The Rome Affair

by Karen Swan

  ‘I know. And I’m so sorry, but it wasn’t my fault. Honestly,’ she said, the words mere disembodied breath as she struggled into the tiny room, wounded and exhausted. ‘Let me pick up the next tour. Who covered for me? I’ll do their shift.’

  He shook his head. ‘Fran—’

  ‘No, scrap that,’ she panted, almost collapsing onto a folding chair. ‘I’ll do two of their shifts to make up for it. It’s only fair.’

  ‘Is too late, Francesca.’

  ‘I know and I’m so sorry. But I’m here now. I’ll make it up to you. Tell me how I can help.’

  ‘You were supposed to be here two hours ago.’

  Cesca felt a tremor of anxiety. Giovanni wasn’t usually difficult to placate. Although he’d been married since he was eighteen and loved (and was also quite scared of) his wife, Cesca knew he had a crush on her. It was the hair. She was as rare as an arctic fox around these parts. ‘I know, but you see, my landlady . . . she tripped,’ she said, flipping her hair over her shoulder.

  ‘For two hours?’ he asked, watching it arc through the air as though in slow motion.

  ‘Yes, I . . . I had to take her to hospital.’

  He looked back at her again. ‘And in all that time, you couldn’t call?’

  Cesca smacked her hand to her chest. ‘I couldn’t speak, Giovanni. It was terrible. There was . . . so much blood.’

  Giovanni raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘But I suppose she make a fantastic recovery? Just like after the fire?’

  Cesca swallowed. ‘Well, that was only a little fire . . .’

  ‘You said the whole building could have been destroyed.’

  ‘Could being the operative word. Luckily, I . . . I saw the candle smoking and was able to smother it before it went out of control.’

  Poor Signora Dutti: if only she knew how colourfully her life was portrayed on this side of the Via del Corso. The truth was, she was as sturdy as the Pantheon, rarely ever left the square except to go to the market, and the high point of her day was sitting on her chair in the late afternoon with Signora Accardo and watching the tourists go by.

  Giovanni sighed. ‘Cesca—’

  ‘Giovanni, please,’ Cesca cried, panicking now that she appeared to be making no headway. Yes, she’d been pushing her luck for the past few weeks – forgetting to charge her phone or not saying no to that last limoncello were hardly helpful when her nights were already so sabotaged. And yes, perhaps the blog’s growing success meant her mind had been less on her day job than it should have been, but she still needed it. The equation was simple: no tours meant no rent meant no blog. No more Rome Affair. No more Rome.

  ‘Cesca, it is the third time this month.’

  ‘I know, but it really wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘It never is. Your poor landlady has almost died three times in three weeks: the landlady and the scented candle; the landlady and the almost fatal collision with the pizza van; and now the landlady and the . . .’ He arched an eyebrow. ‘How did she trip?’

  ‘On a geranium.’

  ‘The landlady and the geranium,’ he repeated in a mono-syllabic tone. ‘I cannot decide if she is the luckiest woman in Roma or the most unlucky.’ He tutted, looking sad. ‘You are one of my best guides. Your history, knowledge? Amazing! And the tourists, they love you. But if you are not here when they are here, it does not matter how good you are. I need someone I can depend on.’

  She slapped a hand over her heart. ‘And from now on, I promise, you can depend on me,’ she said, as earnestly as if she was about to launch into ‘God Save the Queen’.

  ‘Today, Astrid had to do the tour for you.’

  ‘Astrid?’ Cesca’s hand dropped, indignantly. ‘But she barely even speaks Italian!’

  Giovanni arched his eyebrows. ‘I know.’

  ‘And she always confuses Augustus with Nero.’

  ‘Exactly. A disaster. But I had no choice. She was the only person available.’

  Cesca felt her chest tighten as she realized she’d backed herself into a corner. ‘Okay, look, I’ll be straight with you – I slept through the alarm,’ she said quickly. ‘I don’t sleep that well and—’

  ‘Cesca, I am sorry. It is the third strike. You know our company policy.’

  She swallowed, hardly able to believe this was happening. Third strike? What was this – Borstal? ‘You mean, I’m out?’ she whispered, feeling the blood drain from her flushed face. She had precisely two hundred and eighty-six euros in her bank account. Her rent – due next week – was nine hundred and ninety euros but she’d had eleven tours booked in between now and then. Earning eighty euros per tour, she would have just made it. Dinner, last night – to celebrate Guido’s twenty-fifth birthday – had been factored in to her weekly outgoings for weeks. Oh God, why hadn’t she taken that reward last night? Five thousand euros for returning a bag! She could have been here, sitting pretty. How could she afford to be principled when she couldn’t afford to eat?

  ‘I don’t suppose it would make any difference if I told you I was almost run over on the way over here?’ she tried.

  Giovanni arched an eyebrow that indicated he was done with her stories.

  ‘Look at my knee!’ she said, rucking up her long skirt and showing him.

  ‘Cesca, please,’ he pleaded, his eyes drooping like a blood-hound’s. ‘There is nothing more I can do for you.’

  ‘But you’re the boss!’

  ‘I know. I am sorry it must end this way.’

  He was adamant. She sat there for a moment, trying to think of another way to change things, but she had tried it all: outrageous stories, a frank confession, honesty, pleading, begging . . . What else was there? She had overslept one time too many.

  ‘Ciao, Francesca,’ Giovanni said, as solemnly as a judge in a black cap. ‘Sonia will settle up with you on the way out.’

  Cesca sighed, pulling herself to standing and walking out slowly, her knee beginning to throb. She added in a limp, hoping he’d take pity and call her back, but her rubber soles on the metal walkways were the only sound as she walked out, back towards the light.

  Sonia had the envelope all ready as she approached. ‘Sorry, Cesca,’ she grimaced, handing it over.

  ‘No, it’s my fault. I’ve only got myself to blame,’ Cesca sighed, feeling last night’s exhaustion creep upon her as the adrenaline ebbed away. And she stepped back out into the light to where the shadows were still hard-edged and black, to where the crowds were beginning to gather and the day was already pulling away without her.

  Chapter Four

  Rhode Island, June 1961

  The lights from the pool outside flickered around the silk walls and ceiling of the peach bedroom: the only movement in the room. Laney sat on the bed listening to the hubbub of the crowd, to all those people waiting for her, the baby-pink tulle skirt of her dress fanned out around her, as though arranged by the famed Norman Parkinson himself, ready for the shot.

  She could see her reflection in the full-length mirror from where she sat. Her skin, not yet buffed by the sun, looked milky in the dim light, her shoulders, neck and arms extending elegantly from the raspberry velvet bodice that seemed almost heart-shaped to her now it was on. Her brown hair – not dark enough, always too limp – had been back-combed, sprayed and coiffed so that the ends kicked out at the nape, the front section quiffed and held in place with a satin band, highlighting the large pearl globes at her ears that her mother had presented to her at dinner the night before. Laney would have preferred something smaller, something that suited sixteen, but understatement wasn’t a concept that her family either understood or observed.

  Her face, though . . . She had never worn make-up before, and the powder felt thick on her skin, her lips too distracting in this vibrant cherry shade that overpowered even the dramatic sweep of kohl at her eyes. She couldn’t stop staring at herself: part-doll, part-geisha, part-Hollywood siren. She wasn’t quite sure who she was supposed to be, looking like this, but there was no doubt in
her mind that she was going to have to act the part; she would only disappoint otherwise.

  A woman’s shrill laugh – not her mother’s – pierced the night and Laney broke away from her reflection. They would be waiting for her. She rose, hearing how the skirts swished and rustled with the movement. The feel of them was slightly rough against her nylon-clad legs. The bodice skimmed tight against her ribs and she tugged at it slightly, feeling another urge to gulp down breaths as she had a few minutes ago.

  Opening the bedroom door and crossing the large landing, she stood at the balustrades and looked down for a moment at the greyed – occasionally balding – heads: satin lapels upon ivory jackets for the men, stiff silks and sapphires for the ladies. Her mother, she knew, was wearing the new Schiaparelli gown that had arrived tissue-wrapped and boxed from Paris three days earlier: cut in silver lamé plissé, its fluidity and minimal, strapless form would have all the other women clucking like hens – it struck such a contrast to the fussy gathers and tucks of their own dresses. Which was precisely the point. But would she have accessorized it with the rubies Laney’s father had given to her at Christmas, or the Larchford emeralds inherited from her paternal grandmother? All week it had been one of the more pressing questions, along with whether to dye the swans pink on the lake to match Laney’s Sweet Sixteen dress (they had), and whether or not it was ‘de trop’ to place a pearl in each open oyster at the seafood bar (apparently not).

  Someone saw her and the gasp that followed led to an almost biblical parting of the crowd, coos and sighs at her appearance breaking into applause as she descended the stairs. She felt embarrassed and overwhelmed, wanting to scurry instead to her governess Winnie’s rooms and sit on the couch, eating popcorn and watching The Ed Sullivan Show.

  ‘Darling, you’re a vision.’

  It was her father, his salted blond hair and moustache toplighting his yachting tan. He looked so handsome in his evening jacket. Mother had had the hand-stitching redone in gold thread especially for the occasion and for once Laney agreed it looked just the thing – discreet and yet lending an opulent shimmer.

  He kissed her on the cheek and reached to take a couple of glasses of vintage champagne from the waiter hovering by his elbow. She quickly took a sip – admiring the pale biscuit colour, liking the way the bubbles fizzed on her tongue – feeling herself calm under his protective gaze. ‘Come, there are so many people who want to say hello to you.’

  Laney wished it could have been just the two of them there. They could have walked down to the shore together, taken off their shoes and talked about their favourite things – what to name the new boat (even though she couldn’t swim and was terrified of water); his plans for the stud now that the black stallion was settling in. They could have sat with their feet in the pool and – with napkins tucked in at their necks – eaten with their bare hands the lobster she’d watched the kitchen staff preparing earlier. She could have danced the Viennese Waltz with him and shown him how hard she’d been working in her lessons to make him proud. She was sixteen now, after all, a young woman, as he kept telling – reminding, instructing – her: no longer was she the little girl she’d hoped desperately to remain, no more the child hidden from view and protected behind security-patrolled gates. As everyone kept telling her now, there was a whole world waiting to meet, or at least catch a glimpse of, America’s little heiress.

  ‘Charles and Miranda Stowcroft, may I present my daughter Elaine?’

  ‘How do you do?’ Laney nodded politely.

  ‘Enchanted,’ the tall man replied, taking her hand and kissing the back of it.

  ‘How do you do?’ Miranda said. Her grey hair was set into small stiff curls, her blue eyes bright against her rouged cheeks and mustard-yellow gown. ‘You look exquisite, my dear. Why, those pearls must be the size of golf balls!’

  Laney smiled her thanks before her father gently took her by the elbow and presented her to the next person waiting in line. With a sinking heart, Laney realized that almost the entire party had formed a sort of queue, all of them wanting to shake her hand or kiss it.

  Almost the entire party – but not quite. Beyond the doors that led onto the terrace, she heard the ribbon of familiar, delighted laughter that had curled through the night air on so many of these occasions at their home before – her parents simply loved throwing parties – and she would know that amused trill anywhere. As a child, she had lain in bed listening to it with the windows open, hearing the hushed whispers that usually followed, sometimes ending with a shout or a curse or the smash of crystal. Now though, she could just make out the shimmer of liquid silver couture through the old glass, the dots of cardinal red rubies, that sweep of raven-dark hair.

  As they listened to that laughter, her father’s hand gripped tighter on her elbow; he had seemingly forgotten all about the couple standing in front of them with frozen smiles, awaiting their official introduction.

  ‘. . . Sorry, forgive me,’ he said, remembering himself in time and rescuing them all with one of his famous, dazzling smiles. The papers always said he’d built his fortune with that smile, even though they knew perfectly well he’d inherited a billion-dollar highways engineering empire from his father. ‘Larry and Dinah Stanford, my daughter, Elaine.’

  ‘A pleasure to meet you,’ Laney smiled, falling back into her role. Business resumed.

  The man took her hand and kissed the back of it. ‘The pleasure is all mine.’

  ‘You look perfectly lovely tonight, Elaine,’ Dinah added with a small, inhibited smile. ‘Aren’t you just the luckiest girl in the world to have such a swell Sweet Sixteen party?’

  ‘Oh, Daddy’s just the best!’ She smiled, clutching his arm tighter, even though she’d never wanted this party at all, much less to invite four hundred people when she could barely identify fifty faces here. But suddenly that didn’t matter because now that she anticipated how the evening was going to play out, with her on her father’s arm, it didn’t matter at all how many strangers she had to meet. It was quite apparent too that no one actually wanted to talk to her anyway – they simply wanted to be seen by her father, and be seen being seen by her father.

  Six couples had glided past them, saying the same thing six different ways, before the laugh came again like a mockingbird’s echo, a taunt that the real party was happening elsewhere. Her father’s gaze automatically fell beyond the doors again, his eyes squinting at the glass every few moments, as conversation faltered and names were forgotten.

  He looked back at them all and she saw the clouds behind his eyes. Laney felt herself loosen, as though the stays binding her together were being gradually unpicked, one by one . . .

  ‘I’m sorry, won’t you excuse me?’ he asked tonelessly. ‘There’s . . . something I have to attend to. Laney, look after our guests?’

  ‘But Daddy—’

  He left and, in the sudden vacuum created in his wake, the people that had been clamouring to meet her moments before now sank back into the body of the crowd, the receiving line closing into private clusters that left Laney standing alone in the room, watching her father’s retreating back, his hair bright beneath the chandeliers as he headed for the terrace. For all his charisma and intelligence, his kindness and insight, there was one truth that George Valentine, as a father, a husband and a man, would never grasp – that they had all the money in the world, but never enough time.

  ‘You look sad.’

  Laney jumped. The voice, in the dark, had come from the left side of her, by the beech tree. Behind her, the house looked to be dripping with light like liquid gold, a celestial haze rising above the estate like a nimbus. She thought she had found refuge here in the crepuscular nooks of the sunken garden, the music from the live band distant, as though caught in a box, and this intrusion on her privacy alarmed her.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she asked, detesting the tremor that shook her voice and betrayed her fright, hating even more that someone had seen the truth. She’d thought she was alone here.


  A shape emerged from the shadows – broad-shouldered, long-legged, the glowing tip of a cigarette like a firefly in the night sky. ‘The question is, what could you possibly have to be sad about? You’re the luckiest girl in the world, aren’t you?’

  She blinked. Even without seeing his face, she could detect the faint sneer in his voice. Money made you bullet-proof, right? ‘So they keep telling me.’

  ‘You must feel pretty special. It’s a hell of a party. Your folks know how to throw a bash, that’s for sure.’

  ‘And were you invited or did you just manage to scale the walls?’ If there was one thing she’d learnt from her mother, it was the art of the waspish put-down.

  She heard him chuckle, and followed the cigarette end as it arced up to his mouth, stayed there for a moment – glowing even brighter – before dropping down again, the grey smoke that curled from his mouth seconds later looking white in the darkness. ‘With those dogs you’ve got on patrol? You’ve got to be kidding me. No girl’s pretty enough to risk those teeth. Not even you.’

  She didn’t know what to say – not sure whether she’d just been insulted or complimented. Or both. She raised herself up to her full height – all five feet two of it – and asked in her most imperious voice (the one that made her cringe whenever she heard her mother using it), ‘Do I know you?’

  ‘Not yet.’ He made no effort to move or introduce himself.

  ‘Who are you? I insist you tell me or I’ll call for those dogs. I’ve got an alarm in my pocket,’ she lied. ‘They’ll be here in under thirty seconds, wherever they are on the estate. You’d never outrun them.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it.’ She heard his smile in the dark and knew he didn’t believe a word of it. ‘Tell you what – I’ll tell you my name if you tell me why you’re running out on your own party.’

  ‘I’m not running out.’

  ‘No? You always socialize half a mile from your guests?’

  A small laugh escaped her at the wisecrack, surprising her in the same moment.