Stolen Beginnings

by Susan Lewis

  By the time she finished, Grace’s face was ashen and her eyes were filled with tears. ‘Frank does everything he can to help the families of the children who died,’ she said, ‘anonymously, of course. And he’s set up a charity for abused children, to make sure that the victims who have been maimed by what happened are helped. But I don’t think he’ll ever forgive himself. He believes that if he hadn’t frozen Olivia’s money at the bank, she’d never have got into it. But it was my idea to do that, to try and stop her taking the drugs, so if anyone’s to blame it’s me.’

  As Matthew looked at her he felt such overriding compassion that he had to swallow hard on the lump in his throat. What could this woman ever have done to deserve such torment? ‘The sins of the children,’ he whispered, and Grace’s answering smile was so tragic it tore right through his heart.

  ‘Our concern now is for Marian,’ she said, ‘which is why Frank asked me to tell you.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I don’t know yet, but one thing’s certain – she won’t be able to come filming with us in New York. But how am I going to explain that to Stephanie?’

  ‘I think you should bring her,’ Grace told him. ‘She will be safer here, with you and Frank’s people watching over her, than she would in London, alone. The same goes for Italy. Keep her with you, make sure she’s surrounded by people the whole time. We could be over-reacting, but we can’t take the risk. Of course, no one but Frank, Art Douglas, Jodi and ourselves, knows that she has any idea what went on . . . What’s the matter? Did I say something . . .’

  Matthew was shaking his head, and a look of foreboding had come over his face. ‘She’s in Italy now,’ he said. ‘She saw Rambaldi yesterday, and she wasn’t in her room when Stephanie called last night. If she’s let something slip to him . . .’ He leapt to his feet. ‘Can I use the phone?’

  ‘Of course.’ Grace too was on her feet. ‘Use the grey one, it’s a direct line.’

  Matthew snatched up the receiver, then remembering he didn’t have the number of the pensione where Bronwen and Marian were staying, he slammed it down again. ‘I’ll have to get the number from Stephanie.’

  Grace immediately picked up another phone and pressed a button. ‘Is Frank still with the attorneys, Lydia?’ she enquired, and when she had got the answer she rang off. ‘Stephanie left ten minutes ago, to go back to the hotel.’

  Matthew looked at his watch. ‘She won’t be there yet. Look, I think I’d better jump in a cab and get back there myself. Maybe Marian’s left a message.’

  ‘Sure. I’ll call the front desk and have them hail you one while you’re on your way down.’

  After he’d told the driver his destination Matthew sank back in the seat, trying to think himself into a state of calm as the traffic thickened round them, making the journey agonizingly slow. ‘Marian, Marian,’ he muttered, gazing blindly out at the heat-soaked streets, ‘why did you do it?’ But he knew the answer, and his eyes closed as a dreadful premonition swelled through his gut.

  After their meeting with Sergio Rambaldi two days ago, Marian had finally managed to get Bronwen back to the pensione where they were staying, near the Pitti Palace, and had put her to bed. Afterwards she had carried her typewriter up to the roof garden to work in the fresh air, careful to position herself in a sheltered corner under the shade of a rose-covered pergola. She had spent the first hour gazing out over the crazy pattern of Florentine rooftops, watching the lizards as they scuttled in and out of the warped sienna tiles, and letting her eyes wander from Brunelleschi’s splendid dome to the long, thin towers of the Bargello and Signoria, then on to the slumbering mountains far in the distance. All the while she was mulling over in her mind exactly how she was going to commit the afternoon’s findings to paper, but for a long time not even so much as a sentence would fuse itself together.

  Her stumbling block had nothing to do with what Sergio Rambaldi had said – that she had quite clearly in her mind. What was causing her the problem was Sergio Rambaldi himself. How was she even going to begin to describe a man like that when he had such magnetism, such presence, such . . .? Again the words escaped her, but if she didn’t get it right, how on earth was Matthew ever going to cast someone who could even remotely match up to him? But did such a man exist? She strongly doubted that there could be two men in the world like Sergio Rambaldi; but then, for no apparent reason, Paul drifted into her mind. Yes, in some ways they were similar, she decided, but Paul was blond, and not only that, he wasn’t an actor, so that was of no use at all.

  Finally, as a welcome breeze drifted across the garden, she turned to her typewriter, and once she began to type she found the words flowing from her fingertips, and became so immersed in what she was doing that daylight faded into dusk, residents wandered up for pre-dinner drinks and a waiter placed a lamp on the table beside her – but she didn’t notice a thing. It was past midnight by the time she packed up and went downstairs to her room. She dropped off her typewriter, then looked in to check on Bronwen before she attempted to persuade a sandwich out of the kitchen – if indeed there was anyone still there at this hour.

  ‘Did you speak to Stephanie?’ Bronwen asked when she saw Marian’s straw hat peeping round the door.

  ‘No,’ Marian answered, coming further into the moonlit room. ‘I’ve been up on the roof. How are you feeling?’

  ‘To tell you the truth, cariad, I wouldn’t mind too much if I died right now. Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. Look, why don’t you let me get you a doctor?’

  ‘No, no. There’s nothing he can do, I’ve had this before. But there is something you can do.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Marian asked, perching on the edge of the bed.

  ‘First of all, you can close my window, I don’t think I can stand the noise any longer. What are they all doing out there at this time of night, it sounds like Piccadilly Circus in the rush hour. Anyway, tomorrow, if I’m not any better, I’d like you to walk round Florence and photograph anything and everything for Matthew. Oh yes, and those records Sergio talked about, maybe you’d . . .’ Her voice was fading, and from the look on her face Marian could see that the effort was too much for her.

  ‘I’ve got a better idea,’ Marian said, walking over to the window. ‘Why don’t you go back to sleep now, and if you’re feeling up to it in the morning, I think we should go out to the mountains and carry on our research there. It’ll be cooler, and a lot quieter, and we can always come back to Florence when you’re feeling more like yourself.’

  ‘Did I ever tell you you were brilliant?’ Bronwen whispered. ‘Mountain air, it sounds like heaven.’

  So the following morning Marian organised a taxi to pick them up and drive them the eighty or so kilometres to Paesetto di Pittore. As it was then the middle of the night in New York, and as neither of them knew where – if anywhere – they would find to stay in Pittore, Marian hadn’t called Stephanie back.

  As they sped along the main autostrada towards Lucca, Bronwen sat hunched in a corner of the back seat, shivering, perspiring, and cursing the sudden change in the weather. They had woken that morning to a grey, overcast day that had quickly produced a series of thunderstorms.

  ‘What’s the matter with this country?’ Bronwen grumbled. ‘First of all it frazzles me to a chip, then the next thing I know it’s pissing all over me. I want to go home.’

  Knowing that she probably didn’t mean it, Marian smiled and turned to watch the passing scenery, trying to imagine what the undulating hills, olive groves and vineyards would look like on a bright day.

  The steady beat of the rain and the monotonous rhythm of the car engine eventually lulled both her and Bronwen to sleep, and by the time Marian woke they were approaching the outskirts of Lucca. Realising that if this weather kept up they were going to need protective clothing, Marian instructed the driver to turn into the town so that she could buy wellington boots and umbrellas. As the car stopped in
the Piazza Napoleone, Bronwen stirred. Quickly Marian told her what she was doing and Bronwen somehow summoned the energy to tease her for her indomitable common sense.

  ‘You go to Pittore, sì?’ the driver asked, as they drove out of Lucca and rejoined the autostrada.

  ‘Sì,’ Marian answered, running the full extent of her Italian.

  The driver nodded, and it seemed only minutes later that he turned the car sharply off the road, and with much grinding of gears and roaring of the accelerator they started to climb a steep, forbiddingly narrow hill. Marian wished he would slow down a little; the rain was sweeping down in torrents, making it difficult to see, and the hairpin bends they seemed to fly past had nothing round them to prevent the car skidding over the edge and plunging into the vineyards below.

  ‘Pittore, sì?’ the driver said again.

  ‘Sì,’ Marian confirmed.

  ‘You know Pittore?’

  ‘No.’ Marian looked at Bronwen, but she was asleep.

  ‘You rest there? Tonight?’

  ‘If we get there,’ Marian gasped, as he took his hands off the wheel and made one of those gestures peculiar to the Italians. ‘Do you know if there is a hotel there?’ She spoke precisely and loudly so that he could understand.

  ‘Sì, sì. There is piccolo albergo. In the café.’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s a relief,’ Marian said, assuming albergo meant ‘inn’.

  ‘You no want to stay at the albergo,’ he said a few minutes later.

  Thinking it was a question, Marian said, ‘Yes, we do want to stay there. If there is room.’

  ‘No. You no stay at albergo. You stay in Camaiore,’ he waved an arm, ‘the town, over there.’

  ‘Why?’ Marian said, confused.

  ‘Because Pittore is no good in the night.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘In the night there are, how you say, the screams. You hear her scream.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The girl.’

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘The American girl. In the night, she scream.’

  Marian’s mouth was open and she stared at the driver in the mirror. ‘You mean, she is there, in Pittore?’

  ‘Sì. She is there. She scream in the night.’

  ‘But if she’s there, if you can hear her screaming, why doesn’t somebody help her?’

  He answered in Italian; then in English he added, ‘Maybe she is dead.’

  ‘But if you can hear her screaming . . .’

  ‘It is the ghost, no?’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Marian muttered as an icy chill slithered down her spine. Then she remembered how the Italians loved to dramatise, and decided that the story had very probably been invented by superstitious and over-imaginative tourists who had been to the village since Olivia disappeared.

  ‘You like me take you to Camaiore?’ the driver offered.

  ‘No, no. Paesetto di Pittore, please,’ Marian told him – then only just managed to swallow a scream herself as the car swerved dangerously to avoid a motor-cyclist coming in the opposite direction. Bronwen woke up then, and Marian recounted what the driver had just told her.

  ‘Well, I hope he is making it up, cariad,’ Bronwen said, looking gloomily out of the window, ‘’cos this place looks spooky enough without screaming in the night. Just look at those clouds coming in over the mountains. Do you think that’s Pittore over there, in amongst the trees?’

  ‘Sì, Pittore,’ the driver confirmed.

  ‘Thank God, because if I don’t get to a loo pretty soon there’s going to be a dreadful accident.’

  A few minutes later they drove into the village. It was bigger than Marian had imagined it would be, but nevertheless there were probably no more than thirty cottages scattered over the hillside – most of them nestling amongst the trees on either side of the narrow main street. She frowned, thinking that there was something odd about the place, and then she realised what it was. There wasn’t a soul in sight. And as they inched their way along the cobbled road she gazed at the closed shutters with a feeling that the entire population was watching them from between the slats. Quickly she pulled herself together, and when the car came to a halt beside the deserted café, which was at the far end of the street, she opened the door and got out. ‘I’ll just run in and check they’ve got rooms,’ she said to Bronwen. ‘Wait here. I won’t be long.’

  She ran up to the door of the café, shielding herself from the rain with her new umbrella, but the door was locked. She turned back to the car, throwing out her hands as if to say, No good, but she saw that Bronwen was pointing towards the side of the café. Quickly she ran round the corner and onto a wide terrace that jutted out over the mountain, and there she found another door which, thankfully, was open.

  Inside, at the opposite end of the café’s sparsely furnished main room, an old woman was sitting beside a great stone fireplace, a string of rosary beads in her lap and a black woollen shawl round her shoulders. Hearing the door open, she looked up, and when she saw Marian, her crinkled, nut-brown face broke into a smile of welcome.

  ‘Buon giorno, signora,’ she rasped, heaving herself to her feet. ‘Desidera bere qualche cosa?’

  Laughing, Marian waved her hands and shook her head. ‘I’m afraid I don’t speak Italian,’ she explained.

  The woman stopped dead. ‘You are American?’ And Marian very nearly took a step back at the venom in her voice.

  ‘No, no, English,’ Marian told her.

  ‘Ah, sì, Eengleesh.’ The old woman relaxed and was smiling again as she said, ‘You like coffee?’

  ‘Actually, I was hoping you might have some vacancies. Some rooms. In the hotel – albergo.’

  ‘Sì, I have room. How many?’

  ‘Two. Two rooms, that is.’

  The woman nodded. ‘How long you stay?’

  Marian shrugged. ‘Four days perhaps.’

  ‘Four days, this is good. My name is Signora Giacomi. I call my husband, he help carry the bagagli.’

  Marian thanked her and went back to the car. ‘We’re in,’ she told Bronwen, and dug into her purse to pay the driver several hundred thousand lire. As he drove away he muttered something under his breath, and though Marian didn’t catch what it was, she guessed he was put out because he hadn’t succeeded in frightening her.

  Signora Giacomi took one look at Bronwen and marched her straight across the café and up the stairs to an oppressively beamed garret at the back of the house. It smelt of mothballs, but everything was scrupulously clean, and there was even a jar of wild flowers on the small table beside the bed. ‘You are sick, no? I take care, but first you rest,’ she told Bronwen, then turning to Marian, ‘You have the room the other side.’ Leading the way, she took Marian into the next door room which was a mirror image of Bronwen’s.

  ‘Thank you,’ Marian said, smiling at the old woman and liking her instinctively.

  ‘You come to have meal with my family in one hour, sì? We have the tripe, a good dish here, but not in your country I think.’

  Marian laughed. ‘No, not in my country. But I’ve never had it, so yes, I’ll join you. Thank you. I’m not sure about Bronwen, though.’

  ‘I make something special for your friend, make her well soon, and I have the cream to soothe the skin,’ and chuckling happily, she went out of the room.

  Marian flopped down on the bed, and lay quietly listening to the rain outside. The wind seemed to have picked up too, but she guessed that was because they were so high up. She must have dozed off then, because the next thing she knew there was a tap on her door and Signora Giacomi was calling out that her meal was ready.

  When she got downstairs she was surprised to see Bronwen. She was huddled into a blanket by a fire that hadn’t been lit when they first arrived, and sipping from a bowl of hot soup.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Marian asked.

  ‘Better now we’re out of Florence. You should taste some of this, Marian, I don’t know what it is, but it’s delici
ous.’

  ‘This is only for the sick one,’ Signora Giacomi informed them as she bustled into the room, carrying a tray of piping hot tripe. ‘Here is for you,’ she told Marian, and as she set the tray down on the table her husband came in, followed by a young man with a thin, dour face, dressed in shabby clothes as though he had just come in from the vineyards, and a woman who looked rather smarter. Signora Giacomi introduced them as her son and daughter-in-law who lived in the village.

  The meal passed pleasantly, the tripe was delicious, Marian told the Signora – and she meant it. From her place in the corner Bronwen joined in the conversation – much to Marian’s relief, for Bronwen’s Italian was good and, apart from the old woman, none of the Giacomi family spoke English. It was odd, Marian thought, that neither she nor Bronwen mentioned Olivia, especially since there had been no pre-arranged pact not to do so, but she told herself that it was a sensitive subject and not one to be broached so soon after their arrival.

  When lunch was over, Bronwen returned to her room and Marian went off in search of a phone, but all she could find was a battered old contraption in a booth that opened off the café. She sighed wearily; it looked as though it hadn’t been used since the war. Signora Giacomi saw her looking and laughed. ‘You like to make telephone call?’ she said.

  Knowing she was about to ask the impossible, Marian made a grimace of apology. ‘I need to call America,’ she said, and immediately wished she hadn’t because the Signora’s face became suddenly hostile.