Bartering Her Innocence

Tina could believe it. ‘But she’s paying you?’

‘She is, when she can. She has promised she will make up any shortfall.’

‘Oh, Carmela, that’s so wrong. Why have you stayed? Surely you could get a job in any house in Venice?’

‘And leave your mother to her own devices?’ The older woman drained the last of her coffee and patted her on the hand as she rose to collect the cups and plates. She shrugged. ‘My needs are not great. I have a roof over my head and enough to get by. And one day, who knows, maybe your mother’s fortunes will change.’

‘How? Does it look like she’ll marry again?’

Carmela simply smiled, too loyal to comment. Everyone who knew Lily knew that every one of her marriages after her first had been a calculated exercise in wealth accumulation, even if her plans had come unstuck with Eduardo. ‘I meant now that you are here.’

Tina was about to reply that she doubted there was anything she could do when she heard footsteps on the tiles and her mother’s voice growing louder … ‘Carmela, I thought I heard voices—’ She appeared at the door. ‘Oh, Valentina, I see you’ve arrived. I was just speaking to your father. I would have told him you were here if I’d known.’

Tina slipped from her stool, feeling the warmth from the kitchen leach away in the uncomfortable assessment she gauged in her mother’s eyes. ‘Hello, Lily,’ she said, cursing herself for the way she always felt inadequate in her mother’s presence. ‘Did Dad call to talk to me?’

‘Not really,’ she said vaguely. ‘We just had some … business … to discuss. Nothing to worry about,’ her mother assured her, as she air-kissed her daughter’s cheeks and whirled away again with barely a touch, leaving just a waft of her own secret Chanel blend that one of her husbands had commissioned for her in her wake. Lily had always loved the classics. Labels and brand names, the more exclusive the better. And as she took in her mother’s superbly fitted silk dress and Louboutin heels, clearly nothing had changed. The garden might be shabby, but there was nothing shabby about her mother’s appearance. She looked as glamorous as ever.

‘You look tired,’ Lily said frankly, her gaze not stopping at her eyes as she took in her day-old tank top and faded jeans and clearly found them wanting as she accepted a cup of tea from Carmela. ‘You might want to freshen up and find something nicer to wear before we go out.’

Tina frowned. ‘Go out?’ What she really wanted was a shower and twelve hours sleep. But if her mother had lined up an appointment with her bank, then maybe it was worth making a head start on her problems. ‘What did you have in mind?’

‘I thought we could go shopping. There’s some lovely new boutiques down on the Calle Larga 22 Marzo. I thought it would be fun to take my grown-up daughter out shopping.’

‘Shopping?’ Tina regarded her mother with disbelief. ‘You really want to go shopping?’

‘Is there a problem with that?’

‘What are you planning on spending? Air?’

Her mother laughed. ‘Oh, don’t be like that, Valentina. Can’t we celebrate you being back in Venice with a new outfit or two?’

‘I’m serious, Lily. You asked me to come—no, scrub that, you demanded I come—because you said you are about to be thrown out of this place, and the minute I get here you expect to go shopping. I don’t get it.’

‘Valentina—’

‘No! I left Dad up to his neck in problems so I could come and sort yours out, like you asked me to.’

Lily looked to Carmela for support but the housekeeper had found a spot on her stove top that required serious cleaning. She turned back to her daughter, her voice held together with a thin steel thread.

‘Well, in that case—’

‘In that case, maybe we should get started.’ And then, because her mother looked stunned, and because she knew she was tired and jet-lagged and less tolerant than usual of her mother’s excesses, she sighed. ‘Look, Lily, maybe once we get everything sorted out—maybe then there’ll be time for shopping. I tell you what, why don’t you get all the paperwork ready, and I’ll come and have a look as soon as I’ve showered and changed? Maybe it’s nowhere near as bad as you think.’

An hour later, Tina buried her head in her hands and wished herself back on the family farm working sixteen-hour days. Wished herself anywhere that wasn’t here, facing up to the nightmare that was her mother’s accounts.

For a moment she considered going through the documents again, just one more time, just to check she wasn’t wrong, that she hadn’t miscalculated and overestimated the extent of her mother’s debt, but she’d been through everything twice already now. Been through endless bank and credit card statements. Pored over loan document after loan document, all the time struggling with a dictionary alongside to make sense of the complex legal terms written in a language not her first.

She had made no mistake.

She rubbed the bridge of her nose and sighed. From the very start, when she’d seen the mass of paperwork her mother kept hidden away in an ancient ship’s chest—almost as if she’d convinced herself that out of sight really was out of mind—the signs had been ominous, but she’d kept hope alive as she’d worked to organise and sort the mess into some kind of order—hope that somewhere amidst it all would be the key to rescuing her mother from financial ruin.

She was no accountant, it was true, but doing the farm’s meagre accounts had meant she’d had to learn the hard way about balancing books, and as she’d slowly pieced the puzzle together, it was clear that there was no key, just as there would be no rescue.

Her mother’s outgoings were ten times what was being earned on the small estate Eduardo had left her, and Luca Barbarigo was apparently happily funding the difference.

But where was Lily spending all the money when she was no longer paying salaries? She’d sorted through and found a handful of accounts from the local grocer, another batch from a clutch of boutiques and while her mother hadn’t stinted on her own wardrobe, there was nowhere near enough to put her this deep into financial trouble. Unless …

She looked around the room, the space so cluttered with ornaments that they seemed to suck up the very oxygen. Next to her desk a lamp burned, but not just any lamp. This was a tree, with a gnarled twisted trunk that sprouted two dozen pink flowers and topped with a dozen curved branches fringed with green leaves that ended in more pink flowers but this time boasting light globes, and the entire thing made of glass.

It was hideous.

And that was only one of several lamps, she realised, dotted around the corners of the room and perched over chairs like triffids.

Were they new?

The chandelier she remembered because it was such a fantastical confection of yellow daffodils, pink peonies and some blue flower she had never been able to put a name to, and all set amidst a flurry of cascading ivory glass stems. There was no way she could have forgotten that, and she was sure she would have remembered the lamps if they had been here the last time she had visited.

Likewise, the fish bowls dotted around the room on every available flat surface. There was even one parked on the corner of the desk where she was working. She’d actually believed it was a fish bowl at first, complete with goldfish and bubbles and coral, rocks and weed. Until she’d looked up ten minutes into her work and realised the goldfish hadn’t moved. Nothing had moved, because it was solid glass.

They were all solid glass.

Oh God. She rested her head on the heel of one hand. Surely this wasn’t where her mother’s funds had disappeared?

‘Are you tired, Valentina?’ asked Lily, edging into the room, picking up one glass ornament after another in the cluttered room, polishing away some nonexistent speck of dust before moving on. ‘Should I call Carmela to bring more coffee?’

Tina shook her head as she sat back in her chair. No amount of coffee was going to fix this problem. Because it wasn’t tiredness she was feeling right now. It was utter—downright—despair.

And a horrible sinking feeling that she knew where the money had all gone …

‘What are all these amounts in the bank statements, Lily? The ones that seem to go out every month—there are no invoices that I can find to match them.’

Lily shrugged. ‘Just household expenses. This and that. You know how it is.’

‘No. I need you to tell me how it is. What kind of household expenses?’

‘Just things for the house! I’m allowed to buy things for the house, aren’t I?’

‘Not if it’s bankrupting you in the process! Where is the money going, Lily? Why is there no record of it?’

‘Oh—’ she tried to laugh, flapping her hands around as if Tina’s questions were nothing but nuisance value ‘—I don’t bother with the details. Luca keeps track of all that. His cousin owns the factory.’

‘What factory? The glass factory, Lily? Is that where all your money is going as quickly as Luca Barbarigo tops you up? You’re spending it all on glass?’

‘It’s not like that!’

‘No?’

‘No! Because he gives me a twenty per cent discount, so I’m not paying full price for anything. I’ve saved a fortune.’