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  “Shall I close the door?” asked Alicia, her eyes still amused even though her voice was all innocence.

  “I don’t know, I might need protecting,” said Jennifer. Alicia switched off the light and Jennifer smiled to herself as she heard the door click shut.

  At six thirty the following morning, although the sun was still some minutes from lifting itself above the horizon, there was plenty of dawn light flooding into the room. Derek stirred as Jennifer tiptoed back in from a trip to the bathroom.

  “Jennifer?”

  “Go back to sleep,” she said, slipping back into the bed next to him.

  “What are you doing, Jen?”

  “Looking after you, Mr Plonker. Trying to let the rest of the household get a good night’s sleep.”

  He stared up at her, not understanding.

  “You had a nightmare, Derek, a bad one. Ali and I had to hold you down to stop you wrecking the joint, and yourself.”

  A glimmer of recollection appeared in his eyes. “Oh. Sorry. You didn’t have to …”

  “Have you been having them a lot? It seemed bad.”

  Derek nodded slowly, his eyes now creased in rejection of the memory.

  “Every night. Eventually the nurse gave me something; I was waking everyone up.”

  “Why didn’t you say, you dummy? It’s nothing to be ashamed of. We’re mates.”

  “I thought with coming here, being in such a peaceful place, I’d be fine; that they’d go away.”

  Jennifer stroke his head gently. “You’re an idiot. I’ll stay with you tonight, make sure you’re OK.” She stopped and grinned. “Unless Ali wants a turn. She seemed quite keen.”

  Derek looked up at her, his face concerned. “Jen? I didn’t, I mean, we didn’t …? You know …”

  She took his head in her hands and put her face close to his.

  “Derek Thyme! Do you mean to tell me that after that night of passion you don’t remember a thing! Huh!”

  He looked sheepishly at her. “I just meant …”

  “Derek, if you’d tried to sling your leg over me, the momentum of that cast would have thrown you out of the bed faster than I would. So, no, don’t worry. You slept like a baby.”

  The April morning sun was warm on the sheltered terrace outside the dining room. Derek had got over the shock of discovering Jennifer had slept alongside him and was tucking into his breakfast.

  “They don’ feed you in the ospedale, Derek?” asked Alicia, her English strongly accented.

  “Not enough, Alicia, no,” he replied through a mouthful of egg. “And the food was crap. Jen wouldn’t’ve approved. Not Paleo.”

  Alicia snorted. “I know. She say she Italian, but she don’ eat pasta. You eat pasta, Derek?”

  He glanced over to where Jennifer was pouring herself some coffee, her back to them.

  “Love it,” he mouthed, to giggles from Alicia. “But don’t tell …” He nodded his head in Jennifer’s direction and pulled a face.

  Jennifer settled back down at the table. “Don’t ever get arrested for anything, Thyme,” she said, looking over to him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Simply that you’re not only transparent, which given you’re a man is to be expected, but any interrogator worthy of the name would run rings around you.”

  Derek frowned. “What are you on about, Cotton?”

  Jennifer smiled conspiratorially at Alicia and raised her eyebrows in question.

  Alicia flicked her eyes closed in agreement and Jennifer turned back to Derek.

  “One little innocent question and you spilled the beans.”

  “What?”

  Jennifer nodded her head in Alicia’s direction. “She’s even more passionate about the Paleo diet than I am.”

  “Jeez, I’m surrounded by freaks,” muttered Derek.

  Alicia stood. “Freaks. I don’ know this word but I think I get it. It’s your first physio in one hour, Signor Thyme.” She smiled malevolently. “I show you what freak is.”

  Two hours later, Derek was sitting on a lounger by the pool relaxing after his physio session and taking perverse pleasure in the tingling in his muscles. Jennifer finished a gentle fifty lengths and climbed out of the water.

  “’ow was that, Signor Thyme?” she asked, mimicking Alicia’s accent.

  “It was great, Jen. She’s mustard. I’ve really been missing the exercise. I think with the workout she’s got planned for later and then more physio, my body will feel back on track. I need to get it moving. With any luck that’ll mean I’ll sleep the night through without dreams of being mashed by Tube trains.”

  “I hope so, the guards were about to throw you down the well.”

  “Is that what you do with all your awkward guests?”

  “Only the noisy ones. It has to be the well; it’s so deep you can’t hear their cries for help.”

  Derek stretched and looked around, taking in the pool, the terrace and what he could see of the house. “This place is paradise, Jen, magical. But don’t you get, I don’t know, a bit stir-crazy here? I mean, there’s not a lot to do, is there? You get waited on hand and foot; what do you do all day to keep those profound grey cells of yours ticking over?”

  She smiled. “Well, Derek, this is Italy. I’ve got several lovers who come calling on a regular basis, and I’ve been spending quite a bit of time on Skype lately …”

  “Yeah, sorry, I hadn’t forgotten that. You’ve been brilliant. I couldn’t have made it without you. But that still leaves you with time to kill, even if your Romeos are marathon men. I s’pose you’re doing a lot with Alicia, of course, but …”

  Jennifer laughed and tapped her head. “I know, the grey cells. None of that does much to stimulate them. Actually, you might be surprised to know I’ve been learning Russian. Not all my Skype calls are to you; there are almost daily ones to my Russian tutor, Irina. She’s great.”

  “Russian! Why? Bit late to be a spy, isn’t it? You know the Cold War’s over, don’t you?”

  “I’m not so sure, but, no, I don’t have ambitions to penetrate the inner workings of the Kremlin, and neither do I fancy Mr P. I was attracted by the challenge. Anyway, I’m not entirely new to it; I studied Russian for a year as a subsid. subject at uni; Nottingham’s got a good Russian department.”

  “Wow! Impressivo.”

  “Same to you! You pronounced that well. I’ll have to get Alicia to give you Italian lessons.”

  “She’s already started, but I think it was mainly about whips and leather, from what I could get.”

  “Lucky for you you’ve got that cast on your leg, Thyme, or I’d push you in the pool on her behalf.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Derek. He glanced down at a sizeable book Jennifer had left on a table by her lounger. “This your text book?” he said, picking it up. “How do you make sense of all those letters?”

  “Not as difficult as it looks, you know. But no, it’s not a text book. It’s one of the greatest novels ever written.”

  “Really? What is it?”

  “War and Peace. My goal is to read an original Russian version.”

  “You should get off this island, Cotton. You’ve got too much time on your hands.”

  Chapter Nine

  Summer 2015

  Connie Fairbright put down the Italian newspaper she was attempting to read and moved her hand towards the Hotel Barchester’s discreetly monogrammed coffee pot. But before she could reach it, an attentive waiter had spotted her need, materialised by her table and was bowing graciously as he poured for her.

  She sat back in frustration. “Grazie, Mario,” she said, her refined Bostonian tones sounding in her pronunciation of the Italian.

  “Prego, signora,” replied the waiter, with a slight tilt of his head, after which he switched to English to keep the assault on his beloved language minimal. “May I get you anything else, signora? Some more toast, perhaps?”

  “No, thank you, Mario,” sighed Connie, frustrated as ever
that her attempts at practising the skills she’d spent the last three months trying to master were to no avail.

  She’d thought it would be easier now she had all her time to herself. She would spend three hours every morning on one-to-one sessions with her language tutor struggling to mould her limited language skills into some sort of coherency, while in the afternoons she would luxuriate in the magical world of Renaissance art, her knowledge base expanded daily by her personal tutor, the fascinating Cesare Contorni.

  At least that side of her ambition was being fulfilled. She had always loved art, Italian art in particular, and although in the early days of her marriage her acquisitive husband had indulged her with several works bought more for their inflated price labels than their merit, she had been frustrated. She had wanted to understand more, wanted to develop her tastes but was prevented from achieving her goals by a lifestyle that saw her as a perpetual society hostess flitting from one city to the next, one country to the next, according to the endless demands of her husband’s personal goal of becoming the world’s wealthiest man.

  Brad Fairbright had come close to achieving his goal, probably would have achieved it if providence had granted him another five years on the planet. But an ill-advised flight in the poorest weather saw him and his ambitions die along with his three top aides as his jet became the plaything of a massive Midwest storm: tossed, flipped and finally flung into a mountainside.

  Their marriage had long been a loveless façade without even the distraction of children to help paper over the cracks. The only tears she shed were for the memory of a short-lived time when, twenty years old to his thirty-three, she had been swept off her feet by his charm. Too late she had realised how that charm was all calculated, that she was just one more prize in a world of prizes. Brad had targeted her: she was good looking without being beautiful, from old money herself and therefore moulded from an early age into a mindset of compliance with her husband’s demands for a submissive but impressive wife. He hadn’t strayed, so far as she knew, and neither had she; he was just so driven by his ambition that any emotion had long been suppressed, rejected as irrelevant.

  When Brad was killed and she took stock of her friends and family — her parents still ruled their own fiefdom in Massachusetts and her elder brothers were cast in their mould — Connie knew she had to break away, to leave. No one seemed to object so she closed up her various houses and walked away with the settlement she and Brad had agreed upon in the event of his death. She wasn’t interested in his billions; they involved too much responsibility. But with a net worth still in nine figures and a dedicated team of advisers to manage it, she was hardly going to be roughing it. At forty-five and with her background of privilege, she had no intention of lowering the high standards of comfort in her daily life; she simply wanted to kindle her nascent ambitions. She knew that heading for Italy, learning the language and discovering art were all something of a cliché. She didn’t care; she was finally in control of her own destiny. Except, it seemed, when it came to pouring her coffee.

  She took a sip of her Americano, put down the cup and caught Mario’s eye.

  “Bring me another pot, per favore. This one’s past its best.”

  When the coffee arrived, she put her hand on the waiter’s arm, surprising him. “I’ll pour it, Mario. When I’m ready.”

  She picked up her newspaper, determined to make another attempt at gleaning something meaningful from its columns, but before she had worked her way through two lines, her PA Caroline Monkton bustled onto the terrace, one hand pressed against her forehead, the other clutching her handbag, a ring binder, her phone and an iPad.

  The diminutive grey-haired Ms Monkton sat down heavily in a chair that microseconds before the ever-efficient Mario had pulled out with magician-like finesse from under the table. Handing her baggage to him, she let out a loud sigh designed to inform occupants of nearby tables of the endless stress torturing her existence.

  “Connie,” she gushed, “I’m so sorry, I woke up with one of my headaches again. It’s almost gone now, thank heavens; twenty minutes in a steaming shower certainly helped. Have you already had your breakfast? I hope you have.”

  All this was ejected from Caroline’s mouth in a rush of British intensity, her forehead puckered in concern, her hands clasped together.

  Connie looked up from the incomprehensible paragraphs. She was beginning to regret employing Ms Monkton, whose headaches she suspected were a product of too many late-night sips of gin taken in her room. It had been a moment’s weakness: she had felt sorry for the sixty-year-old, been charmed by her English vowels and swayed by her penniless need. The younger candidates had all been better qualified, but, she suspected, gold-diggers. Caroline Monkton had reminded her of a music tutor she’d once had as a child. Rejecting her and her straitened circumstances would have been cruel.

  “I’m done, thank you, Caroline, but let me pour you some coffee.”

  As she reached for the pot, she saw Mario react out of the corner of her eye. She turned her head and glared at him. He retreated in confused submission.

  Connie put down the coffee pot and checked her watch. “You know, Caroline, I’m not in the mood for Signorina Grimaldi this morning; in fact I’m not convinced I want to continue with her. I’m getting nowhere with this damn language.”

  Caroline looked pained. “Are you quite sure, Connie? Your lesson is due to start in fifteen minutes. She’ll be on her way.”

  Connie shook her head. “Tell her I’m not feeling well. I’ll make a decision about her over the weekend. Heavens, there must be someone more dynamic out there, someone better equipped to knock something into my language-challenged brain.”

  “She came highly recommended,” said Caroline defensively.

  “I’m not blaming you, Caroline. It’s just that there’s no chemistry between us. She never laughs, you know. I should have let her go weeks ago. Get on to it, will you, rustle me up a shortlist.”

  “If you insist, but I must eat something first,” said Caroline, the edge to her voice still there. She had negotiated a long-term deal with Connie’s tutor in return for a cut of her fee; dismissing her now could prove expensive.

  “Fine,” said Connie. “But I think before you settle to your muesli, you should give the signorina a call, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” replied Caroline, reaching for her phone, her nostrils flared in frustration. She needed to regain the moral high ground. “I’ll go into the lobby; I don’t think it’s polite to call from a restaurant, do you?”

  Connie shrugged. “I don’t think it’s a big deal, so long as you keep your voice down. But, hey, if that’s what you want to do, go ahead.”

  Neither Connie nor her PA had noticed the woman sitting at the next table, her back to them. Nor had they noticed her the previous day, or the one before as she sat quietly watching. If they had noticed her at all, they would have registered little more than a tall, well-dressed solitary woman with shoulder-length chestnut-brown hair who appeared to be engrossed in a book as she slowly sipped at her coffee. She even turned the pages every minute or so, but nothing on them registered as she listened intently to the exchanges between the two women.

  Olivia Freneton waited until Caroline Monkton had disappeared into the lobby before turning in her chair towards Connie.

  “Excuse me,” she said, her accent refined English, but more businesslike than Caroline Monkton’s judgemental fluster. “I couldn’t help overhearing; I hope you don’t mind.”

  Connie turned to her. “Oh dear, I’m sorry if my PA disturbed your breakfast; she does get a little over-excited.”

  Olivia laughed, her eyes catching Connie’s, her smile gentle reassurance.

  “Not at all. It was what you were saying that caught my attention. It sounds as if you are looking for a good Italian tutor.”

  Connie raised her eyebrows in interest. “I am, yes, but you’re … you’re British, aren’t you? I was really looking for a native speaker.�
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  Olivia made sure her laugh was sufficiently self-deprecating. “Oh, no, not me, I’m very much a student. I just happen to have struck lucky and discovered the most wonderful man. He’s full of fun and an outstanding teacher.”

  For this part of her scheme, Olivia was telling the truth. She had found Alessandro Rossi quite by chance as she trawled a number of language schools in Rome. She was unimpressed by many of them, as much for the prices they were charging for personal tuition as their quality. Her plan was to get to grips with the language while searching Rome’s exclusive hotels for a suitable target; someone loaded she could befriend or work for, someone whose trust and confidence she could gain.

  She knew it would be expensive: morning coffee and afternoon tea on well-appointed terraces were never cheap, and she had to look the part, even if at night she disappeared into the cheapest hostel she could find. But the language schools were likely to break the bank. She had almost given up on the idea when she noticed Rossi’s advertisement pinned up in the hostel where she was staying. It turned out he preferred to work below the taxman’s radar, cash only, and having sampled his style and liked it, Olivia proposed a long-term deal. With a fifty percent advance in his pocket, Rossi readily agreed.

  Rossi’s method was unusual. He rejected the classroom, rejected books and vocabulary lists. “Eyes, ears and this, signora,” he said to Olivia, tapping the side of his head. “It’s how children learn; we can too. I will correct you and correct you and correct you. I shall be merciless, particularly with your pronunciation since I don’t want to hear the most poetic, exquisite and refined language in the world turned into a train smash, metal sheets grinding on metal sheets. So listen, copy, repeat and learn.”

  He was right. For three hours every day for the last three months, Olivia had walked the streets of Rome with Rossi, soaking up the scenery and history, but more than anything, soaking up the language. He fired constant questions, all structured to challenge without undermining her confidence, all aimed at teaching her to think in Italian, to work out alternative ways of expressing herself when one path failed. Rossi’s method appealed to Olivia’s love of contingency planning and she delighted in their time together.