‘Well, tough!’ she retorted, remembering, as if clutching on to a lifeline, his curiously old-fashioned loathing of slang.
‘And—’ another shrug ‘—you know me well enough, cara, to know that I always get what I want.’
She wondered fleetingly what kind of sentence she’d get for murder with this amount of provocation. ‘Not this time, you rat!’
His eyes widened. ‘I had forgotten just how much you could infuriate me. And, as I recall, there was only one sure way in which I could subdue your wildness.’
He made as if to move towards her, and she leapt back as if he were about to thrust a knife in her. If he touched her she would be lost.
‘Get out of here!’ she screamed, when there was a knock at the door. She closed her eyes in horror, then grabbed her kimono, pulling it over the bathing-suit and knotting the cummerbund tightly around her tiny waist. ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ she hissed.
An expression of sardonic amusement lit the dark eyes as he witnessed her obvious discomfiture, and he shrugged his shoulders. ‘Surely you have had men in your dressing-room before now?’ he mocked.
Cressida directed her blackest and filthiest look at him as she pulled open the door. It was Alexia, Harvey’s—the producer’s—secretary, her expression of irritated surprise fading immediately into a dazzling smile directed at Stefano.
‘I thought I saw you come in here,’ she pouted.
‘Mr di Camilla just—er—wanted my—autograph,’ butted in Cressida, knowing, even as she said it, just how ridiculous it sounded.
And Alexia’s expression said it all—this man was not a stage-door johnny, hardly the type who would hang around asking actresses for their autographs. She turned china-blue eyes on him. ‘Justin’s waiting for you in the foyer,’ she said, putting her head to one side slightly so that a wing of golden hair fell alluringly over one eye.
‘Thank you,’ said Stefano formally, and then inclined his head in Cressida’s direction. ‘And thank you so much for giving me your . . . time, and your—er—autograph.’
He had managed to make a simple sentence sound positively indecent, she thought furiously. ‘Goodbye,’ snapped Cressida.
‘Addio,’ he murmured.
‘I’ll take you to Justin now,’ gushed Alexia eagerly, but he shook his head.
‘There is no need,’ he said firmly. ‘I know the way, and I am certain that you must have better things to do than to act as my guide.’ He smiled.
As if he didn’t know, thought Cressida, with an oddly painful pang, that Alexia would have stuck to his side all day like a parasite if he’d let her.
Both women watched as he moved away, the superbly cut loose Italian suit only emphasising the remarkably muscular body which it covered.
Alexia stared at Cressida curiously. ‘Did he really want your autograph?’ she asked disbelievingly.
‘Yes,’ muttered Cressida abruptly, thinking angrily that she still didn’t know why he’d been here. And what business did he have with Justin?
The older girl had mischief in her voice. ‘Strange then,’ she said innocently, ‘that you’ve got lipstick smudged all over your mouth!’
Giving a yelp of rage, Cressida grabbed a handful of tissues covered in cold cream and wiped her lips bare. She turned to Alexia reluctantly. ‘Better?’
‘Better. I take it you approve of our new angel?’
There was a long pause, and, not getting the expected response, she looked at Cressida enquiringly. ‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘Yes,’ said Cressida slowly, ‘I heard.’ She had been thinking what an appropriate description of Stefano that was—yes, he had the face of an angel, a dark, mysterious angel. A cruel angel. But then the true meaning of the word sank in, with all its likely repercussions. ‘Angel’ was theatre slang for the financial backer of a play, with all the power and influence which that position merited.
She stared at Alexia in disbelief.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Alexia chattily. ‘I thought that you hadn’t taken it in. He’s been having hush-hush talks with Justin for weeks now—because the other backers are dropping out. He’s a hugely rich Italian businessman, I gather—or perhaps you knew that already?’ she fished.
‘Why should I?’ asked Cressida guilelessly, amazed at the ease of her lie and hating herself for it, and yet not seeing any alternative.
Why? she thought helplessly. Why is he doing it? Stefano had never been involved in the arts before—the very opposite, in fact. She asked herself the question without really wishing to know the answer.
She wasn’t aware of the journey back to the flat, only of the taxi driver’s startled expression when he took in her half-made-up face and the stiff, lacquered hair-do. He looked as if he was about to make a joke, but something in her expression must have stopped him, and the journey home was completed in silence.
All she knew was that she found herself lying on her bed, tears staining the thick foundation on to the cotton pillow, her dinner date with David forgotten.
Crying, not because fate had brought Stefano back into her life, but because he represented a happier time, the time of her life, and she was reminded with heart-rending clarity of how it had once been between them, such a long time ago . . .
IT HAD been the second hottest summer that century, and England seemed to have caved to a standstill. Everywhere the atmosphere was still and heavy as lead. Even breathing seemed to take the most enormous effort, thought Cressida, as she sucked the hot air down into her lungs.
She was walking towards the park, having arranged to meet Judy her flatmate from the drama school at which they were both final-year students. No one went into the canteen or to cafés in weather like this—they sought the shelter of the frazzled trees, or the light breeze which they prayed they might find near the large pond.
Cressida saw Judy in the distance, gave a languid wave, and walked towards her. Her dark red hair was already damp around her temples, the thin material of her cotton dress limp with the heat and clinging to her body like a second skin. She wore a wide-brimmed straw hat—not, as so many of her peers did, for effect, but because it protected the fair skin which had remained pale all summer.
She reached Judy, who was lying on a beach towel spread out on the grass. She sat up and smiled as Cressida approached.
‘Hiya, Cress!’ she called. ‘Come and eat—I’ve made heaps of sandwiches. Ham and tomato, egg and cress. Cress! Get it?!’
Cressida’s shaded eyes were raised heavenwards. ‘Original sort of person, aren’t you?’ she teased, and shook away the foil-wrapped packages which her friend offered, wrinkling her nose at them. ‘No, thanks. I couldn’t face them. I don’t know how you can eat in this sort of weather.’
‘Oh, you just want to be thin, thin, thin,’ teased Judy as she flapped her hand in the air. ‘Go away!’ She swiped again. ‘Bother these wasps—there’s millions of them.’
‘Well, if you buy jam doughnuts, what do you expect?’ asked Cressida drily, and sank down on to the grass, pulling off the straw hat, so that her hair tumbled down the sides of her face.
Judy’s sandwich froze in mid-air. ‘Wow!’ she breathed. ‘Hot!’
‘Too