Almost without realizing it, he found himself outside the priest’s room on the top floor. He checked that nobody was coming up the stairs. Slightly anxious, knowing he was breaking a taboo, John opened the door and went in. He had done this before, feeling only a strange excitement, and no guilt at this violation of another person’s privacy. He closed the door behind him and took a few faltering steps inside the room. His eyes were a camera, recording every detail. He let his fingers play over a bible lying on the desk, picked up a sweater thrown over a chair, and finally went and opened the closet. All Michael’s meagre wardrobe was there in front of his eyes, on hangers. He stood there looking at the clothes and breathing in the smell of the man who, from the first, had fascinated and attracted him. Attracted him so much, there were times he had to walk away, for fear of what his face might reveal. He closed the closet and approached the bed. He ran his fingers over the blanket and then lay down on his stomach and put his head on the part of the pillow where Michael McKean’s head had been. He took a deep breath. When he was alone and thought about Michael, there were times when he wanted to be with him. And there were other times, like now, when he wanted to be him. He was convinced that, if he stayed here, sooner or later he would succeed…
The cellphone started ringing from somewhere in his pockets. He got up quickly from the bed with his heart in his mouth, as if that sound was the signal that the world had discovered him. He groped for the phone and answered.
‘John, it’s Michael. I’m on my way. Paul’s saying mass instead of me.’
He was still agitated, as if the man at the other end could see him, could see where he was. But in spite of the fact that the voice on the phone came to him filtered through his own embarrassment, it wasn’t the one John usually associated with Michael’s face. It sounded broken or distressed, or both.
‘What is it, Mike? Are you all right? Did something happen?’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll be there soon. Nothing happened.’
‘Okay. See you later.’
John hung up, and stood there looking at the phone as if it could help him decipher the words he had just heard. He knew Michael McKean well enough to know when something had affected him so strongly that he was no longer the person everyone was used to.
And this was one of those times.
When he had asked him if something had happened, he had replied that nothing had. But, in spite of his reassurances, his voice had the tone of a person to whom everything has happened. He left the room and closed the door behind him. As he walked back downstairs, he felt like a lonely, useless man.
CHAPTER 16
The fork went in and took two strands of spaghetti from the boiling saucepan.
Taking care not to scald herself, Vivien lifted them to her mouth. They were half cooked. She drained the pasta and placed it in the sauce that was waiting in the frying pan. She sautéed it for a few minutes on a high flame until the excess water had evaporated and everything was the right consistency, just as her grandmother had taught her when she was little. Her grandmother had been the only person in the family who’d never resigned herself to the fact that their surname had changed over the course of time from Luce to Light. She placed the frying pan on the worktop and with the tongs started to separate the spaghetti onto the two plates.
She didn’t think it was necessary to sit down at table and had laid two places with bamboo mats on the counter.
‘It’s ready!’ she called to her niece.
A few moments later Sundance appeared in the living room of Vivien’s small apartment. She had just taken a shower and her long hair was still damp. The light coming from the window struck her full on. She had put on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, and yet she looked like a queen. There were a few traces of her father, but mostly she was the image of her mother.
Beautiful, thin, fragile.
Hard to understand and easily hurt.
Vivien felt a pang in her heart. There were moments when the pain she carried inside her, congealed like a blood clot, suddenly broke free and overwhelmed her. It was pain at what had been, it was regret for all she could have been and fate hadn’t wanted her to be.
In spite of this, she smiled at her niece.
She mustn’t allow a sense of all the things they’d lost to spoil those that could still be recovered. Or to jeopardize those new, lasting things that could be built in what remained to her of the future. Time didn’t always heal every wound. For Vivien it was enough that it didn’t cause any more. The rest, as far as it was in her power to do so, she would provide. Not to silence the sense of guilt she carried inside her. Only to stop Sundance giving voice to hers.
The girl sat down on the stool and bent her head over the plate to breathe in the smell of the pasta. Her hair fell over the table like the branches of a willow tree.
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing special. Just spaghetti with tomato and basil.’
‘Mmmh. It’s good.’
‘Are you taking that on trust?’
Sundance looked up at her with her clear blue eyes as if nothing had happened. ‘Your spaghetti’s always good.’
Vivien smiled and made an exaggeratedly self-satisfied gesture. ‘That’s quite a compliment! I think I’ll put it in my personal ad.’
She sat down next to Sundance. They started eating in silence, each conscious of the other’s presence.
After what had happened, Vivien had never talked directly to her niece about the things she had been involved in. There had been a psychologist for that, and a long, difficult and tortuous process that was far from over. Sometimes Vivien wondered if it ever would be. But she was the only stable point in Sundance’s life now, since her sister Greta had fallen victim to early onset Alzheimer’s and was moving closer to oblivion day by day. Sundance’s father, Nathan, who’d been a shit all his life, though he’d been skilful at hiding it, had revealed his true colours and run away, trying to forget something that would never abandon him. If nothing else, he had left behind enough money to provide for his wife and daughter. Vivien had often thought, knowing him well, that this was the most they could expect from him. And that in any case anything else that came from him would be more of a hindrance than a help.
They finished the pasta almost simultaneously.
‘Are you still hungry? I can make you a hamburger, if you like.’
‘No. I’m fine. Thanks, Vunny.’
Sundance stood up and went to the TV set. She saw her take the remote control from the armrest of the couch and aim it at the set. The images and voices of Eyewitness Channel entered the room.
And a spectacle of desolation and death appeared on the screen.