‘What?’ Valentino had said, pulling off his helmet as Roxana walked past him, catching her expression, his eyes following her. She had nodded towards Marisa’s office.
‘Something’s happened, Valentino,’ she’d said. ‘Go and talk to her.’
*
Inside the house, her mother was singing, some old ballad about laying a table for a wedding meal. She had a good, clear voice, but it was a long time since Roxana had heard her sing like this. Perhaps not since Luca had been a kid, and Ma used to sing him to sleep. On the porch in the dark Roxana leaned back and closed her eyes.
Had she wanted Valentino to be shocked out of that cheerful selfishness of his? Had she wanted to see if there was any more to him? And why should she care in any case?
She’d gone and stood at the big pinboard where notices of whatever new account or savings bond they were promoting were put up, her back to Marisa’s office. Ridiculously, all she could think was how tatty it all looked. What a stupid dead end of a dump this bank was and how Maria Grazia was right, she had to go.
There’d been no sound from the office — though the door had been closed and perhaps she wouldn’t have heard anything anyway. She had walked slowly around the room, turning on the lights, replenishing the deposit and withdrawal slips, resetting the ticket machine before finally she’d flicked the switches that released the security doors and declared the bank open for the afternoon’s business. What there was of it.
If she’d wanted to see Val shaken, then she had had her wish. Turning from the door, she saw him emerge from Marisa’s office, and his carefully cultivated stubble stood out dark against the pallor of his face.
‘You all right, Val?’ she’d said.
‘What?’
She’d thought he was going to cry, his staring eyes hardly focused on her. Gently she’d put out her hand, touched his arm. ‘It’s a shock,’ she’d said. ‘Take it easy.’
‘He’s dead,’ Valentino had said blankly, and she’d thought, poor guy. Nothing bad had ever happened to Val, he was like a kid encountering death for the first time. Only Val was twenty-nine. She’d felt as if she’d aged ten years herself.
‘Yes,’ she’d said, and he’d took her hand and held on to it, just for a second but very tight. Then someone had appeared at the door: typical. Barely a handful of customers all month, and again some kid was waiting by the door, hopping on white trainers to be let in, looking at his watch.
*
Sweat bloomed, quite suddenly in the humid darkness, at Roxana’s temples, down her spine, the backs of her legs against the plastic of the steamer chair. Was it her imagination, or was it even hotter tonight? And the memory of the day — the awfulness of it, stuck in that airless sweatbox of a bank, trying not to think about Claudio Brunello, even the oblivious customer — that was what had brought her out in a sweat.
It wasn’t an accident. Marisa had said that sharply, then almost immediately back-pedalled. ‘It sounds — well. Mugged, maybe, out on the lungarno near the barracks, the African market.’ She’d looked blank, trying to make sense of any of it. ‘They weren’t saying much according to Irene, she was frantic, of course. She can’t believe it.’
‘What? What?’ It made no sense. None whatsoever. ‘In Florence? But he’s supposed to be on holiday.’
Roxana, thinking back to that stifling office, the air humming with the terrible reverberations of it, kept her eyes closed, and the sounds sharpened. Ma’s singing trailed off as she skipped the words she couldn’t remember, but the cicadas were deafening, sawing with rhythmic relentlessness in the big umbrella pine that marked the end of the garden.
What did Marisa know, really?
‘So someone — do the police think someone did it? What — hit and run?’ Then worse had occurred to her. ‘Murder?’
‘No!’ That had got Marisa up out of her chair. ‘Are you insane?’ She’d put a hand to her chest, the bare tanned triangle of ribcage, not an ounce of spare flesh on her. ‘I don’t know what they think. I — there’s a possibility of suicide.’
And suddenly aware of her position — a mere teller, sportellista sitting calmly in the office of her superior — Roxana had stopped asking questions. She’d just bobbed her head, sorry, but she’d rather wished for that small grey man, Sandro Cellini, to ask her questions for her.
There was something Marisa Goldman wasn’t telling.
Eyes still closed, Roxana sat very still. It was almost as though she could feel the overgrown foliage that surrounded her, hear it too, the banana leaves rustling against each other, a dry loquat leaf falling to earth, could smell the overpowering sweetness of orange blossom.
And there was a crack, very close. The sound of something trodden underfoot and with it Roxana’s eyes snapped open, the sweat cooling fast on her forehead.
‘Who’s that?’ She spoke louder than she intended, leaning forward in the lounger, hands braced against the armrests.
From inside Ma’s singing stopped. ‘Roxana?’
Instinctively Roxana put a finger to her lips.
Then Ma was standing on the threshold to the back porch, her face no more than a pale oval in the dark and any trace of the woman singing over her pans gone. Her mouth moved but no sound came out. Roxana seized her hand to still her and they both turned to look into the overgrown garden.
A rustle. Then the great grey Persian from next door lolloped out from under the banana palm, stepping neatly between the dead leaves, leaping noiselessly up on to the terrace. It looked up at them from the rail with unblinking calm, opened its mouth in a single mew.
‘Get away,’ said Violetta Delfino with sudden savagery, leaning across Roxana and shoving the animal off its perch. Landing on all four feet, with silent dignity the Persian stalked away, its feathery tail upright in affront, the last of it to disappear back into the undergrowth. Not a sound.
‘It wasn’t the cat,’ said Ma, defensively. ‘It wasn’t.’
And Roxana knew she wasn’t just talking about tonight. Could that ball of fluff, which could turn the right way up in mid-air and land without disturbing a leaf, have snapped a twig? Could Ma have spent all yesterday afternoon hiding from a cat?
‘Mamma,’ she said, concentrating very hard on keeping her tone steady, reasonable. ‘You know Babbo’s torch? You remember where he kept it?’
Slowly the dark eyes came into focus, fixed on her and Violetta Delfino nodded.
‘Bring it to me.’
In the few moments she was alone again on the porch, Roxana’s every sense was alert, tensed against panic. Would she know whether there was someone there, if that someone didn’t move a muscle? The cicadas scraped on like buzzsaws in the umbrella pine. Mamma was back, pressing the torch into her hand with trembling fingers.
‘Go inside now, Ma,’ instructed Roxana, but her mother didn’t move. ‘Not because there’s anything to be afraid of,’ she said, as briskly as she could.
Ma stared fiercely into her eyes, as she had when demanding the truth of her as a child, Tell me. Tell me you didn’t stick your finger in the pie. Even though everyone but Ma knew, it had been Luca who couldn’t wait for dinnertime. She felt a sudden little surge of irritable love for her greedy, charming younger brother, a thousand kilometres away under a rainy sky, living it up in a grey northern city while they bickered their lives away.
‘There’s no one there,’ she said patiently, and even believed it. ‘I’m going to make sure the back gate’s closed.’ Fished the small rape alarm whistle from her bag and brandished it. ‘You’ll know if I need you.’ Smiling to show it was a joke. Mostly.
And at last, with an angry sigh, Ma gave in. ‘The dinner’ll be cold,’ she said.
‘Five minutes,’ said Roxana. The porch door closed behind Violetta, and Roxana got to her feet.