"Are you serious?"

"I wouldn't joke about something like this."

Meredith began to hiccup uncontrollably. "It...it's kind of funny."

Of course. The "arrangement." Barnaby was gay.

"I wanted to tell you now because I'm thinking of bringing them both to the wedding."

"Oh f.u.c.k, Elle's sister. When is that again?"

"This Sat.u.r.day. In Florence. Did you RSVP?"

"Yes, then I completely forgot about it. We were supposed to bring hot dates, weren't we?"

Mish made an embarra.s.sed sound. There was a drumroll of mutual silence before they laughed again.

After hanging up the phone Meredith tried to picture Ozzie at a wedding.

It was impossible.

Avalon, meanwhile, was a whole new movie.

Meredith had solved the problem of the plot by beginning the film at the end and moving the narrative backward, from the tragic end of the love affair toward its blissful inception. The result was a simple, dreamlike story that seemed to occur as much within the minds of the players as it did in the eyes of the audience. In this way she compensated for the discontinuous look of the film-the varying ages and stages of the actors and the changing texture and color of the filmstock all fell into place as part of the heady universe of Avalon. For a silent art film, Meredith decided, rewinding the reel, it didn't suck at all.

Ozzie had not been this pleased since the Macedonian builders stripped the paint off the kitchen wall and found a seventeenth-century fresco. In a fit of excitement he woke Reno and Marcella from their beds (it was the wee hours of the morning by the time Meredith finished her cut) and showed them the film, projected outdoors on the side of the garden shed. The two actor-servants seemed immensely relieved. It was obvious to Meredith that they had long ago come to view the making of Avalon as merely another eccentric aspect of their duties as butler and housekeeper at the villa. The continuity girl's recut meant they might finally be able to imagine a future as actors outside of the crumbling Etruscan garden walls of Ozzie's obsessive imagination.

The following night, Ozzie a.s.sisted Marcella and Reno in the preparation of a celebratory feast. Slabs of decadently marbled Florentine-cut beef were served with simple white beans drizzled in the palest green olive oil Meredith had ever seen. Bottles of fine Tuscan Chianti were brought up from a secret cellar and set out with platters of steamed asparagus, spaghetti tossed with caviar and unsalted bread. After dinner they retired to the library, and Reno and Marcella exhorted giggles from Meredith by performing dirty stock sketches from commedia dell'arte. Ozzie brought out his harmonica and played sly overtures to their scenes. Just the sight of him holding the harmonica to his lips like a dreamy hobo made Meredith feel her rib cage was a spun-sugar sculpture dissolving inside her chest. When Marcella offered her a choice of digestives, she yawned and took a thimble-sized gla.s.s of Limoncello, thinking she would go to bed straight afterward.

When they were alone for a moment, Ozzie looked at Meredith.

"You are a fantastic girl, aren't you," he said, reaching over and ruffling her bangs.

"Depends who you ask," Meredith said with a mock-petulant shrug.

Ozzie leaned back into the library sofa. "G.o.d, I can't believe it's done. After all these years of shooting and shooting, labouring toward some invisible idea of perfection, and all I needed was a new set of eyes." He looked at her solemnly. "I hope you will be happy with an editor's credit."

Meredith shook her head hard. "Don't do that."

"I insist," Ozzie said, so insistently that she gave up arguing. "And after that I want you to direct."

"Direct!" Laughter bubbled up from her gut. "What would I direct?"

"Whatever you wanted to," Ozzie said, looking as serious as she'd ever seen him. "Within reason of course. Probably romantic comedies, or tragic love stories. The sort of thing young women seem to direct. If they ever do, which is a rare occurrence. You're very talented, Meredith. You're able to make sensible stories out of...other people's messes."

Meredith raised an eyebrow to object, but Ozzie silenced her by raising his hand.

"I will not see your gift wasted on note-taking and stopwatch--clicking and whatever else it is you continuity girls do."

"Actually the official t.i.tle is 'script supervisor,'" said Meredith, feeling suddenly quite defensive. "And we do much more than take notes. For instance there's back-matching of the action, which is very important, particularly when keeping track of the coverage for a scene shot on a range of different axes-"

"You can be a bit of a bore, can't you."

Meredith shut up to indicate she was not in the mood to be kidded. She wondered why the idea of his wanting her to direct bothered her so much. Ozzie placed a hand over hers.

"Tell me, Meredith, what is it you want, if not to direct?"

The feeling came over her again. A tingling in her ears followed by a deep belly yawn. The Quest. For a split second she considered telling Ozzie about it.

"What I really want," she said after a moment, "is to know exactly how you know my mother."

Ozzie exhaled. It was the sort of preparatory deflation that indicated a speech of heavy importance was on the horizon. But before he could speak, another voice interrupted him-this one rich, familiar and as American as the smell of brewed coffee.

"Mind if I join the party?"

Kathleen Swain, long back arched into tight jeans meant for a woman half her age, stood there. At her side swung a two-liter bottle of Evian water all but drained. She did not seem to register, let alone recognize, Meredith.

"Well, well. What have we here? Did you take the train?" asked Ozzie.

"Nah." Swain dumped herself into an armchair and threw one leg over the side. "Hitched a ride with my friend Fadi. He was flying over Italy on the way back to Saudi Arabia anyway."

Meredith watched Ozzie examine for the first time a small spot of red wine, or blood, that had appeared at some point just below the breast of his camel cashmere cardigan.

"And to what do we owe this pleasant surprise?" he said into his chest. "Shouldn't you be working on my movie? What are we calling it now?"

Swain looked extremely bored. "Death Is for Martyrs. My scenes were finished yesterday," she said, "and I just needed to get the h.e.l.l out of London for a bit." She tossed her head back and shifted her hips in the chair so that a peach-curve of flesh appeared between the top of her jeans and the bottom of her T-shirt. She sighed and yawned, covering her mouth just at the end.

Meredith felt Ozzie should offer something to drink but he didn't. Nor did he get up from his place on the sofa. Instead he reclined deeper into the green satin, closed his eyes and breathed heavily through his nose. The air was thickening. Meredith felt slightly sick.

She remembered the story Tony had told her of Ozzie and Kathleen, and shuddered.

"Are you cold, darling?" Ozzie asked, placing his hand on Meredith's forearm.

Meredith shook her head. He had never called her "darling" before.

This was enough for Kathleen. "There's actually something I wanted to speak to you about," she said to Ozzie.

"And all the telephones in London were broken?"

Kathleen laughed ostentatiously. Meredith felt she should just leave, but Ozzie's hand on her forearm pressed down, indicating he wished her to stay.

"I wanted to come and see you as soon as I could," Kathleen began, her posture collapsing. "I've been seeing doctors. The ones you recommended and others. One in particular who was actually pretty good and, anyway, I thought it would be nice... Basically I thought it would be nice if...we could..." Her voice trailed off, and she looked at Meredith as though she had only just noticed her in the room. She arranged her face in a wincing smile. "Do you mind if I have him to myself for a bit?" she said. "Thaaanks."

Before she made it out the library door and down the hall, Meredith heard Kathleen laugh. "Brunettes?" she said in a voice that made no effort to conceal itself. "You aren't lowering the bar, are you?"

What could Meredith possibly do but eavesdrop?

Ozzie mumbled something gruff in response. Then Meredith heard Kathleen's voice, scandalized and disbelieving.

"No. You mean she's that girl? I had no idea. I mean, I guess I knew she was Irma's kid, but I didn't put it together until now. Jesus, Ozzie, have you told her?"

Told me what? Meredith wanted to scream. But Kathleen walked over and pushed the door shut with an audible click.

Meredith turned in the dark and stumbled into Tony. He was leaning in a door frame, holding a gla.s.s of red wine and wearing a bemused expression.

"How dare you spy on me?" she hissed.

"How dare you eavesdrop?"

She felt like scratching the stupid look off his stupid face. Instead, she started down the hall toward the stairwell.

"Meredith," Tony called after her in a singsong, "Meredith Matilda Moore."

She stopped at the sound of her middle name.

"Have you been going through my things?" she demanded, privately trying to locate her pa.s.sport in her mind. (Black bag, inside pocket.) Tony strolled up to her, sipping as he walked. "Why would I need to go through your things when I can find out everything about you through other, more obvious, sources?"

"I don't know what you're implying, but Ozzie and I are just friends." Meredith's face burned.

"Oh, you're rather more than that, my dear, whether you want to admit it to yourself or not. What I'm wondering is"-he put a finger to his lips and circled her as he spoke-"how you could be so blind to what is right under your pretty little nose."

"Stop talking in riddles," Meredith snapped. "This is real life, not some melodrama in your alcoholic imagination."

"That's precisely what I've been trying to tell you," Tony said with a laugh. "Now run along to your room. Maybe there'll be a present waiting for you."

"What-" Meredith began, but Tony wandered away.

Odious little man, she thought, stomping up the stairs to her turret room. Creepy bald freak.

Stepping over the threshold, she felt a current travel through her body. The room was just as she had left it, except for one thing. On her pillow was a file folder labeled "M." She sat down on the bed and opened it. Inside was a tidy stack of doc.u.ments. She observed with dread and fascination that the doc.u.ments bore the letterhead of the girls' boarding school she had attended in Toronto from grades one through thirteen. "Meredith is quiet in cla.s.s and always completes her work on time; however, she occasionally has difficulty sharing" was the handwritten comment on the first page.

The phrase the universe reeled flashed through her brain. Leafing through the folder-carefully at first and then faster and more wildly as her realization grew-she came across copies of all her old school reports, excellence awards (one for perfect attendance and another for winning a sixth-grade spelling bee she could barely remember), receipts for school fees in Osmond's name, plane-ticket receipts for various flights to London, as well as photographs of her that had been stuffed into envelopes bearing her mother's handwriting, addressed to Vogrie. One showed her at the age of three, ribby and smirking on a Mediterranean beach. Meredith remembered the holiday, which had occurred during Irma's brief and pa.s.sing fascination with naturism. On the back it read, in her mother's handwriting, "Little Mere in Mallorca, Summer 1973. Isn't she lovely? Lots of love, Irm."

Meredith felt ill. She put down the file, let her hands fall to her sides and stared straight ahead, her mouth filling with the sour taste of unwanted discovery. She remembered Holland Park-her tiny hand held in a man's larger one. The flash of jade.

Ozzie's ring.

But if he was her father, why had he never told her?

For a few minutes she sat on the bed, lost in a tornado of thoughts. Her gaze became fuzzy, then somehow fixed again upon a new object set on her bedside table. A photo in a cheap driftwood frame, the kind you might buy in a tropical-airport souvenir shop. She reached for it. The snapshot showed three people, two men and a woman, standing by a pool clutching drinks in highball gla.s.ses. They were hamming it up for the camera, red cheeks fortified, laughing and squinting out from a washed-out pastel landscape of palm trees and tiki torches that Meredith recognized at once as California, the late sixties. In the background was a swimming pool in the shape of a vital organ. The woman looked as twitchy as a greyhound in her green string bikini. The men stood on either side, grinning for their lives. For every inch of her nakedness, they compensated with high wool vests, thick knotted ties and pointy, gleaming dress shoes. A smoother, more sharply focused version of Ozzie stood on the far left, slightly apart from the other two. The taller man, the one with his arm around her mother's waist, Meredith had never seen before. Not that it mattered.

So that explained it. Ozzie was her father. The American director was in fact a Canadian movie producer, and instead of drowning in a swimming pool, he had hidden himself away in a Tuscan villa. She was, in fact, the progeny of a sordid Hollywood pool-house quickie after all. But her father was not dead. Other than that, however, the story matched up. It explained everything in fact. Meredith's education, which her mother (it seemed so glaringly obvious now) could never have afforded on her own. The fact that she was sent away to Canada to school. (Ozzie was originally Canadian.) The job her mother "arranged" for her in London. Ozzie's surprise invitation, as well as the interest he had taken in her career. And her. All of it made a sick kind of sense.

She grabbed the photograph and slipped it inside her bag. Then she started packing.

Half an hour later she walked down the corridor to the library door. She was leaving, but first she had a question. In her hand was the file she intended to present to Ozzie.

She opened the door a crack, but Kathleen's voice stopped her dead.

"I'm not begging you," said the actress in a high-pitched vibrato (the unmistakable harbinger of tears). "There are plenty of other candidates. But I just thought you deserved, you know, what do they call it? Right of first refusal."

Meredith could not see them from where she stood. She held still.

"As I said, I am very flattered you would ask, but at this point in my life-"

"But it wouldn't be yours," she interrupted. "I mean, of course it would be yours, but no one would have to know. And naturally I wouldn't ask you for-for anything. Ever. You know I could care less about that."

"What about one of those anonymous places- Couldn't you...?"

"Look, Ozzie, the whole point is-the reason why I came really, is that I just wanted it to be with someone I know. Not just someone I know but someone who I've known for a long time and who I trust. My doctor recommended that I come to someone I trust first before resorting to-you know..." Her voice trailed off.

"I know, I know. Poor sweet." There was a rustling sound of upholstery as Ozzie comforted her somehow with his body. "Who is this doctor? The American?"

"Canadian actually. You'd like him. If you want, I can fly him over at a moment's notice and we can both meet with him. He can perform the procedure right here in Italy. I know you hate to travel. I've checked it all out. I've arranged everything, darling. All you have to do is- G.o.d, it's so embarra.s.sing...."

Ozzie's tone became more playful, one Meredith recognized all too well. "What are you saying? We can't try the old-fashioned..."

This, followed by a round of giggling admonishments from Kathleen and more giggles and slurpy half-silence. Meredith shivered in disgust. The urge to bolt now outweighed her need to confront.

After moving away from the door, Meredith paused. She slid the file under the door.

Her taxi was waiting outside.

17.

The Savoy, where the wedding reception was being held, was booked solid. This was a relief to Meredith, as the cheapest room cost roughly the same as a mortgage payment on her condo in Toronto. She ended up staying at the Hotel Excelsior, a hostel near the central station where the room keys were attached to large wooden blocks and the windows rattled in the panes every time a train pulled out. At least she could make a quick getaway if she needed to.

The day of the wedding Meredith had arranged to meet Elle for lunch at an outdoor cafe near the Duomo. The city was so crammed with tourists she had to touch her Ativan bottle twice during the walk there. She looked around, trying to determine whether this was the correct street in the crazy cobblestone maze of central Florence, and to her amazement spotted Elle through the throng across the street. Her friend was doing the same wild-eyed dance-squinting down at a map and then up for a sign. Down, up, down, up, as the crowd frothed about her.

Meredith called out and ran to her, and the two women embraced, reveling in the excitement of meeting up with a friend from home, halfway around the world. Once they had secured a table and ordered a carafe of cheap red, everything seemed much more hopeful. They chatted about the wedding, making fun of the overblown insanity of weddings in general without forgetting to pore over every detail of the ritual itself. What was the bride wearing? Who was in the party? What was on the menu, et cetera?

And then Elle took off her sungla.s.ses. She'd been living in the netherworld of sleep deprivation since having Zoe five years ago, but this was different.

"Andrew's moving out," she said.

"No."

Meredith hoped this sounded like disbelief rather than what it was: a protest.

"He's rented an apartment near his office," she snorted, and pushed her sungla.s.ses back on her face. "No more sleeping on the office couch."