The Silent Fountain. Victoria Fox

      Vivien was desperate to shake him off, scrub herself down and erase any trace of him. Her heart galloped and her lungs strained. Everywhere she turned, her fellow luminaries appeared grotesque, made up like circus clowns, laughing and roaring.

      Jonny held the key to her downfall. Imagine if they found out…

      ‘Leave me alone,’ she forced out. ‘Please. I’ll do anything.’

      ‘Anything?’ He grinned. ‘You know what I want.’

      Vivien shook. Even if she did sleep with him, he would never leave her alone.

      ‘Never,’ she croaked. ‘Not that.’

      ‘Then we’re stuck.’

      ‘I’ve got money. You can have it. I’ll pay back every cent—’

      He laughed, horribly. ‘Come on, Vivien, listen to yourself.’

      ‘I won’t sleep with you, Jonny.’

      He licked his lips, slow, tantalising.

      ‘Come along, sweetheart, you never know – you might even enjoy it.’

      ‘Go to hell.’

      ‘Remember I know about you,’ he said. ‘I know everything.’

      It took all her will not to spit in his face. She was trapped – as trapped as she’d been back in Claremont, hiding in her bedroom awaiting the sting of her father’s belt.

      ‘Jump off a cliff, you bastard,’ she said.

      Vivien stepped away but he seized her arm, just as he had that day in his office. She couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, the world spiralling out of control. Twisting from him, she lost her balance and stumbled, fell, was caught—

      ‘Oops!’ Suddenly Dandy was with them, holding her up. ‘Let’s get out of here, shall we, darling?’ Casual smiles for their observers; it was nothing, a long day and an exciting night; he’d spin it right in the morning. ‘Come along, Viv.’

      Grateful, she allowed herself to be led. And she heard Jonny’s parting hiss:

      ‘I’ll tell the world, Vivien… if you don’t give it to me.’

      *

      Over the coming weeks, Vivien lay low. She became a recluse in her apartment, too paranoid to go out but at the same time afraid to stay in: afraid of the bell ringing or the phone going, and Jonny reiterating his menace. She ignored calls from Dandy.

      How had it come to this? All the glitter and fortune she had longed for, and yet at its heart a whistling void. She felt invisible, a ghost girl, not really here.

      She drank to escape the pain. And one Friday night, things came to a head.

      She had started with one gin, the alcohol rushing to her head, making her eyes sting. Next time she looked, the bottle was empty. That was the way of it, great blackouts, time losses she couldn’t account for. Just as she was nodding off on the couch, the telephone rang, startling her. Bleary-eyed, forgetting, she reached for it.

      ‘Hullo?’

      ‘Vivien, it’s your aunt, Celia.’

      Vivien sat, rubbing her eyes, her blotted brain struggling to kick into gear. She hadn’t heard from Celia since… well, since she’d left. Since the last Sunday service they had both attended in Claremont. The woman’s voice severed her.

      ‘I’m afraid I have bad news,’ Celia went on. ‘Your mother is dead. The funeral is on Sunday. Your father told me not to bother but I thought you’d want to know.’

      The conversation must have continued after that, but Vivien played no conscious part in it. When Celia hung up, she dropped the phone. She drank more. She stared her image down in the mirror and when she could stand it no longer she punched the glass, cracking it like a beautiful mosaic. Alcohol – she needed it. She needed to be numb. But there was none left, the cupboards empty, her secret stash under the bed depleted. Only one thing for it: she grabbed the keys to the Mustang.

      It was kamikaze to go driving. Directionless, delirious, drunk, Vivien was the last person who should have got behind a wheel. It was a wonder she hadn’t been killed, the newspapers said afterwards, or that she hadn’t killed anyone else.

      Vaguely she was aware of heading downtown. Once she had a drink she could work out what she was going to do. Saying farewell to her mother would mean seeing her father again. She couldn’t. She just couldn’t. Her father had been right. God only did look after the virtuous. She had always been destined for the gates of hell.

      The car spun off the road and, after that, only black.

CHAPTER TWELVE

       Italy, Summer 2016

      It rains all weekend, a damp, flat, rolling sky bursting with pent-up heat.

      I’m inside when the Barbarossa’s phone rings. Having been chastised for answering the front door, I don’t go for it myself, and instead continue my work cleaning and sorting the old study. This morning I discovered a photograph in one of the desk drawers, of Vivien as a young woman. Without question, she had been fabulous, gazing into the camera, her blonde hair curled round her ears and a smile on her face. I’d wondered who had taken the picture – from the way she was posing, it was someone she had been in love with. In the background, I could make out the castillo. The note on the back, scribbled in pencil, read: V, 1981. And it wasn’t so much Vivien’s appearance that had arrested me, how young and vibrant she looked; it was the hope in her. The optimism. All that was gone now.

      Forget it, I tell myself. Don’t go there. After my scare at the library, I’ve resolved to put a lid on my curiosity. The man was a journalist, I know it. By now he will have reported back to London, to some ravenous editor in an office on Southwark Street, a woman not unlike Natasha, polished and cutthroat, with the toothpaste-white smile of an angel but with a dagger concealed in her silk blouse. The woman will be celebrating, kicking off her heels, opening a chilled bottle of wine… But she won’t tell anyone, not yet, this story is too hot and too precious. Just for tonight, it’s hers alone. The story of the year: a tale of seduction, betrayal and murder.

       And love…

      I can’t risk meeting the same fate as my predecessor. I can’t risk being sent home. Right now, the Barbarossa is the only protection I have.

      Yesterday, I overheard Vivien in conversation, presumably with Adalina. I was outside, clearing the rain-clogged gutters of leaves, head bent against the downpour, when from an open window I detected her voice. ‘You mean you really can’t see it?’ I fought to catch Adalina’s response over the spit of drops bouncing off the veranda roof, but what followed from Vivien filled the blanks. ‘God, woman, it’s unmistakeable. It’s like looking at a photograph. She’s too like her; I can’t bear it…’

      Too like whom? Who was Vivien talking about?

      I had to get Vivien on side. For as long as I was here, secluded in these hills, I was safe. She had succeeded for years in hiding from the world. Why couldn’t I do the same? I’m used to hiding, after all. Those years I spent at home caring for my broken family – maybe they were as much for me as for them. I needed to be closeted away. I needed to be forgotten.

      Adalina appears at the study door.

      ‘It was for you,’ she says.

      ‘What was?’

      ‘The telephone.’

      I’m startled. I haven’t given this number to anyone, not even Bill.

      ‘Who was it?’

      ‘They did not say. They only asked for Lucy. I told them to leave a message.’