Irene showed no sign of having heard, staring at the long window open on to the grass and the rainbow shed by those sprinklers spinning to and fro. ‘I don’t think I would like to live here,’ she said and turned to look Marisa in the eye. ‘It’s too quiet. I need to hear — something. To hear other people. The children.’
Marisa looked away from her, down into her glass. She could pretend to be embarrassed by the non sequitur, but Irene was right. It was too quiet out here.
Detaching her hand gently from Roxana’s, Irene sat up very straight. ‘The questions didn’t make sense to me,’ she said. ‘They asked me if we had money worries, then if we’d had a windfall recently. They asked me if the bank was in trouble. They asked me how Claudio was behaving when there was talk of a takeover of the bank, a few months ago.’
She shook her head. ‘I said, we were careful with money, always: that didn’t change. I said, Claudio dealt with all the money matters. I said, Claudio took everything seriously.’ She was sitting very still and Roxana saw that it was becoming harder and harder for her, not breaking down. ‘He was honest. He was an honest man.
‘It wasn’t the normal thing, to go to the big supermarket in La Spezia, because it was cheaper. Only I think now that was an excuse. He never went to the supermarket, he was coming to Florence to meet someone, and he knew I would be angry, so he told a lie. He was coming to Florence all the time.’ The words came out in a rush. Roxana saw Marisa was very careful not to raise her head.
‘They said that?’ asked Roxana gently.
Irene shook her head. ‘They said they’d been in contact with the mobile phone company and at ten o’clock someone had called Claudio’s mobile, from Florence, on a prepaid phone, bought God knows where, not registered. They asked me if I recognized the number.’
‘Did you?’ Marisa’s eyes were fixed intently on Irene now, and Roxana wondered for a second whether she’d been brought out here to play the part of good cop in Marisa’s planned interrogation.
‘I know it wasn’t your number, Marisa,’ said Irene. ‘It’s all right.’ The two looked at each other with a strange sort of calm. Irene turned back to Roxana.
‘I didn’t recognize it,’ she said dully. ‘But I don’t have a good memory for numbers. When all you have to do is press a button on the phone, you don’t need to remember a number any more.’
She looked at Roxana. ‘I wonder,’ and as she said this she tilted her head stiffly as if to relieve some pain. ‘Did I leave too much to him? Would a good wife have known all about bank accounts and mobile phones and takeovers?’
‘You did know,’ said Roxana gently, not knowing where the words were coming from. ‘You knew your husband inside out, he relied on you for everything. You were a good wife. You are a good mother.’
On the far sofa Marisa made a stifled sound and got to her feet, stalking back to the liquor cabinet on her long legs.
Irene didn’t even turn her head.
‘I don’t know,’ she said in a whisper. ‘I don’t know anything any more. How could this happen to us?’
‘Terrible things do happen,’ said Marisa, leaning back against the cabinet with her newly filled glass in her hand. ‘We manage not to think about them, that’s all.’ But her voice was cool and distant.
Irene Brunello did turn her head then and looked at Marisa for a long moment, before getting to her feet, smoothing her skirt carefully, buttoning her jacket. When she spoke her voice was steady again. ‘I should go,’ she said. ‘If I leave now, I will be — will be home by nine. At the sea, I mean. By nine.’ She smiled tentatively down at Roxana. ‘Thank you for coming,’ she said. ‘It was good of you.’
Roxana stood too. ‘You know how to get hold of me,’ she said. ‘If you — if you need — if I can help.’
‘I know how to get hold of you?’
‘You called my home. When …’ And Roxana saw Irene Brunello’s face crumple.
‘I did,’ she said, ‘oh, I did.’ Catching a sob in her throat. ‘When I didn’t know where he was, I was desperate.’ She passed a hand over her face. ‘What was I thinking of? I called Inquiries for numbers all over the place, anyone I could think of.’ Her hand stopped at her mouth, covering it. ‘God. I talked to your mother.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Roxana, wishing she hadn’t said anything. ‘Of course you phoned. We would all have done the same.’
She didn’t even bother to look over at Marisa to recruit her. Marisa wouldn’t have called anyone. Irene’s shoulders dropped, as if she was close to exhaustion.
Gently, Roxana put a hand under her elbow, guiding her towards the door, edging her out, Marisa watching their every step without moving until they were out in the hall. Then Roxana heard the heavy clunk of the tumbler put back down on the sideboard, and at the front door Marisa appeared beside them. Irene picked up her bag.
While they’d been inside, the light had faded and in the dusk the roses glowed against the luminous green of the grass, the sprinklers only audible as the faintest rhythmic swish.
‘Goodbye, Irene,’ said Marisa lightly, and leaned forward just slightly as to accept a formal kiss.
Irene came no closer, only held out her hand. ‘Goodbye, Marisa,’ she said and Roxana wondered if they would ever see each other again, these two. At a memorial service, at the funeral? Perhaps the police would never solve this thing: perhaps they’d never release the body. Claudio would stay in a police morgue forever. Marisa stepped back, her eyes very black.
‘He liked you,’ said Irene, turning to Roxana. ‘Claudio did. He worried about you.’
Roxana didn’t even know what to say. Worried about me? And knowing that if she opened her mouth she would burst into tears, she just bobbed her head, except that she could feel the tears anyway. Irene leaned in and pressed her cheek against Roxana’s. ‘It never meant anything, you know. She never meant anything to him.’
Roxana froze. Claudio. She was talking about Claudio?
Irene drew her head back, just a fraction, her face so close she might have been about to kiss Roxana. ‘She was here,’ she whispered. ‘The maid — she has a maid, the girl doesn’t like her-told me, before she went. Here all the weekend. Her boyfriend-her boyfriend with his yacht. He has told her to leave. But I can’t even be pleased about that.’ And then abruptly she stepped back and straightened her shoulders.
The little yellow car waited on the gravel and Irene made her precise, determined way towards it, but halfway there something stopped her.
Irene Brunello set her handbag down on the gravel and knelt beside it, looking inside, then peering, then scrabbling. Roxana could hear her hurried, shallow breaths, and then the high tinkle of a phone from somewhere in the jumbled contents of the bag. She could feel her own hands clenched into fists as she willed Irene to stay calm.
He’s dead, she wanted to say, nothing’s going to bring him back. The worst has already happened.
Irene straightened, got to her feet, the mobile in her hand and half the contents of her bag on the gravel. ‘Hello,’ she said, breathlessly, ‘hello?’ Then, dully, ‘Oh. Oh, it’s you. Yes.’
Roxana hurried across to help gather up the contents of the bag while there was still light. Fumbling about on her knees, she couldn’t help hearing the conversation — or one side of it — being conducted over her head. Then she stood, holding out the bag.
‘Who?’ Irene was saying, sounding tormented. ‘No, no. I’ve no idea who that is. No, we weren’t buying property, no. I don’t know this man.’ She was holding one hand over her ear, and she swung round to look into Roxana’s face with incomprehension. ‘How much?’ Her voice went up a note in panic. ‘No. I don’t know anything about it, he didn’t tell me anything about it. Please.’
Over Irene’s shoulder, Roxana could see Marisa on the doorstep, four, five metres away, arms folded and the tumbler in one hand, her face sallow in the dusk. She could hear the urgent crackle of a voice talking to Irene and wanted to say, shut up, leave her alone. He was a good man. He was.