Prospect, Barbados, June 1994
Annie Carter dreamed of him again on the night it all kicked off. Constantine Barolli – the godfather. Him of the all-American tan and the armour-piercing blue eyes, the startling white hair, the sharp suits. It was as if he was there, he was so real. Smiling at her, telling her he loved her.
Once, long ago, Constantine could make anything right. Could make her feel enfolded, protected in the safe cocoon of his love. She turned over in the bed, her eyes opening to blackness, the last insubstantial filaments of the dream floating away into the air around her. Her and Constantine, walking on the beach at Montauk on Long Island, the millionaires’ playground, hand in hand. She could feel his strong grip on hers, could see the sun on his hair, the crinkling of the lines around his eyes… but it was fading, fading… and then it was gone. He was gone.
Coming back to full wakefulness, Annie felt the cool blast of the aircon and she shivered, blinking, pulling the sheet over her body. She awoke to blackness, to an empty room, an empty bed. No Max. And now, as the dream ebbed away, as she came back to herself, she thought, No Constantine either.
Annie sat up, pushed her hair out of her eyes, clutched at her temples. Jesus, these dreams. Recently she’d had them over and over again. She was with Constantine – Constantine as he had been so long ago – they were happy, as they had been all those years ago. It was all so real, disturbingly real, and strange – and then she woke up and felt bereft, abandoned, as cold reality crept back in.
And now Max was gone too.
Annie hauled herself up in the bed, reached over, her eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness so that she could see outlines, discern dim shapes. She groped for and found the glass of water on the bedside table, took a sip, and tried not to think about all of it.
But she did.
She couldn’t help it. How could she not think about it?
Twenty-three years ago, it happened. Constantine had been her second husband. Way back then – believing Max to be dead following a gangland hit – she had married Constantine, and was pregnant with his child when it happened. The explosion. And after that? The dreams.
Ah God, those dreams!
At first they had not been sweet, happy dreams like those she was experiencing now. They had been hideous dreams, waking nightmares in which Constantine appeared before her in the night, wrecked, smouldering, dead and yet
