Wounds Of Passion

‘I won’t argue with that!’

Rae watched him anxiously. ‘Patrick, I’m so—’

‘Don’t say sorry again!’ he snarled, and she flinched as if he had hit her.

The blare of a horn made them both look at the road. Nice was a parking nightmare, too many cars looking for too few parking spaces, and sometimes people double-parked, even triple-parked if they dared.

Rae’s car was blocking the narrow road, which was already crammed with parked cars. Another car wanted to get past—it was wider, and the driver was incensed.

Rae hurriedly dragged on the wheel, moving up on to the pavement to let the other car pass. The driver leaned over to bellow something very rude in French as he shot through, and Rae made apologetic gestures at him. Being a Frenchman, he mellowed enough to give her a forgiving wave and a shake of his head; she was, after all, chic and very female.

‘I’d better get out, before you get fined for parking on the pavement!’ Patrick said, opening the car door.

‘I’ll come and pick you up here, on Saturday morning, OK?’ Rae said as he collected his suitcase from the car. ‘Ten o’clock sharp? Then we can get to the villa in time for lunch. Make sure you have your passport.’

Patrick nodded and ran into the hotel. Minutes later he was in his room, which had a sideways view of the Baie des Anges through palm trees. He undressed and took a long, cooling shower, lay down on his bed wearing only a towel, and went to sleep with the shutters of his room closed, excluding the hot afternoon sun.

He had decided to go to the Côte d’Azur because it was not a place he knew well, and he had hoped he wouldn’t run into anyone he knew. He was still trying to make sense of what had happened to him, but it was hard when he felt as if he had broken into pieces—little jagged, dagger-sharp pieces that hurt like hell whenever he tried to touch them or explore the damage that had been done to him.

All he knew so far was that nothing in his life would ever be the same again, especially himself, and that he needed to be alone for a long time, to come to terms with what had happened to him.

He ate dinner in a little restaurant near his hotel, which, like many small French hotels, did not have a restaurant, went for a stroll in white jeans and a thin T-shirt, sat at a terrace bar drinking a beer, then went to bed listening to the constant hum of Nice traffic.

In the morning he got up, ate croissants, drank coffee, went for a walk down to the beach, and sunbathed until lunchtime. He ate lunch on the beach at a busy restaurant—a salad niçoise and French bread, a glass or two of white wine, a coffee. Then he went back to his room and closed the shutters and took a shower and went to sleep on his bed again, got up as evening began, ate dinner at the same restaurant, went for a stroll to the same bar, drank a beer, went to bed.

The days passed in a dull routine which soothed the anger and the pain in him by sheer monotony, and then it was Saturday and Rae arrived, as she had promised, her short black hair windblown after her drive across the border, her eyes bright, her smile warm. She was wearing a light summer dress in white cotton printed with violets and soft green leaves.

She gave him a wary look which tried to assess his mood. ‘Ready?’

He had bought himself a new overnight bag, which he had packed with a few things. He threw them into the back of her car, nodding, climbed in beside her, and they set off. In a short time they were on the toll road, heading along the coast, towards the Italian border. Rae drove with skill and daring, talking all the time about her ideas for the illustrations to the next set of stories.

They arrived at the border and queued up for nearly half an hour before they got through.

‘The border is always busy on a Saturday. Weekends are the worst times to cross,’ Rae said, then asked casually, ‘What are you going to do when we’ve finished the work on the books? Will you go back to York to live?’

He shook his head without looking at her. He wanted to be a thousand miles away from anything that could remind him of Laura. If he returned to the city where he had lived for years he would be bound to run into her all the time.

‘What will you do, then?’ Rae persevered.

‘I thought I might settle in Italy.’

He felt Rae’s leap of surprise, caught the quick sideways look she gave him. She hadn’t expected that. Well, good. He meant to be unpredictable and unexpected in future; he might as well start now.

They were waved through the border a few minutes later and drove along the autostrada to Bordighera, then turned down the hill from the old town towards the sea. Slowing, Rae leaned out of the car and tapped a security number into a panel beside a high metal gate, operated electronically. The gates swung open and they drove through, down a winding path between cypress trees, olive trees and bougainvillaea.

Patrick stared up at the villa they were approaching; it was enormous, built on a number of levels, a confusion of white walls, red-tiled roofs, dark window-frames and black-painted shutters. A fir tree grew close to the house, dropping pine cones on the paving-stones; geraniums tumbled out of pots, a tortoiseshell cat slept on a stone seat by the front door, and roses and lavender filled the air with fragrance; it was a lovely place.

‘Isn’t it magic?’ asked Rae, observing his reaction with pleasure.

Alex and Susan-Jane Holtner came out to meet them as they parked outside the villa.

‘Hi, there, welcome,’ Alex said, shaking hands warmly, smiling. He was a very tall, thin man of over forty, with reddish hair, a thin moustache, dark glasses and freckles.

‘Hallo. I’m Patrick Ogilvie—it’s very good of you to invite me,’ said Patrick, trying not to stare at the man’s wife too much. It wasn’t easy; she was stunning, in one of the tiniest bikinis he had ever seen.

Tall, sexy, with a ravishing model figure, she was years younger than her husband. Her rich chestnut hair framed her face in a wild tangle of curls, and she had wide blue eyes, a classical nose and a full, generous mouth.

‘Susan-Jane, my wife,’ said Alex Holtner, a gleam of humour in his eye, and Patrick shook hands with her, struggling not to look down at the warm ripeness of the body spilling out of the bikini.

‘Rae never stops talking about what a genius you are; we have been aching to meet you,’ she said, then, mischievously, ‘Alex is quite jealous of you!’

‘I wish I could paint half as well, but all I can do is draw cartoons,’ her husband said complacently, sliding an arm around her and patting her on the bottom.

‘Brilliant cartoons,’ Patrick said, smiling. ‘I’ve followed them ever since they started appearing.’

Alex grinned at him. ‘Why, thank you. Now the compliments are over, Rae will show you your room. If there’s anything you need, just ask. Oh, and we were going to eat lunch on the terrace—just salad and bread. Is that OK with you, Patrick?’

‘Sounds wonderful to me; it’s much too hot to eat much down here, I find,’ Patrick said.

‘And the wine makes you sleepy,’ said Susan-Jane.

‘But it’s such a good excuse for going to bed in the afternoon,’ her husband said wickedly, grinning down at her, and she gave him a little punch.

‘Don’t be naughty!’

Patrick felt a stab of pain at the intimacy between them; that was something else he was going to miss.

The party began before it grew dark that evening; people began arriving in cars or on foot from nearby villas, flocking into the villa gardens which tumbled down to the beach. The barbecue site was just above the beach, and close to the enormous blue-tiled swimming-pool set into a wide terrace, where they could set out chairs and tables around a bar counter from which drinks could be served. Earlier, Patrick had helped carry chairs, knives and forks, trays of glasses and plates down to the terrace, and watched Alex testing the lighting, setting up the music system.

Now there were brightly coloured lights strung through the trees and pop music floated out into the darkening sky. Some guests were swimming in the pool, a few were dancing, some wandered under the trees, and others sat by the bar and talked.

Patrick wandered between the various groups, took a glass of red wine, sipped it as he walked, paused to watch a girl swimming in the pool, strolled on to stare at the dancers, and felt his heart turn over violently as he caught sight of long, pale gold hair, a slender body in a silky white dress which ended at the thighs, and below that, long, elegant legs.

For a moment he thought it really was Laura. He took three hurried steps towards her, barely breathing.

Then the music stopped and the girl and her partner broke apart; she turned and Patrick hungrily stared, but her face was nothing like Laura’s. The thick beating of his heart slowed; he felt a burst of rage, as if the girl had deliberately deceived him.

She was staring straight at him now, as if she had picked up his intense concentration on her, half smiling. Her eyes were blue, not green, he noted dully. She was young, not more than twenty, her face heart-shaped, with a softness in the curve of the cheek and jawline, a fullness in the mouth, that was completely different from the delicacy of Laura’s features.

He turned away, heart-sick, finished his red wine, and put the glass down.

‘Come and dance!’ said a voice beside him, and he swung round, stiffening.

He knew it was her before he saw her; she had a light, young voice with a distinct accent. American, he thought. Some relative of Alex Holtner? He remembered over lunch some talk of a niece, a young art student, coming down that day for the party from Florence, where she was spending the summer studying Renaissance art. He had barely listened, indifferent to everything they said.

‘You do speak English?’ she asked, watching him secretly, her eyes half veiled by long, curling lashes loaded with mascara; shyness mingled with silent invitation in the way the full mouth curved in a smile.

The neckline of the silk dress was low; you could see a lot of golden tanned flesh, the cleft between her small, high breasts.