Eve has no equivalent of Niko’s sex jeans, as she calls them. No fuck-me shoes or flirty dresses, no lace and satin lingerie. Her work wardrobe is anonymous and utilitarian, and she feels silly and self-conscious wearing anything else. Niko regularly tells her that she’s beautiful, but she doesn’t really believe him. She accepts that he loves her – he says so too often for it not to be true – but why he should do so is wholly mysterious to her.
They talk about his work. Niko teaches at the local school, and has a theory that less well-off teenagers, who do all their shopping with cash, are much better at mental arithmetic than richer kids who have been given credit cards.
‘They call me Borat,’ he says. ‘Do you think that’s a compliment?’
‘Tall, eastern European accent, moustache . . . Kind of inevitable. But you’re wonderful with them, you know that.’
‘They’re good kids. I like them. How was your day?’
‘Weird. I phoned someone using a voice-changer.’
‘Actually to disguise your voice, or for fun?’
‘To disguise it. I didn’t want the guy to know I was a woman. I wanted to sound like Darth Vader.’
‘I’m not even going to begin to imagine that . . .’ He looks at her. ‘I think you’d like the girls. Truly.’
‘Which girls?’
‘Thelma and Louise. The goats. They’re very sweet.’
She closes her eyes. ‘Where are they now?’
‘In their house. Outside.’
‘They have a house?’
‘It came with them.’
‘So you’ve actually bought them. They’re permanent?’
‘I’ve done the maths, my love. Nigerian dwarfs give the richest milk of all breeds, and they only weigh about seventy-five pounds fully grown, so they eat the least hay. We’ll be completely self-sufficient for dairy products.’
‘Niko, this is the arse end of the Finchley Road, not the fucking Cotswolds.’
‘Also, Nigerian dwarfs are—’
‘Please stop calling them that. They’re goats, period. And if you think I’m getting up every morning – or any morning, for that matter – to milk a pair of goats, you’re insane.’
In answer, Niko gets up from the table, and goes out onto the tiny paved area that they call the garden. A moment later Thelma and Louise come bounding joyfully into the kitchen.
‘Oh God.’ Eve sighs, and reaches for the wine.
After the meal Niko does the washing-up, then takes himself to the bathroom to freshen up the Acqua di Parma, wash his hands, and run his wet fingers through his hair. When he returns he finds Eve fast asleep on the sofa, a spoon in one hand and an ice-cream tub trailing from the other. Thelma is lying contentedly at her side, and Louise is standing with her forelegs on the sofa, scouring the tub for the last of the melting Chocolate Chip with a long, pink tongue.
Rinat Yevtukh has dressed carefully for his morning rendezvous, and after some thought has selected a Versace polo shirt, raw silk slacks and Santoni ostrich-skin loafers. A solid-gold Rolex Submariner completes the impression of a man who espouses quiet good taste, but is by no imaginable means to be fucked with.
Marina Falieri keeps him waiting underneath the ironwork canopy of the Danieli’s river entrance for half an hour. Two bodyguards in tightly fitting suits lounge behind him, surveying the narrow canal with bored eyes. Katya’s vindictive mood has not abated, but has been tempered by the promise of a photo-spread in Russian Playboy, and perhaps even the cover. Such a thing is by no means within Rinat’s gift, but he will cross that bridge when he comes to it. Meanwhile, Katya is safely ensconced in the hotel’s hairdressing salon, undergoing a revitalising treatment involving white truffle essence and pulverised diamonds.
Shortly after eleven thirty, an elegant white motoscafo launch swings beneath the low, balustraded bridge and draws up at the hotel jetty. Marina is at the wheel in a striped T-shirt and jeans, her dark hair swinging around her shoulders. She’s also wearing – and this Rinat finds unaccountably sexy – soft leather driving gloves.
‘So.’ She raises her sunglasses. ‘Ready to see la vera Venezia?’
‘Very much so.’ Stepping onto the varnished mahogany afterdeck in his new loafers, Rinat teeters for a moment. As the bodyguards move reflexively forward, he lurches into the cockpit beside Marina, placing a heavy hand on her shoulder for balance.
‘Excuse me.’
‘No problem. Those your boys?’
‘They’re on my security staff, yes.’
‘Well, you should be quite safe with me.’ She smiles. ‘But you’re welcome to ask them along if you’d like to.’
‘Of course not.’ Rinat addresses the two men in fast idiomatic Russian, ordering them to keep an eye on Katya, and to tell her that he is lunching with a business associate. A man, obviously. Not this devushka.
The men smirk and withdraw.
‘I’m definitely going to learn Russian,’ Marina says, manoeuvring the launch beneath the road bridge. ‘It sounds such an expressive language.’
Skilfully, she threads a path between the gondolas and the other river traffic, and steers an unhurried southern course past the island of San Giorgio Maggiore and the eastern curve of the Giudecca. As the motoscafo noses through the unruffled surface of the lagoon, its 150-horsepower engine carving a pale wake behind them, she tells Rinat about the palaces and churches that they pass.
‘So where exactly do you live?’ Rinat asks her.
‘My family has an apartment next to the Palazzo Cicogna,’ she says. ‘The Falieri were originally from Venice, but our principal residence is now in Milan.’
He glances at her gloved left hand, curled lightly round the wheel. ‘And you’re not married?’
‘I was close to someone, but he died.’
‘I’m sorry. My condolences.’
She opens up the throttle.
