The Italian Matchmaker (4 page)

Peggy had changed into a simple black dress over which she had tied a crisp white apron. Freya felt sorry for her. Her face looked grim in the flickering candlelight, now that Fitz was no longer there to flatter her. They dined on cheese soufflé and fish pie and Heather’s famous treacle tart. The wine bottles were drained and replaced. Luca found he was constantly filling Annabel’s glass. The conversation turned once again to sex, which appeared to be her favourite subject.

Freya addressed her husband across the table. ‘Darling, did you know Hugo’s psychic?’

‘Really, Hugo?’

‘A little,’ Hugo replied bashfully.

‘He’s very psychic,’ interrupted Emily. ‘He sees spirits all the time and often knows what’s going to happen in the future. Just the other day he told me he sensed that an old friend from New York was going to come over and see us. Five minutes later the telephone rang and it was Bobby, calling from Manhattan asking whether he could come and stay. That sort of thing happens all the time.’

‘We’re all psychic to a degree,’ Hugo explained. ‘Most people dismiss intuition as coincidence. Once you start to tune in, you’ll find you’re really very psychic.’

‘Do you see dead people?’ Annabel asked, squirming excitedly.

‘I have done,’ said Hugo.

‘Do you ever mistake them for real people?’ asked Sarah.

‘I don’t see them all the time,’ said Hugo. ‘I have to link in. I have learned to shut it off. I used to mistake them for real people.’

‘Well, link in – go on!’ Miles encouraged.

‘Oh, do, Hugo. It’ll be fun,’ Freya added.

‘One must never do it just for fun,’ said Hugo seriously. ‘It’s not a game. We’re talking about spirit energies. If you go about it with the intention of causing amusement or fear you will attract the same energy. Like attracts like. I don’t want to encourage mischievous spirits to bang on the table and blow the candles out. But I can take a piece of jewellery off one of the girls and tell you things about her that may surprise you.’

‘Oh, goodie,’ said Freya. ‘Take my wedding ring.’ She pulled it off and handed it to him. She glanced at Luca and noticed that beads of sweat had formed on his brow.

Hugo took the ring and held it in his hands. ‘This contains your energy, Freya. I’m simply going to tune into it and tell you what I see and sense.’ He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. The room fell silent. No one moved. They only slid their eyes from one to another in nervous anticipation. Luca bit the inside of his cheek. The whole thing made him feel hot and uncomfortable.

‘So, Freya, you have a very strong feminine energy. Like a sugared almond, sweet and pretty on the outside, tough as a nut on the inside. You’re secretly obsessive about tidiness and vacuum the sitting-room when no one’s looking. In fact, I can see you hurriedly putting the hoover away before Miles comes back from his walk.’

Freya laughed.

‘There’s no secret about Freya’s need to tidy up all the time. She’s positively anal!’ said Miles.

‘I see you spending a lot of time folding children’s clothes and putting all the tins in lines with their labels at the front. I see you as a child in a red dress crying because your shoes don’t match.’

Freya gasped. ‘How could you possibly know about that?’

‘But your mother tied red ribbons on your black patent shoes and now I see you smiling and dancing around the room.’ Emily glowed with pride. Her husband became so attractive when he used his ‘gift’. ‘You had a little white dog called Pongo and I see an old lady in a pleated tweed skirt, beige sweater and sleeveless green jacket, you know, those quilted ones.’

‘Husky,’ said Emily helpfully.

‘That’s the one,’ said Hugo.

‘My grandmother,’ Freya observed quietly.

‘She’s in spirit,’ continued Hugo. ‘But she’s with you all the time, watching over you.’

‘What was her nickname for Freya?’ Miles asked, hoping to catch Hugo out.

‘Pumpkin,’ Hugo replied.

‘No it wasn’t!’ Miles was quick to correct him. ‘It was Frisby.’ Hugo frowned.

‘No, darling, Hugo’s right,’ said Freya. ‘She did call me Pumpkin.’

Hugo nodded, eyes still closed. ‘But you asked her to stop calling you by that name when you grew up.’ Miles fell silent.

‘Can you tell us what lies in her future?’ Sarah asked.

‘You’re going to go to Italy,’ said Hugo.

‘To visit you, Luca,’ Freya said happily.

‘I hope I’m included!’ Miles interjected.

Hugo’s face clouded a moment and he frowned. ‘Of course,’ he said.

Miles’s smile remained, but his eyes betrayed a certain discomfort. He had never liked Luca. He had been safe enough while married to Claire, but now he was single again he had that predatory glint in his eye that made him dangerous. Miles was very self-confident but he wasn’t a fool. Freya and Luca were unfinished business.

‘That place makes me feel uneasy.’ Hugo opened his eyes and handed the ring back to Freya.

‘You’re joking,’ said Freya, feeling a prickle of anxiety.

‘Of course he’s joking,’ interjected Emily, but she knew from her husband’s face that he had seen something too horrible to share.

‘It’s all a load of nonsense!’ Luca had loosened his bow tie and was undoing the top button of his shirt.

‘But how could Hugo know all those things about Freya?’ Annabel asked.

‘He could have heard them from Rosemary at lunch.’

‘Give him something of yours, then,’ Emily suggested. ‘Give him your watch, let’s see what he has to say about you.’

‘Yes, the big City player,’ said Miles heartily. ‘What’s the real reason you quit and where will you go from here?’

‘No,’ said Luca quickly. ‘I’ve had enough of this game.’

‘You can’t accuse my husband of being a liar and then refuse to let him defend himself,’ Emily continued, her voice rising a note.

‘It’s okay,’ said Hugo with a smile. ‘I’m not here to convince anyone. I come across cynics all the time.’

Luca stood up. ‘Let’s go into the drawing-room.’

‘Good idea,’ said Freya, following him out.

‘That’s the behaviour of a man with something to hide,’ said Miles.

Once in the hall Freya grabbed his arm. ‘What was that all about, Luca?’

‘I just don’t want him inventing things about me.’

‘He wasn’t inventing. He was telling the truth. He couldn’t have known any of those things. What about my grandmother’s nickname for me? How do you explain that?’

‘I can’t.’

‘I understand you not wanting to let him read your watch. It’s not a game. You never know what he might reveal. But you needn’t have put him down.’

‘He has a wife to defend him.’

Freya frowned. ‘You’ve gone all funny, Luca. What’s the matter?’

He stared down at her for a moment, as if about to divulge a terrible secret. His eyes were glassy, his mouth twisted at one corner. He looked afraid. But Annabel and Miles stepped out into the hall, interrupting them with their cheerful banter.

Luca went to the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror. He splashed water on to his face and rubbed his eyes but still he looked terrible. He felt that familiar sensation of falling very fast without anything to hold on to. He dared not close his eyes for fear that the voices would return. That the shadows would once more walk about the room. That he would invite back in all those beings he had struggled to evict. He could hear his mother’s voice telling him to grow up, not to invent imaginary friends. That if he really was hearing voices they were the spirits of Hell trying to persuade him to follow them into the fiery furnace. He recalled the doctor telling him to pull himself together and stop frightening his mother with lies, the teachers telling her he was making it up to get attention. Eventually, he had learned to keep quiet. Little by little he had shut them out and they had been silenced.

That night he did not want to be alone. He lay staring up at the ceiling, the light on the bedside table throwing shadows into the corners of the room. At last he crept down the corridor to where Annabel slept. Her door was ajar as if she were expecting him. She sat up when he entered, her white breasts exposed above the sheet. ‘What took you so long?’ she asked, throwing back the covers invitingly. He untied his pyjama bottoms and let them fall to the ground. Making love to Annabel was the best way to forget his boyhood and make him feel like a man again.

Miles took Sinbad for a walk around the garden before bed. It was drizzling again on to the phosphorescent green buds and daffodils. The dog trotted into the darkness, sniffing the grass and wagging his tail. When he was far enough from the house not to be overheard, Miles pulled out his mobile telephone and pressed redial. ‘Hi,’ he said in a low voice. ‘It’s me.’

 

The following morning Luca returned to London. He had promised Annabel he would call her, but knew he wouldn’t. As for Freya – happily married, beautiful Freya – there was no point chasing angels. He’d had his chance and missed it long ago. He drove up the M3 in his silver Aston Martin ruminating on what might have been. Would he be in the middle of a divorce had he married Freya instead of Claire? Or was he simply not made for the institution of marriage? He considered his daughters, Coco and Juno, then shuddered as he thought of them climbing into bed with John Tresco every morning. He hoped Claire would have the sensitivity not to bring him home until they were married, then the wisdom to resist forced intimacy with a man who was not their father.

John Tresco’s shallow features were more suited to a shop dummy than a man of flesh and blood. Luca didn’t trust men who looked like pretty boys, preening themselves in the mirror and taking too long to dress in the morning. John Tresco was too in love with himself to muster up emotion for anyone else. Arrogant and pompous, he was a know-all and a show-off. Having inherited a fortune, he had never done a day’s work in his life, floating from party to party, shooting weekends in Scotland to weddings in Saint Tropez, mingling with the famous and fatuous. He invested the family money and employed armies of staff whom he spent hours training and seconds firing when they didn’t come up to scratch. At least Luca had made all his money himself.

He had suspected Claire was having an affair long before she was caught out at a hotel in Beaulieu supposedly on a two-day break with her mother. Being so busy he had given it little thought. The spark between the two of them had died a few years after they had had girls. Once the fire of passion had diminished to a mere glow they were left with the two very different people that they were. The girls united them briefly: early mornings and interrupted nights and shared moments watching the little miracles over the side of the cot. Then even the glow died and they existed as acquaintances or house-mates who didn’t laugh with each other any more. He didn’t blame her for finding someone else to love her but she felt guilty and chose to accuse him of driving her into John’s arms. Years of resentment gushed out in a venomous torrent: he hadn’t been there for her; she’d had to raise the girls single-handed; he didn’t listen to her any more; he only talked about himself; he was a shocking father; he didn’t deserve to have children. As deftly as he defended himself, he suspected she was probably right. He was guilty of all those things. They divorced on the grounds of irreconcilable differences. They were yet to work out a financial settlement but she was ensconced in their family house in Kensington, taking the girls to their home in Gloucestershire on alternate weekends and during the holidays. Her monthly maintenance was more than most people required in a year. If she was spoiled, he only had himself to blame.

Reluctantly, she let him see the children. He had bought a mews house in Chelsea, hiring an interior decorator to do it up for him so that the girls had bedrooms of their own and a playroom full of toys. It didn’t feel like home to him; he was pretty sure it didn’t feel like home to them either. The weekends he had them he relied on his friends who had children the same age. Coco, although only seven, was a precocious little girl one would almost expect to see smoking Marlboro Lights over a
cappuccino
in Starbucks. Dressed in clothes from Bonpoint and Marie Chantal, she was pretty and slim with dark hair and blue eyes like her father, but her face was joyless, as if she had seen and done everything already, so nothing excited her anymore. Juno, four and a half, was less blessed in the looks department, but she was effervescent and smiley, caring more about her toy caterpillars than her own wardrobe of beautiful clothes. Since Luca had stopped working he had begun to get to know his daughters. He realised there was not an awful lot to like in Coco. Juno was more malleable: with her there was still potential.

He considered Freya’s advice. The thought of leaving London was a very tempting one. His parents’
palazzo
would offer just the sort of tranquillity he needed to search for the point in his now pointless existence. He’d find a corner away from his mother and her friends, take a suitcase full of books he had always wanted to read, and spend time on his own. He’d swim in the sea, go for long walks, unwind the years of tension that had slowly begun to choke him like a noose around his neck. There was something unsatisfying about his life but he wasn’t sure what it was. He had money, children, women whenever he wanted them, but there was an emptiness that, since leaving the frenetic world of banking, he had begun to feel more acutely; a silence in his heart as loud as clashing cymbals.

He arrived in Chelsea just before lunch time. His house looked like a hotel, beautiful but impersonal. The housekeeper had cleaned it, tidying away any signs of life. Only the neat pile of post on the kitchen table indicated that somebody lived there. The light on his telephone winked at him, displaying messages. He pressed the delete button without even listening to the complaints of friends accusing him of not having confided his plans.