Deep and Silent Waters by Charlotte Lamb Read Free Book Online

men – which, she once told Sebastian, was fair enough, considering what men had done to her in the past. He had seen the justice in that, even when it was him who was paying the bill for a guy he had never even met, who had been dead for years.
    In those first months they couldn’t have enough of each other. He still remembered the wildness and tirelessness with which they had made love. Clea always screamed when she came. ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ she would shriek, shuddering with pleasure, her smooth body arching in orgasm.
    ‘No, no, no,’ she had screamed, three years ago, all the way down to meet her death, while the busy traffic moved on and people below were quite unaware at first that she was falling towards them, like Icarus, burning from flying too high and setting the sky on fire.
    At three o’clock that afternoon, the Venetian TV news began with images of the start of the film festival: the arrivals at the airport, snatched pictures of smiling, waving stars hurrying past, interviews with one or two better-known names, clips of the film for which they had been nominated. Then a reporter rapidly sketched in the gossip: who was in town, who had been nominated but had not come, who had not been nominated but had arrived anyway.
    Towards the end of the item the scene switched to the lobby of the Hotel Excelsior. The camera skimmed famous faces, picked up the international babble, then Sebastian flashed into view. The viewers were shown him grabbing Laura’s arm, saw her white, distressed face briefly, before she was tugged away into the lift.
    The microphone hadn’t picked up anything that was said – it had not been close enough – but it hadn’t needed to: the faces said it all. The pretty, dark-haired reporter speculated excitedly, talked about the film Laura and Sebastian had made together, about the gossip surrounding them at the time. She reminded the viewers of Sebastian’s Venetian birth, his marriage to one of the biggest stars Hollywood had ever known, then related the story of Clea’s death.
    ‘Nobody knows the truth of what happened that day, accident or suicide, or—’ The girl broke off, gazing into the camera. ‘Well, who knows? But Sebastian Ferrese is home again, after years in America, one of the biggest names in cinema today, a universally acknowledged genius of film, and it would seem fitting for him to win the award for best director here, in his own city.’
    Many people in Venice saw the report: Sebastian, in his hotel room, bleakly regarding the screen, hearing all that the reporter did not actually say but hinted at; the members of his film crew, sitting in an American-style bar in the city; Melanie, in her room, talking on the phone to her office in London, with one eye on the TV. Laura did not see it: she was in her bath, listening to Puccini on her headphones and trying not to think about anything at all.
    Sebastian’s camera man, Sidney McKenna, drained his glass of whisky and called over to the barman to bring another round.
    ‘Not for me,’ Valerie Hyde said, nursing her Cinzano, her black eyes smouldering.
    ‘Girlie, you look as if you badly need a few drinks.’ Sidney rarely spoke much, but when he did he was usually blunt and incisive.
    ‘Don’t start on me, Sid,’ she snapped. ‘I’m not in the mood.’
    ‘We can see that. You’ve been grim ever since she showed up. It was bound to happen one day – the film business is a small world.’
    ‘She’s bad for him. If he hadn’t met her, Clea would be alive today.’
    There was silence in their little group; people glanced furtively at each other, the bar so quiet that you could hear the slap, slap, slap of the water in the side canal on which it stood.
    ‘Better not say that to anyone else,’ Sidney said softly. ‘Unless you want to destroy him. Is that what you want, Val?’
    ‘Sod off.’ She finished her drink and got up. ‘I’m going for a walk.’
    As she went out she met an American journalist who