by Evie Blake
And now she imagines they are not just on any bed in a hotel in Venice, but on their marriage bed. They are making love as if for the first time, the scent of wild roses mingling with the pure tang of their arousal. This day she is free, for the moment Theo said I do, her fear disappeared, and the knot of their love tightened around her heart. She imagines a glittering day in Venice, sunlight streaming through the open window, holding up her hand, and a gold band upon her finger, shining with promise.
They are falling, cascading together, as tender on each other’s naked bodies as soft rain on a summer’s day. She is stunned by the release she feels. She has never felt this way before. I love you. The words are so crystal clear inside her head she is not sure whether she has actually spoken them out loud. Yet her lover is silent, caressing her, holding her within his arms, unaware of her silent declaration.
Gradually they untwine from each other’s bodies and sit back against the bedstead. Theo puts his arm around her shoulders. She would like to stay like this forever, in the comfort of stillness after such passion, listening to the sounds of Venice: the clatter of footsteps outside and the voices of Italians and tourists all mixed up, the lap of the canal, and the odd motorboat buzzing past, a clock striking two, and the ghosts of past lovers whispering through the windowpanes. Yet Theo stirs, breaking through the surface of their silence.
‘Have you considered my question, Valentina?’
‘What question?’ she asks lightly, stroking his bare shoulders and inhaling his longed-for scent.
He drops his arm from around her shoulders and turns to her, looking at her earnestly.
‘The one I asked you ten days ago, when I had to go away.’
She shakes her head, trying to look as if she has forgotten, as if it’s not important now.
‘I want you to be my girlfriend,’ Theo says, stroking her hair. ‘Can you trust me now? Do you think you can love me?’
Again inside her heart she hears a tiny voice, oh yes, yes, yes. A voice long silenced, put out in the cold when she was young and forgotten about. She wants to let it speak. Only this morning she decided she would tell him she loved him. While they were making love, the words sang out within her body. Yet now Valentina cannot bring this voice past the lump in her throat. She cannot open her lips and give Theo what he wants. To hear her say it.
‘Valentina,’ says Theo, giving her a blinding look, ‘I love you. From the moment I saw you on the metro, I have loved you . . .’
She sits back against the pillows as if he has hit her, forcing him to drop his hand from her hair.
‘No, it’s not possible. Don’t say that,’ she whispers hoarsely, trying to fight back the tears.
‘I love you,’ he repeats, transfixing her with the passion of his gaze. ‘I know you don’t think you are worth it, but you are. Can’t you see what all this is about?’
She shakes her head, unable to speak.
‘The night I met you, I fell in love with you because you are such a free spirit. Finally I had met someone who didn’t want to possess me, or control me. You let me be free, Valentina. And I loved you for it.’
She looks at him in awe, beginning to comprehend.
‘Do you remember how it was? When we used to play games with each other, meet up in hotels, make love? It was erotic, so thrilling, it heated my love.’
‘Of course,’ she whispers hoarsely. ‘But you can’t do things like that for ever. It’s not normal.’
‘Why not? Who says that fifteen years from now, we couldn’t be doing exactly the same thing? Playing our game of secret lovers?’
He sighs.
‘I fell in love with that Valentina. Free spirited yet shy; liberated yet elegant; passionate yet never cheap. I never wanted her to change.’
She looks at him questioningly.
‘But you did, honey. As soon as I moved in with you, you shut yourself away from me. You suppressed that girl. Why?’
His words pierce her heart, and she looks up at him, her eyes loaded with unspilt tears.
‘I don’t want to become my mother.’ Her voice cracks.
‘I don’t know what you mean, but then why would I?’ He sounds bitter all of a sudden. ‘You have refused to tell me anything about her. Everything I know about your mother is from a conversation I had with Mattia.’ His voice softens. ‘I hear she is a difficult woman.’
‘Very,’ Valentina says tightly. ‘I think she drove my father away. She was so obsessed with her freedom, with never being tied down. She treated her lovers very badly.’ She pauses, taking a breath. ‘I asked you to move in with me because I was afraid I was going to turn into her.’
‘Not because you wanted me to move in?’
She shakes her head dolefully.
‘Not then, no. But now I do want to live with you.’ She turns to look at him, hoping he can see the truth of her statement in her expression.
‘What’s changed?’ he asks her.
‘This week. Before you went away, I thought I had to suppress who I really was to make it work. It was driving me crazy. Deep down I knew I was like my mother really. And it made me angry not to be able to be myself.’
Theo picks up her hand and holds it in his.
‘That’s all I have wanted, for you to be yourself. But you wouldn’t talk to me, tell me what was wrong.’
She twists round to look at him, plants a kiss upon his shoulder.
‘I’m sorry. I promise I’ll try harder.’
Theo smiles at her sadly.
‘I want it to be effortless for you. I want you to understand that my love is unconditional. That is what the erotic album meant, Valentina. Those pictures were taken by your great-grandmother’s lover, and even back then you can see how that man worships her free spirit. I wanted to show you that you are like her, and there is no shame in that.’
‘Is that why you were in the club; is that why all those things happened there?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Leonardo is an old friend of mine. I asked him to help me.’
She raises her eyebrows at him. She can hardly believe what he is saying.
‘And you didn’t mind that we had sex?’ she asks him incredulously. ‘Or that I slept with those two women, Rosa and Celia, or that I was Leonardo’s submissive? You didn’t mind what I did in the Dark Room?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘In fact I was there most of the time, watching.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘It was very erotic, Valentina, watching you open yourself up, really seeing your pure heart, your liberated spirit . . .’
‘But I didn’t do things just in Leonardo’s club.’ She ploughs on. She has to tell him everything now, make him see how bad she is. ‘He came to the apartment and we had sex there,’ she says brutally.
‘Yes, I know,’ he says calmly. ‘I was there that night too.’
So that was who she heard banging around the apartment. There was no intruder.
‘Remember I had sex with Celia, right in front of you,’ he continues. ‘How did that make you feel?’
She thinks back to the memory of her and Theo in bed with Celia and Leonardo.
‘It was strange,’ she says slowly. ‘It made me feel so close to you.’
He smiles at her triumphantly.
‘So you see, Valentina, there are no hard and fast rules. You are a free spirit and I love you for it. I don’t want you to change.’
She looks at him in awe.
‘You are such a strange man,’ she says. ‘I can’t believe you are real.’
‘For us to work,’ he continues, ‘I need to know you trust me. We have to be completely open with each other. But if you cannot . . .’
He trails off and looks away from her. She stares at the back of his head in surprise. What kind of man is this? The type who shows her so much of his heart? Who risks all?
The silence hangs between them, heavy and loaded. She knows he is waiting for her to say those words. She wants to say them. She does love him, and yet she can’t speak. It hurts her so
much to let go of her old ways. They make her feel safe. She is happy to make love to Theo for the rest of her life, but she can’t tell him she loves him. She wants to stay outside the Dark Room of love, because to her love is dark. It is full of the danger of being hurt, rejected, humiliated, exposed and weak.
She hears him sigh, and it almost kills her. She is hurting him, yet she can’t say those words to reassure him. He gets out of bed, and she looks at his naked back as he walks over to the chair and picks up his jeans, pulls them on.
‘I can’t do this any more,’ he says finally, turning around as he buttons his shirt and searching her face desperately for the answer he wants.
‘But Theo, we can go back to how things were before you moved in. We can be secret lovers again, can’t we?’
‘It’s not just about sex for me, Valentina,’ Theo says, pulling on his jacket.
‘Please come back to bed.’ She gives him her little half-smile, trying to lighten the mood. If she can just make love to him again, and afterwards tell him she loves him . . .
‘No,’ Theo says emphatically. ‘I want us to have something more.’
He buckles his belt roughly, and she thinks he is angry. Finally she has made Theo mad.
‘That is what all this week was about, for God’s sake!’ he says with exasperation. ‘I wanted to show you that I know who you are. All your fears. All your fantasies. I wanted you to know that you are the bravest girl I know and yet you are afraid of the one thing in life that brings the greatest joy. Love.’
‘And the greatest pain,’ Valentina adds darkly.
Theo looks at her sadly. He walks over to the bed and traces her face with his finger.
‘I know,’ he says wearily. ‘You have always said this. And yet I hoped with me it would be different.’
He takes his hand away, and the magic of his touch still taunts her. He walks towards the door.
‘I’m sorry, Valentina, but this is it.’
‘Theo, come on, wait . . . don’t be so dramatic . . .’
But her words are inadequate.
‘It’s over,’ he says.
She knows she should run to him, tell him her true feelings, and yet instead of doing this, anger flashes through her.
‘Go on then, leave.’ Her voice sounds unnaturally hard. It shocks her.
He turns and looks at her with such pity, it makes her squirm on the bed, yet still she doesn’t back down. She glares back at him hotly. What does she care? He is just like her mother, making demands of her. How dare he? Yet deep down she knows she is being a fool, she needs to stop him. She takes a breath, tries to calm down. She closes her eyes and concentrates. She clutches at the words. They are so close to being spoken. She can say it. She can.
‘Theo . . . I . . .’ she begins, but when she opens her eyes, he is gone. He has left her in mid-sentence.
She sits on the bed, stunned. Surely he will come back? Yet the minutes tick by, and Theo doesn’t return. He will come back. Of course he will. This is another stupid game.
She circles the room, clutching her hands, anxiety prickling her heart. She picks up the black album and begins to flick through it again to distract herself. She remembers his expression of disappointment when he asked her what she thought of it.
She looks again at the images of Belle Louise Brzezinska, her body language and how she expresses herself to the anonymous photographer, her lover. It occurs to her that she has misunderstood her great-grandmother’s gestures. Yes, her body is charged with desire, but it is not just for sex. It is for love. And as Valentina leafs through the book, she realises that it is not just a book of erotic photography, it is a book of love and how it should be. Of how the giving and receiving of sensual pleasure tightens the knot of love, not loosens it. Now she understands what Theo is trying to tell her. The most intense form of eroticism is the eroticism of love. He wants her to have it all.
As he kept saying, he is not trying to trap her; he is trying to set her free.
I love you.
She whispers the words in the empty gloom of the hotel bedroom in Venice. But it is too late. Theo has not heard them, and she knows that he has walked away for good. He gave her enough chances. She has lost him because she cannot tell him she loves him, and he wants nothing less. She has to let him go.
Valentina slips on her silk camisole and French knickers, and opens the blinds. She looks down at the green canal, as murky as her mixed emotions. She feels terrible. She wants to lie down on the tiled floor of the room and let the world go on without her.
She wanders back into the bedroom and picks up the old photograph album again. She prays for guidance as she flicks through the pages, her grief blurring her vision so that the images become a mess of black and white. And in the dark silence of her heartache, she begins to rip the back cover. She wants to destroy this book, and all that it represents. Yet as she tears away at the black paper, she sees writing underneath, faint pencilled calligraphy. It must have been written by her great-grandmother.
All my life I have lived for this summit of bliss, when I tell the love of my life that I love him.
The realisation hits her like a punch to the stomach. Valentina catches her breath, hugs herself in pain. Theo is the love of her life. She knows that now. She turns to the mirror and looks at her reflection. In her eyes she sees another woman, and her power speaks to her. The image flickers for just one second, like a projection from a magic lantern. Valentina is Louise, and Louise is her. What would her ancestor do?
She knows, of course. She would not give up. She would get Theo back.
As Venice casts its magic all around her, Louise Brzezinska takes Valentina by the hand and spins her.
Wake up, Valentina, wake up.
Faster and faster she spins her as her hurt, her sorrow, her anger and fear fly out of her. Away and across the cerulean lagoon like a big black bird.
And so Valentina’s great-grandmother takes her out of the Dark Room of her past, towards hope. And beyond that to love.
THE DESIRES UNLOCKED TRILOGY
EROTIC, ADDICTIVE AND EMOTIONALLY CHARGED, VALENTINA AND THEO’S LOVE STORY WILL STIR YOU, ENTHRAL YOU AND STAY WITH YOU FOR EVER.
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