Someone was moving around, downstairs. Roxana felt light-headed, a little panicky, she held her breath.
‘Roxi?’
It was her mother. Roxana breathed out, slowly, and the situation came back to her. No work today. And last night-
Ma had the ears of a bat, sometimes, she could hear her daughter’s bare feet touch the floor as if Roxana was still a teenager and she was listening for her key in the lock late at night. ‘Roxana?’
‘Coming, Ma.’ Roxana could hear the sleep still in her voice.
Last night.
It had been purple dusk, not quite dark, when she had parked up and come through the front door under the jasmine: eight o’clock perhaps. Her mind had been on other things than home, all the way; on Irene Brunello walking proudly out of Marisa’s front door; Marisa drunk and lonely in her borrowed life of luxury, telling her Val was a good bet for marriage.
Maybe he was. Maybe she really had been being too picky all these years. And thinking of him, his hopeful face, untroubled as a child’s — maybe they could be a team. Maybe she needed someone like that, to lighten her up. One thing was for sure, she wasn’t going to mention Valentino to Ma.
It had turned out that Ma had too many things of her own to tell, though. She’d had a busy day.
‘He’s gone,’ she had said complacently, silhouetted in the doorway to the parlour. ‘The handyman. I dealt with it.’
Setting her bag down wearily, inhaling the powerful scent of the evening flowers, the jasmine and nicotiana coming in at every window and through the open door behind her, Roxana had been on the point of scolding her. For heaven’s sake. Couldn’t you have told him to wait? But she didn’t. She stared at Ma, in a belted, pale-blue summer dress she hadn’t seen in years, fine tights, the Ferragamo sandals Roxana’s father had bought her for her fiftieth, good as new because almost never worn.
‘Ma,’ had been all she said, before she’d stopped.
‘Well, I went to the doctor’s first,’ Ma had said, shushing Roxana out through the salotto — had it been dusted? There was a smell of polish — on to the veranda at the back. ‘This morning.’
She’d wanted to clear a few things up, she had said. Do it on her own: there was no point in just sitting at home fretting over whether she was losing her grip, was there? There were tests.
They’d both sat down. ‘And?’ Roxana had still been holding her helmet, she had realized. Gently she had set it down beside her, and pulled off her jacket.
‘Well, it takes time,’ Ma had said, smoothing the cloth on the little table. Refocusing, Roxana had seen that there was a Martini glass with an olive in it, and a small empty beer bottle.
‘I had to offer him something,’ Ma had said, seeing where she was looking. ‘Coming out here, in August. Nice man. The handyman.’
‘Right,’ Roxana had said, trying to remember when she’d last seen Ma drink a Martini. Dad had made them once in a while, for special occasions. The bottles must have been gathering dust for a decade. But alcohol didn’t spoil, did it? ‘The doctor?’ she had said. ‘The tests?’
‘Well,’ Ma had said comfortably. ‘Like I said, it takes time. They do tests, then do them again, to measure deterioration.’
Roxana had stared at her. So had it taken that day Ma had spent hiding, frightened, in the hall, for her to gather her wits and see what the truth of the matter was? She had imagined Ma getting dressed so carefully, for the visit, and felt a sudden burning shame, mingled with respect. ‘So?’ she had managed.
‘He says, he can’t say.’ Violetta Delfino’s eyes had been bright. ‘But right now, it seems I have the appropriate level of — cognition, or something — for a person my age. No evidence of progressive disease — although, of course, he will do the tests again to monitor that. He says, his belief is that I have been depressed.’ Pressing her lips together in an expression familiar to Roxana. ‘I told him, nonsense.’
‘Right, Ma,’ Roxana had said, expressionless. She hadn’t known whether to cry or to hug her mother. Neither response, she had guessed, would be greeted with anything but impatience.
‘They say the weather’s going to break,’ Ma had said then, getting to her feet. ‘I had a Martini.’ A week, a day ago, the non sequitur would have panicked Roxana. ‘Would you like one?’
There had been no scent of dinner from the kitchen; things, it seemed, had changed today. ‘Fine,’ Roxana had found herself saying.
The alcohol had been warm and oily but had tasted surprisingly clean. Roxana had let it burn her throat and as it did so, she’d felt her shoulders drop. Ma hadn’t had another: at least Roxana didn’t have to worry about her turning to drink. The beer bottle had gone.
Ma had settled herself into her chair, smoothing her dress. She had looked perhaps ten years younger; why, the doctor had asked, hadn’t they done this test months ago? Roxana had supposed it would have always had to be Ma who requested any such test.
‘So what did the handyman say?’ Roxana had sat up straight, suddenly flustered and reaching around her for her handbag, ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. How did you pay him?’
‘He’s sending his bill,’ Ma had said. ‘He said he’d bring it round in a day or so, actually. A nice young man.’
Roxana had subsided, waiting.
Ma had set her hands on the table. ‘He said, we should talk to the police because it was criminal damage, not wear and tear. He said, it looked like someone had been — almost camped out there. Recently.’
She had spoken complacently, without the terror that Roxana would have expected, that Ma had herself experienced looking at the damage. It had come to Roxana that she felt justified, happier in some way that the whole affair of the mysterious caller at the house had been a real threat rather than an imagined one.
‘Fancied himself as something of a detective, if you ask me,’ Ma had said confidentially. ‘Talking about footprints, showing me, “Look, there’s this set here, lots of those, then someone else, here.”’
Roxana had shifted uneasily in her chair. ‘Two sets of footprints?’ She had tried not to sound alarmed: did she want Ma too scared to leave the house all over again? No. She had got to her feet, and leaned on the balustrade, looking out into the garden. ‘I should have got back sooner,’ she had said.
But Ma had gone on blithely, ‘He put on a very good strong bolt, and a new lock, he pieced in some wood where it had been pulled away. Safe as houses now, he said. He was concerned, that was all. Thorough. Quite insistent, about the police, doing things properly.’
Roxana had tried to remember the man’s voice on the phone. Had he sounded young? He had sounded, to her, like a man such as her father, or perhaps she’d merely imposed that on him, poor guy, just as she’d done to Sandro Cellini.
It had come to her that Ma would like Sandro Cellini.
‘Well then, perhaps we should,’ she had ventured. ‘Contact the police. Or someone.’
‘Yes,’ Ma had said. A silence. ‘Tomorrow.’ Her face had looked completely serene in the soft light falling through the door. ‘He said we should talk to old Carlotta next door. She might have seen something, he said.’
Still leaning on the balustrade, Roxana had turned her head and found herself listening for the grey Persian, nodding absently. The police. Two sets of footprints.
‘I thought we might have a bite out, tonight,’ Ma had said, standing to brush down her shirtwaister fastidiously as if she hadn’t spent the last two years barely even bothering to look in a mirror. ‘When you’ve finished your drink? The place on the corner’s open.’
‘Leave the lights on,’ Roxana had said as they left. Ma had looked at her, enquiring. ‘So we’re not fumbling about when we get back.’ And it’ll look like there’s someone home. ‘We’ll only be out an hour.’
It had been a bit more than that, in the end: it had been close to eleven. The trattoria — a decent place, if basic — had been very busy as there were so few places open this time of year; the clientele a mixture of campsite tourists and locals, and no air-conditioning, a waitress with a sheen of sweat hurrying between tables. So it wasn’t till eleven that she had started to look for her mobile, to phone Sandro Cellini.