‘I’m not planning to die yet. And I haven’t seen much of Venice, except the inside of the shops.’
‘That’s a pity, because the shops here are either full of tourist trash, or the same as those in a hundred other cities, except maybe more expensive. Venice is not about the present, Venice is about the past.’
Rinat stares at her. She really is very beautiful. The amber gaze, the oblique smile, the whole artfully expensive look of her. Belatedly, it occurs to him to offer her a chair.
‘Sei gentile. But I’m interrupting your evening.’
‘Not at all. I’m looking forward to that drink. What was it again?’
She sits, and with a whisper of silk tights, which Rinat does not fail to appreciate, crosses her knees. ‘A Negroni Sbagliato. It’s a Negroni, but with sparkling wine instead of gin. And at the Danieli, naturalmente, they make it with champagne. For me, the perfect drink at sunset.’
‘Better than a single malt whisky?’
A faint smile. ‘I think so.’
And so it proves. Rinat is not an obviously handsome man. His shaved head resembles a Crimean potato, and his handmade silk suit cannot disguise his brutal build. But wealth, however acquired, has a way of commanding attention, and Rinat is not unused to the company of desirable women. And Marina Falieri, as he learns her name to be, is nothing if not desirable.
He can’t take his eyes off her mouth. There’s a faint scar on the bow of her upper lip, and the resultant asymmetry lends her smile an equivocal quality. A vulnerability that speaks, quietly but insistently, to the predator in him. She is flatteringly interested in everything he has to say, and in response he finds himself holding forth freely. He tells her about Odessa, about the historic Cathedral of the Transfiguration, where he is a regular worshipper, and about the magnificent Opera and Ballet Theatre, to which, as an enthusiastic patron of the arts, he has contributed millions of roubles. This account of himself, if wholly fictional, is richly and convincingly detailed, and Marina’s eyes shine as she listens. She even persuades him to teach her a couple of phrases in Russian, which she repeats with endearing inaccuracy.
And then, all too soon, the evening is over. She has to attend an official dinner in Sant’Angelo, Marina explains apologetically. It will be dull, and she wishes she could stay, but she’s on the steering committee of the Venice Biennale, and . . .
‘Per favore, Marina. Capisco,’Rinat says, discharging his entire stock of Italian with what he hopes is a gallant smile.
‘Your accent, Rinat. Perfezione!’ She pauses, and smiles at him conspiratorially. ‘It’s not possible, by any chance, that you’re free for lunch tomorrow?’
‘Well, as it happens, I am.’
‘Excellent. Let’s meet at eleven at the hotel’s river entrance. It will be my pleasure to show you something of . . . the real Venice.’
They rise, and she’s gone. Four empty cocktail glasses stand on the white linen tablecloth, three of his and one of hers. The sun is low in the sky, half obscured by oyster-pink cirrus clouds. Rinat turns to beckon for the waiter, but he’s already standing there, as patient and unobtrusive as an undertaker.
In the bus, moving at a snail’s pace up the Tottenham Court Road, the only person to give Eve a second glance is an obviously disturbed man who winks at her persistently. It’s a warm evening and the interior of the bus smells of damp hair and stale deodorant. Opening the Evening Standard, Eve flicks through the news pages and the descriptions of parties and serial adultery in Primrose Hill, and settles pleasurably into the property section.
There’s no question of her and Niko being able to afford any of the living spaces so seductively laid out there. All those Victorian warehouses and industrial units reimagined as fabulous, light-filled apartments. All those panoramic river-views framed in steel and plate glass. Nor, in any real sense, does Eve covet them. She’s entranced by them because they’re deserted, and not quite believable. Because they serve as the imagined backdrops to other lives that she might have led.
She reaches the one-bedroom flat that she and Niko rent shortly after eight forty-five, and pushing past the accretion of footwear, bicycle accessories, Amazon packaging and fallen coats, follows the smell of cooking to the kitchen. The table, which holds an unstable pile of maths textbooks and a bottle of supermarket Rioja, is laid for two. A hissing sound and a tuneless whistling from the bathroom tell her that Niko is in the shower.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she calls out. ‘Smells delicious. What is it?’
‘Goulash. Can you open the wine?’
Eve has just taken the corkscrew from the drawer when she hears a frantic clicking sound on the floor behind her, and turns to see two substantial animal forms hurtling through the air and landing on the table, sending the textbooks flying. For a moment she’s too shocked to move. The Rioja rolls from the table and smashes on the tiled floor. Two pairs of sage-green eyes watch her quizzically.
‘Niko.’
He saunters damply out of the bathroom, a towel round his waist, slippers on his feet. ‘My love. I see you’ve met Thelma and Louise.’
She stares at him. When he steps over the widening lake of Rioja and kisses her, she doesn’t move.
‘Louise is the clumsy one. I expect it was her that—’
‘Niko. Before I fucking kill you . . .’
‘They’re Nigerian dwarf goats. And you and I are never buying milk, cream, cheese or soap again.’
‘Niko, listen to me. I’m going to the off-licence, because I’ve had a bitch of a day, and every drop of alcohol we have is there on the floor. When I get back I want to sit down to your goulash, and a nice bottle of red wine, possibly two, and relax. We won’t even mention those two animals on the table, because by then they will have vanished as if they’d never existed, OK?’
‘Er . . . OK.’
‘Excellent. See you in ten minutes.’
When Eve returns with another two bottles of Rioja, the kitchen has had
