She’s only being kind, but I can’t stop myself from snarling, ‘Do your job. Find him. What are you waiting for?’
‘Straight onto it,’ Gia says soothingly, ‘I promise. As soon as we get to the cars.’
I don’t need to touch her to know I’ve hurt her feelings, but I’m no good at modifying my behaviour when something I want is almost within reach.
‘Felipe,’ Gia snaps. ‘Your car has to be waiting by the emergency exit. I need Irina to be inside and on the move before anyone gets a good look at her. Giovanni’s security team can handle things from his end, but we can’t be seen to be arriving a second late or she loses the booking. It’s in the contract. Fast, fast, fast today. No dawdling, no unscheduled stops.’
‘It is understood.’ Felipe’s tone is now openly hostile. His dark eyes flick to her face for a second before he resumes studying the gilded frescos on the ceiling, his mouth a sulky line.
Gia continues to badger him. ‘And you’ve spoken to Bertrand? He’s clear that Natasha’s to leave Irina’s usual hotel an hour after we leave here, wearing the wig and dark glasses? And he’s to drive her all over Milan so she gets to Atelier Re well after we’ve gone inside?’
‘Si,’ Felipe says, not bothering to hide his boredom. ‘The decoy, she is ready. We have been through it many times. You must think us stupid, Senorita Basso.’
Gia doesn’t bother to refute him. ‘And Irina’s security detail? Have you confirmed the personnel, the numbers?’
Felipe’s reply is sullen. ‘It, too, is in hand. Gianfranco recommends three cars today. One to go ahead, one to follow. You will travel in the last car, Senorita Basso, with Carlo and Jurgen. Myself and Senorita Zhivanevskaya in the second car, and Angelo and Vladimir in the first car. To give her enough time to get inside without unnecessary … complication.’
Gia’s expression is suddenly furious. ‘Complication? Is that what you think of me? And what? Separate us? Whose idea was that? Look at the condition she’s in today — I can’t leave her alone! Especially with the mob scene she’ll have to endure outside Atelier Re. She’s too fragile. We can’t risk a relapse.’
Felipe shrugs, his expression unreadable. ‘Do not ask me. It is Gianfranco’s orders. I am just the driver. Ring him if you like.’
‘Just the driver!’ Gia expostulates. ‘What are you plotting, Felipe?’
Felipe studies the fingernails of one tanned hand. ‘If that is all, Miss?’
The doorbell peals again, and Gia looks up sharply. ‘That’ll be breakfast. Finally. When I call down, Felipe, have the engine idling. Hotel security has organised for us to exit through the basement levels. There’s to be no waiting time. None at all.’
Felipe gives a mocking half-bow in Gia’s direction. ‘You worry too much, Senorita Basso,’ he replies insolently. ‘She is in good hands. The best, no?’
He gives me a lazy, lascivious wink and walks quickly to the door of the suite with long strides.
‘You’ll find Ryan?’ I remind Gia again, feeling strangely uncertain. ‘Bring him to me?’
She nods and I can feel my heart rate begin to slow, my breathing even out, my left hand stop aching. I flex my fingers gingerly and take my hand out of my pocket, sit straighter in my armchair.
At the door, Felipe lets in a dark-eyed young woman with dark, curly, chin-length hair wearing a crisp white shirt and sober, maroon skirt suit with the hotel crest picked out in gold thread on the jacket’s front pocket. She’s pushing a linen-covered trolley bearing a raft of breakfast things, including two dome-covered plates. She’s so flustered at the sight of me that she runs over her own foot in her hurry to get the trolley to the graceful dining table near the street-facing windows of the sitting room.
The woman takes a pot off the trolley, lifting the lid with unsteady hands to show us the hot coffee inside, before repeating the action with the second pot, containing boiled water. There’s a small dish with slices of lemon arranged on it in a pretty pattern, and another with butter and two small pots of different varieties of jam. She places these on the table, darting quick, self-conscious glances in my direction.
She lifts the first silver dome, revealing a plate of mixed warm pastries and toasted bread. Under the second, there’s a small white bowl with a couple of tablespoons of dry oatmeal in it, mixed in with a type of seed and dried berries I can’t identify. She sets these down, blushing beneath my scrutiny, then unrolls two heavy, linen placemats and lines each one up with a dining chair.
Out of the warming area inside the trolley, she pulls a plate bearing a lavish, English-style breakfast — scrambled eggs, fried bacon, grilled sausages, tomatoes and mushrooms — and places it on one placemat. Then she pulls out another plate, which appears to hold a couple of tablespoons of scrambled egg-white and sets it on top of the other mat. Finally, she removes a small jug of hot milk.
The woman clumsily lays out two sets of silver cutlery, puts a folded cloth napkin beside each plate before practically bowing her way backwards out of the room. Her eyes are fixed on me so attentively as she lets herself out that she bounces off the doorframe and almost falls in a heap in the hallway outside. Blushing furiously, she staggers upright and shuts the door to the suite behind her with one last anguished look in my direction.
‘What was that all about?’ I say.
Gia follows the direction of my astonished gaze and shrugs. ‘Just another case of insta-girl-crush. People are more accident-prone around you. Remember that reporter from the Argus who followed you around during the London shows three years back when you really began to take off? He wrote an article about it; said you were the human equivalent of walking under a ladder. Total bad news from start to finish. And I should know!’ She gives a burst of genuine laughter before her expression grows wary again, as if she’s said too much and can’t understand how it keeps happening.
The smell of the food is strangely welcome. I don’t often feel hungry, but today, for some reason, I’m ravenous.
‘Let’s eat,’ I say, pulling out the dining chair in front of the loaded, cooked breakfast plate.
Gia clears her throat. ‘Uh, that would be mine? You’re the one with the agent who insists you limit your daily calorie intake to keep you “competitive”. Your definition of breakfast is two tablespoons of raw oats, linseed and goji berry, slightly wetted with hot, soy milk, capped off with some cooked egg-white washed down with hot lemon water.’ She pulls a face. ‘Yummy.’
‘I don’t do starvation diets,’ I exclaim. ‘And the pastries?’
Gia’s expression is half-sceptical, half-amused. ‘Um, they’d be mine, too. But I’m happy to share.’ She grins. ‘If, for a change, you do as you’re bloody well told.’
We split the pastries and hot breakfast down the middle, returning Irina’s usual cheerless fare to the trolley. As we eat, I can feel Gia’s eyes on me. But whenever I look up, she glances away.
‘Coffee?’ she asks, pouring herself a cup.
I wrinkle my nose and shake my head. ‘Can’t stand it.’
She stares at me for a second. ‘That’s not what you usually say.’
I shrug.
‘You know,’ she says finally, when we place our cutlery down, having eaten our way through everything worth eating, ‘you seem so different today. I can’t put my finger on it. But I like this version of you. Much as it pains me to say it, you seem more in touch with your … humanity today. You seem more like the rest of us.’
I laugh, genuinely amused by her words.
She can’t help giving me an answering grin. ‘You look startled by the suggestion.’
‘You have no idea how much!’ I grin back.
Then Gia’s smile dies, and she pushes her plate away firmly, as if she’s about to walk into battle. ‘You ready?’
I lift Irina’s narrow shoulders again in a shrug, let them fall. How can one ever be ready to live another person’s life? To go forth into another person’s day?
Gia stalks over to the gilt-edged console table by the in-room surround-sound system, her silver jewellery jangling. She picks up the house phone, dials a number and says curtly into the receiver, ‘We’re coming down.’
After replacing the handset, she walks across to an elegant, button-back armchair near the door and picks up a huge, tan-coloured, crocodile-skin carryall, holding it out to me as she picks up her own shiny, black patent- leather tote off the floor. It’s bristling with external pockets and silver buckles. ‘Okay?’ she says. ‘I mean it, are you ready?’
