Christmas in Venice. Lucy Gordon

won’t you have it downstairs on the stall?’

      ‘Some yes, but some will be sold, or given away, or broken. So I must have spares nearby.’

      ‘Doesn’t the hotel provide you with storage space?’

      ‘Of course, but—I’ve brought rather more than I should. I thought I could make it all right.’

      Later she was to discover that this was his way: bend the rules and worry about the practical problems afterwards. And it usually did work out, because he had such charm and confidence. Even then, ten minutes after their meeting, Sonia found herself saying, ‘Look, I don’t mind—if there isn’t too much.’

      ‘There is nothing—almost nothing—you’ll never notice it.’

      In fact there were ten large boxes, but she didn’t see the danger until they were all crowded into her room so that she could barely move. And then she lacked the heart to tell him to take them away. She’d even helped him carry them in. She’d actually offered. He was like that.

      ‘Never mind,’ she said brightly. ‘There won’t be so much when you’ve set up your stall.’

      ‘It’s up,’ he explained. ‘This is just the extras. You really are a bit cramped, aren’t you?’

      She gave him a baleful look.

      ‘There’s nothing for it,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I shall have to take you out to dinner.’

      ‘That will be impossible,’ she said crossly.

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Because all my clothes are in the wardrobe that is now completely blocked by your boxes.’

      It took them ten minutes to get the wardrobe door clear, and then he wouldn’t let her choose her dress in peace.

      ‘Not that one,’ he said, dismissing a deep blue silk that she’d bought specially for this trip. ‘The simple white one. It’s far more you.’

      By this time she was beyond argument. In fact, beyond speech.

      ‘I’ll call for you in one hour,’ he said. Halfway out of the door he looked back, ‘By the way, what is your name, please?’

      ‘Sonia,’ she said, dazed. ‘Sonia Crawford.’

      ‘Grazie, Sonia. My name is Francesco Bartini.’

      ‘How kind of you to tell me—finally.’

      He grinned. ‘Yes, perhaps we should have been formally introduced before you—that is, before I—’

      ‘Get out,’ she said, breathing fire. ‘Get out while you’re still safe.’

      ‘Beautiful signorina, I haven’t been safe since I opened that door. And nor—I must confess—have you.’

      ‘Out!’

      ‘An hour.’

      He vanished. At once a light seemed to have gone out of the room. Sonia stared at the door, torn between the impulse to hurl something and an even bigger impulse to yield to the smile that seemed to be taking possession of her whole body.

      And the really annoying thing was that she discovered she actually did look best in the simple white dress.

      Sonia came out of her reverie to find that she was smiling. However badly their love had ended, it had begun in sunshine and delight. Francesco had been thirty-three then, but so comical and light-hearted that he’d seemed little more than a boy, with a boy’s impulsive enthusiasms. Better to remember him like that than as the domestic tyrant he became, or the embittered man of their last meeting.

      Nor, however hard she tried, could she silence the voice that whispered the ending hadn’t been inevitable, that something better could have grown from that first moment when he’d stared at her nakedness, smiling with admiration.

      If she concentrated she could banish the lonely hotel room, and see again his expression, full of shock and the start of longing, feel again the happiness that just the sight of him had once brought her…

      She forced herself back to reality. What was the use of thinking like that?

      There was a knock on the door, and with a start she realised how much time had passed. This would be Tomaso to fetch her to the hospital. Slowly she went to the door, and opened it.

      But it wasn’t Tomaso. It was Francesco. And his eyes, as they gazed on her pregnancy, were once again full of shock.