2.30 a.m.
The man takes her passport, she signs a form, they show her to a room. Pete is not there. Caroline wants to cry. The room is beautiful, a suite not a room, a sitting room opening on to a bedroom opening on to a bathroom, all soft lighting and cool minimalism but warm too, comfortable, balconies from both sitting room and bedroom. There is a locked door, just off the sitting room, an extra bedroom for a family of guests, Caroline assumes. It’s more a small, elegant apartment than a hotel room, but there is no Pete. Caroline even goes outside on to the balcony, just in case he is hiding. He isn’t.
She sees the boy racer below, on his phone, talking in quiet, fast Italian, smoking. He unhooks the rope and, without putting down the phone, without taking the cigarette from his mouth, without stopping talking, he sets the boat into gear and drives away. She watches him go, then there is silence. Water, lapping, only just, and silence. Caroline shakes her head. This is insane, she is angry now, Pete’s just being stupid. It’s no fun without him. She will go in and call him and shout and they will have a row but it doesn’t matter, she wants to hear Pete’s voice. She wants Pete.
A knock at the door and she runs to answer it, calling his name, believing him to be on the other side of the door. A young woman stands there smiling, pushing a trolley. There is a huge bunch of flowers, spring flowers, a half-bottle of champagne – Caroline shakes her head, half-bottle again, a single glass she notes, her anger rising further, and an envelope. She points to the envelope and asks the girl about it. Did he leave this? My boyfriend? But the girl shakes her head, mi dispiace, non parlo… She pulls out a plate of fruit from the bottom layer of the trolley, bread too, some cheese, and then leaves. Buona notte. Caroline doesn’t want her to go. She doesn’t want to be alone. The girl closes the door behind her and Caroline opens the envelope.
There is a single piece of paper inside, and a small pill, just one, in a foil wrapper. There is no writing on the foil.
The paper is a printed emaiclass="underline" Sorry, I meant to be there waiting for you. Impossible delays here. I’m getting the first flight out in the morning. Eat, Drink, Sleep. Sleeping pill if you want. I’ll be there by the time you wake up.
Caroline opens the champagne, she eats a chunk of melon. She is close to tears. She tries Pete’s phone but it goes to answer. Tries again, leaves a message, trying not to sound angry, needy. Pete hates needy. Hangs up realizing she probably sounds both. She is lonely and tired; Caroline is not very good at her own company, not at night. In the day she can happily spend twelve hours at a stretch alone, but once dusk hits she hungers for other people, for noise, interaction, warmth. Pete. She turns on the TV and turns it off again. The middle-night Italian talk-show, women with their porn-star make-up and brash clothes, are not the warmth she wants. Caroline sighs.
She goes to the bathroom, takes off her make-up, checks all the doors and windows are locked, double locked, drops her clothes on the floor and takes the sleeping pill and the half-bottle of champagne to bed.
Caroline drinks, swallows, sleeps.
12 April, 11.15 a.m.
Caroline wakes, disoriented. Her head is fuzzy from champagne and the sleeping pill and no water, no food. No Pete. She has woken up and he isn’t here. Caroline sits and then falls back on to her pillows, these big, soft, white-cottoned pillows that are so ready for her tears. And then Caroline is standing and rushing for the bathroom, dizzy head and stumbling feet, arms out to find walls, doors, knee smashing into bedside cabinet. The blackout blinds kept night light, street light out last night, now they turn the room into a labyrinth. She finds a door, runs a sweaty hand up and down the wall, clicks a switch, light blinding, mouth open, kneeling at the toilet, throwing up. After she has washed her face, cleaned her teeth, Caroline takes the white towelling gown from the hook in the bathroom and walks into the bedroom.
She finds her phone and there are three texts from Pete, all saying the same thing. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Each one giving a later departure time. The last text says 6.15 p.m. arrival. He will be there for dinner. He. Will. Be. There. For. Dinner. Caroline is not sure why Pete is still trying to promise, when clearly he has no power to do so. Caroline knows how angry he must be, how Pete hates delays at the best of times. She wants to text him back, to placate him, to tell him it’s fine. And she doesn’t want to as well. She wants him to miss her as she is missing him, she wants to cry and shout and stamp her foot and complain. She texts back simply: Don’t worry. I love you. See you later.
Caroline is hungry. She has an afternoon in Venice, alone. She will go out, she will eat, she will enjoy herself. There are things she knows she wouldn’t do if Pete were here, tourist shops full of pretty little bits of Murano glass Pete would never go into, windows of carnival masks he loathes. Pete hates all that tourist crap. Caroline is sure he’s right, and yet a part of her, the part she doesn’t dare show Pete, is still attracted to it, to being – more honestly – the tourist she is. She will walk over the Rialto Bridge and go to San Marco and she will order insanely expensive coffee and cake that Pete believes only stupid American tourists would eat and leave the kind of tip Pete never would and look at all those shops that spin off the square. And when she has finished wasting money she will come back to the hotel and get dressed up and she and Pete will have dinner and they will come back to that big fluffy bed and fuck and sleep together and it will all be fine. She can bear being alone in daylight and Pete will be here by night.
12.55 p.m.
Caroline walks downstairs. There is no one at Reception, no one to leave her key with, to return her passport. There is no bell either; it is all quiet, cool, the place feels empty. She imagines this is a good time for the staff to take a break, grab a rest between breakfast and checkout and cleaning the rooms and then the after-lunch rush as the morning flights that left London and Paris and Madrid land and the new guests check in. She puts the heavy room key in her bag and leaves the hotel, the door locking behind her.
1.00 p.m.
Caroline turns right. This is not the way she came in. She makes a note of the street name, and where the door is in relation to the water, to the canal off-shoot where the taxi dropped her. She looks up and can see, past the narrowing perspective of tall buildings on either side of the small street, that the sky is very light blue, high white cloud filtering the pure blue she remarked on the last time they were in Venice, and the first time in Venice too, that time with John. A city girl, Caroline always looks up to the sky. Not for her the checking of fields or flowerbeds or hedgerows to judge the weather or the season, it is all in the sky. She likes a high sky, and a lot of it. These narrow streets, narrow canals, make her claustrophobic.
She heads out of the small street and into a larger one and then another wider still. Across a bridge she finds a footpath leading alongside a canal, into another canal, broader now, and then sees what she is looking for, walks along and up to the Grand Canal. This is how she will find her way around, this is how she will orient herself. She will not get lost. She looks across the water, north-east to the Doge’s Palace, to her right the span of the Accademia Bridge; she knows the Rialto is all the way round to her left. She will go to the Rialto, because Pete would not. She will cross it and may even buy herself a mask, something that hides her eyes, with feathers perhaps, because Pete would not like it. She will waste money on things only stupid tourists do. Pete isn’t here and Caroline is.
2.15 p.m.
Caroline has eaten ice cream – cherry, rich, syrup dripping from the creamy vanilla ice, fat cherries squirting sweet juice into her mouth when she bites into them. She has stopped for coffee twice, both times an espresso, both times standing at the bar, paying the cheaper price, the price she cannot pay with Pete who likes to sit, take his time to look around. She has stood at the bar and talked to no one and sipped the bitter coffee made easier with sugar and been glad, almost glad, to be alone.