Elizabeth Edmondson - The Villa in Italy - Escape to the Italian sun with this captivating, page-turning mystery

Jessica nodded.

‘Here?’

‘Staked out at the front, two of them, would you believe it? They know you’re a friend of mine; honestly, wouldn’t you think they had something better to do than follow me around?’

Delia went into her sitting room, edged round the Schiedmayer grand piano which took up nearly all the available space, and peered down into the square.

‘You’re absolutely right, there they are, bold as brass, not even bothering to lurk or look inconspicuous. The neighbours will be complaining, and pointing out that this is a nice area.’

‘Is it?’

‘Not really, or I couldn’t afford to live here. Respectable is what they mean. What’s up? You look all in. I can see your ghastly husband hasn’t agreed to give you a divorce. What’s he done now?’

‘Haven’t you seen the papers?’

‘Not that foul Giles Slattery again?’

‘No, although he’s one of the reporters hanging round the front door downstairs. No, this is important news, headlines in The Times kind: Richie’s been appointed a junior minister at the Foreign Office.’

‘Hell,’ Delia said. ‘That’ll make him even keener to stay respectably married, won’t it?’

Delia was Jessica’s oldest and best friend, and the only person who knew and understood her predicament, the only person whose advice she trusted. Despite the fact that their lives had taken such very different paths, and despite the fact that Jessica’s husband, Richard Meldon, disliked Delia almost as much as she did him, Delia and Jessica had remained the closest of friends. It was inevitable that if Jessica was in trouble she would come to Delia for refuge, advice, sympathy, good sense, and, Delia not being one to mince words, the truth.

‘How long have you got before he gets back from Hong Kong?’

‘One of the reporters outside my house shouted out something about him being back next week. Because of the new job, do you think? Or maybe just fed up with China.’

Jessica threw herself down on Delia’s large and comfortable sofa, and her dog jumped up beside her.

Delia’s sitting room was like Delia herself: exotic, larger than life and full of bright colours and untidiness. Delia, who was taller and had more curves than Jessica, liked bold colours on herself as well as in her surroundings, and she was dressed today in a huge scarlet sloppy joe jumper, with red sneakers on her feet and large gypsy hoops in her ears.

She looked at Jessica with affection tinged with anxiety. Jessica used to be a colourful dresser herself, favouring the blues and greens that suited her silvery blonde hair and the deep blue eyes set in a long Plantagenet face, but since her marriage she had become more and more neutral, camouflaging herself in camels and beiges and pale greys, none of which suited her colouring or her personality.

‘Come on, what else did the damned reporter say?’

‘Oh, he asked if Richie would be joining me in the Chelsea house.’

When Jessica had stormed out of the matrimonial home, a house in Mayfair, she had moved into a tiny house in Chelsea that belonged to friends who had been posted abroad, and Delia knew how happy she had felt there, in a place untainted by the husband she so hated.

They looked at each other in silence. ‘You’re welcome to stay here,’ said Delia. ‘Any time. You and Harry the pooch.’

Jessica’s dog, named Harry because he had come from Harrods, had been Delia’s wedding present to her. ‘So that at least there’ll be someone for you to love,’ Delia had said with savage percipience.

Richie had disliked the little dog from the start.

‘What is he, some kind of mongrel?’

‘He’s a Heeler.’

‘A what? Never heard of any such dog.’

‘They come from Lancashire. They nip at the heels of cattle.’

‘You believe that, you believe anything. What a stupid little tail, curled over like that. Why didn’t you ask me? I’d have bought you a proper dog.’

‘Thank you, Harry’s perfect.’

Delia knew that Richie wasn’t a man who could easily be kept out of anywhere he wanted to be; her Chelsea house would no longer seem safe to Jessica.

‘Talk about not wanting to take a hint,’ she said. ‘Why doesn’t he accept that the marriage is over, that it’s been a failure?’

‘Why ask? Nothing Richie does can be a failure.’

Delia had her own opinion about that. Richie was a failure as a human being, and not all his glowing war record as an ace fighter in the RAF, the brilliance as a speaker that had taken him into Parliament, his dashing good looks, his wealth, his connections or his influence made up for the fact that, deep down, ‘He’s a shit,’ she said.

‘I know that, and you know that, but he’s no such thing in the eyes of the world, and that’s why I’m now the demon woman for daring to leave him. My loving husband, so wonderful, how could I want to divorce him?’

‘Yes, it’s tough on you that the press eat out of his hand. Did you know that he and Giles Slattery go back a long way? They were at school together.’

Delia saw the flash of anxiety in Jessica’s eyes, those eyes that always showed when a sensitive spot had been touched.

‘I had no idea,’ Jessica said. ‘That’s an unholy alliance, if you like. Oh, God, do you suppose Richie sicked Slattery on to me? Just to torment?’

‘I expect so. It’s a good way of keeping tabs on you, while keeping his own nose clean.’

‘I’m going to have to get away. Go abroad. Only do you think the reporters would follow me there?’

‘What, send out search parties all over the Continent? You aren’t that much of a story.’

‘I wish I weren’t any kind of a story at all. Oh, why didn’t I listen to you? If I had, I wouldn’t be in this fix now.’

Delia had never really got to the heart of the reason why Jessica had married Richard Meldon. On the surface, it seemed a perfect match, but to one who knew Jessica as well as she did, it was doomed to disaster. Her reaction to Jessica’s engagement to Richie had been openly unenthusiastic.

‘Marry that man? Jessica, you can’t be serious. Go and take a cold bath, or hop on a banana boat to South America, anything to make you come to your senses.’

‘What’s wrong with Richie? He’s handsome, successful—’

‘And rich. Is he in love with you, or the fact that your family goes back for nine centuries? And what about his liking for older women?’

‘What older women?’

‘He has a reputation, that’s all. He’s discreet about it, but I heard from Fanny Arbuthnot that—’

‘Fanny’s a tedious gossip and always has been.’

‘Maybe, but she stayed with some people in the south of France and your Richie was among those present, and spent a good deal of his time in the company of Jane Hinton, who must be quite twenty years older than he is. And Fanny says he’s known for it.’

‘As it happens, I don’t care. My past is past, and so is his. Neither of us is coming virginal and innocent to the bridal chamber, why should I mind who he’s slept with before me?’

‘It’s who he’ll sleep with after you that you should worry about,’ Delia muttered.

‘Make me a cocktail,’ Jessica said. ‘A strong one.’

‘You’re drinking too much.’

‘It keeps the goblins at bay.’

‘Yes, it’s a pity you ever married the wretched man,’ Delia said. ‘I still don’t understand how you came to do anything so stupid. It wasn’t as though your friends didn’t warn you.’

‘Oh, trust me to make a mistake,’ Jessica said. ‘When you get into scrapes, you somehow manage to wriggle out of them, don’t you? With my scrapes, I end up having to live with the consequences.’