‘D’you have a number or anything?’ she said. ‘In case I — we need to contact you?’
With a grimace the detective patted himself down, eventually locating a worn card with his contact details in a breast pocket. He handed it to her.
‘In case you remember anything?’ he supplied. And then Sandro Cellini smiled, a sad, crinkled, kindly smile. ‘Thanks, Signorina Delfino,’ he said. ‘It’s been nice talking to you.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
At the reception desk of the Women’s Centre, Giulietta Sarto — Giuli to her friends, but not here — was fifteen minutes from the end of her shift and taking a risk. She sneaked the mobile out of her bag under the counter and peeped at the screen. She smiled.
Mobiles were supposed to be switched off at the door and kept off; if anyone had heard the trill that announced a text message, she would have been reprimanded. But that was because the unspoken rule was: keep the phone on silent. Nobody actually switched them off: not the cleaners, not the doctor on duty, not the nurses, not the security guy. They needed a security guy at the Women’s Centre, not because of the women but because of the men that followed them in: the batterers and stabbers, the ones who branded their wives’ faces on the stove and the ones who told them they loved them. The ones who wanted to force them to have the kid, the ones who slipped abortion drugs into their coffee.
The heat didn’t help, that was for sure, and their clientele couldn’t afford a month on a sunlounger at Forte dei Marmi either. August wasn’t a quiet month at the Women’s Centre. Anna Niescu’s problem was by no means as bad as it got; Anna had plenty going for her, compared with most of the deadbeats that came through the door.
The phone bleeped again, and the pale face and lank hair of the doctor on duty appeared at the door of her consulting room. ‘Sarto,’ she said wearily.
‘Turning it off,’ said Giuli, smiling shamefacedly, holding the thing up. When the woman’s head disappeared, she took a look. But this one was from Sandro.
Lunch?
Sure, she typed, her dark maroon fingernails clicking across the screen, porta romana midday-ish? Giuli could text faster than anyone she knew. ‘Shows your motor skills are intact at least,’ Sandro would say, with wry respect. Because with what she’d put her nervous system through, it was nice to know.
Sandro wanted something: she was supposed to be in the office this afternoon anyway, at two-thirty. He was going to take her along with him to talk to Anna again.
Giuli held her finger on the off button until the little screen dwindled and died. Along the corridor in an examining room a woman cried out in pain, a small, hopeless sound, like a cat in a back alley. Giuli thought of Anna’s bright face as she smiled down at that belly. A baby: a joy. The equation was as uncomplicated as that.
Looking down, Giuli realized she had her hand protectively on her own stomach. As if: the very thought raised the hairs on the back of her neck. Giuli had never wanted a baby; she wasn’t going to start at her age. But the chain of thought, lighting up its path in her brain like the display on an arcade slot machine, was irresistible. Why now — why did Anna Niescu come into her life now? And why did Sandro want to talk to her over lunch?
But before she even pushed through the door to the modest self-service restaurant — open all year round, on the viale in the great arched shadow of the Porta Romana — Giuli had a pretty good idea why. She could see him through the glass, sitting in a corner, frowning down at his hands tented on the formica table in front of him, beside his old battered panama hat.
‘Luisa’s put you up to this, hasn’t she?’ she said, swinging her bag down beside her, admiring in passing the new brown on her arms, the fine bleached hairs from a week in the sun.
‘Let’s get something to eat,’ said Sandro, starting up. He piled stuff on her tray: Russian salad, bresaola, two rolls, a piece of cake.
‘And she told you to feed me up while you were at it?’ Giuli set down the tray and fastidiously divided the oozing mayonnaise of the salad from the meat.
‘You’re going to eat it, aren’t you?’ said Sandro, impatiently.
She forked up a load, pointed it at his plate, where two sweating slices of pecorino lay unadorned beside some small hard pears. ‘If you do,’ she said, and cheerfully began to chew, hungry after all. Starving, in fact. Sandro eyed her: apparently her appetite was worrying him now, on top of whatever else.
Giuli decided that if he was going to interrogate her about her private life, he’d get no help from her.
‘How’s it going?’ she said. ‘Have you tracked him down yet?’
‘Maybe,’ said Sandro cautiously. ‘I think he might be up in Monterosso, you know, in the Cinque Terre, with his family. August, you know; at the bank they said he left on Friday.’ Giuli thought she saw a shadow pass over his face as he said it.
‘You think?’
‘The name’s right,’ said Sandro. He eyed the cheese on his plate, and gingerly cut off a corner. ‘I’m not a hundred per cent sure about the face. Maybe we can get the staff mugshot online, and Anna can take a look.’
‘You sickening for something?’ said Giuli. Her own plate seemed to be empty, suddenly. She pulled the cake towards her. ‘Or maybe we could go up to Monterosso and ambush the guy? It’s only a couple of hours on the train.’
The piece of cheese still on his fork, Sandro appeared depressed. ‘So it’s just the old story,’ he said. ‘Married man, with a bit on the side. A whole family on the side.’
‘Is that worse?’ Giuli found herself saying. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s worse. He might have forced her into having an abortion, I think that would have been worse. I think he loves her, even if he is an arsehole.’ And she stopped short at the expression on Sandro’s face. ‘What?’ she said defiantly.
‘Since when did you believe in love, Giuli?’
She laid down her fork, mouth full of chocolate cake. It was hard to fight back under the circumstances and, besides, he was right. Since when did she believe in love and family?
‘All your fault,’ she said, swallowing. She wiped her mouth. ‘You and your old-fashioned values. Eat your cheese. What would Luisa say, wasting good food?’
‘Are you seeing someone, Giuli?’ he asked abruptly.
She sighed: that was Sandro. Nowhere to hide. She held up her hands in surrender.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Satisfied? Yes, I’m seeing someone.’
Sandro pushed the plate aside. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s great, Giuli.’
‘Yeah?’ Giuli could not have sounded more sceptical. ‘No way, Sandro, no way are you going to leave it at that.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s none of my business,’ he said, but he was smiling. Even if it was a funny, twisted, anxious sort of smile.
Giuli relented. ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘It’s serious. I’m not being stupid. I know a bad guy when I see one, these days. Let’s face it, if I don’t, who does?’
‘Well,’ said Sandro, ‘he’s certainly given you your appetite back.’
She eyed him narrowly, and he looked down to examine one of the hard little pears on his plate more closely than was necessary.
‘Which is a good thing, right?’
He sighed. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘So?’
‘Where did you meet him?’ Sandro’s voice was lowered almost to a whisper. And when she didn’t answer he said, awkwardly, ‘It is a him, right? Not that — I mean,’ and she saw something like crafty hope dawn in his eyes and burst out laughing.
‘That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?’ she said. ‘Oh, Sandro, I love it, how you’re trying to be cool with it. That’d be so easy, you’re thinking, actually, wouldn’t it? Giuli hooks up with a nice girl, a girl to look after her, make her eat, cosy up in the evenings together. Nice and safe.’ Giuli paused, thinking about it. ‘Actually, yes. It would be nice, I might even have wondered about it myself — even if I’m not sure girls are as safe as you think they are. After a year at the Women’s Centre.’ She leaned across the table, right up close, and whispered, ‘Only trouble is, I’m not gay.’