by Victoria Fox
Vivien was out in the cold. Nobody turned back to see the lone hostess in the centre of the dance floor. Not even my damned husband. Isabella smiled like an innocent flower, instead of the dreaded poison ivy Vivien knew her to be. She linked her brother’s arm as if they were the married couple – and, really, Vivien conceded, it was their party. They had been the original pair to occupy this mansion, long before Vivien had a stake in it. They were the ones their guests had come to see.
She waited for Gio to look at her, to catch her eye, to wonder, at least, where she was. But she was forgotten, cast aside like an old coat in favour of sequins.
But one person did catch her eye.
Isabella.
And that one look told her all she needed to know. Isabella had upstaged her deliberately. The sister had waited, bided her time, calculated her appearance to be the opposite of her rival’s and all the more devastating for it – because her dusky gown dripped with sex and seduction where Vivien’s own smacked of an uninitiated girl.
Isabella kept watching her, and Vivien dared herself not to look away.
Isabella’s glare said it perfectly.
He’ll never be yours. He’ll always be mine. Whatever you try, however you try it, you’re always going to lose. I’m his blood. You can’t compete with that.
An idea occurred to Vivien, then.
Oh, you’re wrong, Isabella. I can compete.
She knew what she had to do.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Italy, Summer 2016
It’s a relief when Max asks to meet. The past week at the Barbarossa has been quiet, and all the more strange because of it, as if the thing I disturbed has retreated, but only to plot its resurgence. I am desperate to tell someone about the diary, the attic, about Salvatore and the image in the fountain, but nobody at home would understand and besides, whatever this is belongs here, in the hills and the gold summer light. Against London it seems absurd, which perhaps it is, but I’m not ready to relinquish it yet.
I had considered contacting Max myself, but after my insistence when we’d met that I wanted nothing to do with his investigation, I feel cautious.
He collects me at the foot of the drive.
‘I remember coming here,’ Max says, as I climb into his beaten-up Fiat. ‘Lili never let me go past the gate.’
I wonder about Lili, the aunt. How close had she been to Vivien? I envy her that closeness. I feel as if one meeting with Vivien would answer so many questions, settle some faint query in my mind that would set off a chain reaction, see mysteries falling against each other like dominoes. Was Lili like Max? I watch my companion as he steers us through the groves and out on to the heat-parched road, the windows down and the warm, fragrant breeze playing with his hair. I’d thought him handsome when we met in the café, but in daylight it’s a true, real detail that appears more sharply in focus than it should, as if to remind me how it is to notice such a thing.
I haven’t noticed it in anyone since him.
Since James.
‘Are you OK?’ Max asks. I watch his hand on the wheel, touching it lightly at the bottom, and am reminded of a night James drove us to the coast, on a whim, because I said I fancied fish and chips on the beach, so that was what we had.
‘Yes,’ I reply, quashing my memories. ‘I’ve got a lot to tell you, that’s all.’
*
I don’t expect Max to take me to his home, but that’s where we go. He lives in a modest apartment in the village, converted from an old monastery, so it’s full of weird recesses and cool chambers whose walls are cold and moist to touch. It smells wonderful, like churches, and I like how he’s furnished it with solid pieces that speak of ages past – ‘Lili’s belongings,’ he explains, ‘I couldn’t get rid of it all…’ – mixed with modern photography on the walls, black and white prints of Florence that turn out to be his. ‘Just a hobby,’ he downplays it, ‘nothing special.’
I’m taking in his wall of books – mostly hardback history tomes, The Road to Rome; Germany’s War; Fall of the USSR, things like that. ‘Can I get you something to drink?’ he asks. I notice that cleft in his chin again.
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Coffee would be great.’
We sit at the back, on a small patio surrounded by sun-scorched plants, and Max confesses that he’s inadvertently killed every plant he’s ever bought or been given. I find this funny, and when I laugh it feels uncomfortably like we’re on a date. How I laughed at James’s jokes, but more of a nervous laugh, more that I didn’t know what else to do with myself besides laugh because he was my boss and this was off limits. With Max, it’s an easy, natural laugh that comes from an honest place.
Bill would say this was a date. She was constantly hassling me to get back in the mix, to ‘put that idiot in perspective’. Is Max hot? my friend had teased when I’d brought her up to speed. I’d reassured her it wasn’t like that, it really wasn’t, yet I knew that Bill would think he was hot, because… well, he was.
‘So.’ Max sits back. ‘Tell me everything.’
I do. I tell him about my meeting with Salvatore in the Oval. I tell him about Vivien’s outing to the doctor, and the pills that arrived previously; I tell him about the skeleton key, exactly where he’d described it in the ballroom fireplace, and the opening of the attic and the discovery of the handwritten note. I tell him about Vivien’s diary. For some reason I don’t tell him about the spectre I saw in the fountain, partly because I’m not sure I did see something, and partly because it sounds so far-fetched as to negate the veracity of everything else I’ve said. In fact, I don’t mention the fountain at all. The word doesn’t pass my lips. It’s forbidden.
‘Did the diary mention Lili?’ he asks.
I shake my head. ‘I only saw that one entry.’
Max sits forward. ‘We need to get hold of it again.’
‘It’s too risky. Honestly, Max, what Salvatore said scared me. This whole thing scares me. I feel like I’m going mad.’
‘He’s the mad one.’
‘Is he?’ I frown, remembering. ‘Adalina warned me he’d lost his mind, but when she said it… it was as if she wanted me to disregard him. As if she was covering herself. She said he went crazy years ago. But even though he startled me, he seems like the most honest person I’ve met at the Barbarossa. Not that I’ve met many.’
‘You still haven’t seen Vivien?’
‘I’ve glimpsed her. Saw her in the back of the car that day they went to the doctor’s. I’m sure she’s been watching when I’ve gone outside. And I’m pretty certain she’s been up in that attic – I’ve heard her. But, no, I haven’t met her.’
‘That’s odd.’
‘Tell me about it. Even if I wanted to pass on Lili’s message, I couldn’t. Adalina’s impossible to get past.’ I think of another thing. I tell Max about the exchange I overheard when Vivien told her maid how I looked like someone.
‘Who did they mean?’
‘I have no idea. But that has to be connected, doesn’t it? The thing that drove Salvatore crazy, and your aunt’s apology?’
Max lifts his shoulders. ‘Maybe.’
I dig in my bag to produce the scrawl I found in the attic. He’ll never be yours. He’ll always be mine. I’d shared with Max its content, but nothing except the original can adequately conjure the sheer dementedness of it, that horrifying scratch.
‘Wow,’ he says.
‘Who do you think wrote it?’
He blows air out of his mouth.
‘It has to be the husband,’ I jump in. ‘Gio. It has to be about him, I mean.’
‘Sí.’ A beat.
‘I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me.’
Max gives up on the coffee and goes to fetch something stronger. A bottle of grappa comes to the table, with two glasses. He fills them, takes his time.
‘Lili used to talk about the sister,’ he says. ‘Isabella. What a misery she was making of Vivien. They were at each other’s throats.’
<
br /> ‘That would tie up with the diary entry.’
‘It would. But what does it mean, that she had a thing for her own brother?’
I’m about to dismiss it, but don’t. ‘Did Lili say anything else?’ I ask.
‘I tried, but she only said Vivien was entitled to her privacy.’
‘That figures, if they were close…’ I’m thinking. Mostly about the fountain and what Salvatore said, the woman who washed herself in it. Had he been talking about Isabella? Vivien? Even Lili? What did the water have to do with it?
We end up talking long into the night. It’s ages since I got properly let-it-all-go drunk. The last time was with Bill, a few nights after Grace Calloway killed herself. I’d neither eaten nor slept since it happened, closeted in my room, afraid to get out of bed because that meant facing the world, and equally afraid to stay in it because that meant facing my demons. Eventually Bill hauled me out, produced a ton of vodka and we’d drunk it neat on ice cubes while I poured my heart out. Alcohol was the only thing that passed my lips that week. That was one sinister hangover.
But getting drunk with Max now – even in spite of the circumstances, it’s fun. We move off topic, as if actually that was just a guise to bring me here, an excuse to see each other, and we talk about our lives, our histories, our fears and hopes. Max shares with me a funny story about an ex-girlfriend. I don’t say anything about James. He tells me about his mamma, how he tried a while ago to get in touch with her but she didn’t want to know. I tell him about mine, my dad and my sisters and what it was like growing up, and how I wish I remembered my mother better.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
‘Don’t be. It’s fine. I’ve had long enough to get over it.’
My attempt at light-heartedness sounds empty.
‘You can talk to me, you know,’ says Max.
‘Talk to you about what?’
‘All the things you don’t talk to anyone else about.’
‘How would you know what I talk about when I’m not with you?’ But I say it playfully, maybe to alleviate the serious ground we seem to have stumbled on to.
‘Go on,’ he encourages. ‘I want to know a secret about Lucy Whittaker.’
I swallow. A secret…
I think about it. And then I say something I’ve never said to anyone.
I say how, after Mum died, I tried every day to make my father happy even though I didn’t know how, and I just wanted to feel happy myself. I say how, on a bad week, Dad didn’t get out of bed, and when anyone came to the door I pretended it was fine and he had just gone out to the shops. I say how Dad never talked to me about Mum, and I wished he would but I never pushed him because grief affected us in different ways. I say how, after my sisters went, it seemed impossible to leave because Dad needed me, so I took a local job, ploughing my earnings into the house and into paying the woman who came to play cards with Dad on the nights I was at work. I say how that woman gave me my life back, because, in time, a friendship grew between them and she moved in – and, in the same stroke, my old school friend Bill was looking for a flat share in London. I say how excited I was that my life was my own again… but that I always left a piece of me at home with Dad. I don’t say what happened next. That I embarked on the most reckless of adventures because I had never known adventure before.
Max waits a long moment, before saying: ‘It was nice of you to care for your family.’ He’s searching my eyes, gently, curiously.
‘Anyone would do it.’
Max makes a Maybe face.
‘Aren’t they worried about you?’ he asks.
‘Why would they be?’
There’s that grin again – and, just like that, he’s scooped us up and we’re two friends, having a drink, and nothing is frightening or strange or sad.
‘Beautiful, single girl out here on her own,’ he says, ‘she could get up to anything.’ The grin holds for a moment, and then: ‘You are single, right?’
I’m blushing at his description of me. ‘Yeah,’ I say into the glass.
‘No one at home?’ He refills me. ‘There must be.’
‘Why?’
‘Just a feeling.’
‘Well, your feeling’s wrong. There’s nobody.’ It comes out harsher than I’d wanted, the last word catching. Where would I even begin, telling Max about James? I lost the words a long time ago, if indeed they ever existed.
‘What about this Bill guy?’
I laugh and it’s a nice release. ‘Bill’s a girl.’
‘Ah. In that case, I like the sound of Bill.’
Somehow, we reach midnight. We make the appropriate noises about wrapping it up, but neither of us wants to, and, besides, we’re both too smashed to drive. We reach one a.m.; one becomes two and two becomes three, and the sky outside is no longer pitch but giving way to lilac, a nascent dawn. Max makes up the couch and the next thing I know I’m awake, my head on a pillow and a blanket over me, the sun bursting through the windows and a headache like fire.
Thankfully, Max isn’t awake. I check the time and it’s still early; I can make it back to the Barbarossa and begin my day as normal. The thought of all I must do is, for a moment, more than I can take, and I consider being sick before dragging myself together and sinking a glass of water. I find a couple of painkillers in the bathroom and swill them down, then rub toothpaste on my gums. In the mirror, my reflection is frightful, my hair a nest and mascara smudged round my eyes. But there’s a glint that saves it from being a completely lost cause. I had fun last night. Who cares if I’ve got the hangover to end all hangovers, or if I’ve got to grit my teeth and plod through the day when all I want is to collapse into sleep… I had fun.
I rearrange the sofa, leave a thank you note for Max, and grab my bag, before opening the door to the street. I can see the Barbarossa in the distance, and even though I don’t know my way, I’m happy to amble a while and see where it takes me.
*
My good mood is still going strong when I arrive back at the castillo. Adalina is nowhere in evidence so I have a bowl of fruit, then take a shower and gather the cleaning equipment at the foot of the stairs. Remembering how my phone’s been on silent, I quickly check it. The messages must have come in while I was in signal at Max’s, only I was too wasted to notice. My mood falters.
The texts are from my dad. Three of the same; he never could work out how to use it. ‘Why not just call somebody?’ he’d say. And he’d tried that, too.
Four missed calls. I open the text.
I know something is wrong even before I read it.
Hi, darling. A young lady came by looking for you today, a journalist. Very determined. Is she a friend of yours? Told me to buy the papers in the morning. What did she mean?
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Vivien, Italy, 1982
As the seasons passed and turned into a year, Vivien’s plan to exile Isabella became less high-impact and more slow burn, whose hope fizzed to dust with every month that elapsed. The one sure-fire way she could think of to relegate her rival escaped her. The single way in which she could draw a line under her history rushed through her praying fingers like sand. Each time she had her period, she despaired. She and Gio made love at the right time, she was sure of it. What was the matter with her?
Many a tear had been shed on the lavatory seat. Vivien couldn’t share her frustrations with Gio because Gio was none the wiser. Unbeknown to him, she had long stopped taking her contraceptive pill, emptying the tablets down the loo and tossing their packets in the garbage. They had discussed children in the past, she reasoned, and both wanted them, so where was the harm? Once Gio heard the news, a happy accident, he would be thrilled. So why was the news taking so long coming?
Vivien tried not to overthink the matter. Plenty of couples took at least twelve months to conceive, there was nothing unusual about it. But too often she spiralled into negative thoughts, obsessing about how it would feel to carry an unborn baby, to give birth to it, who it would look lik
e, a girl or a boy; and, on dark nights, she would wonder if this was Gilbert Lockhart’s curse, if what he had said all along was right – that she was sullied and sinful, and this was her punishment for rejecting his creed.
You don’t deserve a baby. You never will. After what you did?
Was it Gilbert’s voice, or her own? Because the voice was right: she didn’t deserve it. She thought of her shameful actions at Boudoir Lalique, when she’d been a wide-eyed virgin too frightened to protest for fear of being chucked back out on the street. Back then she’d been terrified of falling pregnant, and willed her period each month, a sick dread growing in the pit of her stomach until she was saved by a bright red stain in her knickers. Now, she dreaded its arrival. It was a cruel irony.
Having spent most of her life in denial of family, Vivien’s every waking hour was now preoccupied with it. A clean slate, a new unit: a wonderful, pure little person who had made none of her mistakes and knew none of her faults. She could be anyone in her child’s eyes, the most perfect mother on earth. She longed to be that mother.
The mother she herself had never had.
‘Pass the salt, would you, Bella?’ Gio asked one night over the supper table. He signalled from the head of the table, and while his sister went to retrieve the shaker, Salvatore, after refilling their goblets, spared her the effort.
‘Prego, signor,’ he said, bringing it to Gio.
‘Grazie, Salve.’
Vivien, drenched in the finery she always reserved for mealtimes, focused on her rabbit pappardelle and on avoiding Isabella’s eye. It was customary for the trio to rotate their seats (Gio suggested it early on, for fear of his precious sister feeling left out), and tonight Vivien was on one arm of the absurdly long table, with brother and sister facing each other from opposite ends. It made an infant of her, dining with her parents. The finery was intended to counter that – and yet, it seemed, with each sun that rose Isabella became lovelier still. The chrysalis that had emerged on the night of the Halloween party had become a butterfly. Isabella now made an effort with her appearance that had been resolutely lacking in LA, her hair styled, her make-up applied, and a wardrobe advisor who sent delectably wrapped packages to the house.
