Putting out a hand to quiet her, Giuli had said, softly, ‘Anna, shh. Anna.’
Anna had groped blindly for the hand and Giuli had seen from her face, blank in the moonlight, that she had not quite been awake. She’d wanted to say, it’s all right, but it would have been a lie. So she had said, ‘It’s Giuli. I’m here.’
‘Giuli,’ Anna had repeated, first wonderingly, then with dull realization. She had lowered herself back on to the pillow, but held on to Giuli’s hand.
‘You’ve got your baby,’ Giuli had said. ‘Think of the baby.’
On her side and staring into the darkness Anna had moved her free hand down, across her belly, hesitantly, as though it was new to her, this weight she had been carrying around for eight months.
She had spoken, quietly. ‘He said the nursery would be ready in time.’
Giuli had seen that the girl’s eyes were open, and that something gleamed on her cheek. Love, she’d thought; Sandro had been right all along. What was I doing, believing in love? And rage had bubbled inside her, at Anna’s man and his lying.
‘He wouldn’t have killed himself.’ Anna’s voice had not been defensive, or angry, but calm. ‘I know he wouldn’t. You didn’t know him, none of you did. He was — like a boy, when he heard about the baby. He was so happy.’
Giuli had held still, keeping back her anger.
‘Where was it?’ she had asked softly. ‘The apartment? The — the nursery?’
By way of distraction but also because it had niggled at her. Was this bank manager a man so wealthy he could set up another home? Would it be a mistress’s penthouse, or would he park Anna, too naive to know any better, in a tenth-floor monolocale overlooking a trailer park? She’d said, like a boy; boy wasn’t a bank manager. And all this talk of a pay rise coming his way? He was into something dodgy, one way or the other.
‘I’ll show you,’ Anna had said, her voice drifting. ‘I’ll take you there.’
‘You sleep,’ Giuli had said.
‘You could see the hills,’ Anna had murmured. ‘A beautiful view. Needed some work, he was going to do the work, just to make the nursery, that was all it needed. The bathroom had marble tiles and the bed had a blue cover. He couldn’t find the light switch.’
She’d turned a little in the bed, and her grip on Giuli’s hand had loosened.
Giuli had wondered if it was wrong to let her go to sleep, dreaming of this house in the hills that would never be. ‘Yes,’ she had said.
‘You can go now,’ Anna had said, faraway now. ‘You can go, and I’ll take you there in the morning. I remember the way.’ Her eyes had drooped. ‘I remember the way.’
The reception desk had been unattended as Giuli had passed on her way out; she’d found the Russian on the terrace under the loggia, smoking. Her eyes were blue as ice under black eyelashes, and she’d still looked angry.
‘I’ll come back in the morning for her,’ Giuli had said.
She’d fished in her pockets for one of Sandro’s cards; he’d put her mobile number on it when they had them reprinted at the beginning of the year. She’d held it out, and the Russian had taken it, in the same hand as the cigarette, held it disdainfully between thumb and little finger. She hadn’t looked at it.
‘Call either one of us, if she — well, if she needs us. If she wakes in the night, or anything.’
The Russian had looked at Giuli levelly. ‘My name is Dasha,’ she had said. ‘I don’t have card.’
Despite herself, Giuli had smiled; Dasha hadn’t quite smiled back, but almost.
At the rickety lift in the corner of the room Giuli had turned. ‘Did you meet him?’
‘Him?’ Still standing in the door to the loggia, Dasha had leaned back to stub out the cigarette on one of the terrace’s ashtrays.
‘The baby’s father.’ Giuli had watched her. ‘I mean — he’s real?’ Stupid thing to say. What was this, the immaculate conception? But there was something unreal here.
‘Real?’ The Russian had looked almost amused. ‘I suppose. Not meet him, no. Not an introduction. I see him in the street with her once or twice. Not ghost, if that is what you mean.’ And she let out a surprising cackle. ‘Not Holy Ghost.’
‘He didn’t mind being seen?’ Giuli had turned right around to face the girl, and she’d been able to hear the lift cranking wheezily up behind her. Dasha had shrugged.
‘Not so much, no. On Piazzale Michelangelo, out in open, sure. They were not hiding.’
There had been something in her eyes, though: something. She had shifted, looked away. Hiding something.
The internet cafe had fierce air-con, and now Giuli shivered, remembering. There was something not right about this, the married bank manager holding hands with his pregnant mistress on the Piazzale Michelangelo, among the thronging tourists. Was that it? Tourists were strangers, here today, gone tomorrow. Or because his wife was safely stowed at the seaside, along with most of his colleagues, no one to catch them? She got out her phone and texted Sandro, quickly. Shd talk 2 Russian at hotel?
But the case was closed, wasn’t it? Give or take a few loose ends.
Enzo would be here soon, and Giuli was glad. She was hungry, all over again.
In the cafe’s lurid red and green evening lighting, heads bowed intently over computer screens, a couple in a corner, she looked up and there he was, at the door, her sweetheart. She watched his face light up as he saw her; she checked her watch. Ten o’clock, bang on.
*
In her bedroom, Roxana lay very still and listened. This was the room she had slept in for her entire childhood — and now, it felt, most of her adult life too. She should feel safe here, if she felt it anywhere. She knew the sounds — the cicadas, the river, the distant roar of the motorway interchange. She even knew what it sounded like when someone broke through the downstairs bathroom window, and knew what to do. She wasn’t stupid, but she wasn’t neurotic, whatever Ma said. The trouble was, Ma had gone through her life thinking — knowing — that there was always someone else to deal with stuff like this. There had always been Dad, and now there was Roxana, and Roxana had no one.
A man would be coming out from Prato tomorrow evening to sort out the back gate. Some handyman-cum-locksmith, she’d been all through the Yellow Pages and hadn’t been able to find one closer, not at nine at night in August.
Of course, she had had to wait until Violetta was asleep and snoring first; Ma had a bat’s ear for panic. Roxana had come back in from the garden with the dead torch, pausing for a long moment on the veranda to collect herself, to put an expression of wry irritation on her face.
‘Bloody thing,’ she’d said, setting the torch down on the kitchen table. ‘My fault, I should have bought batteries.’
Ma had looked at her oddly, as if she had decided to wipe the whole thing from her mind and didn’t want to hear otherwise. ‘Yes,’ she had said, complacently, setting down a bowl of salad with tuna and sweetcorn. And that had been that: they’d eaten stolidly in the heat. Although when a car had backfired a couple of streets away, Ma had looked wild-eyed, just for a second.
‘I’ll make you a camomile,’ Roxana had said, to hasten her to bed, and obediently she had padded upstairs. Roxana had heard the creak of the old fan coming on.
She could hear it now, whirring across the landing, and Ma’s soft snore behind it. From somewhere on the slopes below the Certosa, the soft warning hoot of an owl.
She had made herself stay and listen long and hard. Was there someone there? She would not have let Ma think everything was well otherwise; she would, whatever her low opinion of their capabilities, have called the police and not a locksmith if she had had a single doubt. Wouldn’t she?