8

November

‘No one goes to Venice in November.’ Mark grinned at me and leaned over to clink his champagne flute against mine.

‘No one,’ I agreed. It was what his mother Diana had wailed down the phone at him when he told her he was taking me away for a few days, as a surprise, and it had made us laugh from the moment he told me about it in the taxi on the way to the airport until now, when we were sitting on a terrace overlooking the slow green water of the Grand Canal. ‘Although there do seem to be a few tourists around.’

‘Can’t have everything.’

‘No.’ I wriggled my shoulder blades against the back of the chair. ‘This is amazing. I can’t believe you did this. I can’t believe this hotel.’

He set his glass down carefully. ‘It’s worth it to see you looking happy again.’

‘Is it?’ I said wistfully. ‘I feel as if you had to spend a lot of money to cheer me up.’

‘No point in having it if you can’t spend it.’

That was true, but one of the things I loved about Mark was that he didn’t feel the need to spend money; he could be just as happy in a tent as the rain pelted down, or the tiny Greek cottage with an outside shower and no electricity that we’d rented the previous year for our holidays.

‘And I know you love Venice, so …’

It was true; I did love Venice. I had been there before but it was his first time. We had spent the last two days walking the narrow streets that ended abruptly in water just when you thought you knew where you were going. It was misty in the mornings, murky and grey and cold enough that we had to dive into tiny cafés and restaurants at regular intervals to warm up. Around every corner lurked a church filled with priceless art, or a gallery selling fantastically intricate glass that was as light and insubstantial as a bubble.

The hotel was a former palazzo, not far from the famous Gritti but smaller and more intimate. Our room had a four-poster bed and a view of the Grand Canal. I was more or less in heaven.

‘I’m not going to want to go back, you know.’

‘It would be hard to get tired of this,’ Mark agreed. ‘But you’d hate having to walk everywhere all the time.’

‘There are vaporetti.’

‘There are.’ Mark had flatly refused to go for a gondola ride, despite the concierge’s blandishments, but he’d taken to the water buses that the locals used to get around. He didn’t want to see the tourist version of Venice; he wanted the real thing. With great difficulty I had dragged him to St Mark’s Square that morning for a photograph (for his mother) and then persuaded him into the basilica itself. He trudged through the tour groups (even in November) with a martyred expression, right up until the moment when we saw the four bronze Roman sculptures known as the Triumphal Quadriga, the horses that had once stamped the air high above the square.

‘I thought you’d like them,’ I whispered. ‘Petrarch did too, back in the fourteenth century. The Venetians liked them so much they stole them from Constantinople, and then Napoleon nicked them and took them to Paris. But they came back here in the end.’

Instead of answering me he took my hand, and we stood there paying homage for half an hour as the tides of tourists washed around them. It was spellbinding, all of it.

‘Signor Orpen?’ The concierge was at Mark’s elbow, holding an envelope. ‘There is a letter for you.’

‘Thank you.’ Mark waited for him to leave before he opened the letter. ‘This has to be from Mum. No one else knows we’re here.’

I watched his face as he read it, his expression changing from mild exasperation to a kind of stillness that made my heart begin to race. ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing.’ He folded it over and shoved it in his pocket. ‘Nothing that need worry you.’

‘Was it from him?’

‘Ingrid. Leave it.’ He glanced at me but he didn’t meet my eyes. ‘It was nothing.’

Easier to pretend to believe him than to argue. I knocked back the rest of my champagne and flipped open the guidebook, because when it came to travel, peering at a mobile phone didn’t have quite the same romance as an actual book you could mark up. ‘So tomorrow is a tour of the islands in the lagoon – Murano, Burano and Torcello.’

‘Murano is the lace one, isn’t it,’ Mark said absently.

‘No, that’s Burano. Murano is glass.’

‘Right.’

I carried on talking about the trip the following day, rambling about what we would see and what time we had to be ready, as if Mark’s mouth wasn’t thin with tension, and the whole evening ruined.

In other circumstances the tour of the islands would have been the high point of our trip. As it was, we dragged ourselves through it, admiring the colourful buildings jammed tightly together along the canals, commenting on the artists’ work politely, and wandering through the vineyards on flat, ancient little Torcello. We pushed lunch around our plates at the restaurant we’d been recommended to try near the Ponte del Diavolo. I read the myth about the bridge in my guidebook and decided to keep it to myself: we had both had enough of death and the devil. Even the sight of Venice’s domes and campaniles, silvery under the failing daylight as the boat took us back, wasn’t enough to shake Mark’s bleak mood. Mine matched his exactly. We had barely talked all day, both of us preoccupied. I didn’t know what the letter had said, but I could imagine it was nothing good, and I knew I wasn’t imagining the way Mark kept checking over his shoulder. The narrow calles and unexpected little squares had lost their magic. The city felt threatening in a way that jolted me – dark and gloomy, with an undertone of rot in the salt-scented air. The damp had soaked into my bones that day, and I couldn’t get warm. Mark held my hand as we walked, but tentatively, as if it was a dead and fragile thing.

‘We’ll be home tomorrow,’ I said, attempting to sound positive as we walked into the reception of the hotel. The concierge saw us. Instead of rushing forward as he usually did, he melted into the room behind his desk. Surely he couldn’t be avoiding us, though, I thought. It was probably that he knew we were leaving so his opportunities to book concerts and tours for us were at an end. ‘I think I’ll be glad to get back after all.’

‘Look, Ingrid—’ Mark began, and the receptionist looked up. She was a cheerful twenty-something, but this evening she seemed cold. For once her smile was not in evidence.

‘Ah, Mr Orpen, Miss Lewis. There was a message for you.’ She reached up for a folded sheet of paper that was in the pigeonhole for our room. ‘Here you are.’

Mark took it from her. ‘Was this delivered to the hotel?’

‘It was a phone message.’ She looked down at her blotter. ‘He read it out and I wrote it down. He insisted that I write down exactly what he said. He made me read it back twice.’

‘Thank you.’ Mark glanced at it and swore under his breath. I reached over and twitched it out of his hand before he could stop me. ‘Ingrid, don’t read it.’

The receptionist’s handwriting was, I discovered, remarkably clear, and I managed to read the entire message before Mark took hold of my shoulders.

‘Leave it. You don’t need to know what it says.’

Mark

Ingrid is cheating on you

she has been with hundreds of men

she is a slag if you have any sense you’ll dump her

she has chlamydia and you should get an aids test

she doesn’t give a fuck about you

or anyone else

‘Is that what was in the letter yesterday?’ I asked, barely able to form the words. My face felt stiff from shock. ‘Was it that?’

Mark nodded. ‘I didn’t want to tell you.’

‘But you should. You shouldn’t keep these things to yourself. We have to deal with them together. You said that.’ I turned to the receptionist. ‘It’s all lies. There’s a man who is harassing us – the man on the phone. He’s trying to embarrass us. He’s trying to ruin our holiday here.’ And my life.

‘Do you still want to keep your dinner reservation, Mr Orpen?’ the receptionist asked, peering at her computer screen so she didn’t have to look at us.

I turned away.

‘I think,’ Mark said evenly, ‘we’ve lost our appetites.’

The journey back was a nightmare of delays thanks to fog and an air traffic controllers’ strike in France. We got back to the house at two in the morning, six hours late, yawning and shivering with cold. The house was icy and I put the central heating on.

‘I know it’s late and we should go to bed,’ I said, as Mark came into the kitchen, ‘but it’s too cold and I’m too keyed up.’ I was filling the kettle. ‘I thought I’d make a cup of tea.’

‘There’s no milk.’

‘Herbal tea, then.’

‘Mm.’ He was going through the post. ‘Ingrid, there’s a note here.’

Every muscle in my body tensed. ‘From him?’

‘From the police.’ He was frowning. ‘Judith next door heard noises here the other day. Officers attended but there was no sign of a break-in and the premises were secure.’

‘The alarm didn’t go off.’

‘No. It didn’t.’

‘Poor Judith,’ I said. ‘I sometimes wonder if she’s getting a bit Alzheimer-y.’

‘Yeah, you’re right. It’s probably nothing.’ Mark rubbed his hands. ‘That tea would be good, actually. I swear I can see my breath in here.’

‘No problem.’ I busied myself with finding him a mug and a teabag, and neither of us admitted – then – that we knew very well Judith was sharp as a tack, and if she said she’d heard something, she had heard something.

I knew John Webster had been in our house.

I just didn’t know why.

 

 

Transcript of 999 call made by Mark Orpen at 22.23 on 30 November 2017

Operator: Hello, fire service.

Mark Orpen: My fucking house is on fire. I don’t believe this.

Op:	Calm down, sir. Please, just calm down. What’s the address?
MO:	17 Henryson Road. That bastard. That fucking bastard.
Op:	Sir, if you can just listen, was that seventeen, one seven, Henryson Road.
MO:	Yes, yes.
Op:	And what town are you in?
MO:	London, you— London. In Battersea. Can you send someone quickly please? The whole place is going up.
Op:	And are you in the house, sir?
MO:	No, I’ve just got back. I’m on the pavement outside. [sound of breaking glass]
Op:	You’re on the pavement outside. Right. Is there anyone else in the house?
MO:	No, my fiancée is at the cinema. Oh my God. Oh God. [muffled sobbing]
Op:	Listen to me, sir, you need to calm down. We are on our way.
MO:	The whole top of the house is on fire. The roof. Everything. Oh God, the neighbours. What if it spreads?
Op:	We’ll take care of that, sir, don’t worry. You could knock on their doors to alert them if they’re not aware.
MO:	Someone else is doing that. There are people here. Lots of people. I don’t know where they’ve all come from.
Op:	What’s your name, sir?
MO:	Mark.
Op:	I’m Suzanne, Mark. Just stay on the line with me.
MO:	Okay.
Op:	And just to check, you are out of the property and there’s no one else in there to your knowledge.
MO:	It’s empty, I think. If Ingrid is still out [inaudible] Oh God, what if she came back early?
Op:	We’re on our way to you now, Mark. You should be able to hear the sirens.
MO:	I just need to [inaudible]
Op:	Mark? Mark, please stay outside.
MO:	[inaudible, sounds of coughing]
Op:	Mark, do not go into the house. Please, just wait for us. We are two minutes away.
MO:	[coughing] I can’t … breathe …
Op:	Mark? Mark, can you hear me?
Op:	Mark?
	[sounds of sirens getting closer]
Op:	Mark, are you there?
Op:	Mark?