by Victoria Fox
‘No, thank you,’ says Vivien.
Then, sensing Adalina slipping away from her, she asks:
‘Where is the girl going?’
Adalina’s voice reaches her from afar. ‘Lucy? Into town, I expect.’
Vivien sits on the bed. ‘She knows.’
There is a pause. Adalina has heard this before, many times.
‘She cannot possibly.’
‘Can’t she?’ Vivien looks at her. The maid flickers for a moment in her vision, like a cracked reel of film, as if she’s not really there. ‘I sense her fascination.’
‘You cannot blame her. She is young. Impressionable.’
‘She is finding out about me. About… us.’
Adalina is confused. ‘How can she be? Signora, we’re careful…’
‘Are we? What if she suspects us?’
There is no reply. Vivien swallows, closes her eyes. All she hears is silence. She concentrates. ‘I want you to investigate her,’ she says.
‘I’m sorry?’ says Adalina.
‘I want to know everything: where she came from, why, what she left behind. I want the whole story, from start to finish. I can’t be powerless.’
Adalina considers her next move.
‘This isn’t about…’ she falters, ‘her resemblance to…?’
Vivien waits. ‘Go on,’ she challenges, ‘say her name.’
Adalina can’t. ‘Signora, I think it’s best if we—’
‘I think it’s best if we find out all there is. I don’t trust her.’
You don’t trust anyone. That was what the maid wanted to say; Vivien could hear it in the air as surely as if it had been on her lips. Can Adalina blame her? A moment passes where it looks as if she might go in for another disagreement. Then:
‘Very well, signora.’
‘Report back to me in the morning. I hope I’m proved wrong, but, Adalina, we should prepare ourselves to lose another one.’
Adalina wears a resigned expression. She has anticipated this. Next month they will hire another, the same the month after that. An endless merry-go-round of hopeful young things who are doomed from the start. But Lucy is worse; she looks like Isabella. Next, Vivien will ask for a photograph to accompany the application.
If her illness spares her that long…
‘May I leave you now, signora?’
Vivien turns back to the wall.
‘Yes,’ she says tightly. ‘You have work to do.’
Alone, she rests a hand on her stomach, empty and longing.
I’ll protect you this time, she thinks. No one is taking you, ever again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I’m due to meet Max at midday. He’s waiting on a terrace by the Duomo, drinking espresso and smoking a cigarette. I didn’t know he smoked.
‘Hey,’ he says when he sees me. ‘What’s up?’
His manner is aloof but I expected no less. He’s messaged me a few times since Alison but I’ve stalled on every reply, unsure how to play it. Either I lie about the whole thing, deny James’s existence because it’s easier, or I open the whole basket of snakes and let Max into the most disgraceful event of my life. Only twenty-four hours have passed since Alison’s visit but it feels like an eternity.
‘Thanks for meeting,’ I say, pulling out a chair. A waiter comes to take my order. I ask for a Coke, though I don’t really like it: I can’t think of anything else.
‘You look tired,’ he says.
‘I was up most of last night.’
He waits. He doesn’t need to express his interest, his need to know: it’s there all over his face. It’s a kind face, open and intelligent. Not the shadows I am used to.
‘I’ve got Vivien’s diary,’ I say. It isn’t what he wants to hear and his features drop with disappointment. But this is our business; this is what brought us together in the first place, Max’s desire to solve the Barbarossa mystery and my agreeing to help. Nothing about my personal life has the slightest bearing on that.
‘Really.’
‘It was weird. Someone put it outside my door in the middle of the night.’ In saying it, another thing occurs to me. ‘I keep waking at the same time each morning: twelve minutes past three. I see it on the clock. That’s when the diary showed up.’
Max can’t conceal his interest, though he’s trying.
‘Who put it there?’
‘It has to be Adalina. It’s hardly going to be Vivien herself – and Salvatore would never get access. Besides, I haven’t seen him since the portrait fire.’
I pause.
‘There is another person who could have given me the diary,’ I venture.
Max lifts an eyebrow.
‘This is going to sound mad,’ I say, ‘but it’s true. It’s the latest in a series of strange things that have happened to me at the Barbarossa. I thought I’d heard it before… seen things, you know, but it wasn’t until last night that I knew for sure.’
Max doesn’t follow. ‘Knew what?’
‘It’s haunted.’
He sits back. I’m aware this could discredit me entirely, but I know what happened in that bed. I was there. Someone – something – else was, too.
‘You’re talking about a ghost?’
Max’s voice carries the quirk of humour; he isn’t taking me seriously. Nonetheless I tell him about the sheet being pulled. He asks if I was drowsy, imagining things, all the doubts I anticipate. I wasn’t, I didn’t; I’m sure of what I felt.
‘Lucy, this is…’
‘Mad, I told you. But I swear it. Isabella’s dead, right? This “tragedy” they talk about. But she’s still there – she’s still at the Barbarossa. She’s been trying to get through to me, and now I know why. Don’t look at me like that, Max. I’m not crazy.’
‘No, but you do have a lot on your mind.’
‘What would you know about what’s on my mind?’
‘Not much,’ he says, ‘since you won’t tell me.’
Well, I walked into that one. ‘That’s completely irrelevant,’ I say.
‘Is it? Lucy, you’re right, I haven’t a clue what’s going on with you, but the way you’ve been acting lately, that woman showing up, all this secrecy… I mean, I thought we were friends? All I’m saying is that it would be understandable if you were letting it get on top of you. All this stuff bottled up, whatever it is.’
‘I’m not bottling anything up.’
‘No?’
‘No. And that has nothing to do with this.’ I’m angry. ‘You asked for my help, Max – you asked me to join you because you needed to know. Here I am about to share a goldmine and instead you’re fixated on my private life?’
‘I’m pointing out that all this rubbish about spooks and hauntings… well, it might be because you don’t want to think about your own problems.’
I’m stunned. ‘How dare you,’ I say.
‘I want to be a friend to you, that’s all.’
I swallow hard. At least he’s made my decision easy.
I fish in my bag and bring out the diary. ‘I haven’t read it,’ I say, sliding it across the table to him. ‘And I’m not going to.’
He frowns, not understanding. But I know this is the right thing. It’s the only thing. I told Max at the start that this wasn’t for me – I had enough on my plate. And now I know for sure that I’m in too deep. I’m scared. Whatever I felt, whatever this is, it’s telling me to go: it doesn’t want me at the Barbarossa.
Max’s expression shifts. ‘You’re leaving,’ he says flatly.
I nod.
‘When?’
‘My train leaves first thing in the morning.’
His features close, letting me know I’m shut out. He finishes his espresso and takes his time repositioning the cup on its saucer. There’s an uncomfortable pause.
‘We’re so close,’ he says at last. ‘The truth’s in that diary – you know that, right?’
I nod. The truth is what I’m afraid of. I look at the diary, just as I had u
ntil dawn, my fingers itching to lift its cover but my racing heart telling me not to.
‘I’m not sure I want to know the truth,’ I say. ‘I’m done with truths.’
Max watches me for a moment, as if working out if he can change my mind. He must decide that he can’t, because then he says:
‘Is it something to do with him?’
I’m confused. ‘Who?’
‘The guy over there.’ Max nods over my shoulder. ‘He’s been watching us this whole time. Someone you know?’
*
I walk briskly, but I sense he’s behind me. I pretended I didn’t know him on the terrace. I wasn’t prepared to give Max the satisfaction of seeing me run into his arms.
‘Lucy—’
He has called my name a few times; this last is firmer, aggressive, like it was the last time we spoke before I left Calloway & Cooper. He grabs my arm; I act startled, stop, turn, and arrange my features into pleased surprise.
‘Didn’t you hear me? I’ve been following you for ages.’
‘James, hi. Sorry… I’m in a hurry.’
‘Where to?’ There is a grey cloud in his eyes, warning of a storm. I used to adore how his eyes gave him away, so passionate and fervent.
‘Back to work,’ I lie. He knows it.
‘Who was that?’
‘Who?’
‘That man you were talking to. Don’t tell me you’ve moved on already?’
I’m shocked by his tone. It’s a side I’ve never seen before, sniping, mean, derogatory. I half expect him to call me a tramp or a slut, all those names the internet threw at me. My heart drops. The papers. It’s today. James will know. His lawyers will have called him first thing.
‘Of course not,’ I say quietly. ‘He’s a colleague.’
James snorts. ‘At the private estate?’
‘Yes.’ It’s only half an invention. It occurs to me that I shouldn’t have to lie about Max at all – I’ve nothing to hide. But the way James is confronting me makes me want to hide things. It makes me want to hide, full stop. I swear he never used to be like this. All he ever did was tell me how much he cared for me, walked hand in hand with me on deserted night streets, made love to me in that flat he used in Vauxhall. I don’t recognise this version. Out of context, away from his powerhouse in London, he seems more ordinary. He’s wearing the same clothes as yesterday.
‘Were you with him last night?’
This isn’t a conversation I want to have in the middle of a piazza.
‘James, do we have to—’
‘Yes, I’d say we have to.’
I’m about to deny it when a thought surfaces. Why would he be so hung up on Max if he’d already heard about my story hitting the stands? Surely, then, he’d have greater matters on his mind. Is it possible James hasn’t been informed? It’s lunchtime here, tourists trickling into cobbled trattoria for pizza and sorbet; at home, the whirlwind will only just have hit. I picture his advisors in crisis meetings. How do we break this to him? What’s the least debilitating transmission we can come up with?
Hesitantly, I say, ‘There’s nothing going on. I spent last night alone.’
Abruptly, his features lighten. There he is, the James I know.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘You understand, don’t you? It’s such a difficult time. You’re the only thing that’s making me see clearly.’
‘I understand.’
‘I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.’
‘You won’t.’ My mouth is dry.
‘Good.’ He smiles and takes my hand. ‘You’d never let me down, would you, Lucy? You’re on my side, our secret is our secret?’
I nod. The deeper in, the quicker the sand; it’s too late to get out now.
*
He insists we eat. I have no appetite and the linguine he orders for me sticks like cement to the roof of my mouth. He talks as if we’ve never been apart – about how beautiful the city is (how I must remind him to take me to Venice, to Rome, to Verona) and how it’s so special to be here with me. It’s more special than when he was with Grace. I wish he wouldn’t talk about her, and I don’t know if that makes me a coward or him a cretin. Once again, I think of his children. Where are they?
Every time his phone beeps, which is often, I feel the ground slip out from under me. ‘Football scores,’ he says, or, ‘Bloody bank.’ The ground reappears.
When my own goes with a missive from Alison, telling me that the story has been delayed to tomorrow’s press, I relax a little. My execution postponed a day longer. I know I should come right out and say what I’ve done, that I did it in good faith and what was I supposed to think, I hadn’t heard from him in months. I know I should be able to do this, to be truthful, if our love is what I believe it to be, if it’s what he promises it is. But I can’t. Every part of me tells me not to.
‘So how long are you staying?’ James asks, spearing a spiral of fusilli.
I open my mouth to tell him, but then I stop. I don’t want him to know. Come the morning, come Alison’s reveal, I want to be as far away as possible, somewhere he can’t find me. Tell him now or you’ll blow it. You could have a future with James, all you ever wanted – Lucy Calloway, by his side forever. Tell him now or it’s over.
‘A while, I expect,’ I mumble. ‘How about you?’
‘Tomorrow,’ he says, throwing back red wine. ‘I don’t want to, darling, but my team are clamouring for my return. Seeing you has been like a shot in the arm.’
A lethal injection, more like. The guillotine hovers. Tomorrow.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Vivien, Italy, 1985
They named the boy Alfonso, Alfie for short. Vivien considered him the most perfect person she had ever laid eyes on. She fell in love instantly with his skin and his smell, his wide blue eyes that were older and wiser than their days, and the softness of his gently downed head as it rested against her shoulder. Her son. Her wonder.
For a while, Alfie’s arrival smoothed the path towards Gio. Both were too enamoured with their baby to remember their fight, the birth a punctuation mark more decisive than any they could have contrived. It put all else in perspective. They had made this child together: with his lovely dark hair and glacial eyes, he was a flawless mixture of them both. Vivien had always thought that most babies looked a bit shrivelled, like sultanas wrapped in muslin, yet it was an unspoken duty to coo over how sweet and immaculate they were. In Alfie’s case, every word was true.
‘Look at him,’ she would whisper, just to herself, as she stood rocking him in the deep of night, tired beyond reason but with reserves of energy she never knew she possessed. That was love, she decided: the unquestioning instinct to put another before oneself. She had never done it before – if she were truthful, not even with Gio.
Here was someone who needed her, really needed her, and the focus she gave to caring for Alfie eclipsed all she had done before. It all seemed meaningless now.
She kissed Alfie’s head and sang him a lullaby:
‘Do you know where the pear tree grows?
Up on the hill, by the old corn mill…’
She couldn’t remember where she had heard the rhyme, the tune trickling back to her after years. A nanny, perhaps, one of the crinkly-faced black women whom Gilbert employed; he would never say hello to them in the market, but he would let them clean the dirt off his boots. Love thy neighbour. Another lesson unheeded.
Gazing down at her newborn son’s face, Vivien was filled with indignation. How her parents had palmed her off on the help, her mother hiding behind closed doors, afraid to meet her husband’s eye, too timid to reach out and touch her only daughter. For so long, she had considered Millicent Lockhart a victim. Now, fired by an unconditional commitment to her own offspring, Vivien wondered if Millicent hadn’t been as much to blame as her father. How had she got to duck out? How was it OK for her to keep quiet, put up with the beatings and the threats, and, in not saying anything, to say: This is fine. Keep doing it. I’ve
no complaints. Millicent had been the adult and Vivien the defenceless child. She held Alfie now to her chest, listened to his gentle breath. Her protection of him was a force field. Millicent had lacked that spirit.
Alfie’s eyes were closed, his tiny chest rising and falling.
‘Is he asleep?’
Gio appeared at the door, his handsome face exhausted but happy. They talked about their son like a couple in the first throes of love, in hushed, reverential tones, tender with each other as they were with the baby. Are we still in love? Vivien wondered. She adored Gio as much as she ever had, but she feared that the words they had spoken and the anger they’d exchanged was a path with no return. Too many times, she had shown her jealous, rageful self. She wanted to appear wonderful to him, as wonderful as Isabella, but she could never compete with the walking miracle that was his sister. Even after childbirth, after bearing him a son and all the astonishment that contained, she still could not occupy the place that his sister did. Gio could pretend, he could spend the rest of his life pretending, but Vivien knew it was an act. He had lied since they came to Italy. He had put Isabella first.
‘Yes,’ she answered, holding Alfie out so his father could take him. Seeing Gio cradle their son was magical. She drank in moments like this, thinking, These are the pictures I’ll remember. Quite when she would remember them, she never got round to settling. When she was old, grey, lost? When she was dying?
‘Isn’t he perfect?’ she murmured. Gio nodded. She wished he would say something like, As perfect as you, which he might have once upon a time, and even in that instant of contentment she felt the familiar stab of envy. Alfie looked nothing like Isabella, except, perhaps, for a trace around the chin. Was Gio looking for his sister? Had he hoped to find more of her, of his parents, in his son?
