‘Hi. How you doing?’ She closes the door gently behind her.
The young woman is sitting up in bed, hunched over a wooden roller tray, the type patients are served meals on.
She glances towards the captain but doesn’t say anything.
Valentina makes small talk as she heads her way. ‘You look as though you’re busy. Are they making you work for your stay?’
A tiny voice comes back. The voice of a sad child. ‘Mommy says I have to do my homework. She says if I don’t get it done I’m not going to be allowed to go with Daddy when he comes for me. Do you know what time it is?’
Valentina stays calm. ‘Plenty of time, honey. You’ve got plenty of time. What’s your name?’
She doesn’t look up from her writing. ‘Suzanna.’
Valentina is relieved. ‘That’s right. Suzanna Grecoraci, I remember now.’
‘No, silly. That’s not my name. I’m Suzanna Fratelli. I’m only eight. Suzanna Grecoraci is the name of that old lady, the one who is friends with the others.’ She looks up and gives Valentina a childish giggle. ‘You must be really silly to mix us up.’ She adds a critical stare to her facial repertoire. ‘Have you been drinking? My daddy mixes things up when he’s been drinking.’
Valentina moves closer to her. ‘No, I haven’t. Do other people mix you up?’
‘Sometimes.’ She looks down and works some more on the paper in front of her. ‘The others call me Little Suzie; that way when I leave notes and things they don’t get us confused.’
‘The others? What others are they?’
‘You know. The others, the ones who live in here with us.’
Valentina’s out of her depth and she knows it. ‘How many, Suzie? How many others are there?’
Suzie stops her work and counts them off on her fingers. ‘More than that!’ She holds up two outstretched hands, fingers spread wide. ‘Lots more.’
‘Really?’ Valentina works her way around so she can see over Suzie’s shoulder. ‘That’s really good. What is it?’
Suzie moves her hands to reveal a large crayoned drawing. ‘Romans. Do you like Romans?’
‘Some of them.’ Valentina leans closer. The crayoning is good. She can easily identify Roman soldiers, a crowd, senators in togas and — she has to look twice — a woman with her hand in the mouth of a giant white disc.
The Bocca della Verità.
‘That’s blood!’ says Suzie, jabbing excitedly at a smear of red. ‘It’s from Cassandra.’
The background of the drawing is filled with strange shapes: a sun, maybe a moon, and some badly drawn stars, so bad they’re more triangular and lopsided than star-shaped.
‘Cassandra is having her hand cut off,’ explains Suzie, almost as though she were recalling a favourite fairy tale. ‘It’s because she won’t tell them about the secret.’
‘Oooh, it looks nasty.’ Valentina rubs her own wrist. ‘What secret is that?’
Suzie frowns. ‘I don’t know. It’s Cassandra’s secret and she never tells. No matter what.’
There are sounds outside the door. A trolley being wheeled into an adjacent room. A woman’s voice talking loudly.
Suzie looks scared. ‘You should go now.’ She glances nervously towards the door. ‘If you don’t go, Momma will find you — then you’ll be sorry.’
Valentina gives her a reassuring smile. ‘I’m a policewoman, Suzie; nothing bad is going to happen while I’m here. I promise you.’
Fear takes Suzie’s voice up another ten decibels. ‘Please go! I don’t want you in here. If you don’t go, Momma will take it out on me and she won’t let Daddy come.’
The trolley is on the move again. They can hear its wheels squeaking. The door to the room next to them is opening. Valentina is desperate to ask more about Cassandra — about the secret — but she can see it would be pointless.
The poor girl is petrified.
She’ll come back and do it when she’s had time to gather her thoughts and think the whole crazy thing through a little more.
She gives Suzie a smile and moves away to open the door. ‘Don’t worry, no one will hurt you. I’ll come back tomorrow and make sure you’re all right.’
Suzie doesn’t reply.
She’s already pulled the bed sheet above her head and curled herself into a tight ball.
25
There is whispering in the womb.
Hushed voices.
Confidential tones.
But I hear them.
I lie curled up, pretending to be asleep, but I hear all their secrets and their laughter.
Mother and the special one — the favoured one — are together.
They are out of sight, hidden in the darkness, but their sentences fly like birds and nest in my ears.
It is easy for me to picture them there.
Easy but painful.
They sit side by side and Mother has her arm fondly around her. She strokes my sister’s hair and tells her how beautiful she is.
The most beautiful of all of us.
She tells her how clever she is.
By far the cleverest among us.
And She tells her how like Her she is.
And how She likes her the most.
The others want me to run away.
Escape.
They say they know how and can set me free.
They tell me they have done it before — in Phrygia, in Crete, in Anatolia, in Etruria, Hellas and Rome.
They can do it again.
But I know Mother will stop them. She will stop them and She will stop me.
And deep inside I feel that I don’t want to escape.
I want to belong.
I want to be the one to sit beneath Mother’s outstretched arm and be cherished and confided in.
I strain to listen.
I wait patiently for the word birds to nest again in my ears.
They are coming now, their beaks heavy with secrets carried from centuries long ago.
They drop them gently and I pick through them.
Precious stories about the kings of Rome, the Seven Hills of the Eternal City, the Prophecies.
And more.
The Tenth Book.
The secrets of the Tenth Book.
These are the scraps I am left as the voices fade in the darkness of the womb.
Now there is only silence, darkness and one thing else.
The silent screaming of my mind.
PART TWO
26
Monday morning isn’t Louisa Verdetti’s favourite time of the week. Especially, if she’s already worked Saturday and Sunday.
To make matters worse, the first part of her least favourite day is being spent with the man who tops her list of least favourite people.
Hospital administrator Sylvio Valducci is mid-fifties. He has white hair and is one of those bosses who one minute manages from a distance of six miles and the next from six inches. He’s the kind that conveniently ignores you when you’re in the middle of a crisis but is all over you about the cost of paper clips when it’s annual budget time. He and Louisa only have one thing in common — a mutual loathing of each other.