One Hot Summer by Norrey Ford

believed it would come. So if you don’t mind—’
    He kept his hand extended. ‘ All right, keep some more for your shopping. But I can’t guarantee a rescuer appearing for the second time, and you didn’t manage very well on the earlier occasion, did you? You need that money and other things, for getting home. So let me keep them in my briefcase where they’ll be safe. No bag-snatcher will have a chance to grab them from me .’
    Common sense. He talked common sense all the time. He made it sound so plausible. Yet the plain fact was that once she parted with her passport, she’d be his prisoner again.
    ‘ Hurry,’ he said crisply. ‘ We haven’t all morning to waste. You’ve planned a programme for yourself you won’t accomplish in a whole day as it is. Take a taxi to the Vatican. Be sure he has his meter operating and don’t give more than ten per cent tip.’
    What could she do? Go back into the bank and claim that her elegant young escort was trying to rob her? A rich, well-known businessman? She might make a run for it, and finish off her holiday in the hotel room for which she’d paid. But if he chose, he could then make things difficult for her. She was clad from head to foot in his sister’s clothes, and carrying an expensive handbag which wasn’t hers.
    She surrendered the items he’d asked for. 'What happens if I meet your sister in Rome, and she has me arrested for theft?’
    His eyebrows lifted. Devil’s eyebrows, pointed rather than curved.
    ‘ Bianca in Rome? I hardly think so. You know she is in Florence, visiting her aunt. Still, if you’re nervous—’ He took a business card from his wallet, scribbled a word or two across the back. ‘ If you meet with any trouble, use this.’ He laughed abruptly. ‘ I’ll warrant it would bring Bianca to her senses ! ’
    So Bianca needed bringing to her senses, did she? And Marco, for all his confidence, thought it possible s he might turn up in Rome? Racing headlong towards St Peter’s in the taxi Marco had hailed for her, Jan turned the idea over in her mind. She felt a sympathy, almost an affection, for the girl. Young and filled with modern ideas of independence and freedom, she would undoubtedly find the slow, even tenor of the long days at the Villa Tramonti boring beyond endurance. One would need to be deeply in love, and fully involved with the life of the island, to live there permanently. So it was likely Bianca had run away. Eloped, maybe, with the boy of her choice. And Marco hadn’t a clue to her whereabouts.
    Jan chuckled to herself. If that were the truth, it served Marco Cellini jolly well right!
    Just then her taxi-driver decided to race two others to get through the narrowing gap between two converging buses, and Jan closed her eyes waiting for the crash. When nothing happened except a great deal of shrieked abuse, she opened them cautiously again, and found she had already arrived between the great stone wings of Bernini’s magnificent colonnade, with St Peter’s church in front of her.
    Going up in the lift, she found herself on a flat roof from which she had all-embracing views of the city of Rome, the river Tiber, the gardens of the Vatican. The stone statues of Christ and his apostles which dominated St Peter’s Square and seemed, from ground level, a little larger than life-size, were now revealed as giants. Tourists and photographers, gazing in awe at close quarters, were pygmies. How strange it seemed, she thought as she gazed over the parapet at the toy traffic below, the insect-humans moving to and fro, that centuries ago, when the magnificent Roman Forum now in ruins was in its heyday, this very spot, now so revered, was the cruel Roman circus. Under this same sky, this same blazing sun, thousands of young Christians had been martyred by those Romans, and buried where they fell. Ordinary people, common people, who worked and paid taxes and got tired and frightened, their lives ending in a mess of blood and stink,