Venice, a Cat and a Koala

In the spring of the new millennium Emma Andrews made the short voyage across the lagoon from Venice to its Lido to keep a four o'clock appointment. Forty minutes later she was outside the house again, with tears in her eyes and clutching a document. There was another copy in a hotel in Venice. As she crossed the road, a car screeched to a halt and the driver lowered his window to foul-mouth her... When she opened her diary the next morning, she drew a pattern of heavy black squares around the date of that day, forgetting its bright spring sunshine.

Six months  before that visit to the Lido, she had been woken as usual by the bells of Santa Maria Carmelo playing Ave, Ave, Ave Maria before the chimes for seven o'clock, and had abandoned the safe warmth of sleep for the demands of the day. She had walked briskly to her first pick-up point, enjoying this quieter time of day when the tourists were eating breakfast, to a small family hotel, "da Bergamo".  An oblique direction, a haphazard  deviation.

She had been asked to arrive early, and on announcing her identity to the receptionist she was shown into an office where the October sunlight was casting its rays through a tall narrow window. When she was a few steps inside the office, she paused at the sight of a slim dark-haired man gesticulating as he spoke rapidly into the phone.  As he turned to look at her, the light from the window imposed a warm tint on his tense face; still talking on the phone, he smiled at her and pointed to a chair on the side opposite his desk.  She sat down, and looked at the gleaming wood of the well-polished desk, at the dapple of light  reflected on to the brass desk lamp, and up at the wall at the side of the desk  where there hung a portrait of a woman holding the hand of a small boy, whom Emma recognized as the man now in front of her. "Mia madre," he said as he followed her gaze.