Free Accidentally Expecting! by Lucy Gordon

avoiding her, but it was hard.
    Her new credit cards arrived in the post, and news came from the consulate that her passport was ready. She drove down and collected it, then went to a café by the water and sat, considering.
    Surely it was time to move on? Her flirtation with Dante had been pleasant but it would lead nowhere. Forgetting to take pictures was an ominous sign, because it had never happened before. But the mere thought of a serious affair with him was madness, if only because of his habit of withdrawing behind a mask.
    On the surface he was a handsome clown who could tease his way into any woman’s heart. But, when she’d given him her heart, what then? Would she be confronted by the other man who concealed himself inside, and whose qualities were beginning to seem ominous? Would he frighten her? Or would Dante keep her at bay, allowing her only to see what suited him? Either prospect was dismaying.
    She thought of their first meeting on the train when they had sat together, thundering through the night, talking about the circles of heaven and hell. It had seemed a trivial conversation, but now she had the conviction that Dante was mysteriously acquainted with hell. Yesterday he had looked into its fiery depths not once but twice. Unafraid. Even willing.
    Why? What did he know that was hidden from the rest of the world? What was his hell, and how did he confront it?
    She was sunk so deep in her reverie that it took a while to realise that her mobile phone was shrieking.
    ‘Ferne—at last!’
    It was Mick Gregson, her agent, a cheerful, booming man.
    ‘You’ve got to get back here,’ Mick said. ‘There’s a great job coming up, big time, and I’ve put your name forward.’
    He outlined the job which was, indeed, ‘big time’. Following Sandor’s example, a major Hollywood actor had just signed up for a West End play, seeking the prestige of live theatre. Next to him Sandor Jayley was peanuts.
    ‘The management wants only the best for the pics, and when I mentioned you they were very interested.’
    ‘I’m surprised anyone wants me after last time,’ she observed wryly.
    ‘I’ve heard that they value your “self-sacrificing honesty”. Don’t laugh; it’s doing you a world of good. Seize this chance, sweetie. Gotta go.’
    He hung up.
    So there it was, she thought, staring at the silent phone: the decision was made for her. She would say farewell to Dante and return to England, glad to have escaped.
    Escaped what?
    She would have to learn to stop wondering about that.
    The phone rang again. It was him.
    ‘Where are you?’ he asked in a voice that sounded agitated. When she told him, he said, ‘Don’t move. I’ll be there in a few minutes.’
    She was waiting for him, baffled, when he drew up at the kerb.
    ‘Sorry to hassle you,’ he said as she got in. ‘But I need your help urgently. I’ve had a call from a man who owns a villa a few miles away and wants me to sell it. I’m going up there now, and I need a great photographer, so of course I thought of you.’
    ‘I’m flattered, but my experience is showbiz, not real estate.’
    ‘Selling a house can be a kind of showbiz, especially a house like this. In the nineteenth century, it was notorious. The owner had a wife and three mistresses and kept each one in a different wing. Then he was murdered.’
    ‘Good for them.’
    He laughed. ‘It’s odd how people always assume that it was the women.’
    ‘If it wasn’t, it should have been,’ Ferne said without hesitation.
    ‘It probably was. The police never found out. I want you to bring out the drama, while also making it look a comfortable place to live.’
    After an hour they came to the villa, set on a hill with an extravagant outline, as though it had been built as part of a grand opera. Inside, the place was shabby with few modern comforts. The owner, a tubby, middle-aged man, followed her around, pointing out what he considered the attractions, but she soon left him behind