‘Shut up! Shut up, you whore!’ Boyd roars.
‘Enough! Take him,’ says Leandro. In silence, the carabinieri march out with Boyd stumbling between them. Clare realises that she has referred to Ettore in the past tense, twice; a strange, raw keening starts up in her throat, and for a while she can’t stop it. She puts her hands over her mouth but the sound leaks out through her fingers, and she can smell blood on her skin – she has Ettore’s blood all over her hands.
The sun rises on Masseria dell’Arco as though the new day is the same as any that went before, and Clare wakes with every muscle aching, to the sound of splashing and sweeping. The servants are scrubbing blood from the courtyard stones with long-handled brooms and buckets of water. She looks in on Pip, still sound asleep, then wanders out onto the terrace, barefoot and dressed in her slip, to watch the clean-up. She’s still not able to absorb everything she’s seen and heard and learnt. That Marcie seduced Pip, and he thought himself in love with her. That Marcie was in love with Ettore. That Boyd had Emma killed, when she wasn’t as perfect as he wanted her to be. That Boyd killed Ettore, and that he aimed the gun at Clare, and pulled the trigger. She feels nothing whatsoever about the fact that the chamber was empty when he did. She can’t decide if it was good luck or bad, and she doesn’t care. Ettore is dead. None of these events, none of these things she’s learnt, will settle into a sensible order in her mind; an order she can read, and understand. It’s all a dark jumble and every time she feels some small satisfaction that she need never see Boyd again, that she is safe from him, it’s followed closely by the raw pain of remembering that Ettore is also gone. It’s exhausting. Trying to think it through is exhausting.
She goes back to Pip’s room and watches him sleep for a while. The room is full of the soft smell of him – skin and hair and breath. He’s sleeping off his shock, his double heartbreak; the trauma of losing his father, of having to rewrite his own history; the strain of sifting the truth from all the lies. To Clare it seems as though he’s cocooned himself in sleep – that this stupor hides a metamorphosis of some kind, and she can only wait to see what form he will take when he emerges from it. When she thinks how Marcie used him it kindles a slow-burning anger; she tries not to dwell on it. Marcie hasn’t yet come down from the high room she shares with Leandro, to which she retreated at some point in the night, and more than anything, now, Clare wants to be gone, and see none of them again. She wants to take Pip and leave. She thinks of all those hours he spent with Marcie in the bat room, listening to music or supposedly rehearsing a play that will never be staged. She thinks of the dusty old couch they dragged in there, initially for Clare to sit on and watch them. Perhaps it was all a play to Marcie, but Pip thought it was real. I was protecting you, he said, after he shot at Ettore, like I promised I would. She pictures Marcie playing the helpless, frightened woman, making Pip feel like a man. It’s all too easy to imagine. And she knows how word of the raid got to Leandro in time for him to prepare its defence. From Marcie, who heard it from Pip, who had sworn to Clare that he would tell no one. But she has no blame for Pip, only for herself. She abandoned him to be with Ettore; she left him to be lonely and uncertain – left an open wound for Marcie to heal.
Clare can’t eat. Not even when her hands start to shake with hunger and black flecks jig around the edges of her vision when she moves too quickly. Carlo is back on duty at the front door as though nothing has happened. His nose is swollen and bruised, split open across the bridge, and his eyes are bloody. When Clare apologises to him he turns his face away and doesn’t answer. He tries for a stony expression but he’s too young and too sweet; he looks like he might cry instead. Clare asks him where Paola Tarano is and Carlo jerks his thumb at the stairs behind him, still refusing to look at her, and she goes up in silence.
Paola is in a small room high up in the front wing of the masseria. There’s a little window overlooking the courtyard but Paola has her back to it, curled on her side on the narrow bed with Iacopo asleep against her stomach. These are servants’ quarters, and the room doesn’t look like it’s been used in a while. The nightstand is thick with dust, as is a rickety chair against one wall – the only other furniture. Someone has taken up a jug of water and a plate of bread and cheese, but they’re untouched. Paola moves nothing but her eyes when Clare knocks softly and goes in. For a second Clare hardly recognises her because Paola’s hair is loose, released from its usual knot and scarf. It reaches down past her elbows, black, and wavy from braiding. She looks younger, prettier, but her eyes are ancient with grief. For a while Clare simply stands there and says nothing, and their shared pain hovers between them. There’s some other resonance as well, something else they both feel – it takes Clare a moment to put her finger on it. She can feel her own guilt over Ettore’s death seething inside her, and she’d expected Paola to blame her, and be furious. But Paola is sodden with guilt as well; Paola blames herself.
Gently, to not stir the baby, Clare sits down on the edge of the mattress. She takes Paola’s hand, and though the girl’s black eyes fill with unease, even suspicion, she doesn’t pull away. They stay like that for a while. There’s nothing Clare can say to explain, nothing she can say to make things better, even if she could make this hard-faced girl understand her Italian. In the end she lifts Paola’s hand and presses it to her middle, low down, beneath the waistband of her skirt. Paola gazes at her, confused.
‘Ettore,’ says Clare. Paola still stares, so Clare points to Iacopo, then taps the girl’s hand on her abdomen. ‘Ettore’s baby. Bambino,’ she says, and sees comprehension dawn, and as it does Clare’s eyes flood with tears, and she can’t seem to stop them. She hangs her head and lets them run. ‘I never got to tell him,’ she says. ‘He’ll never know.’ Paola keeps hold of her hand but says nothing.
Clare stays for an hour or more, unwilling to leave because she’s sure that this will be the last time she sees Paola. The girl’s kinship to Ettore is a precious commodity now; the tantalising hint of him she has about her is a grain of comfort. When she gets up to leave she stoops and kisses Paola’s forehead, before the girl can jerk away, and Paola watches after her with an odd mix of anger and vulnerability. Clare can see how she hates to be cared for; how she doesn’t want sympathy, and mistrusts affection. She has a strength in her that Clare can’t hope to emulate, but then she thinks that if Paola won’t bend she must break, eventually.
Restless, searching, Clare paces the rooms and corridors of the masseria like a ghost. She would go out into the landscape but she can’t stand the thought of seeing the places where she met Ettore; can’t stand the thought of having to return to the masseria once she’s left it. Perhaps she wouldn’t return – perhaps she’d just keep walking, and she needs to be there when Pip emerges. She can’t go without him, but there’s a kernel of terror inside her that somehow, when he’s reborn, the bond between them will have vanished. That Marcie and Ettore will have somehow erased their affinity, that invisible tie they had, which is not motherhood, and could dissolve without trace. He would be justified in blaming her, after all – for all of it. Even for his father being taken away. He might refuse to leave while Boyd is still in Italy; he might want to stay with him. Clare’s walk drifts to a halt. Could that happen? Could she be forced to choose between Pip and staying for ever in a place that has begun to feel like a vast prison? It could happen. The idea makes it seem like the air itself is crushing her.