The room was dim, shutters closed against the day’s heat, and Dad had always used light bulbs of roughly half the wattage necessary. After forty years of marriage Ma couldn’t even begin to question his decisions, Roxana understood that. She got up and pushed the shutters open a little: probably a mistake, she thought, feeling the wall of heat that met her. You could almost see it, creeping inside like fog.
Leaving the shutters ajar, she returned to her seat, sweat trickling between her shoulder blades, and her mother looked up at her, helpless. This was worse, she thought, worse than being nagged about her OCD, or her childlessness, or her single status.
‘Are you all right, Ma?’ she asked, a prickle of anxiety setting up.
Alzheimer’s was what she dreaded: she’d tried to broach the subject with her mother’s doctor, but he’d brushed her off. ‘Grief,’ he’d said brusquely. ‘If she seems a bit vague, or forgetful, or lost, that’s the most likely culprit.’ And it could be a killer too, he’d made sure she knew that. She’d taken Ma in on her return from hospital, and had lingered to ask him one or two things she didn’t want her mother to hear; his hand on her shoulder as she left, though, had been kindly enough, she knew that. The same doctor who had given her her shots and looked in her ears when she was six years old: he probably still thought of her as a kid.
‘And how was your day, dear?’ said Ma, the spoon languishing in her bowl, ignoring the question.
‘Fine,’ said Roxana, staring at her. ‘August, you know.’ She sighed. ‘It’s like a ghost town. And Val’s driving me mad.’ Leaned forward. ‘Since when did you ask me about my day, Mamma? Now I know there’s something wrong.’
‘That Valentino,’ said Ma, contemptuous, and Roxana breathed again. Ma had met Val a couple of times and looked down at her nose at his sharp suits, his aftershave – almost everything about him.
‘Can’t you just imagine him as a child? That kind. Spoiled wouldn’t be the word.’
At this point Roxana might normally have mentioned her own younger brother, apple of her mother’s eye, but she was so relieved at the return of her mother’s sharp tongue that she did not. She concentrated on cleaning her plate scrupulously. It was sage, she decided. Ma had put sage in it. Which wasn’t right.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘He asked me for a drink after work.’
And laughed. Her mother’s expression was a picture: the desire to thrust her daughter into a liaison – any liaison – with a man warring with her absolute disdain for Val.
‘It’s all right, Ma,’ she said. ‘He only wanted to manoeuvre me into shutting up early. He’s about the laziest man I ever met.’
‘But surely you can’t do that? I mean – it’s a bank!’
‘Oh, Mamma,’ said Roxana, and sighed. ‘We had three customers all day. We closed up five minutes early, that was it.’
‘So you did go for a drink with him?’ Violetta was looking at her slyly. Perhaps after all she thought Val would be better than nobody.
Roxana folded her arms. ‘A drink, yes, Ma.’
Val hadn’t meant anything by it. She knew he hadn’t. They’d had a nice enough half-hour, though, sitting in a bar just across the river in the Piazza Demidoff. In June and July the place would be so packed you had to walk around the customers in the road; as it was, there’d been a couple of expensive convertibles parked ostentatiously and illegally. Hardly a parking warden about, at this time of year. They’d sat on the terrace under the lime trees outside, though their scent was long gone.
‘You don’t mind?’ he’d said curiously, as the waiter set down their drinks, a cold beer for him, a ruby-red Crodino for her. ‘Stuck here in August?’ Someone had called over to Val, from another table, asking about the weekend, and leaning back in his chair, he called back an answer, shaking his head ruefully.
He’d turned back to Roxana, sipping his beer. ‘Everyone’s off to the seaside,’ he’d said sourly. ‘Elba. Vincenzo’s got a place there.’ Covertly, Roxana had eyed the man who’d called across: tanned, lazily handsome. She’d shifted in her chair.
‘You could go?’ She had wondered what he was still here in Florence for.
Val had shrugged. ‘I agreed to stick around, didn’t I?’ he’d said thoughtfully. ‘Marisa wouldn’t take no for an answer. Very insistent, that she had to get off on the yacht with Paolo.’ He leaned back. ‘Their perfect life.’
‘It’s all right for them,’ Roxana had said. Marisa’d just assumed, in her case. That she’d comply. ‘For the bosses. But just for the weekend?’
‘I’ve got no one to go with,’ Val had said, eyeing her. Then drank a little deeper from the beer. ‘It’s not like it was. You know, the lads, away together for the weekend, the girlfriends come and go. But these days, the girls stick around, wives some of them, by now. It’s the lads that disappear.’
It had been the deepest conversation she’d had with Val since she’d known him. Maybe it wasn’t all roses, being a man about town.
‘Sorry, Val,’ she’d said. ‘What happened to – what’s her name?’
‘Lily?’ Val had given her a sidelong, sardonic look. ‘The American?’
‘If you say so.’ Roxana had only glimpsed her from a distance, now and again, a rangy blonde with expensive clothes. ‘She go back to America?’
‘Greece,’ Val had said briefly, draining his beer. ‘Next stop. On the Grand Tour.’
‘Right,’ she’d said, giving him what she hoped was a sisterly, consoling smile. He’d laughed and got to his feet. ‘Want another?’
Roxana glanced across the table at her mother in the uneven light of the inadequate bulbs. It wasn’t as if she’d never had a boyfriend, for God’s sake; there’d been Matteo at college, only he’d fancied someone else more; that kind of thing happened when you were twenty-two. And then she’d been too busy working – trying to please the boss, staying late; for a while Violetta had even warned her off, thinking there was something going on, telling her he was a married man and she should be careful. And when next she lifted her head from her desk, all the men her age seemed to be taken.
Can’t be helped. Someone will come along. That was Roxana’s mantra.
Roxana didn’t bother telling Violetta any of this; she’d only get the wrong idea.
Instead she stood up and dutifully began to clear the plates. This kitchen, she thought absently, ugh. The wooden units were thirty-five years old, oppressively Tyrolean in style but still, unfortunately, in excellent condition.
At the sink – no dishwasher, of course – she spoke over her shoulder. ‘So what did you get up to today? How far did you get on your walk?’
Violetta was very good about her daily walk, as prescribed – the only thing prescribed, in fact, by the same family doctor. ‘Fresh air, exercise,’ he’d said briskly. ‘Better than antidepressants,’ and Roxana had agreed with him. Violetta would walk up around the side of the Certosa, the pale-walled monastery surmounting its hill beyond Galluzzo, and along the lanes into the countryside. She grumbled that she was turning into one of those old widows from her own childhood, bow-legged in black, searching the hedgerows for sorrel and chestnuts. It was doing her good, they both knew that, and she did come back with a bag of something most times, even if it was only nettle heads for risotto.
But now behind Roxana there was a silence, and turning she saw on her mother’s face only anxiety and confusion. This was new: she’d been vague, there’d been episodes – but this was another thing.
‘Violetta? Ma? I said, how far—’
But her mother’s lip was trembling. ‘I didn’t go out. I – there was the phone call. And then someone came to the door. I didn’t have time. It – it looked like rain.’ She was practically babbling.
‘Looked like rain? What are you talking about?’ Roxana could hear her own fear, sounding like anger, and she tried to soften it. ‘Sorry, Ma. One thing at a time. Someone phoned.’ She came back to the table and sat down; outside a siren wailed, far off in the city, and she r
eached for her mother’s hand. It seemed to hold no warmth, the fingers no more than skin and bone.
‘There was a message.’ Violetta Delfino stopped.
Roxana smiled steadily into her mother’s eyes. ‘You wrote it down.’
Her mother returned her look. ‘Yes,’ she said, hopefully, then with greater certainty, ‘Of course.’ And made as if to get up, in awkward haste, to fetch the pad they kept by the telephone in the hall. Roxana held fast to her mother’s hand.
‘But you don’t remember who it was?’
Violetta looked around herself, anywhere but at her daughter. ‘I’m sure it’ll come to me,’ she said, and with a sigh Roxana released her.
‘Yes,’ she said.
Ma stayed where she was, as if she’d forgotten any urgency. ‘A woman,’ she said. ‘It was a woman, I remember that much. I’m not gaga, you know.’
Roxana let out a quick nervous laugh. ‘I know,’ she said, and got to her feet.
But the pad by the telephone in the hall was blank; it sat there on the perfectly polished table, dead centre on its own lace doily. Behind her in the kitchen doorway her mother stood, nervously moving her hands.
‘Oh, Ma,’ said Roxana.
*
‘So what d’you think?’
Sandro gazed at his wife, who was eyeing him with a certain sceptical amusement, one hand on her hip, the other having just gestured across the dusty tiled floor.
‘I think it’s a wreck,’ he said, paying no attention to the protesting murmur that came from the third figure in the room, a small, bearded young man in a short-sleeved shirt and tie, clutching a briefcase. ‘And it’s three floors up.’
Luisa had met him on the doorstep, ready to go out. Dark-grey linen dress, a bit of lipstick, her best handbag on her arm. She’d sniffed his breath as she kissed his cheek, good-humoured.
‘How was Pietro?’ she’d asked cheerfully. ‘Amazing, to think of that little girl all grown up.’ He’d agreed.
What had been more amazing, although neither of them was going to say as much now, was how Sandro and Luisa themselves had survived, because when Chiara had been born, Luisa had shut herself in her room for a day and a half, emerging pale and monosyllabic. She had given birth to their only child twelve years before Chiara; close to perfect on the outside, the baby had suffered from a syndrome that brought with it major defects in the internal organs; at most a baby born with the syndrome might survive for a month. Luisa and Sandro’s daughter had lived a day and a half. There was still no known treatment; these days there were prenatal scans – and abortion. Sandro still sometimes wondered about it all. About what they would have done if they’d been offered that option: would it have changed anything? Their daughter’s birth and short life had left them too shell-shocked to approach the possibility of trying again, until it was too late. Would a termination have left them any different? Sandro could not grasp it: it was too big a question.
On their doorstep Luisa hadn’t let him go inside to change. ‘We’ve got half an hour,’ she’d said. Sandro had just looked at her with faint exasperation, and she’d said, before he could ask, ‘It’s a surprise.’
The first part of the surprise had been standing on the doorstep of a grubby-stuccoed three-storey villa in the south of the city, on the eastern edge of San Niccolo, twenty minutes on foot from Santa Croce. The young man with the beard, who smelled strongly of aftershave, had greeted them, introducing himself as Sergio Galeotti of Galeotti Immobiliare. An estate agent.
Galeotti’s car had been outside, an expensive, low-slung model with a personalized number plate: GALIMM. Even a mid-range Maserati didn’t come cheap: Sandro imagined that plenty of backhanders would have come Sergio Galeotti’s way. Prices fixed, deals done.
Whatever happened, Sandro’d wanted to say to Luisa, to the old way? Where you went to see a man you knew, who knew a man who knew an apartment that had come free, in a nice area, knock-down price for a quick sale? But glancing at his wife, he’d seen that she knew exactly what he was thinking, because she always did. And he’d known what she’d say, too: that was how we got our flat, the old way, and we’ve never been happy there.
‘Mr Galeotti is handling the sale for a client of mine,’ Luisa had said briskly. ‘Signora del Conte. You know her.’
It hadn’t been a question, but yes, Sandro knew her, one of many devoted clients of his wife’s, this one a fierce, beady-eyed, elderly woman. Oh, and startlingly wealthy, too. A hoarder, of shoes and silk blouses and properties, here, there and everywhere, little apartments, garage spaces, a cottage or two in the country. Luisa had spent her whole working life at the same place: Frollini, just off the Piazza Signoria, a shop that over the years had transformed itself from an excellent old-fashioned haberdasher’s and ladies’ outfitters – all wooden display cabinets, sensible knitwear and lace collars – to one of a chain of sleek palaces of luxury. Luisa, who had enjoyed moving with the times, was now the most senior saleswoman, and their treasure; she had many loyal ladies – not to mention those ladies’ daughters and granddaughters – and some of them were extremely well connected.
‘She’s a very good client,’ Luisa had gone on. ‘And as a favour to her Mr Galeotti has agreed to waive the buyer’s fee.’ Oh, yes, thought Sandro. The money’ll reappear somewhere else, you can bet on that; no such thing as a free lunch. And the old lady certainly had a fat portfolio of properties.
But it was a nice area, even Sandro had grudgingly had to admit that. If pushed, he would have said it was his favourite part of the city: not quite on the tourist track, tucked between the river and the green hills that rose up from it to the Piazzale Michelangelo.
Quiet but not too quiet: they’d walked through a small piazza on their way here, no more than a junction between roads just inside the soft stone of the mediaeval wall, and there’d been the sound of quiet conversation in a bar, the rattle of cutlery being laid in a restaurant, some kids on their mopeds chilling out. No blaring satellite TV, no thumping music, no smashing bottles. It was a nice area, which was why they couldn’t afford it.
‘We can’t afford it,’ he’d said flatly before they even went inside. The street had been quiet, a patch of green rose above a low wall opposite the hundred-and-fifty-year-old building; a rusting, wrought-iron balcony ran right along the top floor. The agent had dipped his head discreetly at Sandro’s words, leaving Luisa to deal with that particular obstacle.
‘You don’t know how much it is,’ she’d said.
Galeotti had raised his head again. ‘I think you’ll find my client—’ and he had broken off, nodding to Luisa, ‘our client, should I say, is open to offers. The apartment does need, ah – some attention.’
And Sandro had sighed, giving in. Then Galeotti had fished from his briefcase a great circular bunch of keys – eight or nine different sets, each tagged – extracted one and they had gone in.
Some attention: well, that had certainly been true. The roof had collapsed in places, and the speckled tile of the floor was heaped with rubble. The window frames were rotten and the shutter-slats half broken; the tiny bathroom blotched with rust and mildew, the kitchen no more than an ancient cooker and a stained sink in one corner of the main living space. But the room was wide and light and spacious and beautiful, with chestnut beams; one set of long French doors let in a rectangle of green hillside, and another a slice of the view, between rooftops, of the smoke-blue layers of the Casentino hills.
‘Perhaps you could leave us for ten minutes, to have a look around?’ Luisa had said politely to Galeotti, who had appeared unsettled by the request.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ he’d said, chinking the big hoop of keys against his thigh.
‘Please,’ Luisa had said, and there was something about her tone – Sandro knew it all too well – of precision and firmness and certainty, which demanded compliance.
‘I’ll be downstairs,’ the estate agent had said shortly. Ten minutes.’
‘I don’t like him,’ Sa
ndro had said, listening to the man’s footsteps on the stairs.
‘I think he can tell,’ Luisa had said, smiling. The pale soft skin around her dark eyes had crinkled and Sandro had found himself wondering why anyone would want to erase such lines. ‘I could never work out how you managed to be such a good policeman,’ she’d said, hands on hips. ‘You’re so bad at pretending.’ He had laughed abruptly: wasn’t that just like Luisa? Hide a compliment in an insult. Or vice versa.
‘Yes,’ he’d agreed. ‘Do you like him, then?’
And she’d laughed out loud.
A little trace of a breeze had set up, drifting through the long window nearest to them that gave on to the hillside, and it brought with it the smell of hot, dry earth and pine needles. It hadn’t rained in five months.
‘You love it, don’t you?’ Luisa had said, and Sandro had nodded, just barely.
‘Why did you bring me here, Luisa?’ he’d said with a sigh, turning slowly on the spot, taking in the scratched floor tiles, the long streak of reddish-brown stain down one corner, the lovely windows one after another. ‘We can’t afford it.’
‘Come here,’ she’d said, and dutifully Sandro had followed his wife. Ahead of him her wide shoulders – finer than they’d been before the chemo, her collarbones pronounced now, but still strong – made him think of Anna Niescu’s tiny frame, struggling with its burden. Had her fiancé brought her to a place like this and said, Imagine, darling? This is where we’ll put the nursery.
‘We’re too old,’ he’d begun, but Luisa’s sharp backwards glance had silenced him. She had then taken him into the only other real room in the apartment, the one bedroom. It was big, too, twice the size of anything you’d find in a modernized place. A square, handsome room, with two windows looking down into the nested houses, ornamented with window boxes and washing hung out to dry, that clustered around the old wall.
By now the sun had disappeared behind the dark hump of hillside to the west, but the sky had remained livid blue, and clear. Luisa had been leaning on the windowsill, silhouetted as she gazed out. The hot wind had blown in past her, carrying her scent inside with its load of humidity. She’d turned.
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