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Chapter Eleven – Clare

The more Clare speaks to Ettore, the more time she spends with him, the better her Italian becomes. The latest word she’s learnt is tradimento. Betrayal. She was so sure that Boyd would guess at once that for the first few days fear chafed at her every time she saw her husband. She’d been sure he would see it in her eyes, or smell it on her – smell Ettore on her – but he’s said nothing, and shown no signs of suspicion. Since he told Clare about Leandro Cardetta and his strange, precarious relationship with the man, Boyd has been diffident with her, cautious, as though he’s not quite sure what she’ll do. Perhaps this distraction is what keeps him from noticing that nothing is how it was before – that the world is not what Clare thought it was, that they are not the same people, any of them, and that to this new version of herself, Ettore Tarano is as necessary as breathing. She fears the speed with which Ettore is healing, his leg strengthening; she dreads his departure from the masseria.

One afternoon she goes directly from Ettore’s room to the quiet chamber where Boyd works, at the back of the masseria. She goes with her hair dishevelled, her blouse untucked from the waistband of her skirt and sweat drying along her hairline, but these could be symptoms of the heat, nothing more. Boyd starts as she comes in, his body curved over his work, the desk covered in papers and pencils; he looks up and the sight of her wipes away his frown of concentration, leaving pleasure and hope in its place. The room smells faintly of him, and of wood and ink, like a schoolroom.

‘Hello, darling,’ he says, and he smiles. Clare pulse flutters in her throat; she’s alive with nerves, and yet a part of her almost wants him to guess, even if the thought of what would happen then terrifies her. She wonders if it was this same impulse that made him confess everything to her about his affair, the year before, with Christina Havers. Clare hadn’t guessed anything; she hadn’t seen or sensed anything different, until he broke down and wept, and made her sit while he knelt before her and confessed it all. Had he come home with traces of Christina on his body? Had he wanted her to guess, and felt this same frustration when she hadn’t? Nothing has changed. He said it over and over. Nothing has changed, my darling, I promise. But he’d been wrong about that, because Clare took a quick look into her heart and couldn’t even find an echo of what she’d felt for him when they wed. She doesn’t think it was his affair that made it vanish, but that gave her cause to examine her feelings. And because there was no love there was no injury, there was no anguish. There was nothing much at all.

The affair with Christina showed Clare a side of her husband she’d never seen before. Since their trip to New York she’d known there were things about him she didn’t understand, and perhaps never would. She would never know how deep his grief for Emma went, because it seemed fathomless, like his love for her. She knew there were things from that past life that he would not, or could not, put into words. But the way he rounded on Christina Havers – the young, bored wife of a client – after their affair, was a revelation. Christina had thick, dark hair, lazy eyes and bee-stung lips. She was about the age Clare had been when she’d married Boyd – eighteen or nineteen. There was still a layer of puppy fat on her figure; her big, round breasts nestled between soft arms. Boyd said she’d seduced him – got him drunk at a drinks party and came on strongly. He called her a whore, a slut, a trollop, spitting out these ugly words as if they tasted bad; he clearly hated her with a passion. But he hadn’t only slept with her once; somehow he’d found himself at her mercy four or five times before guilt and loathing overwhelmed him, and made him throw himself on his wife’s mercy.

Clare had believed his remorse – it was impossible not to when he’d worked himself into such a lather. His utter abjection made her think of New York, of the vomit and the white dots on the carpet, and the terrifying way he’d seemed like a stranger – completely, in that moment, and partially ever since. So she followed her instinct to calm him, to reassure him. She believed that he loved her, hated what he’d done, couldn’t explain quite why he’d done it, and was terrified she might leave him because of it. But she also believed his hatred of Christina, and that was what bothered her the most. She wasn’t sure what it meant; she didn’t know how he could make love to the girl and then blame her entirely, and hate her. Making love had required both of them to be there, and willing, after all. Troubled, Clare said very little on the whole subject, and Boyd took her silence as a dignified toleration of his transgression that might soon lead to forgiveness, and life returned to the way it had been before. That bitch, he called little Christina, his lips white with the word, tears shining on his rumpled face. That whore.

Now, Clare finds herself wondering what it would be like to hear those same words from Boyd directed at her. She can’t imagine it – not when he has only ever told her that he couldn’t live without her, that she is an angel, that she has saved him. But that was the Clare before Ettore. Boyd holds his hand out to her, and with the thrill of wondering if this will be what gives her away, if touch will be the sense with which he sees clearly, Clare crosses the room and takes his hand.

‘How’s it coming along?’ she says. Dry mouth; shallow breaths. Boyd turns back to look at his drawings and shrugs slightly.

‘Well, they’re almost ready to show him. As to how he’ll react to them…’ He looks up at her with mute appeal. ‘I can only hope he’ll be happy, and we can go home.’ Panic bubbles up in Clare. In the space of two weeks her goal has turned on its head, and now she doesn’t want to leave. She remembers what Ettore said – that Leandro wants to find something out from Boyd before he will let them go. It could simply mean that Leandro wants to see these finished designs, but it could mean something else. Something more. As soon as Ettore told her she’d thought of New York, and it’s on the tip of Clare’s tongue to ask, to speculate, but she stops herself. If he doesn’t know already, then she doesn’t want Boyd to hear that this missing information is what’s keeping them there. He might clear the matter up in minutes; their visit might end there and then. There’s unease behind all this silent thought – she can’t imagine what information Boyd could possibly have that Leandro might want.

Boyd squeezes her hand for attention. ‘Well, what do you think?’ he says. Clare has been staring at the drawings for a minute or more without really seeing them. She blinks, and concentrates. The new front Boyd has drawn for the house on Via Garibaldi has trulli along the roofline. Four small, stylised trulli, built of interlocking stone just like the real things, but with regular-sized cut blocks, put together precisely, so that the sides are almost faceted and they are halfway to being pyramids rather than cones. Each one is topped with a tall spike, like that of a small minaret, and the rest of the front is plain, elegant, almost austere, with four Doric columns flanking the large street door. Clare has a sinking feeling inside.

‘It’s just… wonderful, Boyd,’ she says honestly. ‘It’s so different, and yet it won’t jar with anything around it… It’s understated, but it’s striking. I think it’s one of the best things you’ve designed. Cardetta has to be pleased.’ Boyd sags visibly in relief.

‘I am so glad you think so, darling. I was hoping… that is, the building seemed to take shape as I drew it – it seemed to know how it ought to look. That’s always a very good sign. The trulli are such iconic buildings of this area. I’d never seen anything like them before I came here. I think they represent Mr Cardetta rather well, don’t you? As emblems, I mean. They’re peasant dwellings, after all, but they can stand for hundreds of years. He came from the peasantry but has constructed a far grander life, and a more lasting one, by being steadfast and adaptable.’ Boyd pauses, scrutinising his work with an anxious gaze. ‘Never mind quite what he has constructed it upon,’ he murmurs.