‘When am I going to see you, Ruth?’ he says now, not plaintive, just enquiring. ‘Simon, Cathy and the boys are coming over on Saturday. We’re going to the carvery for lunch.’
When’s Saturday? Ruth has rather lost track of the days. She looks at the recycling calendar. Today is Thursday, it seems.
‘Soon, Dad,’ she says. ‘Remember, Kate and I are in Italy at the moment.’ Please don’t let him be losing his memory.
‘I remember,’ says Arthur. ‘You’re on your holidays. With Shona and her little lad. How is she?’
‘Fine. Getting on well with the locals.’
‘What about you? Have you been to the beach?’ Arthur is a south London boy. For him, holidays are symbolised by ‘going to the beach’. In his case, Southend or Brighton.
‘Yes, we have,’ says Ruth. ‘There are lovely beaches here. Very clean. And I’m doing consultancy work too. We’ll be back next week.’
‘How does Katie find the food?’
‘Fine, Dad. She loves pasta and pizza, as you know. She’s having a great time.’
‘Be careful,’ says Arthur. ‘It’s not the same as home.’
That’s very true, thinks Ruth, saying goodbye after more promises to visit Eltham soon. Castello degli Angeli does feel very foreign, in a way that she has never experienced before. She was an enthusiastic traveller as a student, backpacking around Europe several times, and she always felt that, by and large, people were the same everywhere. But now she is conscious of undercurrents that she can’t understand, resentments and hostilities flowing just below the surface like an underground stream. Why do people in twenty-first century Italy still resent the Romans? Why did Don Tomaso warn of the dangers of waking the dead? And who could have killed the saintly parish priest? Cathbad had thought it very interesting, ‘people living in the same place for generations’, but Ruth wonders if it is actually rather dangerous. Angelo’s grandfather was a resistance hero, Valenti’s father was a fascist and Marta’s great-grandfather lies dead in the churchyard. So many different generations, yet their descendants are still living in the same stone-walled town.
She has been pacing the rooms while she reflects and now finds herself in the children’s bedroom. Mindlessly, she straightens their beds and starts putting clothes away in drawers. As she does so, she sees the picture, the one that fell during the earthquake, which she has put back on the wall, minus its glass. Not that Angelo seemed to care very much about it. Ruth looks at the interlocking geometric shapes. Kate thought they depicted elephants in a sandstorm and Louis ships at sea, but, the more she looks, the more Ruth thinks that the picture shows two men walking away into the distance. There is something about the background, the jagged shapes, the blur of green and gold and silver in the foreground, that reminds Ruth of something. She takes the picture and carries it into the sitting room, where she can see the view from the balcony. Yes, there’s the valley, that outcrop of rock, the lone tower, the river snaking its way through the olive groves. The picture shows the Liri Valley. Ruth looks at the back to see if there’s a title and sees, on the wood of the frame, the name of the artist: Giorgio Bianchi.
*
Nelson gets the call when he returns to Linda’s house after dropping Ruth back at Castello degli Angeli. He sees the name ‘Michelle’ and says to Linda, ‘I’ve got to take this.’
‘Of course,’ says Linda, taking her basket from the back seat. ‘I’ll see you in the house.’
‘Hello, love.’
‘It’s a boy,’ says Michelle. Her voice sounds odd, as if she’s trying not to cry.
‘A boy? Are you sure?’
‘The scan was very clear, apparently.’
Nelson doesn’t remind her that they had decided not to ask the sex. He has forfeited all rights to that. His mind is crowded with images: his father, a quiet man at home, yelling encouragement from the touchline; himself as a boy in a houseful of women; his daughters; Tim at Clough’s wedding, the expression of longing on his face.
‘How are you?’ he says. ‘Is everything OK?’
‘I’m fine,’ says Michelle. ‘The baby’s fine. He’s fine. Laura came with me. She was so sweet. She’s walking Bruno now.’
‘I love you,’ says Nelson helplessly.
‘I love you too,’ says Michelle.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ says Nelson.
‘Good,’ says Michelle. ‘Bruno misses you. He’s been behaving really oddly today.’
When Michelle has rung off, Nelson sits for a moment in the car, staring at his screen saver, which shows Rebecca, Laura and Michelle, arms around each other, bronzed and beautiful on a long-forgotten holiday.
Chapter 29
‘It’s a boy,’ says Michelle. It’s the first thing she says to Tim as he rises from the park bench to greet her. It’s risky meeting in the open, but the house isn’t safe either, not after Judy came calling yesterday. Michelle has visited the B&B once. Three-quarter bed, slippery counterpane, soap container fixed to the wall. Never again.
Tim takes her hands. ‘A boy? Are you sure?’
‘They were pretty sure,’ says Michelle. She knows that she should be feeling guilty, conveying the same news to her husband and her lover, but she suddenly feels light-hearted and rather carefree. It’s a sunny afternoon and they are in The Walks, a beautiful open space near the station.
‘How do you feel?’ asks Tim.
‘Good,’ says Michelle. ‘It makes a difference, seeing the baby on the screen. And knowing the sex. You can say “he” inside your head, rather than “it”.’
‘How is he feeling?’ says Tim with a smile.
‘He’s fine,’ says Michelle. ‘I think I felt him moving last night.’
‘That’s early, isn’t it?’
‘He’s advanced for his age.’
Tim laughs, and Michelle wonders if he will say anything about the possibility that the baby is his. So far Tim has been treating the baby as if it (he) is an entity in his own right and not anything to do with him or Nelson. They walk along the flower-lined pathways, going in no particular direction. Michelle knows that it’s dangerous, meeting so close to the police station. What if they saw Judy or Tanya? They are careful not to touch or stand too close, but Michelle thinks that if anyone saw them together, they would know.
‘Have you thought of any names?’ says Tim.
‘Laura suggested Timothy,’ says Michelle, looking at him sideways.
Tim laughs but she thinks he sounds embarrassed. She seldom mentions the girls to him. ‘I hated the name when I was growing up,’ he says. ‘My brothers called me Tiny Tim. Think it must be the only Dickensian character they’d ever heard of. Not that they knew it was Dickens. They got it from The Muppet Christmas Carol.’
As Tim is well over six foot, the joke must have worn thin after a while, thinks Michelle. Whenever Tim mentions his family, she has a sense of him coming from an entirely different world. He has a sister called Blessing, which sounds foreign and exotic. Tim’s mother is Religious (she thinks of it with a capital letter). Harry’s mother is too, of course. Michelle has lost track of the number of strange Catholic ceremonies she has attended with Maureen: baptisms and communions, confirmations, something called Benediction which involves a golden cup shaped like the sun. Michelle has always been willing to attend church with her mother-in-law, which is one reason why she’s such a favourite with her. But Maureen Nelson is also fundamentally a creature of this world – an organiser, a pragmatist, a woman who rules her family with a rod of iron. Don’t think about Maureen, Michelle tells herself. If anyone possesses second sight, it’s not Cathbad, it’s Maureen.
‘What are we going to do?’ she says now. ‘When Harry comes back? When the baby’s born?’ She means when they know who the father is. She realises that she has stopped walking.
‘I don’t know,’ says Tim. ‘Let’s take it one day at a time.’ He sings suddenly, in a surprisingly high, sweet voice: ‘One day at a time, sweet Jesus.’
&nb
sp; Michelle looks at him enquiringly. Tim laughs. ‘It’s a favourite hymn of my mum’s.’
One day at a time. It sounds good to Michelle. She risks squeezing Tim’s arm.
‘Let’s go and get an ice cream,’ she says. ‘I’ve got a craving for ice cream.’
She didn’t have cravings with the girls, but this boy is obviously different. He’s clearly determined to make his presence felt.
*
After speaking to her father, Ruth prowls the apartment, thinking that she should really start tidying up. Kate and Louis have spread everywhere: toys in both bathrooms, Lego in the kitchen, colouring pens all over the sitting room, swimming stuff drying on the balcony. Ruth keeps picking things up and putting them down again. They’re in the apartment for another five days. They’ll only get it untidy again. The thought of staying on after Nelson has left makes her feel depressed somehow. She wants to go home too. She doesn’t want to spend another five days at the beach or the water park; she wants to be back in her cottage with Flint. Get a grip, she tells herself. You’re having a holiday in a beautiful part of Italy, you should be enjoying every second of it. But maybe that’s it: she has slipped into the trap of thinking that she’s on holiday, and so has fallen prey to second-week-of-the-holiday blues. She’s primarily here to work. She will see if she can go to the laboratory tomorrow and have a look at the bones again.
Ruth goes into the kitchen and starts chopping onions. She thinks of the night of the cultural association dinner and the men serving food on the church steps. Food is not love. That’s what Don Tomaso had said, but, sometimes, food does stand in for love, or at least for care. Ruth is not a great cook, but she loves it when Kate enjoys something she’s made. Linda said that when her sons come home she cooks them all their favourite foods, to remind them no one cooks like Mamma. She thinks about Angelo and Elsa. They seem on excellent terms but what was it that Angelo said? ‘She’s always looking for me.’ Maybe all that devotion can be a bit oppressive.
Ruth thinks about Samir and his story, the primal narrative of refugees everywhere: the flight from oppression, the sea crossing, the rejection in the promised land. She cannot believe that Samir, the man who sat crying for his family, could have murdered Don Tomaso. But if he didn’t do it, who did? Ruth remembers the crowd of women on the steps of the church. But, like Marta and her mother, they were probably talking among themselves. It would have been fairly easy for someone to sneak into the church by the rear entrance, although they would have to have moved quickly. There was what Nelson would call a ‘narrow window of opportunity’ for the crime to have been committed.
Ruth remembers the figure that she had seen hunting in the olive groves at night. Was that Samir? She doesn’t blame him if it was. When you’ve got no food, you’re entitled to go hunting, but it would present him in a rather different light. She picks up her phone and starts clicking through the pictures. There’s Kate and Louis at Heathrow, with their animal-shaped travel pillows. There are the first pictures of the house, the gleaming marble floors, the views from the balcony. There’s Toni, Angelo’s skeleton, the picture jarringly out of place amid the blue skies and laughing children. There’s the swimming pool and the beach. There’s Nelson with Kate. She is holding her inflatable unicorn and he is grinning, shielding his eyes from the sun.
Nelson will know about the scan by now. Will they know whether the baby is a boy or a girl? Ruth doesn’t really like to think about it. If it’s a boy, she knows that she’ll be jealous because Nelson will be so happy, so pleased with Michelle for bearing him a son (the biblical language seems to suit the situation somehow). But, at least, if it’s a boy, Kate will retain her position as youngest daughter. Ruth pushes the thought away and goes back to her pictures. There it is. The figure seen from the balcony, moving through the trees and carrying a gun. Ruth enlarges the image with her fingers. It’s hard to tell, but the figure, in a dark top and trousers, looks too slight to be Samir. In fact, looking at it now, Ruth is almost certain that it’s a woman.
*
Nelson spends the afternoon packing. Not that he’s got much to pack: the few clothes he brought with him, the shirts and shorts he bought for the beach, some presents that he’s picked up for Michelle and the girls. It all fits into his sports bag. Thank God for that, because he hates waiting for baggage, hates waiting for anything, really. Cathbad just brought hand luggage too, he remembers, probably a bag containing his spare robe and some incense. He’d been rather disapproving of Cathbad’s funeral rites yesterday.
It’s been an odd few days, he thinks. It’s been time out in a way, spending these days with Ruth and Katie, eating together, going to the beach together. It’s a snapshot of what life would be like if he were married to Ruth. There would probably be more rows than he has with Michelle, but there would definitely be compensations. But he mustn’t think like that. He’s grateful now that Ruth wouldn’t let him finish that fatal sentence: ‘Maybe after the baby is born . . .’ He can’t do anything until the baby (his son!) is here and then, at least, he’ll know whether his suspicions about Tim are correct. ‘You stand out,’ Tim used to say, ‘as a black policeman in Norfolk. It’s a real disadvantage.’ Maybe, thinks Nelson, but it will certainly help to make the baby’s parentage clear. What will he do then? Will he leave Michelle if it’s clear that the baby isn’t his? Will he try to make a life with Ruth? It seems to him that, whichever way he looks, there’s no easy solution. He half wishes that he could stay here for ever, spending the days with Ruth and Katie, Michelle and the girls safely at home. But he has to get back. There’s his job, for one thing. He’s itching to get back to work.
Cathbad appears in the doorway. He’s wearing shorts and a pink shirt and looks brown and healthy. Bloody Cathbad, thinks Nelson, not without affection, always manages to come up smelling of roses.
‘I’ve printed out our tickets,’ he says.
‘That’s good,’ says Cathbad. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing Judy. I don’t think she’s really enjoyed her mother’s visit. Their auras aren’t aligned at the moment.’
‘She’s coping fine at work,’ says Nelson. ‘Good practice for her. She should really take the inspector’s exam soon.’
‘Have you spoken to her?’ says Cathbad.
‘Only exchanged emails,’ says Nelson. ‘Why?’
‘Did she mention a man called Micky Webb?’ says Cathbad.
‘Yes,’ says Nelson. ‘She went to see him. Not really necessary. I’d already dealt with it.’
‘I have a dark feeling about him,’ says Cathbad. ‘Be on your guard.’
‘I always am,’ says Nelson.
‘Yes, you are,’ says Cathbad, ‘but are you looking in the right direction?’
One of Cathbad’s irritatingly enigmatic remarks, thinks Nelson. But, as he sits on the terrace later with Linda and Paolo, watching the shadows lengthen in the valley, Cathbad’s words keep coming back to him. Are you looking in the right direction?
Chapter 30
Ruth has been rather dreading the final meal – the Last Supper, as Cathbad insists on calling it – but it’s actually a rather jolly occasion. This is partly because of Cathbad himself, who is on his best form, keeping the children entertained with stories about statues coming to life, joking with Nelson about his driving, asking Shona about Roman themes in Shakespeare’s plays. While Shona is describing the plot of Coriolanus, Nelson says to Ruth, ‘Michelle’s had the scan. It’s a boy.’
‘That’s great,’ says Ruth, hearing her voice echoing tinnily in her own head. ‘And everything’s OK?’
‘Yes, it seems so.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘Why are you glad?’ says Kate. Ruth didn’t know that she had been listening.
‘I’m glad because I’m with you, sweetheart,’ says Nelson, jumping in.
But tomorrow you’ll be with your other family, thinks Ruth. She gets up. ‘Anyone want more pasta?’
‘Oh, I couldn’t,’ says Shona, who has eat
en a minuscule amount, ‘I must have put on a stone while I’ve been in Italy.’
‘The food’s good,’ says Nelson. ‘I’ll say that for Italy.’
‘Even though there aren’t any chips?’ says Cathbad.
‘I’m middle class now,’ says Nelson. ‘Sometimes I even eat vegetables.’
Both Cathbad and Nelson have seconds of pasta, which pleases Ruth. It didn’t taste bad, she thinks, just mysteriously unlike Italian food. After pudding, the children go to watch a DVD and the adults drink limoncello, a gift from Paolo.
‘It’s been wonderful to be back in Italy,’ says Cathbad. ‘This is a beautiful town, even if it is grieving at the moment.’
‘Everyone’s devastated about Don Tomaso,’ says Shona, looking suspiciously dewy-eyed. ‘The funeral was just so sad. Grown men breaking down in tears.’
Ruth wonders which grown men these were. She’d thought that the atmosphere at the funeral had been charged with something other than grief. Fear, perhaps.
‘I wonder if we’ll ever know what happened,’ says Nelson. ‘I hate leaving a case unsolved.’
‘I’m sure Angelo will keep in touch,’ says Ruth. ‘And maybe your friend the Commissario will let you know.’
‘We’ll never really know,’ says Cathbad. ‘Towns like this keep their own secrets.’
It’s said lightly, but something like a shiver runs around the room. Ruth looks towards the doorway into the hall. For a moment she thought that someone was waiting there in the shadows. Someone she didn’t know, but who was, nonetheless, curiously familiar.
*
Laura is surprised, but pleased, that her mother wants to go to the gym that evening.
‘Nothing strenuous,’ says Michelle, ‘just swimming. I feel as if I haven’t had any exercise for weeks.’
‘I’ll drive you,’ says Laura. ‘I’d like to have a workout.’ This is an understatement. Laura is desperate for exercise, her entire body craving it. She likes to work with weights because then you’re really competing against yourself; it’s not showy, like pounding away on the running machine, but there’s such an intense satisfaction when you push yourself just a little further every time, each muscle pair working in its own way, stretching and contracting. She flexes a bicep, anticipating.
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