friend was working behind the counter. He gave us extra chips for free.

For the next few months, we spent every spare moment together. Revising for my A-levels was so much easier with Jason on the other side of the kitchen table, equally absorbed in his books. Though my parents expressed concern that I might let my first romance take precedence over my studies, my exams actually felt more important than ever, as they suddenly symbolised the beginning of a bright and beautiful future with this boy I now loved. While my parents probably worried that we were ripping each other’s clothes off in the privacy of my girlhood bedroom, Jason and I really were testing each other on important treaties of the sixteenth century.

So when our results were published in August, we had both done far better than we ever imagined. I was euphoric for a short time, until it dawned on me properly that we were going to university on different sides of the country: me to UCL and him to Cambridge. Though we promised that it wouldn’t have any effect on our love for each other, I lived in dread of the girls Jason would meet at his new college. I imagined them sexy and sophisticated and ready to seduce him. I thought that if we shared our virginity with each other, it would be a sign of our commitment.

We planned it so carefully. The week after I told Jason I was ready, his parents were going out of town for the weekend to celebrate their wedding anniversary at a country hotel. They would be leaving him alone in the house for the very first time.

Jason’s mother joked that he would organise a huge party and she’d come back to find her beautiful home completely trashed. She needn’t have panicked. Jason and I had only one thing in mind and it didn’t involve hundreds of teenagers. We were planning a celebration just for two.

I had been working at two jobs to save money for my first year at university, but suddenly I had something I wanted to spend my cash on far more than I wanted textbooks. After finishing my Saturday job in the electrical goods department of the store where I worked, I went upstairs to lingerie and rigged myself out with what I hoped was the ideal ensemble in which to cross the threshold from young girl to fully fledged woman.

I suppose I should tell you what it was like. I sincerely hope, as I write this, that you are good to your word, Marco Donato, and will keep this entirely to yourself. This revelation could ruin my reputation for ever. I bought a rather naff polyester all-in-one. It was supposed to look like cream-coloured silk. The gusset was fastened by poppers. Remembering the garment now, I can’t believe I ever thought it would be sexy. I also bought a pair of white hold-up stockings. I couldn’t afford a suspender belt but didn’t think about going bare-legged. I was trying to achieve a look as momentous as the occasion but I looked less like a beautiful virgin than a dancer from a 1980s pop show. Especially when I accessorised the ensemble with a pair of chunky navy-blue court shoes, bought for me by my mother to wear to my cousin’s wedding. They were the closest thing I had to ‘killer heels’. And I suppose they would have killed, had I thrown them at anyone’s head.

Anyway, I wouldn’t have given a Victoria’s Secret model a run for her money, but when I unveiled the ensemble that evening, Jason seemed to appreciate the effort I had made. He too had splashed out on some new underwear: a pair of dark-green silk boxer shorts. My first thought was what his mother would say when she saw them. He couldn’t just throw them in the laundry basket.

We put on some appropriate music. Our favourite album, containing ‘our song’. Actually, it was more Jason’s favourite album than mine. He was big into Joy Division. I pretended I felt the same way about the music, so I lost my virginity to a dirge and recovered to ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’.

We decided we would use his parents’ bed. To get round the possibility of any awful mess, we covered the fitted sheet with brightly coloured beach towels that would be less likely to show a stain. Though I was eighteen years old, I was still very naïve about the mechanics of making love for the first time and part of me expected a dreadful flood of blood we would never be able to stop.

It’s because of that fear that we actually ended up making love for the first time on the bare floorboards, with a pile of towels to protect my back and Jason’s knees.

So, the music was on. Jason lit a candle. We opened a bottle of wine: screwtop, Australian Chardonnay. We drank a large glass each, quickly. A glass of wine was all I needed to start to feel quite tipsy in those days.

It was strange how, given we had been unable to keep our lips off each other since we first met in the town centre, that day we were full of nerves. We kissed awkwardly, noses bumping, teeth clashing. Though Jason had seen me naked before – we’d done everything but full-on sex – he seemed nervous as he slid the straps of the teddy from my shoulders to reveal my breasts. He kissed them so reverently I’m afraid I actually laughed. I don’t think that helped the situation.

The whole thing was so tense. It was painful. Even if Jason had been better at foreplay – even if I had known how to ask him for more – I don’t think I would have been properly turned on that night. I just wanted to get it over with. Once he was inside me, I think I actually gritted my teeth. The condom didn’t help to make things easier but thankfully, Jason was so excited by the fact he was losing his virginity at last, the whole experience did not take very long. I had seen him come before of course but when he came inside me, he seemed to have an out-of-body experience. He was quite embarrassed about it. I didn’t come at all.

Afterwards, we got up from the floor and lay together for a while on his parents’ bed. We didn’t say much to each other. We were both a little awed by the fact that we were no longer virgins. Perhaps we were a little disappointed too that there had been no real fireworks. Of course, we would start working on improving that the following day.

By the time his parents came back from their anniversary celebration, Jason and I considered ourselves positive experts in the act of love. I think we must have had sex at least eight times in twenty-four hours. Such is the stamina of teenagers! After that, we seized upon every opportunity we could find to explore each other further. Though we didn’t get another chance to spend the night together, we made very good use of the car Jason’s parents had bought him for his eighteenth birthday. I still feel nostalgic when I see a red Fiat Panda.

And then, of course, we were off to university, where we would be utterly free from the constraints imposed by living at home. I couldn’t wait to spend whole days in bed with my love. We agreed we would not see each other for the first couple of weeks, as we settled in to our respective colleges, but I was expecting us to visit each other every weekend after that. We were, after all, destined to be together for ever. But Jason wrote to me two weeks into that first term to tell me that he thought it was best we downgraded our relationship to a friendship. He told me his course required far more effort and attention than he had ever imagined. He would not have time to come to London to meet me at weekends. I knew it wasn’t the whole truth. I was devastated. It took me a whole term to get over him and be ready to date someone new.

And here I admitted the worst of it.

I told my new university boyfriend that I was still a virgin. In some ways I still felt like one.

Chapter 24

I sent my story exactly on the hour, as we had agreed. When I found no corresponding message in my inbox for the next fifteen minutes, I was ready to be furious. All that stuff about my honest face and then the flower and then . . . nothing. I was an idiot.

I was drafting an angry email in my head when Marco’s own finally arrived. He prefaced his story with an apology.

It is very strange. I have not thought about this subject for years. I did not expect to have many clear memories, but they have been almost unstoppable. I could have written for another half an hour but I imagine you sitting at your desk thinking you’ve been tricked and I do not like the thought of you cursing me for getting you to show your hand first. So, here it is. My own terrible story.

I clicked on the attached Word document.

Her name was Chiara. She was my father’s mistress.

His father’s mistress! Already Marco’s story had trumped mine.

Someone once told her she looked like a young Sophia Loren and she played up the similarities at every opportunity she could. To me, she was certainly the most exotic creature I had ever seen. To my father, alas, she was but one of a string of similarly exotic creatures and as such he soon became bored of her.