The Rome Affair

by Karen Swan

  ‘Oh God,’ she panted finally, bloodied hands on her scraped knees. She had been digging for twenty minutes now and was exhausted, but still this man was trapped. She couldn’t do it on her own. ‘I can’t . . . I can’t move it. I’ve got to go and get help.’

  ‘Wait!’ The man’s voice was much closer now. Stronger.

  She straightened up at his tone. He didn’t sound scared, but authoritative, decisive. ‘There is a small gap here.’ She looked and saw his hand again, the fingers wiggling through a narrow channel between the rocks. ‘Is there anything you can use as a puller – a lever?’

  ‘A . . . a lever?’ she echoed, looking around frantically at the mess surrounding her. There were broken pipes, but they were made of clay; tree trunks, but they were far too long and heavy to move. But a few metres away she saw a metal rod, of the type that builders used as strengtheners. One end of it was sharp and lethal-looking, the very top of the other gloved in the remains of a concrete cylinder.

  She scrabbled over to it, the clips on the harness jangling prettily as she stumbled over the rocks. ‘There’s this,’ she panted, bringing it back and holding it up to the narrow gap.

  The eyes blinked. ‘Try it.’

  She slid the rod through the gap. It fitted.

  ‘Okay. Stand behind the bar and pull it backwards,’ he said. ‘Pull as hard as you can.’

  Cesca heaved. Nothing happened. Her hands, slick with blood, slipped on the metal. ‘I’ll try the other way. Pushing’s easier,’ she said, ducking under the bar and beginning to push against it instead. For a moment, nothing happened again, her feet treading the ground, gaining no distance. And then suddenly—

  The lever switched back and she fell face first into the rubble heap. The sound of the slab crashing forwards came a second or two later, a huge muffled thwump that made the hole shake again, yet more rocks falling, soil sliding. A mushroom cloud of dust filled the cavity and Cesca coughed, choking on the solid concrete-flecked air.

  She felt hands on her back. ‘Are you okay?’

  But she couldn’t stop coughing, grit in her lungs and eyes. Her cheek stung and she put a hand to it, feeling the shallow groove of fresh scrapes on her skin. She looked up and saw the ghost-man. Her first thought was to wonder whether she was as white-looking as he was. Her second—

  ‘You!’ She couldn’t believe it. She got to her feet in an ungainly fashion, the harness clips jangling noisily as she tried to balance on the unstable ground. ‘If I’d known it was you—’ she panted, glaring at him.

  ‘What?’ The whites of Cantarelli’s eyes looked super-bright against his dulled skin, his lips extra pink, his eyes ultra dark, trying to catch up with her rage.

  But she couldn’t finish the sentence; angry though she was, it wasn’t true. She wouldn’t have left anyone down there.

  ‘You are—’ He put his hand to his own cheek and wiped it gently. She echoed the movement on herself, her fingers coming back red. It stung. ‘We should get that cleaned up.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she replied indignantly, refusing to allow him the opportunity to take control of this situation, to reverse the roles as though she was the victim in this. ‘I’m not the one who needed rescuing.’

  She saw the way his eyes flashed at her words, highlighting his momentary vulnerability. He looked back at her with that unsettlingly direct look of his. ‘Thank you—’

  It was like forcing a toddler to hand back an ice cream.

  ‘—But I would have been fine.’

  Cesca’s mouth dropped open. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You did not need to trouble yourself. I would have been able to get out.’

  ‘Oh! You think so, do you?’ she asked sarcastically, gesturing to the fresh heap of newly dislodged earth and rock, to the giant slab of parterre at their feet. ‘I guess that’s why you were calling to see if someone was there, then?’

  He didn’t reply but his displeased expression pleased her. He was in her debt and they both knew it.

  ‘What were you even doing in there on your own anyway? Aren’t there rules against that?’

  ‘I knew what I was doing.’

  ‘Yeah. It looked like it.’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘You realize everyone else has gone? Alberto would never have heard you from inside. Elena’s away. You were lucky I was around.’

  He arched an eyebrow. ‘Was I?’

  Cesca gasped in full-blown indignation. ‘You could have died!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘. . . What?’

  ‘I would not have died. There was another way out.’ He gestured to the cavity where he’d been trapped – the space behind it was regular and smooth.

  Open-mouthed, Cesca walked towards it and stared in. The passage extended back towards the west wing to her right and the east wing to her left. Small niches, carved into the walls at regular intervals, were blackened with scorch marks, indicating where candles had once sat, lighting the way. Presumably, there would be a door or entrance of some kind at either end, back into the palazzo.

  She looked back at him, feeling her anger rise again. She had put herself in danger for him; hurt herself because of him. She glanced down at her bare and bleeding legs, her bunched-up skirt now ruined. And he wasn’t grateful. It hadn’t even been necessary. ‘So then, what the hell were you doing, trying to get out this way?’

  ‘I cannot tell you that. It is confidential.’

  Cesca’s jaw dropped. She was so frustrated she wanted to scream. She wanted to slap him, kick him, knock ten bells out of him. How dare he behave like this when she had tried to help him? ‘That’s all you have to say after I just moved that crap to get you out? I thought you were suffocating! I thought you were going to die! And you can’t tell me why I bothered because it’s “confidential”?’

  He saw the stress in her face and how her eyes were red-rimmed, her lips trembling, her knees bleeding, her knuckles scraped. She noticed him close his right hand. ‘And I thank—’

  ‘What’s that?’ She pointed at his fist.

  ‘Again, that is confidential.’

  ‘Is that the reason why you just endangered your life and potentially mine?’

  ‘No one was going to die.’

  She straightened up. She’d had enough of this. Of him and his jobsworth pettiness. ‘Show it to me. Show me or I’m going to report this entire charade to your bosses. I don’t care what you say. There’s no way your health-and-safety people would allow you down there alone.’

  He glowered at her, still so shrouded in the dust he could have been a stone statue, only the anger in his eyes animating him. Slowly, and with visible resentment, he raised his arm and opened his fist.

  Cesca looked down at the tiny fragment of a tile in his palm. ‘That’s it?’

  He shrugged, his mouth set in a grim line.

  ‘Hey!’

  They both looked up to see three faces peering down at them: Alberto, Guido and Matteo.

  ‘What is going on here?’ Alberto demanded, looking furious.

  ‘Is this a private party or can anyone join in?’ Matteo asked, grinning wildly, the smile sliding off his face as he took in her expression. ‘Hey, baby, what’s happened?’

  ‘You okay, Chess?’ Guido asked, immediately protective.

  She shook her head, feeling tears suddenly threaten at the sight of her lovely friends. She’d had enough of this man. Not only was he ungrateful, he was consistently rude and arrogant. And he’d drawn blood again. She was going to have yet more scabs on his account!

  ‘Just get me out of here,’ she said, stumbling over the rubble and towards the rope, hands shaking as she tried to fasten the carabiners to the harness again, Cantarelli’s eyes like bullets in her back.

  Chapter Eighteen

  New York, December 1977

  The lights strobed, picking out her silver dress – the one that reminded her of one of her mother’s, half a lifetime ago – her tanned bare arms above her head, dark crimped hair swaying down her back.
Steve was sitting in the booth with Andy, both of them watching something – someone – other than her, Steve’s deep-set eyes hooded, one arm slung across the back of the banquette, a cigarette dangling carelessly between his fingers. Laney swayed to Donna Summer, feeling the love as she stared at her man. He even looked like a movie star in the dark, his top three shirt buttons undone, dark hair flopping forwards every few minutes and needing to be raked back – all the better for showing off the dramatic bone structure that made him such a dream onscreen. His new movie had just opened and was blitzing the box office, overtaking the new John Travolta picture, and creating a buzz around him that sometimes made her wake in the middle of the night and stare at the ceiling until the sun came up. Wasn’t their life crazy enough already?

  Being married to him was like harnessing the sun. Everyone was equal in here – once you got past the ropes – but some were more equal than others: wasn’t that how the saying went? Mick was here with his new model girlfriend, Jerry Hall, Liza was already on the dance floor, she’d seen Elsa too, head bent in conversation with Halston and Truman, and the not-yet-teen sensation Brooke Shields, whose soon-to-be-released film Pretty Baby already had industry buzz, popping in briefly with her mother. Nevertheless, it was Steve who was the centre of gravity in the room, women in tight pants stopping at his table to talk, to laugh, to let the straps of their camisoles slide off their shoulders as they tossed their hair . . .

  She watched as one – blonde, tall, a model type – slid into the booth beside him, her blue strapless dress clinging tightly to her narrow torso, shiny shoulders on display. They seemed to know each other: Steve extended himself to pour her a glass of champagne – not everyone received that courtesy – their white teeth matching as they smiled and clinked glasses.

  Laney turned on the spot, shaking her hair, shaking them out of her head, shaking her hips harder as the song segued into ‘Staying Alive’. Someone took her hands and danced with her, turning her, spinning her. Laney felt her heart racing. It was so hot in here, in spite of the thick snow out-side, and she dabbed her nose again – a habit now, almost a tic – checking her fingers for any telltale trace of white powder.

  The man ebbed from sight and unfamiliar people swam in front of her, the crowd a heaving mass that kept changing – too many new faces in here tonight – so that her friends, her clique, sporadically fell away from her, leaving her alone and exposed amidst strangers: a public she had been conditioned to fear. She turned back to Steve, looking for familiarity, an anchor.

  The blonde had her hand on his thigh and he was leaning in towards her, his mouth inches from her ear. The woman’s long golden hair was swept aside provocatively to expose her neck and the beautiful, almost sculptural sweep down to her bare shoulders. Andy, beside them, was staring into the crowd with his usual nonplussed expression, eyes blinking slowly behind those thick-rimmed glasses, his white-blonde hair shocking under the lights.

  Laney couldn’t take her eyes off her husband. He was hers, in spite of what that little blonde might think. He would never leave her – her name opened too many doors, her money throwing shade over even his earnings. Together they were dynamite. A power couple. Greater than the sum of their parts. They needed each other.

  She kept watching him but she kept dancing too; she wanted to go over and throw that girl to the floor, to put his hands on her body instead, but her silver sandals were rooted to the spot. She was somehow caught in this game they had fallen into playing. It had been going on so long now, she couldn’t remember how it had first started, or where. She couldn’t remember a lot of things – like when they had started being happier apart than when they were together. Was it when they’d become a family? Because that didn’t make sense to her; they were supposed to be closer now. Why weren’t they?

  She closed her eyes, feeling the music carry her, knowing that all these things she could see, she should also be able to feel. But she didn’t. She was numb. Bullet-proof.

  She felt hands on her hips, hands that slowed down her movements and brought them into time with another body. She let it happen. She felt good; she felt so far away. The man came closer, turning her to him. She recognized the face but his name eluded her. She frowned, before relaxing into a languid smile. What did it matter anyway? Details, names, were irrelevant. There was nothing beyond this moment. Tonight.

  ‘I need champagne!’ she shouted to the guy over the music. And before he could answer, she took him by the hand and towed him behind her to the booth. The model pulled away, fractionally, from Laney’s husband as she reached across the full width of the table for her champagne glass. ‘Hey baby. Having fun?’ she asked, swaying slightly from the suddenness of not dancing.

  ‘You don’t mind, do you, Laney?’ he asked, squeezing the model’s skinny thigh. ‘You look happily occupied yourself.’

  ‘I am,’ she shrugged, looking back at her dance partner and wondering if she should know his name. They had met before, she was certain. Ugh, but there were too many people. It was hard to remember. Everyone laughing and dancing, shouting above the music, all moving so fast . . .

  She winced, feeling suddenly weary. Exhausted. A chink of another world – another life – suddenly burst through into this one, too strong, too bright. The colours were beginning to glare, hurting her eyes. She sank one buttock onto the table and downed her glass. Steve was saying something in a low voice to the blonde. She smiled a private smile in this most public of spaces and they both rose, her husband grabbing his jacket and slinging it over one shoulder. ‘See you tomorrow, babe,’ he murmured, stopping in front of Laney to kiss her on the mouth, his eyes locking onto hers for a moment. Another private moment, publicly shared.

  She nodded, watching them leave, her husband’s hand on some other woman’s bony ass, the crowd parting for them as they headed for the door.

  Her dance partner – almost forgotten – took a step closer to her, refilling her glass quickly and taking a slug of it himself, before putting it to her lips, the liquid spilling out of the sides of her mouth. He leaned down and kissed it off and somewhere deep inside she registered a feeling of distaste. No, more than that – disgust. But it was a theoretical recognition, she couldn’t actually feel it right now. She couldn’t feel anything real in here, like this. She couldn’t feel the horror she knew she ought to feel that her husband had left with another woman. She closed her eyes: she felt good; she felt far away. She was in with the in crowd. Always one of the lucky ones.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Rome, July 2017

  Even by day, the brightness in the white apartment was unexpected. The room seemed to glow with reinforced serenity, defying the day’s unseasonably overcast skies and blithely ignoring the despoiled garden four floors below. Elena was still in the bedroom, getting dressed, but Alberto had directed her up here for the interview, saying the Principessa – they were back to formalities again after Friday’s transgression when she’d been ‘caught’ in the garden – was tired from her weekend of travelling and preferred not to be so close to the noise and disturbances from outside.

  Cesca stood at the window, tugging gently on her plait, which was thrown over one shoulder, and staring down at the activity. From here, she had a bird’s-eye view, able to see straight down into the hole, which was noticeably bigger than it had been when the workers had left on Friday evening. She had seen the first of them arrive and peer in, looking puzzled, then alarmed, getting out their lasers and measuring equipment and mapping out the new shape and dimensions. When Cantarelli arrived shortly after, two fingers strapped up and a nasty-looking cut on his arm, there had been a flurry of concern – of head-shaking and shoulder-patting, arms thrust out questioningly – and she knew they were asking the same question she herself had asked: what had happened? She wondered if he was admitting to having gone down there alone. She wondered when he had broken his fingers – during the rockfall? Or the escape? He had said nothing about it at the time and not done anything to indicate he was
in pain; then again, she’d barely given him much of a chance. The guys had teased her all Friday night about it, recounting how funny it had been to peer over the top of the monstrous hole and find the two of them at the bottom of it, arguing like an old married couple. She’d practically shinned her way back up the rope, they’d said, her skirt still bunched up like a nappy.

  She sighed, trying to banish the undignified image from her mind as she watched him striding around down there as if he owned the place. That man was not her problem. Next time, he could dig himself out. Or take the damned back door—

  ‘Good morning, Francesca.’ Elena’s voice was almost singsong in its quality. ‘Sorry to keep you. I trust you had an enjoya—’ She gasped. ‘Oh my goodness, whatever happened to you?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Cesca asked, before noticing Elena’s gaze was fixed upon her cheek. ‘Oh.’ Her hand flew up to it defensively. ‘I fell.’

  ‘Down what? A cliff?’ Elena asked, although there was levity in her tone.

  Cesca gave a small laugh, brushing it off, wanting to move the topic on, glancing as she did so out of the window one last time. To her surprise, Cantarelli was standing in the garden staring up at her. The laughter died on her lips.

  She moved away quickly, out of sight, back into the white radiance of the room. ‘So, how was the wedding?’ she asked, skirting round the sofa she’d sat upon that first night – only twelve days ago now, yet seeming more like months.

  ‘Oh, pure heaven. I do adore Florence. I always stay at the Medici. They’re so sweet and always give me my old suite whenever I stay.’

  ‘Who was getting married?’