In The Venetian's Bed

‘Calling the ambulance service.’

Was it possible to edit the information he gave out any more? ‘Why?’ she pressed insistently.

‘To make sure there isn’t a hold-up. My patient needs proper care, which I can’t give here.’ He glanced around then held Nell’s stare as if daring her to argue.

Nell had to force herself not to shout. He was talking about Molly so impassively, as if he were a puppet master working them from the remotest reaches of his ivory tower. She shuddered involuntarily. The past, horrific as that had been, was nothing compared to this.

‘Tell me everything you can remember about the day.’

To keep her busy and distracted, Nell suspected as dark eyes probed her thoughts. She wanted time to collect herself, to examine her own actions. If she had done something wrong to bring Molly to this point, then she wanted to be the first to know. ‘Molly was quite well when we woke up this morning.’ A faint smile touched Nell’s lips as she remembered the light-hearted start to their day.

‘Cast your mind back to the moment when you first noticed signs of deterioration.’

‘Deterioration?’ The ugly word wiped out anything good about a day earmarked for pleasure that had tilted on its axis to reveal a face as sinister and outlandish as any of the painted masks she had seen in Venice.

‘Can’t you remember when she first slipped into this state?’

‘If you mean, do I remember when Molly fell so deeply asleep I couldn’t wake her?’ The way he was speaking…so remote, so detached. She couldn’t bear it. She wouldn’t bear it.

‘That’s right,’ he went on. ‘Tell me when the patient—’

‘My daughter’s name is Molly.’ She would not have him discussing Molly as though she were some test case in a textbook.

‘When Molly first became sleepy.’

Nell shook her head as she thought it through out loud. ‘Why did I wait for a problem to become a crisis?’

‘Because you thought she was only sleeping.’

She hadn’t been speaking to Luca Barbaro but to herself, and turned on him angrily. ‘I should have picked it up.’

‘Get over the guilt and tell me what you remember.’

His sharp voice shook her into gear. ‘It happened so gradually I hardly noticed.’

‘Until you couldn’t wake her, I presume? Has anything like this ever happened before?’

‘Never.’

‘This is important, Nell,’ he warned.

‘Do you think I don’t know that? And it’s Ms Foster, thank you.’ She stared at him with hostility. But for Molly’ s sake she had to go over everything again. Nell started to snatch at whispery strands of recollection from the day—the simple breakfast, the cappuccino froth lodging on her lip, which Molly had wanted to copy…dabbing it on, holding her up to laugh at her reflection in the mirror…Nothing to give warning of what was to come. And why was he examining Molly’s fingertips again? Was she getting worse?

The fear was rising again. It sat on her thought processes like a heavy weight. This was far worse than Jake’s accident, even though she’d been pregnant with Molly then, and still had everything to learn about betrayal, loss and loss of trust. She had survived the disillusionment of discovering Jake’s double life, survived having everything she believed in ripped away, and with no warning at all, but, staring at Molly lying lifeless in Luca’s arms, she wasn’t sure she was equal to this.

She wanted to ask more questions, but remembered from her experience with Jake that doctors were masters of deception. What would this man tell her that she could believe? She had been told so many lies. Where there’s life, there’s hope—that was just one of the many platitudes she had been fed in the hospital. No one told her before she went into Jake’s room that he was already brain-dead, and that his body only lived on thanks to the machines breathing for him.

‘Have you come up with anything yet?’

Dragging herself back to the present, Nell realised that Luca Barbaro had a frighteningly similar manner to the doctors she had encountered in the hospital following Jake’s accident. ‘I’m trying to remember.’ She was struggling with every atom of intellect at her command to try and pin down a trigger. If she could just identify the moment when things had changed…

She’d been over and over it, and still nothing new, and now the past was sucking her down again like quicksand. Jake’s death had flung back the curtain on his secret life, proving she hadn’t known the man she loved, the man she believed loved her and their unborn child. But Jake was wild, a free spirit. He would never have been content with a conventional life with her…

Barbaro was staring at her, Nell realised, his eyes hypnotic, demanding. He’d guessed something was chipping away at her mind. She didn’t want him climbing inside her head, reading her thoughts.

‘Tell me everything you did from leaving the hotel,’ Barbaro prompted.

His manner rankled. He was so sure of himself, so altogether comfortable in his deeply tanned skin. But however much she wanted to hit back, this was for Molly, and she would give him every bit of help that she could. ‘She became sleepy about half an hour after we boarded the gondola. At first I thought it was because she found the ride soothing. I was day-dreaming too…’ Nell stopped abruptly. Help was one thing, sharing her personal impressions with this man was something else.

‘And before that?’

‘Nothing. She was fine.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure. Will you give her to me?’

‘No. You might drop her.’

‘Drop her?’ Was he mad? ‘I can assure you, I won’t!’

‘You look light-headed to me.’

‘Is that in your professional opinion?’

Ignoring the sarcasm, he leaned out again, and so far this time, Nell grabbed him by the sleeve.

He looked down at her hand on his arm and she quickly drew it back.

‘Will you please try to calm down?’

‘How do you expect me to be calm when you take chances with my daughter—when you stand there saying nothing, explaining nothing?’ Nell shook her head. She would never get through to him. As far as Dr Barbaro was concerned, she was the unavoidable encumbrance that came with each of his patients—their relative or friend.

Digging in her pocket, she found her phone. Relief flooded through her; she could do something now. She could ring the emergency services—take over. And the number was…?

Why hadn’t she thought to ask at the hotel about the local emergency number? Because an emergency was the last thing you thought about on holiday…because all it took was one ray of sunshine and your brain shut down.

‘What are you doing?’ Luca Barbaro said sharply.

She ignored him and kept on punching numbers. ‘I’m ringing our hotel.’

‘Why?’

‘To ask them for the number of the emergency services.’

‘I’m perfectly capable of handling this. It’s too late for them to do anything, and you’ll just complicate everything. It will be quicker if we wait.’

‘For how long?’ she almost shouted.