‘Ciao,’ said Giuli, cursing herself for sounding ingratiating. ‘How you doing?’
‘You again,’ said the girl, elbows on the desk, settling her chin in her cupped hands and looking at Giuli. ‘Kidnap, is it?’
‘What d’you mean?’ Giuli looked at her, expressionless.
‘You have our girl. Who do you think is doing the work, the chambermaid? Have you come for — for ransom?’ It was her idea of a joke, delivered without any more malice than usual, but it put an idea in Giuli’s head that she didn’t like.
‘Well, had anyone thought about what was going to happen when the baby came?’ she said, and thought, hark at me. Giuli the responsible, the foresighted, as if she hadn’t misspent her own youth more comprehensively than anyone she’d ever met. More than Dasha, whose eyes had returned to her book.
‘Not my problem,’ she said, chewing ruminatively as she turned a page.
Giuli gazed around. ‘And it’s not as if you’re busy, is it? Have you got any customers at all?’ She thought of something: two birds with one stone. ‘Is the old lady around?’
‘No,’ said Dasha, still not looking up. Giuli crossed over to the desk and placed her hand on the pages. Dangerously, Dasha raised her head, stared Giuli in the eye.
‘No to what?’ said Giuli, politely, meeting her black-lashed blue gaze. And Dasha laughed, unexpectedly.
‘You are like me,’ she said. ‘I don’t know there are any Italian girls like me.’
‘I’m older than you,’ said Giuli, stony-faced. Then cracked a smile. ‘And there’s a few like us. No to what?’
‘No customers,’ said Dasha, and stretching a thin pale arm over her head, she yawned. ‘And the old woman is not here either; she is asleep.’ Jerked her head. ‘Upstairs. Siesta she call it. Looks like she is practising for being dead, to me.’ She closed the book. ‘So what do you want?’ she said.
‘You’ve seen him, haven’t you?’ said Giuli, because then it came to her, what Dasha had been hiding, that last time. The girl’s smile faded and she was stilled, watching. She said nothing.
Giuli persisted. ‘I mean, since, you’ve seen him since he was supposed to have disappeared. Since Anna last saw him.’
She held her breath. Dasha looked around as if someone might suddenly materialize in the dead and silent space. She said nothing.
Giuli shrugged. ‘People aren’t as clever as they think they are,’ she said. ‘I knew something was bothering you. Why didn’t you tell me?’
The dark-blue eyes narrowed, the pale pretty face turned stubborn. ‘She’s better without him,’ she said, and folded her arms. Something in Dasha’s set jawline told Giuli to work around to it slowly. Not barge straight in there.
‘Anna is — better off without him?’
Dasha nodded, her mouth set in a line.
‘Why? What do you know about him?’
‘She don’t like him,’ said Dasha, her eyes flicking up to the floor above.
‘She. The old lady?’ It seemed to Giuli that Dasha was prevaricating. ‘And she’s always right about people, is she? About — foreigners, for example? About you?’
‘She’s — what you say — she is racist, yes,’ said Dasha equably, as if she was saying, she’s vegetarian. ‘She don’t like foreigners too much, but I am cheap. She even say I am clean, like usually Russians are not.’ Her smile didn’t reach her eyes.
‘That’s the only reason she doesn’t like him, that he’s foreign?’
‘Not only reason. She says he has a dirty job.’
Giuli sat back, looking up at the ceiling, thinking of the old woman lying like a corpse up there, chewing over ancient hatreds. ‘A dirty job. You know what his job is?’
Stiffly Dasha shook her head. Giuli leaned towards her, feeling queasiness stir low in her gut, feeling a little sweat break on her upper lip. A tiny frown appeared on Dasha’s face as if to say, don’t ask for sympathy. Don’t ask for sympathy from me.
‘Where did you see him?’ Giuli hadn’t intended to whisper, but a hoarse whisper was what came out.
‘You all right?’ asked Dasha warily.
‘This heat,’ said Giuli. It passed. ‘Where did you see him, Dasha? Did he come here? When?’
Abruptly Dasha stood up, paced to the glass doors leading on to the wide loggia and pushed through them. After a moment’s indecision Giuli followed her.
It was better outside; they both felt it. The loggia faced north-east and was in shade. It was probably hotter than inside but less stifling, the air less still. Dasha rested her forearms on the waist-high parapet and looked down into the street, Giuli beside her. Her phone blipped: damn. She took it out, glanced at the screen, turned it off. Damn: she waited a moment for the silence to re-establish itself.
‘Did he come here?’ she said, nodding at the narrow pavement below.
The girl said nothing, just stared down.
‘He wanted to see her.’ Still nothing. ‘You didn’t tell her.’
She took the girl’s silence for agreement. It was true: she was the same kind of animal Giuli had once been herself, hiding and watching, her survival dependent on never trusting anyone. Giuli couldn’t tell her, when you find someone you can trust, the world changes. Better to know whom you couldn’t trust, first. She said nothing.
‘That your boss on the phone?’ said Dasha, changing the subject, Giuli suspected deliberately. ‘You can look at the telefonino, if you want. You can turn back on.’
At the rough kindness in the girl’s voice Giuli shook her head. ‘Not my boss,’ she said. ‘My boyfriend.’
She didn’t use the word fidanzato. She wouldn’t even have used the word ‘boyfriend’, wouldn’t have surrendered any information at all a year ago. She was getting soft: it was asking for scorn, from someone like Dasha.
‘How you get your job?’ was all Dasha said and, holding the phone out, watching the screen illuminate, seeing two missed calls and a message, Giuli tore herself away from it to look into the girl’s eyes. What had she asked?
‘How did I get my job?’ she said. ‘That’s a long story.’
‘So you going now,’ said Dasha defiantly, arms folded. ‘Now I tell you?’
‘You told me nothing,’ said Giuli reasonably.
‘He’s hiding somewhere,’ said Dasha. ‘Scared of something. You want her involved in that? I see her looking at her phone, waiting for him to call, but he doesn’t call. I’m telling you, it is best for her without him. We can look after her.’ Cocked her head to one side. ‘Or you going to find your boyfriend?’
She eyed Giuli narrowly and indeed Giuli had been thinking, with tenderness, of Enzo, of maybe a snatched coffee with Enzo, to tell him what she’d learned, to show off just a little bit.
The look that Dasha gave her was so complicated, though, envious, a little malicious, a little suspicious, that it stopped Giuli in her tracks. This was business, this was serious.
‘No,’ she said. ‘First off, I find my boss. He’s not far away.’
She’d passed the pharmacy on the Via Romana on the way, and it was still open on the way back, and this time, without thinking, without knowing what she wanted, Giuli went in. It was an old-fashioned establishment, with little gilded drawers and glass urns behind the counter. Even as she crossed the threshold, the thought came into Giuli’s head that, if she was right, then this place might mean something to her for the rest of her life. She wouldn’t be able to walk past it without thinking, there.
She asked for what she now knew she wanted; she tolerated the long, curious look from the pharmacist — a thin man, blue-chinned and prematurely old; Giuli had known his domineering blonde mother before him. He was involved, now; he was her accomplice, whatever the outcome.
Giuli felt slightly stunned as she walked out and back into the heat.