‘You fainted,’ he said.
She tried to sit up and he helped her, feeling her tense as he touched her.
‘You don’t have to be afraid of me,’ he bit out. ‘It wasn’t me who attacked you, or aren’t you still sure about that?’
A little dark red colour crept into her cheeks. ‘I’m not afraid of you,’ she denied, but it wasn’t true. She was afraid, even though it had not been him who attacked her. She wasn’t scared he would attack her; she was simply scared—of him, or of herself, perhaps? She didn’t know.
She had been afraid for a long time now. It was a habit, hard to break. It had forced her life into a pattern she couldn’t change.
‘But you did think it was me,’ he muttered in a curt voice. ‘Why? In God’s name what made you believe I’d do a thing like that?’
Stammering, she said, ‘It was dark down on the beach, but his hair was the same colour as yours, and he had an English voice; and I’d just met you at the party, and I thought...’ Her voice stopped dead; she took an audible breath.
‘You thought?’ he probed, frowning.
Their eyes met: hers wide, a darkened turquoise, the wet lashes curling back from them, his narrowed, hard, glittering blue.
She gave a faint wrenched sigh. ‘When I spoke to you at the party you were so angry; you looked at me as if you hated me.’
He gave a rough sigh, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck as he felt the muscles in it tensing. ‘Yes, I remember; I’m sorry, I was in a bad mood that night.’
‘I know. My uncle saw what happened, and he came over and said I shouldn’t take any notice because you were unhappy, your engagement had just been broken off. That’s why...when I saw you walking down to the beach...why I followed you. I was worried about you. You looked so sad; I had some crazy idea I’d try to comfort you.’ She stopped, a half-sob making her shake. ‘And then...and that...that’s why I thought it was you...who attacked me.’
‘You put me through a couple of days of hell, do you know that?’ Patrick suddenly said.
‘I wasn’t exactly having the time of my life myself!’ Antonia threw back, a hectic flush in her cheeks.
Patrick reddened, too, his face tightening as if she had hit him. ‘No, of course you weren’t,’ he muttered. ‘I’m sorry; I don’t know why I’m still so worked up about it. I realise I should have forgotten about it by now, but it hit me just at the wrong time. I was still reeling from one shock when another one knocked me right off my feet.’ He angrily raked his hair back from his forehead. ‘Look, it’s very hot and I’ve walked a long way, following you; I need to sit down. Would you mind?’ He gestured to the seat beside her and Antonia hesitated, biting her lip.
‘There’s nothing more to say, is there? I’ve told you I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking straight when they interviewed me; everything had got muddled up...’ She broke off, swallowing, her pale throat moving visibly. ‘I know it must have been painful for you, and I am sorry, believe me; what else can I say? It was two years ago. Can’t you just forget it?’
‘Have you?’ Patrick quietly asked, and her nervous eyes fluttered a glance at his face, then away again. She didn’t answer; but she didn’t have to.
Patrick sat down, turned sideways to half face her, one arm going along the back of the seat, his long legs stretched out. She was intensely conscious of him, which appalled her. The strange, confusing similarity was still there—the sound of his English voice, the gleam of his hair, the way his body moved. She swung like a pendulum all the time, between attraction and repulsion.
‘Let’s talk about something else,’ he said in a casual voice. ‘What are you doing in Venice? Are you studying here now?’
A fig tree grew close to the bench; Antonia kept her eyes fixed on the tree’s smooth grey patterned bark, the shiny, deeply lobed green leaves; the sunlight pierced between them, made shifting patterns on the gravel underneath. Ever since she arrived at the house she had been meaning to paint the tree, it was so beautiful. She wouldn’t paint it now; she wouldn’t be able to bear to look at it; it would always remind her of these moments with Patrick.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I went home as soon as the Italian police let me. I gave up my course in Florence, and went back to the States. I worked for my father, doing some research for a book he’s been writing for years. He’s an art historian, something of an authority on Jackson Pollock.’ She gave Patrick a rapid glance. ‘George Cabot? Have you heard of him?’
‘George Cabot, yes, of course,’ Patrick said, wondering if she was very proud of her father. The name did ring a bell, but he had never read any of the man’s books; he wasn’t into American modern art. He was too fixated on the Italian Renaissance; it left no room for other art. ‘Are both your parents still alive?’
‘Yes,’ Antonia said. She had seen more of her father during those months when she worked for him than she had ever seen before, but she hadn’t got to know him any better. An almost silent man, George Cabot lived and breathed his work and had never had much time or attention to spare for his wife or daughter. He was too remote; obsessed with his own interior life, he tried to be kind, tried to be understanding, but he kept forgetting her and drifting off, back into his preferred world.
Her mother, Annette Cabot, was just as busy, just as remote, in another way. All she cared about was her social life. She worked for local charities, sat on committees, and lunched and dined with important and influential people.
Antonia’s parents were alive, but separated from her by a barrier almost as strong as death: indifference.
Patrick, watching her pale face, wondered what she was thinking about to give that sadness to her eyes. The way they had met, the trauma, for both of them, which had marked that meeting, had forged a strange, subterranean link between them. He had thought about her all the time over the past two years; he was intensely curious about her, even more so now that he had seen her again. She was so fragile, with her light, fluttering hair and her sad eyes. He kept wanting to touch her; but that would be madness. This was not a girl you could risk touching, not any more. He sensed that the merest touch of a hand would make her terrified. She was like a wild bird in a cage, ready to dash itself to death against the bars if a hand reached out to it.
Carefully, keeping his voice casual, he asked, ‘Who do you take after—your father or your mother?’
‘Neither,’ Antonia said, but it wasn’t quite true. She was a mixture of them both. She inherited her colouring from her mother. Annette Cabot was a beautiful woman, blonde and classically elegant, blue-eyed, a little icy. Antonia inherited her artistic talent from her father, and her shyness.
She had been sent away to school at an early age, had spent her vacations in summer school or been sent on skiing holidays in winter, and then, when she was eighteen, had been sent to Italy to study art.
All Antonia’s friends had said she was lucky—Italy alone, with every chance of having fun! Wow, they had said, her parents were great, letting her go so far away. But they hadn’t understood. She had been far away all her life.