Her clothes felt stiff from the unclean canal water, and they didn’t exactly smell that great either.

As Keira stashed her items back in her purse, she saw a stream of missed calls from Cristiano, and, just to complicate her mind even further, another text message from Shane. It just said, simply:

Keira?

She felt terrible about ignoring him, but she just couldn’t handle Shane on top of everything else right now. She deleted the message, put her phone in her purse, and left the hostel.

Out on the streets, Keira was still unsure what to do with herself. She and Cristiano had planned to attend the street festival celebration for All Saints’ Day, the costume ball. She wondered whether he would go in case she turned up, with her luggage in tow. She didn’t want to risk seeing him again. She was so embarrassed and hurt by what had happened back on the gondola.

From her purse, she heard her phone start to ring. Expecting it to be Cristiano again, she took it out, but saw with surprise that it was her mom calling. She quickly calculated in her head that in New York it was midnight. It was very unlike her mom to call her so late.

“Is everything okay?” Keira asked when she answered the call.

“Yes, I stayed up late so I could call you. It’s not too early there, is it? I didn’t wake you?”

Keira felt her heart swell at the sweet gesture of her mom. But that still didn’t explain why she’d gone out of her way to stay up in order to call Keira.

“You didn’t wake me, no,” Keira confirmed. “But why did you want to talk in the first place?”

“I just thought you might need some support.”

Keira’s mom was terrible at lying.

“Someone’s spoken to you,” Keira said. “Who?”

If there was one thing her mom was worse at than lying it was holding her ground.

“Elliot, from work. He said you were thinking of quitting.”

Keira was shocked to hear that Elliot had been in touch with her mom of all people. It seemed like he was really going out of his way to help her, even though he had no idea the true extent of what was going on.

“I am,” Keira replied. “I’ve had some bad luck here. Bad omens.”

“This is a once in a lifetime experience, Keira,” her mom replied. “What could possibly be so bad that you’d want to leave?”

“I don’t know, losing my laptop. Ruining all my notes by accident. Getting pickpocketed.”

She avoided mentioning Cristiano’s name. Her mom would surely not approve of her moving on so quickly from Shane, especially since she’d thought she’d moved on too quickly after Zach in the first place.

“Honey, that sounds tough,” her mom soothed. “But I have to ask you a question. What city are you in right now?”

Keira looked ahead of her, at the sight of the exquisite Venetian architecture, the impossible canal, the extraordinary glamour.