In my rush to get away from him I’d become totally lost. My brand-new boots pinched horribly as I slipped and scurried across the wet worn flagstones, under green flaking arches, along narrow alleyways, beside stagnant canals, and finally into a little square where I stopped to catch my breath.

      I glanced round. The rain had found its way into the square after me, but not the strange man. There was no one to be seen. Ridiculously, I almost wished that I’d stopped being so paranoid and just asked him what he wanted. That’s what happens when you spend too much time on your own. Maybe this trip wasn’t such a good idea after all. Not right. Not healthy. And just then I would have preferred to be with anyone, even a weirdo, rather than, like now, totally alone.

      I took out my mobile. A call to Hazel, my mate and business partner who was holding the fort back in London, should sort me out. She was the one who’d told me to fuck off and get out of her face. In the most caring kind of way.

      ‘How’s it going?’ I could tell Hazel was busy, and distracted. Probably a client was standing by the counter as she talked, waiting to pay. In the background, red buses rumbling by. The pedestrian crossing beeping just outside our shop. ‘Found any good outlets yet?’

      ‘Some. Most of the glass shops are very quiet this time of year. And their stuff is so – quaint. Not sure our super-contemporary clients want fussy little seashells and conches scattered all over their minimalist interiors.’

      ‘Well, think outside the box and find something cutting-edge, then. Been out to the workshops on Murano yet?’

      ‘Give me a chance! I’ve only been here two days!’

      ‘Two more to go, then. So you’d better get your skates on, girl. And there’s no need to be petulant with me. We’ve got to justify sending you over there on expenses. So. What about your leisure time? Any nice men to take your mind off things? It’s the most romantic city on earth, after all.’

      ‘Yeah. Rub it in, why don’t you. Especially with Valentine’s Day just around the corner and everyone getting ready for Carnivale with their masks and costumes and all. I must be the only person here without a lover.’ I thumped my backside down on the rim of an old well in the middle of the square. A pigeon came up, tilted its head and pecked experimentally at my toe. ‘And to top it all I’ve got a stalker.’

      Hazel cackled. ‘You wish!’

      ‘Seriously. Everywhere I go, every shop, every corner, he’s there.’ The well was damp, and so now was my bottom. ‘Watching me.’

      ‘If you say so, doll. What does he look like?’

      ‘Like a stalker! You know, tall, long dark coat, some kind of brimmed hat, a fedora thing – I haven’t seen his face, but it’s like he’s this shadow, sliding over the walls behind me, following me everywhere.’

      ‘Sounds like the kinky fantasy of a frustrated old mare to me.’

      ‘It’s true. He exists!’ I protested, laughing nevertheless. ‘I first saw him passing down the Grand Canal on a vaporetto not long after I got here. Then coming out of Harry’s Bar last night. He was even outside my hotel this morning. But it’s funny you should use the word “kinky” …’

      As always she’d hit the nail on the head. Inside the head, even. She knew the way my mind worked, how it basically revolves around sex or the lack of it. We were bosom mates – no, not that kind of bosom. Neither of us are – were – that way inclined. But she just knew me so well after hours, nights, weekends, years of talking long into the night about our life and loves. She knew how splitting up with my latest married man was inevitable. They always went back to their wives. But to top it all I was pushing forty, my faithful stock of fuck buddies had also run out and she certainly wasn’t prepared to lend me her precious Tony.

      So, yes, I had fantasised about the scary stalker.

      More than that, I’d actually slowed down deliberately coming out of Harry’s Bar last night, wondering if he might turn and follow me back to the Danieli Hotel. I picked my way over the bridge and along the wide promenade that ran from the bar along the outer edge of Piazza San Marco, trying not to get my feet wet in the remaining puddles from the rain and the acqua alta that had flooded over the piazza at high tide. I let my long red cashmere scarf trail behind me like bait as the cold breeze blew off the black lagoon and whipped my hair across my eyes. But when I looked back he wasn’t there.

      At the hotel I wandered across the large tiled hallway and into the warm piano bar humming with people, the sweet smell of cocktails and the saccharine melodies being picked out by an ancient pianist. I took the cocktail that the mustachioed barman flourished at me. I’d never travelled on my own before, and on my first night I’d automatically scanned the place for talent as if I was still cruising the bars in London, painted on my best smile, hitched up my tits in my best push-up bra, crossed my legs provocatively, Sharon Stone-style. Realised there was nothing doing. I was being comprehensively ignored. And when I realised that the manager was observing me from the doorway, wondering if I was a hooker, I shrugged at him, jangled my room key ostentatiously and went up to bed.

      But something had definitely come over me since then. In the two days I’d been in Venice a kind of charmed fatigue was creeping into my bones along with the damp air of the city. I couldn’t be bothered to toy with what was in front of me, the jostling crowds, proposing couples, even random barmen or winking Italians. I wanted the imaginary, the impossible, something ephemeral that I was sure was waiting just out of sight.

      That second night I hung around in the bar for at