English Rose for the Sicilian Doc

by Annie Claydon

  Rose shot him a smile and picked up her bag, looking inside to make sure that William hadn’t deposited anything from his office in there. He almost wished that the boy had, because Rose would undoubtedly make a point of returning it, even if it did mean a trip all the way back to the hospital.

  ‘Would you like to see our lab? On the way out?’ She’d mentioned how most university archaeology departments would give their eye teeth for some of the imaging technology that the hospital boasted, and he suddenly felt like showing off a little.

  ‘Yes, I’d love to.’ She grinned. ‘Although you’d better check my handbag on the way out.’

  ‘That’s okay. You’ll never get a CT scanner in there.’

  ‘I suppose not. Anyway, you need it a lot more than I do.’

  He led her down the corridor, quiet now that most of the department was on their way home. The night shift would be using one of the labs, but the other would be empty.

  As he opened the door, she bent and took hold of William’s hand. She took a couple of steps into the room, looking around carefully.

  ‘Very impressive.’ Her gaze lit on the two large screens over the operating table. ‘So these screens tell you everything that’s going on?’

  Matteo nodded. ‘Yes. We do a very wide range of procedures here. We can treat fibroids, unblock clogged arteries, perform angioplasty. There are some cancers that we can treat, and that list is growing. We often work with clinicians and surgeons from other disciplines.’

  She looked up at him. ‘So maybe one day no one will need to be cut open by a surgeon.’

  ‘That’s more science fiction than medical fact at the moment. Although we do have help from robotic technology.’ He grinned, gesturing towards the robotic arm that duplicated his own precise movements on a much smaller scale.

  ‘But you make the decisions. If I were on that table, I think I’d feel a lot more confident if it wasn’t a robot in charge.’

  She seemed to make everything so human, so personal. Or perhaps he was the one that was making everything personal, and if that was the case then he should stop it.

  ‘I’m definitely the one in charge.’

  She smiled, turning for the door. ‘Thank you for showing me. It’s fascinating.’

  Matteo closed the lab, and decided that it was only polite to walk her to the lift. When the lift came, it seemed only natural to walk her to the main entrance. If he wasn’t going to follow her all the way home, he was going to have to say goodbye at some point.

  ‘Whereabouts are you digging?’ If she couldn’t answer in the next thirty seconds then he’d never know, because they were already outside and halfway to the car park.

  ‘Up in the hills, about five miles to the south of Palermo. There was a dig up there a couple of years ago that uncovered evidence of a small settlement.’

  ‘I know it. You’ve found something else?’

  ‘Yes, we’re excavating a Roman villa. It’s an important find.’ In the sunshine she seemed even more golden.

  ‘That’s interesting. My grandfather used to tell me stories of encampments in those hills. More recently than that, though.’

  ‘We’ve found a lot to indicate that the site’s been inhabited for many years. We’re always very interested in any local stories about the sites we dig.’ She paused for a moment as if thinking something over. ‘I don’t suppose you’d like to come and see the site, would you? I’d be very pleased to give you a tour, show you what we’re doing.’

  The site sounded interesting. Matteo tried to think of a reason why he shouldn’t and found that the word no had just mysteriously disappeared from his vocabulary. ‘I’d really like that. If you have time.’

  She gave him a look of mild reproof and opened her handbag, taking out her purse and extracting a card. ‘My mobile number’s on here. Give me a call and we’ll arrange a time.’

  ‘Thanks. I will.’ Matteo held out his hand, wondering how he should bid her goodbye. Somehow they seemed to be hovering insubstantially between Dr Di Salvo and Ms Palmer, and Matteo and Rose. Neither seemed to quite fit the bill.

  ‘Goodbye, then.’

  She took his hand, giving it a brisk shake. ‘Goodbye.’ Clearly she wasn’t quite sure what to call him either.

  He watched as she put William into the back seat of the car and got in, reversing out of her parking space, the card with her number on it seeming to burn a hole in his hand.

  * * *

  The early evening traffic in Palermo was a great deal less challenging than feeling that Matteo’s eyes were on her, watching her drive out of the car park. Rose relaxed a little as she rounded the corner, out of his view.

  ‘Mum.’ William’s voice sounded from the back of the car.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you going to ask him to be your boyfriend?’ William had been exploring the concept on and off for the last few months. His radar was just as perceptive as the delicate diagnostic equipment in Matteo’s lab.

  ‘No, sweetie.’ Rose injected as much certainty into her reply as she could, and started to count. Generally it took William about fifteen seconds to follow up one mortifyingly embarrassing question with another, even more embarrassing. At least he’d waited until they were in the car.

  ‘Wouldn’t he be a good boyfriend?’ It had taken William up to a count of twelve to formulate the thought.

  ‘I’m sure he’d make a very good boyfriend.’ Stupendous, actually. But in William’s mind the word was reserved for cars and superheroes. ‘Only I don’t want one.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Why not indeed. Telling William that his father had been the only serious relationship she’d ever had, and that she’d made a complete and utter mess of it, probably wasn’t a good idea. Neither was telling him that she would never allow herself to get into a situation where she could make all those mistakes again.

  ‘Because I’ve got you. And Grandma and Grandad, and my job. And you. I don’t need anything else.’

  ‘Good. Because he’s my friend.’

  ‘Yes. I think superheroes ought to stick together.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  MATTEO DROVE ALONG the dusty, snaking road. He’d told himself that however interested he was in seeing the site, he wouldn’t go, but all the same he’d asked his grandfather to recount the old stories about the area when he’d visited him at the weekend. And once he’d transcribed them into English, it seemed only right that he should give them to Rose.

  He sent her a text and she replied almost immediately. If he’d like to come to the site on Friday evening, she’d show him around.

  He could see signs of activity up ahead of him, people taking advantage of the cool of the evening to work. Matteo turned off the road and parked his car next to the others that were lined up along the perimeter of the site.

  She walked towards him as he got out of his car. Fair hair tied up in a messy ponytail at the back of her head, her arms bare, a thin white top with blue embroidery over a faded pair of denim shorts. Like the rest of the people working here, her feet were protected from the rocky terrain by battered work boots.

  ‘Hello. You made it, then.’

  There had never been any real question about that. And now she was standing beside him he realised that he would have driven over to the other side of the island just for this one glimpse of her. Matteo wondered briefly whether her choice to wear blue was for his benefit, and decided that he had no right to hope that it was.

  ‘Yes, I made it.’

  They stood for a moment smiling at each other and then Rose turned suddenly. ‘Come and see what we’ve been doing.’

  She led the way over to a group of prefabricated buildings. Inside, long trestles held boxes of material, waiting to be sorted and cleaned.

  ‘I brought som
e notes from my grandfather.’ He felt suddenly unsure of himself. ‘I’m not sure they’ll be any use to you. They’re just old stories and some of them are pretty far-fetched.’

  ‘That’s just the kind of thing we’re interested in. Old stories are often embellished as they’re handed down but they usually contain a kernel of truth.’

  ‘I’m not sure about these...’ Matteo reached into his pocket, producing the written sheets and handing them over to her, and Rose scanned them.

  ‘Bandits...’ She nodded. ‘We’ve heard that one. But we haven’t heard this... A sorceress?’

  ‘Yeah. I doubt that one’s got any basis of truth in it.’ Matteo shifted uncomfortably. The stories meant a lot to his grandfather, but he liked to think that his feet were more firmly planted in the modern world.

  ‘You never know. It’s good to keep an open mind. May I put these into our site archive?’ She put the paper down on the worktop and walked over to a cabinet, consulting the labels on the plastic boxes stacked inside.

  ‘Of course. If they’re of any interest.’

  She turned, grinning. ‘Everything’s of interest. We just have to find out how it all fits together. About what date would the bandits be?’

  Matteo chuckled. ‘A long time ago, and they’re all long gone. My grandfather’s nearly eighty, and it was when his father was a boy.’

  ‘So...’ She turned. ‘Somewhere around nineteen ten. Twenty...?’

  ‘About that.’

  ‘Will you write that down, please, on the paper?’ She turned back to the boxes, running her finger along the rows, and found the one she wanted, pulling it out.

  Matteo did as she asked, wondering what this was all about. Then she opened the box. ‘We reckon that this probably dates from around that time.’

  In a plastic bag lay a bullet. Matteo stared at it open-mouthed. ‘You’re kidding...’

  She grinned. ‘No, we found it in one of the test pits. We often find things which are more modern when we dig down to get to the older strata. You’d be surprised how many old plastic bags get turned up.’

  Matteo picked up the bullet, looking at it carefully, the sudden thrill of discovery throbbing through his veins. ‘It could be from a hunting rifle...’

  ‘Could be. We’ve sent photos off to a forensic ballistics expert, and we should know a bit more soon. I’d have thought it would be more likely to be buckshot if it was for hunting, though. There were no human or animal remains there, so maybe target practice?’

  ‘You’re hoping target practice.’ The idea of anything else made Matteo shiver.

  ‘Yes, hoping.’ She smiled, leaning towards him, obviously catching his mood. ‘Careful. We’ll have you hooked if you don’t watch out.’

  ‘You might have warned me sooner. I’m already hooked.’ In more ways than one, when he thought about it.

  ‘Ah. Well, since the damage is already done, it can’t do any harm to show you a bit more.’ Rose gave him a bright smile, her obvious enthusiasm for her work bubbling deliciously. Putting the bullet away and picking up the sheets of paper, she led him away from the finds to a large computer screen in the corner of the room.

  ‘I thought this might be of interest to you. Where your skills and mine meet.’

  The thought of her off-duty skills meeting his, and testing them to their limit, sent a cool shiver down his spine. Matteo reminded himself that he needed to get a grip. That clearly wasn’t what she was talking about.

  She opened directories, finding the file she wanted, and an image came up on the screen. ‘This is the geophysical survey.’

  Matteo sat down next to her, leaning forward to study it carefully. ‘This is ground-penetrating radar?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. We’re using a combination of GPR and electromagnetic survey techniques.’ She leaned back in her seat. ‘This is a pretty easy one. What do you reckon?’

  ‘I’d say...well, that line looks like an external wall of some sort, and those are internal walls?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Most people don’t see it straight away.’

  ‘And this is...what, two doorways?’ Matteo indicated the breaks in the pattern.

  ‘Maybe. I’m inclined to think a doorway and a window. We’ll see when we excavate.’ She pulled up the directory and opened another file. ‘We interpret the survey data and map out the site using computer aided design software. These green lines here...’ Her hand flew to her mouth.

  Matteo grinned at her. ‘It’s okay. You can mention green in my presence. I can take it.’

  She laughed, changed the settings on the image, and it reformed on the screen, different hatching styles replacing the difficult-to-read colour coding.

  ‘That’s better. So these single lines are...?’

  ‘It’s what we’ve gleaned so far from the surveys. The cross-hatching is what we’ve extrapolated from that.’

  ‘Guessed, you mean?’ he teased.

  She gave him a look of mock horror. ‘It’s in keeping with what we know about this type of building. Call it an educated guess.’

  ‘Right. And this is the atrium?’ When he leaned in, he caught her scent. She smelled gorgeous, like the scent of silk against skin.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. It has a mosaic floor and usually an indoor pool right at the centre, below the open part of the roof.’

  ‘Is that another guess?’

  ‘No! We’ve dug a few test pits there, and there is evidence of a mosaic floor. We’re hoping that it’s in good condition and the bits we’ve seen aren’t just fragments. Would you like to come and see?’

  When they walked out into the evening sunshine, Rose tipped her head up slightly, as if welcoming the cool caress of the breeze on her face. ‘It’s beautiful up here. I’m very lucky...’

  ‘You like Sicily?’ Suddenly that mattered more than it should.

  ‘I haven’t actually seen a great deal of it yet. I’ve been pretty involved up here, and the rest of my time is William’s. But what I have seen is wonderful.’

  Such a bright, sparkling spirit, contained in such strictly drawn boundaries. Matteo felt himself wanting to break those boundaries down, and wondered if Rose ever felt constrained by them.

  ‘You do this kind of thing back in England?’

  ‘These days, I usually teach during term time and dig during the summer holidays. William’s grown up messing around in the mud.’ She grinned. ‘But this was such an opportunity I couldn’t say no to it, and I’ve taken a six-month sabbatical.’

  ‘But you don’t do forensics any more?’

  ‘No, never.’ She quirked her mouth down a little. ‘I got involved with that when I was at university—one of the professors did work for the police. Finding remains, modelling faces, that kind of thing. It seemed like a good thing to do at the time and I went on to work on a number of cases with him and then some alone’

  ‘It’s important work.’ It seemed as if the spark, which invigorated her and made everything she touched seem special, had suddenly gone.

  ‘I felt that getting justice for people mattered. I still do, but it was very hard emotionally. I couldn’t stop myself getting over-involved.’

  ‘I can understand...’ Matteo bit the words back. He knew all about being involved with his work, and could understand a wish for justice. But he wasn’t sure he understood these particular pressures, or how Rose must have felt.

  * * *

  Did he? Did he really understand? When she looked into his face, she saw only humanity, the gentle eyes of a healer. To understand some of the things she’d seen, someone would need to have a streak of evil in their heart.

  ‘No, you don’t understand. And, trust me, that’s a good thing, there are some things that decent people shouldn’t be able to make sense of.’

  ‘Can
you explain it to me, then?’

  ‘No. I really don’t think I can.’ Suddenly the air seemed cold, and Rose shivered, wanting to cover up her bare arms.

  Why should Matteo be any different from her ex-husband? It was better not to say anything, so that she didn’t have to hear him dismiss her feelings.

  Rose shot him a smile and he took the hint. ‘What was it you were going to show me?’

  She almost wished he hadn’t given up so easily. As she showed him the newly excavated test pits and the areas of mosaic that they’d uncovered, he seemed to have left everything else behind, concentrating only on what was before his eyes.

  But Rose couldn’t forget. Alec had been a lot like Matteo, easygoing and charming, and that was what had drawn her to him. He hadn’t wanted to know about the hard parts of life, or even its necessary practicalities, and Rose had dealt with them willingly, not wanting to spoil his almost shining aloofness from such things.

  They’d set up home together, working on scraping the walls and rebuilding the ramshackle kitchen and bathroom in the house in Tufnell Park. And they’d been happy.

  It had been Rose who couldn’t cope. When her work had become stressful, Alec hadn’t wanted her to spoil their evenings by talking about it. She’d stayed quiet, turning in on herself, and in the end they’d hardly communicated at all. Her pregnancy, so unexpected but so much wanted, had left her even more tired and that had been the last straw for Alec. He’d wanted the carefree life they’d had, and when Rose had destroyed it all he’d left without looking back.

  Matteo was squatting down next to one of the pits, talking in Italian to the archaeology student who was digging there. He was obviously asking about the soil strata at the side of the pit because the student ran his finger along a darker layer that indicated a fire maybe three hundred years ago.

  He’d been kind, and he seemed willing to be a friend. Her life was on course now, and anything else would be madness. She’d messed up once, and now that she had William to consider, she couldn’t afford to do it again.

  Matteo got to his feet and walked over to stand beside her. ‘You’re doing some fascinating work here.’