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It was Nora who guarded Willa against importunate fans, snarling directors, the demanding Press. She who soothed and cajoled when Willa threw a tantrum, who grumbled unceasingly over Willa's wilder excesses, who applauded each and every performance the star gave—on screen or off-boosting an ego that was already dangerously inflated.
'I'll show you your room.' Nora strode ahead, her flat shoes flapping against the cool marble floor. 'She hoped you'd come, and I'm thankful you did.'
And that was one big concession, Annie thought, as she lifted her suitcase and followed Nora up the curved staircase.
The usual poky room she had been allotted on past occasions when she and her mother and the usual entourage had stayed at the villa was not for her this time, Annie noted with a faint lift of one dark, arching brow. Nora was showing her into one of the sumptuous guest-rooms, all clear lemon silk curtains and bed-coverings, the carpet a deep-pile pure white.
'You're going to have to fend for yourself,' Nora informed her dourly, her brown-clad bulk planted in the centre of the room. Against the delicate, elegant background the older woman's uncompromising plainness appeared incongruous. 'She dismissed all the servants, gave her secretary an unlimited leave of absence and cancelled Griff's visit.'
Annie's heart sank. Willa, in one of what she called her 'states', always demanded an audience. If Willa were depressed, enraged, or even merely bored, then as many other people as possible had to be in on the act, to witness the performance, had to soothe and placate, amuse and sympathise, had to turn themselves inside out in the effort to make her feel happy and pampered again. And Griff, her agent, was more adept than most when it came to coaxing Willa back into a sunny mood. He was more than half in love with his illustrious client and, for that reason alone, was always the first to be called in a crisis, the first to come running.
But if his visit had been cancelled there had to be something very wrong indeed.
'What's going on?' Annie moved over to the windows and looked down on the wrinkled blue silk of the Mediterranean.
'The end of a love-affair.' The older woman sat down heavily on a fragile-looking gilded chair, staring glumly at her broad, capable hands. 'In the past she's always been the one to end it. She gets bored, or finds someone else and moves on. You know the pattern as well as I. This time it was different. He ended it.' Her mouth turned down in a look of distaste. 'I did warn her. He was less than half her age. A pretty Dutch boy who only wanted one thing—a part in her next film. She hasn't been able to take it. It broke her up and, as if that wasn't bad enough, your letter arrived announcing your engagement. She'd just lost a man and you'd found one. She's no spring chicken, Annie,' Nora imparted drearily, 'and I think she was plain simmering jealous of you.'
A toy boy! Annie felt her knees buckle as distaste and pity in equal measure enervated her. She walked slowly across the room and sank down on the edge of the silk-covered bed, feeling the mattress dip beneath her slender weight.
'So she sent for me?'
Annie's mouth went dry as Nora put her inner misgivings into words. 'Naturally, she's burning to find out what manner of man you've managed to capture!' She got heavily to her feet. 'One word of warning—keep him away from her, at least until some new and fascinating man walks over her horizon.' Her voice deepened, and her words were heavy, as if they were being dragged from her against her will. 'She hasn't treated you well—I've not been blind to her faults over the years. She'll make mischief if she can. At the moment she's a bitterly unhappy woman and she'll try to take your happiness from you. She won't see it that way, of course.' She paused, her hand on the porcelain doorknob. 'If she took your man from you she'd tell herself it wasn't her fault, pout her lips the way she does and say she can't help being totally feminine, completely irresistible! Now…' she sighed tiredly '… I'll go to her. When she wakes I'll tell her you're here.'
As soon as she was alone Annie moved briskly about the room, unpacking her case and putting her things away. The content of Nora's warning hadn't surprised her, only the fact of its delivery did that. In the past Nora had treated her as if she were invisible, and her devotion to Willa had been such that she wouldn't have warned her own mother if the star had taken it into her head to do that lady a fatal mischief!
However, the warning was invalid, Annie thought drily as she dumped folded underwear into a drawer. She no longer had a fiancé!
A quick shower in the adjoining palatial bathroom freshened her a little. The flight to Capri had been relatively short but she felt jaded. And that was owing to her fraught emotional state, she admitted, sighing as she pulled on a pair of light cotton jeans and a cool, matching, apricot-coloured top.
Flicking a comb through her hair, she caught her full lower lip between her teeth in an effort to stop it quivering. Every time her thoughts turned to Luke, wondering where he was, what he was doing, how he had taken the very final slap-in-the-eye of her sly departure, she felt like crying.
She didn't know why he should be so difficult to get out of her head. She had left Seabourne without a word to him, leaving no forwarding address because putting distance between them was the only sensible thing to do in the circumstances. She was missing him more than she could have thought possible.
But at least Willa's problems and the dismissal of the servants meant that her time and her mind would be fully occupied, leaving little room for Luke to intrude.
But he did intrude, damn him! Mentally, he dogged her footsteps as she wandered through the large, silent villa. Through airy rooms and quiet corridors thoughts of him nudged relentlessly at her mind. And she couldn't stand it!
Roses—she would pick some for her room. Even in autumn they bloomed in their thousands in the magnificent, cypress-enclosed gardens that swept via green-lawned terraces to the sea.
But no sooner had the thought occurred than Nora appeared in an arched doorway.
'She wants to see you. I've just made a pot of tea—take it with you and try to persuade her to have some. She's been living on uppers and downers for the past week.'
'Of course.' Automatically, Annie followed Nora to the kitchen, her eyes skimming the laden tray with disbelief. Willa would never allow herself to sample those buttery scones, that wickedly rich chocolate cake. 'Don't you think she'd be more tempted by a thin cucumber sandwich or a very small green salad?' And then, seeing a look of distress pass over Nora's normally deadpan face, she added quickly, 'But I'll gorge myself on your delicious baking, I promise! It is yours, isn't it?'
'Since she tipped out the servants, cook and all, I thought I'd make the type of stuff I fancy for a change.' Nora held out the tray and balanced it on Annie's hands, a twinkle of humour in her eyes. 'I'll fix something less fattening for her ladyship, though in my opinion she could do with gaining a stone.'
Annie had too many memories of her mother's indifference to her to feel anything less than apprehensive as she carried the tray to the room Willa always used when staying at the villa. And compounding her anxieties was the very real fear that the actress had suffered a breakdown.
Everything pointed to it. There was her uncharacteristic insistence on being alone—it was unheard-of for her to live without a troop of servants. Even when she came to the villa to 'get away from it all', as she would wistfully announce, she had always demanded a full complement of admiring hangers-on.
And, equally obviously, Nora couldn't cope. Why else should she have admitted to being thankful to see Annie—have confided in her to the extent that she had done?
Gingerly, Annie nudged the bedroom door open with her knee and stood in the doorway, hardly able to believe her eyes. The cu
rtains were almost completely drawn across the windows, but even in the dim light she could detect the squalor of the frowsty room.
Willa had always been so fastidious, both in her person and her surroundings, and the surly-eyed woman who regarded her from the depths of the rumpled bed didn't look like the glamorous, sophisticated Willa Kennedy at all. She looked old, she looked lost and she looked broken.
