Secrets in Sicily

by Penny Feeny

  ‘Doesn’t matter what,’ Shell said. ‘Don’t have to be a bike or anything big. A dried-up old paintbrush will do. No one’s going to send you to jail for a paintbrush.’

  ‘Why would you want one anyway?’

  ‘We don’t,’ said Andi with exaggerated patience. ‘It’s the initiation. To prove you’re one of us.’

  Lily looked miserably at the six inches of black space where the door had cranked open. ‘What if I say no?’

  Bev said, ‘I told you, didn’t I, she’d be scared of the dark?’

  ‘I’m not scared.’

  ‘Course you’re not,’ said Andi.

  She needed to show she was brave – that was the point of this ordeal. She couldn’t make a run for it because she didn’t know how to find her way out of the estate; besides, there were four of them and one of her. And Shell was right, who would be bothered about a dirty paintbrush? Faye delivered a little kick to her shin; Lily flinched and said in a last-ditch attempt: ‘What if it’s empty and there’s nothing for me to steal?’

  ‘There’ll be something. We don’t care what it is, that’s up to you. But you should hurry, time’s running out.’

  Would this be the moment to faint? She took a deep breath but couldn’t hold it in for long enough: since she wasn’t making a move, Bev and Faye got impatient and pushed her to the ground so all the air wheezed out. On her knees, her cheek against the tarmac, she could see into the dim space but she couldn’t see what it contained.

  Bev hissed at her. ‘Get a move on!’

  The quicker it was over, the better. Lily crawled through the gap and waited for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. On the other side of the door, in fading daylight, she could see the girls’ shoes and their ankles in ribbed grey tights, but little else. Then, suddenly, she couldn’t see their shoes any more. She couldn’t see anything because the garage door had clanked shut.

  ‘Hey! What happened?’ Her protest sounded squeaky and panicked. She could hear giggling.

  ‘What’s it like in there?’ came Andi’s voice. ‘Is it like being in a cave? Or stuck underground like when you were a baby?’

  ‘Let me out!’

  ‘We can’t,’ called Shell. ‘The lock’s snapped.’ More giggling.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Andi. ‘You’ve had practice, haven’t you? How long was it last time? Two days?’

  Lily thumped on the metal slats till they rattled. ‘You can’t do this!’ She’d told Andi about the earthquake when they’d been swapping confidences and Andi had admitted that her dad wasn’t her real dad either. ‘You’ve got to let me out.’

  ‘Only if you stop making a fuss and being such a scaredy-cat. If you shut up, we’ll get onto it.’

  ‘You’ll go for help?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  She knew they’d run off because of the silence they left behind. The silence and then the horrible realisation that they wouldn’t be coming back. Why would they confess to anyone that they’d picked a lock? Cause trouble for themselves? Much easier to go on home and pretend nothing had happened. That was why they’d told her to be quiet, so they could make their getaway. This wasn’t an initiation test: they’d devised the whole scenario so they could laugh at her.

  At first she was rigid with shock at the trick they had played. When she could move her limbs, she pushed at the base of the door on the off-chance the bolt hadn’t connected and she’d be able to shift it. It didn’t budge. She hammered on the slats again and yelled for help. Surely somebody would hear? There’d be children playing ball or drivers returning home, putting away their cars. She didn’t know how on earth she would explain her presence to the owner of the garage, but that seemed a trivial dilemma compared with making her escape.

  Her chest felt so tight there was no room for her lungs to expand: no need to practise holding her breath if she couldn’t breathe anyway. Would that be the next thing, losing consciousness? She subsided onto the concrete floor, hugged her knees, and wept. But the floor was too cold to sit on for long, so she rose, still tearful, and began to feel her way around the walls. A thread hanging from the ceiling tickled her face and she shrieked, thinking it was a cobweb. (Even though she wasn’t actually afraid of spiders.) She reached her hand up and tugged what turned out to be the cord of a strip light that ran the length of the garage.

  She wasn’t in a chilly claustrophobic cavern any more, but somebody’s workshop: shelves stacked with tools well-oiled and cared for, not a stiff old paintbrush in sight. She picked up a mallet. She could make a lot of noise with a mallet. She launched its iron head against the garage door with a satisfying, thunderous crash.

  Lily didn’t wear a watch. She had no way of telling how swiftly or slowly the minutes were passing. She couldn’t understand why no one was coming, why no one had heard her assault with the mallet; her own ears were ringing. She picked it up and swung it a few more times, venting her frustration and fury. But the mallet was heavy and in the brief respite she allowed herself, there came a tentative rap of knuckles on the door.

  ‘You are in difficulty?’ said a soft female voice with a foreign accent.

  At last! ‘I’ve been locked in,’ said Lily. ‘Can you get me out?’

  ‘You can tell me what to do?’

  Release wasn’t going to be as straightforward as she’d thought. ‘I don’t know!’ she wailed. ‘I don’t know who owns this garage or who has the key. Couldn’t you call the fire brigade? Or maybe my dad…’ She supposed Alex would discover what had happened at some point; it would be difficult to keep an incident like this secret, however humiliating. ‘Will you ring him if I give you the number? I’m sure he’ll know the best thing to do.’

  The person on the other side of the door was quiet, as if using a public telephone was something she might find tricky and complicated.

  ‘Or knock at all the flats nearby,’ said Lily in desperation. ‘Till you get an answer.’

  ‘I am finding my pen,’ said the foreign woman. ‘I will write down the telephone number. Please don’t cry. Don’t be upset. I will bring you help.’

  18

  The windows of the café were steamed up; it wasn’t possible to see passers-by splashing through puddles or umbrellas battling the rain. Inside, in contrast, the walls were painted a sunny yellow and pinned with posters of Mediterranean scenes. Carlotta perched at a small table dropping sugar lumps into her double espresso. She had arrived twenty minutes early; she wouldn’t risk being late. She’d forbidden Eva to accompany her. ‘This is all so delicate,’ she’d said.

  ‘I can’t believe you don’t want me to support you.’

  ‘But you have, tesora, in every way! This is something I must do by myself.’ She could picture Eva becoming agitated on her behalf, making demands that would never be met, scuppering the entire process. ‘I couldn’t have done without you up to now,’ she’d added – which was true.

  Her fingers had been shaking so much when they were in the phone box she hadn’t been able to dial the McKenzies’ number. Eva had been obliged to take over. She’d fed the coins into the slot too and pressed the button when the call was answered. Carlotta hadn’t introduced herself. Clinging to the receiver, she’d rushed into an account of Lily’s predicament. Her voice faltered initially, but grew stronger as she described the location of the garages and the name of the road, all the details she’d carefully noted down.

  ‘Is this some kind of a hoax?’

  ‘No, no. I saw it happen. She has asked me to call you.’

  And then Alex McKenzie, altogether bewildered by the curious situation, said: ‘Do I recognise your voice? Who is this? Who am I talking to?’

  ‘I am a visitor.’

  ‘Where from?’

  Carlotta said, ‘I think perhaps you can guess.’

  ‘Jesus wept!’ There was a long grim silence.

  Carlotta said, ‘Lily is very distressed. Those girls were not nice. I saw them laugh when they ran away. It’s important for you to go to her.’


  ‘Of course I’ll go to her!’ His tone was menacing. ‘Whereas you should make yourself scarce. Has she seen you?’

  ‘No.’ Carlotta had kept her distance while following Lily to school and attempting to follow her home again, her heart lurching at the sight of Lily’s wild curls pulled back, her developing figure in the unflattering uniform, the troubled way she had scuffed her feet along the pavement. ‘I spoke to her only through the door of the garage.’

  ‘You’d better not go back there.’

  ‘This is not fair to me!’

  ‘Tough shit.’

  She told herself he was worried, he wanted her to get off the phone so he could go to Lily’s rescue. ‘Can we have a meeting, you and I?’ she begged.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Just to talk. Please.’

  In the background, crammed into the corner of the kiosk, Eva murmured, ‘He won’t refuse you. You know where they live. And now their telephone number.’

  ‘Alone?’ he said. ‘Jess is away and I don’t want her to get the wind up again because of you. And there’s no way I’m bringing the kids, so don’t even ask.’

  She didn’t. He suggested the café – ‘The owner’s Turkish, but he’s installed an Italian coffee machine.’ – and rang off.

  Despite Alex’s warning, Carlotta and Eva returned to the site of the garages. They wanted to reassure Lily that he was on his way, but she had already been freed. The door was raised and she trying to explain herself to a stocky man, who was leaning against a green Triumph Herald and scratching his bald head.

  ‘I can’t let her see me,’ said Carlotta. ‘You speak to her, Eva.’

  ‘I don’t know how to say the words.’

  ‘It’s simple. You say: “I have telephoned. Your father is coming.” But don’t hang around. We need to leave before he gets here or I’m in trouble again.’

  From a distance, her fingernails biting into the flesh of her palms, Carlotta watched Eva deliver her message. When she scurried back, she asked, ‘Did she try to find out who you were?’

  ‘I said I didn’t understand English.’

  ‘She wasn’t curious?’

  ‘I think she was glad to be outside.’

  ‘The man wasn’t shouting at her?’

  ‘Carli, stop firing all the questions. You should have gone yourself!’

  ‘You know I couldn’t. I’m sorry…’

  As they returned to the Tube, Eva observed, ‘She looks quite like you, actually.’

  ‘Oh, do you think so?’

  ‘Her complexion is paler, but that’ll be because she’s grown up in this country.’

  ‘I wish I could have seen her close-up. I wish I could have touched her.’ She recalled the warmth of Lily’s young body in the bed they had shared on Favignana, how she had watched over her most of the night: the rise and fall of her chest, the tremble of lashes on her cheek, the flail of her legs kicking away the sheet. How frustrating it had been to speak through a barrier, to hear her voice swamped in misery and yet be unable to touch or console her. To have to pretend to be a passing stranger.

  She stirred the sugar into her coffee and sipped it. Two men pushed through the door, calling out to the owner, cursing the weather, establishing a noisy presence. One of them winked at Carlotta. It made her feel welcome, as if she were back in Italy instead of this cold city where the inhabitants strove to ignore you, looking through you as if you weren’t there. She smiled in acknowledgement (not encouragement, she would have insisted to Eva) and nearly missed Alex’s arrival moments later, damp from the rain. He shook the drops from his wet jacket and looped it over his finger as he surveyed the room.

  It took him a while to register Carlotta and, when he finally approached, the first thing he said was, ‘What the hell have you done to your hair?’

  She lifted her hands to ruffle its unaccustomed length. ‘I cut it.’

  ‘And some! I wouldn’t have recognised you.’ Alex was little changed: he still had a scruffy careless air, though the planes and angles of his face were sharp, his expression stern. He narrowed his eyes and banged his fist on the table. ‘I suppose that was the whole fucking point. I’m going to order a coffee. Do you want another?’

  She shook her head. He dumped a battered briefcase onto a spare seat and went over to the counter. She drew a cigarette from the pack in her handbag, lit it and inhaled the welcome hit of nicotine. At least he had come, he hadn’t let her down. She recalled their first discussion, sitting on wobbly cane chairs in the corner of the Jolly Bar, accompanied by a percussion of squeals and jangles from the pinball machine. Then he had been gentle with her, they had circled each other like cats, exchanging snippets of information, neither wanting to give too much away. This was bound to be different.

  He came back with his cup, some liquid slopped into the saucer, and sat opposite her. ‘The coffee’s not bad here. And I thought the surroundings might help you feel at home.’ His tone was less aggressive, he was beginning to relax, she thought.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘As far as Lily’s concerned,’ he said, ‘there’s been some unpleasant stuff with her schoolmates. You could call it a prank if you were being generous, but I’m not feeling very generous today. I’m feeling harassed, which I don’t much like. I shall be handling the school business, but meanwhile I’ve taken time off work to meet you, so let’s not mess it up.’ He delved into his briefcase and set a small rectangular device beside his cup and saucer.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I’m a journalist,’ Alex reminded her. ‘Haven’t you ever seen a tape recorder before?’

  ‘You are going to record our conversation?’

  ‘A sensible precaution, don’t you think? A way of keeping everything clear and above board.’

  ‘What will you do with the tape?’

  ‘I haven’t decided yet. But I want to make sure there are no more misunderstandings. Does it bother you?’ She eyed the cassette suspiciously. He added, ‘You’ve chosen a good spot by the window. Not too much background noise so it should pick our voices up fine.’ He was enjoying her discomfiture, his mouth crinkling into a smile. He switched on the instrument. ‘Why don’t we start with who you are? Why don’t you introduce yourself?’

  ‘You know who I am!’

  ‘I’m not sure that I do. And not just because of your new hairstyle.’

  ‘I am Carlotta Galetti.’

  ‘You’re certain about that, are you? Because it doesn’t tally with my information.’ He leaned back with his arms folded, watching her expression carefully.

  She told herself she had nothing to lose; she should take the opportunity to put things right. ‘Carlotta was the name of my sister-in-law.’

  ‘Was?’ He frowned. ‘D’you mean you’ve stolen the identity of a dead woman?’

  An electric jolt ran through her. ‘No! How can you say such a thing? We have no contact, that’s all.’ Francesco’s family had always been cool towards her. They didn’t believe her pregnancy was accidental, and her mother’s preference for Peppe, pushing her to marry him instead, hadn’t been helpful. ‘I haven’t seen her since the disaster.’

  ‘Is that how you got away with it?’ demanded Alex. ‘Because you fell out and lost touch? My God, you’re devious.’

  ‘Please, you don’t understand! It was a simple error. When I applied for the new paperwork, the office in Palermo made a mistake with my first name. My date of birth, everything else, was correct but they were processing so many applications…’

  ‘You could have rectified it.’

  She bowed her head. ‘I didn’t want to send back the passport. I wanted so badly to get away. I thought this new name was like a special gift – one I could use to become a different person. I could forget all the terrible things that had happened and be reborn.’ Collecting her shiny new passport had been a diamond flash in a dark period. ‘I did not tell you lies and you are not being fair. If you wanted to know more about me, why didn’t you r
eply to my letters?’

  ‘I’d have thought that was obvious. We couldn’t possibly trust you after what happened in Roccamare.’

  ‘I took good care of your children,’ she said defensively. ‘They asked to go fishing and Favignana was a little excursion for them. Harry became seasick, that’s all.’

  ‘Harry getting seasick was hardly the fucking point!’ The volume indicator on the tape recorder shot to the end of the scale. At nearby tables, heads turned. She gazed past them, at the poster on the wall: a picturesque harbour, boats bobbing on a brilliant blue sea. A reminder of another time, another place. ‘What on earth were you planning to do with the pair of them?’

  ‘I had no plans. I wanted merely to get a little closer. When I went to Roccamare it was because I heard about the English family who come for holiday every year, with their children who are so different…’ Alex rocked back in his chair, one eyebrow cocked; she rushed on. ‘Please try to imagine my feelings! My husband is dead, my baby is dead. My old life, it’s finished. Then I hear news of a little girl in the orphanage who is from Santa Margherita. They say no one has claimed her, but when I arrive from America she’s gone. Then I meet you and you tell me how you found the baby and gave her to the nuns, and they are the same nuns I went to see…’ She lit another cigarette, adding to the fug of smoke and steam which made her eyes prickle. ‘You must understand. You have a child yourself…’

  His voice was steely. ‘I have two.’

  ‘Of course, I’m sorry.’

  ‘And, for Christ’s sake, if what you did two years ago hadn’t been bad enough, here you are, at it again! I could have you arrested for stalking.’

  ‘I just wanted to see her,’ pleaded Carlotta. ‘To see how she has grown.’

  ‘You haven’t approached Lily, have you? She’d no idea you were watching her.’

  ‘You have asked her this?’

  ‘She was more interested in being released, frankly, than why a random tourist had come along. She’s probably forgotten about your intervention.’

  ‘You see, I have been very discreet.’ But she was cut by his dismissive attitude. ‘You should be grateful to me, in fact, for making sure she was safe.’