by Karen Swan
‘Right,’ he said, still slowly, still trying to keep up. ‘But I don’t understand your point.’
‘Well, if it was Vito who dropped the ring but the others had no idea he even had it, then it had to have been—’
She stopped talking. Suddenly the question of who had told Christina the ring was in the tunnel wasn’t important. She was remembering something else from last night, something more troubling. It had hit a dud note at the time, Elena’s behaviour abruptly and uncharacteristically emotional and erratic. Giotto had been embarrassed. ‘Imagine a love so great that you’d put a bomb under your own life to protect it . . .’
Was that what Vito had done? Cesca fell still . . . and Elena too?
‘What is it? You’ve gone white,’ Nico said, alarmed.
She looked at him, her eyes wide. ‘Oh my God! No!’ she exclaimed, beginning to run.
Alberto was carrying the breakfast tray, his back erect in a white jacket, the day’s edition of Corriere della Sera ironed and folded under one arm. He was moving through the galleries, one ahead of her.
Cesca sprinted, grateful for the floaty cotton skirt that didn’t hinder her legs, for the trainers that were silent on the marble. She overtook him in the imperiali suite, Alberto dropping the tray in shock as she streaked past.
‘Stop!’ he hollered.
‘Alberto! Get help!’ she called back, over the sound of china smashing. His shouts were the least of their worries right now.
She burst through the doors into the white apartment, racing past the blossom tree and the pure white sofas to the gentle calm of the private sitting room behind it. Beyond that was the silence of Elena’s bedroom. Cesca knew that Alberto woke her every morning at nine.
Cesca stopped at the door, breathless and scared to enter, Nico right on her heels. ‘What are you doing?’ he hissed, grabbing her elbow too late as she knocked loudly.
She looked up at him, fear on her face. ‘Please God let me be wrong,’ she whispered, as she didn’t wait for a reply but simply opened the door.
Alberto arrived not two seconds later – but it was already obvious that she was heartbreakingly right.
Giotto was lying on the bed beside her, his face streaked. Elena was lying under the sheet, tucked in as if by Winnie, her hair perfectly brushed, the Bulgari Blue on her bedside cabinet. The brown pill bottle was still on the bedside table, half full. It wouldn’t have taken much, Cesca supposed; she had weighed almost nothing.
‘Oh Giotto,’ she whispered, rushing over and gently holding one of Elena’s cool hands, double-checking for a pulse. There was none and her heart plunged to her feet. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Oh God,’ Nico mumbled. ‘Gio.’
Cesca looked across at Alberto, who was standing like one of the palazzo’s many marble statues, frozen in the doorway. ‘Alberto, could you notify the authorities, please?’
She knew he would feel better to be doing something. His eyes slid over to her, unseeing at first, before he nodded and slipped from the room.
‘I got up in the night and saw her light was on; I thought something might be wrong. She’s been so frail lately.’ Giotto swallowed. ‘She was already gone.’ He looked up at them both. ‘Why would she do this? The doctors had given her another good year, at least.’
Cesca took in the look of peace on Elena’s face. Was she free now – free from the lies, the pretence? Had it been worth it? she wondered. ‘She must have felt it was time.’
‘To leave me?’ he asked, his voice sharp.
Gently, Cesca met his eyes. ‘To face up to things.’
There was a pause as Giotto tried to read her, this stranger in the heart of his home. ‘How much do you know – about us?’ he asked finally.
‘I think pretty much everything,’ she admitted.
Giotto stared at her, then back at his mother, before pushing himself up to a seated position, shoulders slumped, his head hanging as though it was too heavy for his neck to bear. He was wearing navy monogrammed pyjamas, the front crease in the trousers still pressed even after a night’s sleep.
‘I think your mother made her decision last night, at the dinner.’
‘What?’ Giotto asked, frowning as he looked up again. ‘How do you know that? Did she tell you what she was planning?’ Horror shone from his eyes.
‘No, she didn’t. Not directly,’ Cesca replied calmly. ‘But do you remember last night when she asked you if you remembered what your father used to say about your grandfather?’
‘. . . Yes.’ He exhaled impatiently. ‘As if I could ever forget it. My father used to quote it to us all the time. It was like a family motto, almost.’
‘It’s because that was what he had done too – for her, and for you. And I think last night was when she finally realized it.’
Giotto blinked, his expression desolate and angry all at once. ‘I don’t understand.’
Cesca reached into the waistband of her skirt and pulled out the two photographs: the one taken of the four of them eating ice creams, the other from years later – after the accident – with ‘Vito’ sitting on the wall in Positano.
‘Look at these. See how in this one Vito is wearing the signet ring on his left hand?’ she said, pointing to the ice-cream shot. ‘I started thinking about what you said last night about using the rings to identify them: a signet ring is worn on the non-dominant hand and your father was right-handed, so we know that in this picture, he is Vito; clearly that means the one with the cigarette is Aurelio. See? Aurelio’s ring is on his right hand.’
He nodded and she held up the other, later photo from Positano.
‘Now see, in this photo – which was taken in 1990, a year after the accident – the ring is still on his left hand. That means this is Vito. Not Aurelio. It was Aurelio who died in the crash.’
Giotto looked at her. ‘I know what I heard, Signorina. My mother called him Reli. He—’ he said, angrily stabbing the Positano picture with his finger ‘—is Reli. Not Vito. He . . . he probably just switched the ring to his left hand because he knew that’s where Vito wore it.’
Cesca nodded. ‘I know and I thought of that. But if you look in this picture here,’ she said, holding up the earlier ice-cream image again. ‘See how he’s holding the cigarette in his left hand? We know for a fact that’s Aurelio there. Left-handed. Smoking with his dominant hand. But in this one—’ She brought up the Positano picture again. ‘—The cigarette’s in his right hand.’ She looked at Giotto, hoping he was able to understand. ‘Do you see what I’m saying? It would have been one thing to change elements of his appearance, but it would have been much harder to change a habit or a behaviour. Vito probably wouldn’t have even thought about the fact that he smoked with his right hand.’
Nico stepped forward, a look of utter disbelief on his face. ‘You’re saying it was Vito who survived after all? Not Aurelio?’
‘Yes. It was what I was saying to you earlier about the ring – if Vito lost the ring in the tunnel and then died almost immediately afterwards without going back in, who could have told your mother it was in there? Not Aurelio; he knew nothing about it. Not Elena. It had to have been Vito. You said your mother saw him for lunch just once after the funeral? He must have told her the ring had been lost then.’
‘But then why did he push her away?’
‘Because she knew him better than anyone, and he was about to start living a lie. He couldn’t have kept it up in front of your moth—’
‘This doesn’t explain what I heard,’ Giotto said, cutting in. ‘I know what I heard.’
‘That’s right. You did overhear your mother calling him Reli – because that was what Vito wanted her to believe. He wanted her to believe he had died and his brother had lived.’ There was a stunned silence.
‘. . . But it was Aurelio who was killed in the car crash,’ she finished, quietly.
‘But you said that crash wouldn’t have killed anyone,’ Nico argued. They were both arguing with her now.
‘And it wouldn’t have killed anyone – ordinarily. But Aurelio wasn’t ordinary. He had been shot years earlier in Kenya and your mother told me last night the bullet was lodged too close to his heart for the surgeons to be able to remove it. The impact of the crash was just enough—’
‘To move it,’ Nico murmured, looking ashen. ‘Oh my God.’
‘Exactly. That’s why the official cause of death was heart failure.’
Everyone was quiet, trying to digest this new version of the truth. There were so many . . .
‘So . . . my father lied about his own death?’ Giotto clarified.
‘To your mother, yes,’ Cesca nodded. ‘To the world he was still Vito Damiani, but he wanted her to believe he was his brother.’
‘By pretending he was dead?’ Giotto asked incredulously. ‘Why? Why would he do that?’
Cesca blinked. ‘Because he knew she was in love with Aurelio. And he probably guessed that if she thought Aurelio was dead, she would leave him. And take you too.’
Giotto fell silent, looking back down at the still form of his mother on the bed. ‘And you think my mother . . . realized this, last night?’
‘I do. I think she realized it when you talked about the rings. The talk of which rings were on which hands was just enough to highlight the anomaly for her – Vito wouldn’t have been able to hide that he was right-handed. When you live with someone, their behaviours are so familiar as to become invisible, but as soon as they’re pointed out, they become glaringly obvious.’
Giotto was quiet for a long time, trying to digest this twisted truth. ‘But she got up on that stage last night and said all those wonderful things about Vito. You’re telling me she could do that, even though she had just learnt he had lied to her for all those years?’
‘Yes, because I think she understood why he had done it. She realized your father had put a bomb under his own life to protect his love for her and you. It was what he felt he had to do to keep you both.’
Giotto dropped his head again, hiding his face in his hands as the sobs began to heave his shoulders. Cesca felt her own heart break for him. She couldn’t imagine the pain of this – to have lost his mother, to learn the full torment of his father’s love.
His eyes were red when he finally looked back at her. ‘He did all that, even though . . .’ His voice cracked. ‘. . . E-even though he may well not have been my father. You realize there’s every possibility it was Aurelio?’
She swallowed and nodded. ‘Yes. I’m so sorry,’ she said, giving a helpless shrug. It was the one thing she didn’t know, couldn’t help him with.
A sound escaped him – low and urgent, like a wounded animal’s acceptance of defeat, of the end. He got up and began to pace the room restlessly, his hands in his hair as he shook his head. What was he supposed to process first? Cesca wondered sadly.
Nico squeezed her shoulder, giving her a quietly proud look as he walked back towards the window and saw his team all standing in a group in the courtyard, hard hats off. The news was spreading . . .
Cesca wondered how long it would be before the authorities got here, and then, of course, the press. ‘Giotto – I’m sorry to ask this. But did your mother leave a note?’ she asked, twisting to see him as he walked.
He stopped, as if the realization was a wall. ‘No.’ His tone was flat. ‘Well, I . . . I haven’t looked. When I saw her on the bed, I just—’ His voice cracked and he turned away quickly again.
‘It’s okay,’ Cesca soothed, just as Nico moved suddenly in the corner of her eye.
‘Wait. There’s something here,’ Nico said, his eyes on a stack of papers on the dressing table. It took Cesca only a split-second to realize it was the manuscript. She and Giotto crossed the room as Nico picked up the topmost sheet. He handed it to Giotto but they all read it together in silence, frowns puckering their brows.
My darling boy,
Forgive me for leaving you to learn the truth in this way. I simply was not strong enough to face it myself, until tonight. My life has not been what I thought it would be, and even less what others assumed it to be. I have known great sorrows and made such terrible mistakes that it has felt impossible to try to describe how I came to make them.
What you find on the pages that follow is my best attempt to explain. It will not be easy for you to read, as it was not easy for me to tell, nor, I know, for Francesca to write, but it is my final gift to you – from a mother to her son, this is my account of my life, of who I am.
There are so many things I wish I could have done differently, but you are the one thing I would never change. I could not ever regret anything that brought you to me, for you were always my truest love, my every consolation.
So don’t be sad, my darling. This day was coming anyway – too fast, then too slow. I have made my peace. Just keep in your heart that everything that was done, was done out of love – for me, for you, for our family. Love is the bomb under all our lives, as it should be.
Your loving Mama x
Cesca put down the note, her heart clattering as she took in what it all meant. She hadn’t written a book – not in the commercial sense, anyway – so much as a confession: a 200-page apology, a salutary tale of money, love and luck. It had never been intended to see the light of day.
She thought back to the day she had found Elena sitting in her apartment, waiting with her proposal, the very morning after they had first met. A coincidence? Christina had made it clear at their lunch that she thought not, and Cesca was now inclined to agree. In all probability, Elena had settled upon her as her biographer at that very first meeting; she had probably set her course before Cesca had even woken from her sleep, late and panicking and about to be very nearly run over by a handsome man on a scooter. Elena had probably only had to pay Giovanni a small bribe to get him to sack her and if she hadn’t conveniently over-slept, they’d have found some other reason. Elena would have got her way because she had recognized that Cesca was the girl for the job – for what would she have found if she had googled Cesca’s name, the way Cesca had googled hers? Headlines of a tragic case in which the defence counsel was too good at her job, a blog by a former barrister searching for pleasure in the small things, a girl overseas building a new life, a graduate with a brain and a restless need to dig out the truth.
Cesca paced, feeling the urge to move. The circle had been squared at last, but she had been manipulated in the doing of it. Elena had mined her barristerial instincts to present a case to her son. It was not up to Cesca to prove her innocence and Elena had known she wouldn’t try to; Elena was innocent until proven guilty, after all, and the decision on that would be Giotto’s in the end. His was the only verdict that counted. He was the legacy of a love affair that had consumed every one of them, for Aurelio, Vito and Elena had – in the end – all died for each other.
She looked back at Elena, peaceful in death, tiny in body but formidable in spirit. It was hard to believe she had once been considered the luckiest little girl in America.
But as Cesca stared at her, she saw something – a slip of a shadow beneath the pillow.
‘Giotto?’
The word drew both men’s attention from the manuscript and they turned to find her standing by the bed, holding out the little blue letter.
It had been opened, finally – and just as Elena had predicted – on the last day of her life. After fifteen years, she had found the courage to face her reckoning, to give Vito the last word on a love affair that had blown up all their lives.
It was like a homing pigeon, this letter, Cesca reflected as she held it in her hand: forever returning to her as though she was supposed to read it too. Would anything have been different if, that first night by the bins, she had? For by returning it unopened, she had become woven into the tapestry of this extraordinary family’s history.
But it was a hypothetical question, of course. She was a woman of principle; she would never have read a stranger’s letter – and that was precisely why Elena had chosen
her in the first place. Anyway, she hadn’t needed to. Christina had been right when she’d said the ground had opened itself up to push an old secret to the surface – that sinkhole had led to tunnels, which had led to a ring that was a token for a love beyond measure.
Events were unveiling exactly the way they were supposed to. The process had begun not fifteen years earlier, when the letter had been written, nor even twenty-two years before that, when Aurelio had returned home on Christmas Eve, nor even fourteen years before that when Laney had thrown her head back in laughter at Truman Capote’s Black and White masked ball . . . and missed the dashing Italian who passed right by. No, this moment had been a lifetime in the making and everything that had gone before – all the passion and the pain, the good luck and the bad – had led them to here.
Giotto – their son, heir and future – took the letter from her and, with a deep breath and tears in his eyes, he began to read.
Epilogue I
13 November 2002
My darling Elena,
My road is run. This world and our wonderful life in it have become too much for my heart to bear. I have tried my best to be what you needed and who you wanted, but even this love is no longer enough, for I miss him with an ache that folds me in half and tears me apart.
From the day of that shooting in Kenya, I always knew I would lose him too soon – he knew it too; it was why he lived so hard, knowing a sneeze, a clap on the back, could be all it took – but I would never be ready for it and I find I am still not.
Are you surprised that I am not he? Sometimes I wondered if you sensed it. I admit there have been many times I regretted what I had done, but I hope you will come to see that on the day he died, I made the only decision I could to persuade me to continue too: preserving your happiness ensured my own. I would get to keep you and our son – yes, our son.
That day – do you remember it? – we went for ice cream after lunch. I followed you both to the Pantheon. I saw you kiss in the rain, your passion and despair written over both your faces, and I knew what was going to happen between you, if it had not happened already. I waited in the tunnel that night, expecting to see him on his way to your rooms, never thinking it would be you down there. Your hunger was like a heat in the dark and though you said his name, I could not restrain myself. And so, my darling, I deceived you, even as you deceived me.
