Forbidden by Roberta Latow Page B

accomplished all that she had set out to do in Geneva.
    Pete had indeed surprised her. The call the night before they arrived had been nice, but the flowers, and the card with them, had nothing to do with
nice
, they were most decidedly romantic. And she liked him even more for that gesture. It was what she needed, and he had instinctively known that and had done something about it. To be fair she had been touched very deeply by his words, ‘
all the flowers in the world are for you, Amy
.’ But at the same time a shiver of apprehension had gone through her, and the hand holding the card had trembled. It had been as if someone had walked over her grave and she had known it was not Pete Smith, it had been Jarret Sparrow, because immediately on reading those words she remembered something quite contrary that Jarret had once said to her. She heard his words as clearly as if he had been standing before her uttering them. ‘All the flowers in the world are for
me
.’ And amazingly she had loved him so much, she had agreed with him, and would have laid every living flower on earth at his feet if it had been in her power to do so.
    Amy had placed the card in the pocket of her suede skirt, and put Jarret and Pete firmly out of her mind. There had been no time to deal with emotions, those dead and gone, or those new and tender that with theright nurturing might one day flower. The tremor had left her hand, and a Chaim Soutine painting, Geneva, and the international art world she loved so much had taken over her life.
    Now, the art world set aside, Amy reached into her pocket and drew out the small white card to re-read Pete’s words. She had a window seat and stared through the glass into November sunlight and billowing white clouds. Her mind kept drifting back through the years. She didn’t much mind the memories flooding back, it had been a long time since she had allowed them to. Maybe now was the right time to review those years, see them as a mature woman, when as a young one she had lived and almost died by a
grand amour
. She closed her eyes and drifted back to Jarret Sparrow and Amy Ross’s beginnings.

VENICE, ISTANBUL, PARIS,
NEW YORK
1958–1962

Chapter 5
    The tourists were gone, the travellers had arrived, and it was the best time to be in Venice: early October when the children were back in school, and a cross-section of the world’s most interesting people were visiting. They were there to spend time in this splendid city of mystery, intrigue, and irrepressible beauty. Romantics and poets, painters and writers, this was the time of year they passed through the city for a fix of inspiration, to sit in the sun in St Mark’s Square and drink in the Venetian way of life over a Negroni or an espresso.
    It was Amy Ross’s third day in Venice. She was journeying towards she knew not where exactly but she did have a final destination: Egypt. She was in Venice for the same reason that she had been to Paris or that she was going to Athens – because she had woken up one morning and there was a deadly sameness about it as there seemed to be about every morning of her life.
    It was a good life, a safe life, a fun life. She had an exciting and rewarding job, a good man, great sex. She had worked hard to get those things and even harder to keep them going, but suddenly Amy realised that though she was content, the world had to be bigger than the one she was living in, and she wanted a peek. It was that. Nothing more, nothing less.
    ‘It’s not that I want to change my life, it’s more that … no, don’t look at me that way. I don’t want to change
you
. I love you, Peter.’
    And Amy had meant that when she had said it and still meant it now as she listened to the sounds of Venice, felt the warmth of the sun eating into her flesh, burning away ambition, purpose, seeking. From the moment she had walked away from Peter at the TWA terminal in New York he had vanished from her mind. He and everything else in her previous