'My name isn't Julia. It's Sophie Haydon. My husband was Bruce Haydon. My mother warned me against him, but I wouldn't listen. We were always a little uneasy with each other after that.'
'What about your father?' Piero asked.
'I barely knew him. He died when I was a baby. Bruce and I were married over nine years ago. We had a daughter the next year, a gorgeous little girl called Natalie. I loved her to bits. She-she's almost nine now.'
Her voice shook on the words, and she hurried on as though to prevent the others noticing.
'Bruce had a little business, import, export. It wasn't doing well and he hated it that I earned more than him. I was working as an art restorer, getting plenty of clients, starting to be employed by museums and great houses.
'And then there was a spate of art thefts, all from houses where I'd been working. Of course the police suspected me. I knew all about the keys and burglar alarms.'
She fell silent again, staring into space for a long time. Then she jumped to her feet and began to pace up and down, her feet making a hollow, desolate sound on the tiles.
'Go on,' Vincenzo said in a strained voice. 'I was charged and put on trial.' She gave a harsh laugh. 'Bruce made me a wonderful speech about fighting it together. And I believed him. We loved each other, you see.' She gave a brief, mirthless laugh. 'That's really funny.'
She fell silent. Neither of the other two moved or spoke, respecting her grief.
'In the last few days before the trial,' she went on at last, 'my mind seemed to be working on two levels at once. On one, I just couldn't believe that they could find me guilty. On the other, I knew exactly what was going to happen. I knew they were going to take me away from Bruce and Natalie, and I spent every moment I could with them. Bruce and I-'
She stopped. It was better not to remember those passionate nights, his declarations of undying love, lest she go mad.
'We took Natalie on a picnic. On the way back we stopped in a toy shop and she fell in love with a rabbit. So I bought it for her and she hugged it all the way home. When the trial began I'd say goodbye to her in the morning and she'd clutch that rabbit for comfort. When I came home she'd still be clutching him. The neighbour who was looking after her said she never let go of him all day.
'On the last day of the trial I got ready to leave home and Natalie began to cry. She'd never done that before, but this time it was as though she knew I wasn't coming back. She clung to me with her arms tight about my neck, crying 'No, Mummy. Mummy, don't go, please don't go-please, Mummy-''
She was shuddering, forcing herself to speak through the tears that coursed down her cheeks.
'In the end they had to force her arms away from around my neck, while she screamed and screamed. Then she curled up on the sofa, clutching her rabbit and sobbing into his fur. That was the last time I ever saw her. All she knew was that I went away and never came back. Wherever she is now, whatever she's doing, that's her last memory of me.'
She swung around suddenly and slammed her hand down on the back of a chair, clinging onto it and choking in her agony. Vincenzo rose quickly and went to her, but she straightened up before he could touch her.
'I'm all right. Where was I?'
'The trial,' he said gently.
'Oh, yes. They found me guilty. Bruce came to see me in prison a couple of times. He kept promising to bring Natalie 'next time', but he never did. And then one day he didn't come. My mother told me he'd vanished, taking our little girl.
'I don't remember the next few days clearly. I know I became hysterical, and for a while I was on suicide watch. That was six years ago, and I haven't seen either of them since.
'It was him, you see. He'd copied my keys, picked my brains. He'd drive me to work and ask me to show him around, 'Because I'm so interested, darling.' So he knew what to look for, how to get in, how to turn off the alarm. Sometimes there were security staff, but they trusted him because he was with me. And everything he learned he sold to a gang of art thieves.
'All the thefts happened over the same weekend, then they vanished abroad, leaving me to take the blame like a tethered goat. By the time I realised how Bruce was involved he'd vanished too.'
'But surely you told the police?' Piero asked. 'Of course, but even I could hear how hollow it sounded-clutching at straws to clear myself. My sentence was longer because I'd been 'uncooperative'. I couldn't tell them anything, because I didn't know.
'And all the time I knew he had my little girl somewhere. I didn't know where and I couldn't find out. She was two and a half when I last saw her. Where has she been all that time? What has she been told about me? Does she have nightmares about our last moments, as I do?'
Her voice faded into a despairing whisper. After a moment she began speaking again. 'Then a couple of the pictures turned up at an auction house. The police managed to trace the trail right back to the mastermind, and he told them everything. He hadn't long to live and he wanted to 'clear his conscience', as he put it. He said Bruce used to laugh about how I trusted him, and how easy I was to delude.'
'
'Yes,' she agreed, 'but I suppose I should be glad of it, because that story was what cleared me. It meant that. Bruce and I hadn't colluded. My conviction was quashed and I was released.'
She paced a little more before stopping by the window.
'My lawyer's fighting for compensation, but my only use for money is to pay for a proper search for Bruce, if I haven't found him by then.'
'Aren't the police looking for him?' Vincenzo suggested.
'Not as hard as I am. To them he's just another wanted man. To me he's an enemy.'
'Yes, I see,' Vincenzo said, almost to himself.
Her voice mounted in urgency.
'He wrecked my life, left me to rot in prison and took my child. I want my daughter back, and I don't care what else happens.'
'Have you no family to help you?' Piero asked
My mother died of a broken heart while I was in prison.She left me a very little money, just enough to come here and start searching for Bruce '
'So you came to Venice to find his relatives?' Piero asked.
'Yes. They are only distant,but they might know something that could help me. I had some good friends who visited me in prison, and they used to bring stories about how Bruce had been 'seen'. Some of them were wildly unlikely. He was,in Arizona, in China, in Australia.But two people said they'd spotted him in Italy, once in Rome, and more recently in Venice, crossing the Rialto Bridge.
'That's why I went straight to the Rialto that first night. Don't ask me what I thought I was going to do then, because I couldn't tell you. The inside of my head was a nightmare. Luckily the Rialto is near this place and Piero found me on his way home. If my friend really did see Brace it may mean nothing, or he may be living only a few minutes away. You might even have seen him.'
'It would help if you had some pictures of him,' Vincenzo observed.
'I know, but my pictures went to the bottom of the lagoon an hour ago.' She clutched her head. 'If only I'd shown them to you last week-'
'You were full of fever last week,' Piero said. 'You didn't know whether you were coming or going. It's just bad luck, but we probably wouldn't have recognised him anyway.'
She nodded. 'The Montressis are my best lead. They'll be back in January, and then I'll hunt him down and get my daughter back.'
'But will it be that simple?' Vincenzo asked. 'After six years she may want to stay where she is.'
She gave him a look that chilled his blood.
'I am her mother,' she said with slow, harsh emphasis. 'She belongs with me. If anyone tries to stop me, I'll-' She was breathing hard.
'Yes?' he asked uneasily.
She met his eyes. 'I'll do what I have to-whatever that might be-I don't know.'
But she did know. He could see it in her face and feel it in her determination to reveal no more. She wouldn't put her thoughts into words because they were too terrible to be spoken.
