But now that they were here, she seemed to have run out of steam.
‘I don’t like this place,’ she said, her face moon-pale in the gloom. ‘I would never have wanted to live here.’
‘No,’ agreed Luisa absently, glancing down the side hall to the concierge’s door. Then recovered herself, ‘I mean, it’s a perfectly good neighbourhood, good for children …’ She tailed off. She frowned at Anna. ‘You never said that before. That you didn’t like it.’
‘I didn’t think that before,’ said Anna, her mouth downturned. ‘When he showed it to me, he was so proud of it. So pleased — he was trying to see it in the best light. So I tried too. I could have told him, I have some money, we can find somewhere better.’
Luisa squeezed her hand, thinking of Anna’s tiny savings. ‘Did he — did you ever tell him you had money?’ The girl shook her head. Luisa nodded approvingly. ‘Good girl,’ she said, and Anna’s head jerked up, defiant.
‘He wouldn’t have taken my money,’ she said in a dear voice. ‘Everything was going well for him, he said. Soon everything would be done, everything would be ready, just another few days. He was so excited.’
‘Like he had a secret?’
‘Something like that,’ said Anna. ‘That’s why — well, when I didn’t hear from him at the weekend, but actually weekends are anyway his busy time — I just thought, Monday, he’s busy with — whatever it is.’ Her eyes were dark. ‘I just thought, he’s got everything ready for the baby.’ And she looked up the stairwell, towards the light. The walls were scuffed and dirty.
‘Yes,’ said Luisa, stroking her shoulder. ‘Wait here a minute.’
Reluctantly, she tiptoed down the dark side-corridor to the door. There was that sour smell of alcohol breath and unwashed linen. She knocked. Called. Cupped her hands against the door and shouted. Nothing. From upstairs, some banging.
Luisa’s heart sank: what next? She hadn’t thought this through. Why would either of them be any more likely to get into the place this time?
All right. ‘Let’s go up,’ she said, returning to Anna, trying to sound as though she knew what she was doing. ‘There’s — ah, someone I know lives upstairs.’
They pressed the button for the lift but nothing happened. Perhaps that was what the builders were here for. They took the stairs. Anna moved steadily, stopping for breath at the top of each flight. It had been relatively cool at the bottom but with every upward step it grew warmer.
On the third floor — her floor — Anna stopped again, but this time she looked as though she didn’t want to go on. There were four doors, of flimsy-looking veneer, each with a spyhole. Watching Anna, Luisa shifted from foot to foot: something was sticking to her leather soles. The floor was gritty underfoot.
Sounds were coming from behind the furthest door: scraping. A thump. Men’s voices, in a foreign language.
‘That one,’ said Anna, nodding towards the furthest door as if she didn’t want to get any closer to it.
‘It’s all right,’ said Luisa, glancing up towards the light filtering down from the top of the building. None of the stairway lights seemed to be working — another job for the builders. It was hard to see what the concierge was paid for. Perhaps they’d actually laid him off. ‘Giovanna’s on the next floor up. Let’s see if she’s in.’
Another flight of stairs was asking more than she’d anticipated, though: as Anna walked ahead of her with painful slowness, Luisa cursed herself for not calling Giovanna before they left, or buzzing her bell at the gate to confirm she would be in, after all this.
‘They said, take exercise,’ said Anna, out of breath, catching sight of Luisa’s expression. ‘Good exercise, climbing stairs. I can’t just lie in bed forever.’
‘When was your last check-up?’ said Luisa grimly, holding her under the arm as they took the last step together. Stupid, stupid, stupid: how could I have been so stupid? Eight months pregnant and I’ve got her climbing stairs. ‘Stop,’ she commanded, and examined the girl’s face. Pink, but better, actually, better in the light, better one floor higher.
‘Monday,’ said Anna, ‘at the Women’s Centre, it’s every week now. They say I’m doing well. They say the baby’s big.’
They both looked down and Luisa felt the coolness of fear, like a shadow falling across her. Anna was so small.
‘Do you have any children?’ asked Anna, frowning up at her. Then, ‘Oh, Giuli said — said something-’
‘My baby didn’t live,’ said Luisa, and with the words she felt breathless. She tried to smile, heard herself stammer. ‘There was something the matter with her — in those days, there wasn’t the … the information.’ Anna’s eyes were on her, intent. ‘It wasn’t anything to do with the birth.’ And Luisa found she could hardly think of another word to say. ‘You mustn’t worry,’ she managed, eventually. She paused, collected herself. ‘So your last appointment was on Monday.’
Anna searched her face, then looked down at her belly again. ‘That was when I asked Giuli.’ She bit her lip. ‘She saw me crying, because I hadn’t heard from Josef, because they’d said maybe a scan to see how big the baby was and I tried to call him to tell him and he wasn’t answering and I really got frightened then.’
‘All right,’ said Luisa, taking her hand, alarmed by her sudden distress. ‘It’s going to be OK.’
‘She’d told me what she did when she wasn’t working at the Centre, a while back. Told me about Sandro. What a nice man he is.’
‘Yes,’ said Luisa, looking away, turning to watch the stairwell.
‘I thought he’d be able to help.’ Anna’s breathing was better now; Luisa concentrated on that.
If only being a good man solved everything. There was a sound from upstairs, a door opening tentatively, and from somewhere else in the building a dog began to yap.
‘Come on,’ said Luisa quickly. ‘Can you make another flight?’
They saw her feet first, and Luisa knew it was Giovanna Baldini, in grubby slippers, standing behind a door open not much more than a crack. When she saw them, she opened it wider.
‘Thought it was you,’ she said. And leaned aside to get a better look at Anna, half hidden behind Luisa. ‘And you brought the girl.’
Anna came alongside Luisa on the landing and looked at Giovanna, serious under her dark brows.
‘Not much of a girl any more,’ she said with dignity.
Giovanna Baldini stood aside and let them in.
‘It’s the same,’ said Anna under her breath, stopping short in the hallway. ‘It’s the same as his.’
‘Right above it,’ said Giovanna straight away, ushering them on. The apartment was cluttered and warm, but it smelled clean. Luisa sometimes wondered if smell was the most developed of her senses, and she had a particular response to the way an old woman’s flat could smell — as she approached being an old woman herself, it was becoming a kind of paranoia. Food kept too long, that was the best of it. Giovanna was watching her with a half-smile.
‘You’re wondering, do we let ourselves go earlier, single women?’ Luisa smiled the same half-smile back. ‘I’m hanging on,’ said Giovanna comfortably.
They watched Anna, moving through the apartment, looking into one room then another, towards the lighter room they could both see ahead of them down the central hallway.
Coming into that room — a living room, by the look of a low sofa piled with mismatched cushions — Luisa saw Anna put up a hand to her left, feeling for something. A light switch.
Anna turned back to look down the corridor at them.
‘That was one thing,’ she said. ‘He didn’t know where the light switches were.’ She stood silhouetted in the doorway, almost all belly. ‘He didn’t know where anything was. It was — as if he’d never been there before.’
She turned away again, and Luisa and Giovanna followed her into the room. It was wide, with one glazed door opening on to a long balcony, one window further along. Both were shuttered against the setting sun, but light leaked through.