So we decided to leave, her and me, just for a while. Just as friends. I didn't know any more what I wanted, what I could possibly want from her. To be her friend? To be more than that? Just to keep her alive and safe seemed like a good ambition.
We took an early morning flight to Rome. It was as early as we could make it but the paparazzi followed us anyway, cameras flashing as we walked through Heathrow. But she wore dark glasses and held my hand and we wouldn't be in England to see the "Vic's New Secret Love!" headlines.
And for a few days in Rome, things seemed a little different. We went to galleries and chapels. Vic liked Caravaggio's Madonna in the Cavalletti Chapel, depicted with kneeling pilgrims close to her bare feet.
"She's trying to get away from them," she said.
I frowned. "It's an encounter with the divine. This is a very holy painting!"
"Nah," she said, "they're just trying to get close enough to whip out their cameras."
She laughed.
She seemed better. We ate proper meals, went for walks, her face started to look a little rosier.
But then one morning, she was gone. I went to her suite, she wasn't there. No note, no message, she wasn't answering her mobile phone. Five hours later I got a call. Police station, I should come down at once. But the cameras were there before me. A British pop star visiting the city might be no big deal, but a British pop star arrested making a drugs purchase in the Trastevere was enough of a story for them.
Later, at the hotel, I said: "Can you stop, do you think? Can you just stop?"
She looked down at the bed and shook her head, and her tears fell like rain.
