Her Last Night of Innocence

Leaning against the windowsill, he dropped his head into his hands for a moment as despair and self-disgust overwhelmed him. Against the odds he had survived a crash that should have killed him, come round from ten days in a coma and dragged himself from an Intensive Care bed back to the cockpit of a racing car. He had built up his strength, and driven himself ruthlessly and relentlessly to regain fitness, harnessing the same determination and focus that had made him so successful before.

Now everything he had worked for was slipping through his fingers. And there was nothing he could do about it—because while he could control his body and work harder, train longer, push himself further, his brain still let him down.

‘Don’t forget that you are lucky to have survived, Cristiano.’

He raised his head and looked at the doctor with an expression of infinite despair. ‘If I can’t race again, I might as well not have.’

Dr Fournier tapped her finger thoughtfully against her compressed lips. ‘When was the last time you had a holiday?’

He shrugged. ‘Relaxing has never really been my thing.’

‘Maybe you should try it. You’ve pushed yourself as far as you possibly can physically, so maybe now it’s time to give yourself a rest. Take some time out to think.’

‘No thanks.’

He had spent his life trying to avoid having time to think. Escaping from introspection had always been one of the driving forces behind everything he did.

Dr Fournier shrugged one cashmere shoulder. ‘It’s the best shot you’ve got of getting your memory back. Since you left hospital you haven’t stopped pushing yourself—almost as if you have to prove to yourself that you’re not just as fit as you were before the accident, but fitter, stronger, better. You’ve done it, Cristiano—congratulations. Physically, you’re in peak condition. However, mentally…’

‘Thank you, Doctor.’ He gave her a glacial smile. ‘You don’t need to remind me about my mental failings.’

‘Needing time to get over a trauma like you’ve had isn’t a failing—and I’m not saying this as your doctor; I’m saying it as your friend. I have a chalet in the Alps, near Courchevel. It’s pretty isolated, but a housekeeper keeps it stocked up with the essentials and the skiing is great.’ She opened the top drawer of her desk and took out a set of keys. They gave a silvery jangle as she held them out to him across the desk, looking at him steadily. ‘It’s yours for as long as you want it.’

And, because he had run out of options, because he was desperate, because it was the only glimmer of hope left on an increasingly dark horizon, Cristiano found himself leaning forward and taking them from her.

‘Go, Cristiano,’ she said gravely. ‘Go soon.’

Chapter Two

‘OMIGOD—you will never guess who’s just arriving…’

Kate jerked her head up, almost stabbing herself with the mascara wand, as Lisa’s shriek of excitement ricocheted off her taut nerves.

‘OK, tell me.’

Lisa, already dressed and ready to go in a skin-tight silver dress that showed off her magnificent figure to perfection, was stationed at the French windows looking out over the front of the hotel to where the Monaco Casino lit up the night like an elegant ocean liner. The guests for the Campano party were already arriving: a steady procession of shiny, sporty, expensive cars pulling up in front of the Casino’s famous Belle Epoque frontage to disgorge their glamorous occupants while Lisa gave an increasingly excited commentary.

‘Oh…no, wait a minute…it isn’t,’ she said now, her voice suddenly flat with disappointment. ‘I thought it was Maresca, but it’s not…Too short…’

In the mirror, Kate’s own eyes stared back at her—wide, and dark with terror as well as with unfamiliar make-up. Just the mention of his name and her hands, already shaking enough to make putting on mascara a very hazardous exercise, were damp and slick with sweat. Why had she ever thought she could actually go through with this?

Letting the curtain drop back into place, Lisa peeled herself away from her vantage point and picked up her mini-bar vodka and tonic. Taking a sip, she almost spat it out again as Kate turned round.

‘Wow—just look at you!’ she squealed, peering at Kate through thick false eyelashes as she came forward. ‘Who the hell would have thought that you’d scrub up like that, Miss Edwards?’ She circled around Kate and came back to stand in front of her, an expression of such astonished admiration on her face that Kate wasn’t sure whether she should be flattered or insulted. ‘The dress is fabulous. Fab. U. Lous. And where have you been hiding that figure?’

‘The dress was Lizzie’s choice,’ Kate muttered, tugging it over her straining cleavage. ‘There’s absolutely no way I would have gone for anything so revealing. You don’t think it’s too much, do you?’

As she asked the question she realised that since Lisa was wearing thigh-skimming silver sequins teamed with vertiginous over-the-knee black patent platform boots, her idea of ‘too much’ might not be completely reliable.

‘Absolutely not.’ Lisa’s eyes skimmed over Kate, taking in every detail of the midnight-blue satin dress, with its plunging halter-neck and gathered pleats held in a diamond clasp nestling between her breasts. She shook her head. ‘You are a dark horse, you know. I always thought there might be hidden depths behind that Plain Jane exterior you present in the office.’

Kate moved away, letting her hair fall over her face as she bent to slip on the impossibly high-heeled and pointy-toed shoes Lizzie had made her buy. ‘Oh, I’m completely not. I’m one of the most boring and straightforward people in the world—seriously.’

Lisa wandered over to the mirror, leaning forward and checking her own cleavage before pouting her glossed lips thoughtfully. ‘I was really surprised when I heard you were coming on this trip, since you don’t even work on the Campano account any more. I suppose it’s because you came out here all those years ago and did that interview with Maresca, isn’t it?’

Kate felt sick. ‘Yes, I suppose so. Now, what do we need—invitation, hotel key, money…?’

‘Apparently there’s going to be poker and roulette,’ Lisa said, her butterfly mind mercifully alighting on a new subject as she sprayed on more perfume. ‘Just like in a James Bond film. I’ve always fancied having a go at all that. What about you—are you going to get down to some serious gambling tonight?’

Kate had to reach out and lean against the edge of the bed for support as a black wave of panic swept over her, catching her off guard.

‘Yes.’

It came out as a kind of odd, breathless gasp, and she had to pretend to be adjusting the heel of her shoe as she doubled up against the pain.

At that moment there was a loud volley of knocks on the door. Lisa checked the time on her phone as she chucked it into her tiny silver clutch bag and crossed the room to open it. ‘That’ll be Ian. I said we’d meet him in the bar at seven-thirty, and that was fifteen minutes ago. He must have come to see what’s keeping us. OK! I’m coming!’ she yelled as the hammering started up again.

‘You go,’ Kate called after her. ‘I’m ready, but I just want to phone and say goodnight to Alexander. Please—you two go ahead. I’ll come over when I’m done.’

‘OK, if you’re sure,’ Lisa said, clearly recoiling from the idea of putting her evening on hold for something as boring as phoning home to speak to a three-year-old. ‘We’ll see you in there. Unless, of course, I’ve been swept off my feet and taken into a dark alcove by Cristiano Maresca before you get there…’

The door slammed behind her. Sinking down onto the bed, Kate listened to her laughter fading as she and Ian walked away down the corridor. She squeezed her eyes shut and let out a shaky breath.

Suddenly it was very quiet.

Since they’d got to Leeds airport at two o’clock that afternoon Lisa had kept up a constant stream of chatter that had almost driven Kate demented, but it had also provided a very useful distraction from the spiralling vortex of her own fears. Now they all came rushing in to fill the silence.

With a shaking hand she picked up her phone, longing to hear Alexander’s voice. Maybe that would remind her what she was doing this for. And stop her from packing her bags and getting in a taxi back to the airport.

Standing in front of the mirror, Cristiano dropped the ends of the silk bow tie for the sixth time and swore viciously.

No matter how many formal awards dinners and black tie sports events he’d attended over the years it had never got any easier. It was as if the ridiculous thing had a mind of its own and was determined to show him up as an impostor—a boy from the back alleys of Naples. The boy in the second-hand school blazer, who couldn’t write a line in an exercise book without smudging the ink or letting the words slide all over the page. The boy who would never amount to anything.

Damn.

Above the upturned white collar of his shirt, a muscle jumped in his freshly shaven cheek as his old friend despair wrapped him in its suffocating embrace. Damn Suki for coming up with the idea of this absurd and completely inappropriate party.

Damn him for going along with it.

Turning away from the mirror, he thrust his hands through hair that was still damp from the shower and exhaled heavily. Pretty much everything he’d achieved in the last twelve years had been as a result of his need to escape his past, but he had always shied away from looking too far into the future. There was no point. His future had always looked dazzlingly assured, so he’d lived in the moment, putting all his energy and his focus into making the most of now.

Death or glory. Those had always seemed to be the potential outcomes for his life. He’d either keep winning until he was ready to stop, or die in a ball of flame. This struggle with demons he couldn’t see, didn’t understand, had never occurred to him as a possibility.

Yanking the tie from round his neck he tossed it onto the bed and walked across the expanse of gleaming wooden floor to the wardrobe—the only other piece of furniture in the huge room. He’d bought the Art Deco villa high in the hills above Monte Carlo six years ago now, but had somehow never got round to furnishing it properly. In the old days before his accident, he had simply been too busy—travelling around the Grand Prix circuits in the summer months, away skiing or scuba diving or training out of season. And since the crash…

Viciously he slid back the wardrobe door and dragged out the battered leather holdall that had accompanied him around the racetracks of the world. Since the crash it had been as if he was waiting, he acknowledged bleakly. Waiting for a thousand bits of jigsaw to fit back together again before he moved on with his life.

Except now it was obvious that it wasn’t going to happen like that, because some of the bits were missing.