by Rebecca Lim
Celia called out gaily from the kitchen, ‘Guess who managed to finish up early tonight just to rustle up dinner for my girls? Perfect timing, Janey! You’ve got that trip to Pompeii tomorrow, right?’ Janey nodded, hovering in the doorway. ‘So I thought I’d make sure you ate a big dinner and got enough rest. It’s meant to be forty-five degrees in the shade tomorrow, Pompeii is huge, plus you’ve got an early start.’
Janey smiled at her aunt, placing her shopping bags in her bedroom before swinging onto a bar stool in the kitchen.
‘Been shopping?’ Celia asked as she slid portions of herb-crusted sea bass onto beds of homemade ratatouille. She pushed a plate towards Janey and called out to Freddy to come and eat. Freddy slouched into the kitchen and slid onto the stool beside Janey’s, poking at her dinner.
‘You know I hate fish,’ she said, pulling a face.
‘You hate lots of stuff,’ said Celia. ‘Eat up. Your brain could use it. So how was the Raffaello exhibition?’
‘Bor-ing,’ Freddy replied, ‘like I thought it would be.’ She shot a pleading sidelong glance at Janey, who looked down at her plate to hide her confusion. Freddy hadn’t been there. She was covering her tracks!
Celia frowned. ‘That’s it?’ she said. ‘In two syllables? Well, what did you think, Janey?’
‘The portraits were incredible.’ Janey added mischievously, ‘Didn’t you think so, Freddy?’
Freddy darted another look at Janey. ‘I’ve seen better,’ she mumbled, pushing fish around her plate.
‘Oh, I doubt it!’ said Celia. ‘He’s acknowledged as one of the best portraitists the human race has ever produced. I wrote my honours thesis on Raffaello.’
‘Whatever,’ Freddy muttered. Janey looked down as Celia and Freddy glared at each other.
‘Well, what else did you two get up to?’ Celia asked, popping a forkful of fish into her mouth.
Janey and Freddy raised their eyebrows at each other.
‘We pretty much split up when we got there,’ said Freddy.
‘We sure did,’ Janey agreed. ‘In fact, Freddy’s friend Brandon met me there and we ended up having lunch together at the Hotel Hassler.’
This time Celia’s eyebrows shot up. ‘The Hotel Hassler?’ she cried. ‘At the newly revamped Imàgo restaurant?’
Janey nodded. ‘It was pretty spectacular.’
‘You mean,’ Celia said, putting her fork down, ‘that you left Freddy at the exhibition while you went off with one of her friends to have lunch at the Hassler? Only one of the most expensive five-star hotels in the city? Why didn’t you ask her to go too?’
Freddy grinned mischievously this time. ‘Yeah, why didn’t you ask me? I could have hung out with you two, instead of catching the rest of the exhibition all on my own. I would have loved to have a stickybeak at the Hassler!’
Janey bit her lip. Correcting Celia’s false impression that Freddy had attended the Raffaello exhibition would make the two of them look bad. Freddy for lying in the first place, and Janey for covering it up! It was a no-win situation. ‘Um, I don’t know,’ she mumbled, deciding the more honourable thing to do was back Freddy up. ‘Sorry, didn’t think.’
‘No you didn’t,’ Celia said in a low voice. ‘I must say that I’d thought better of you, Jane. You’re older than Federica, and you should be looking out for her, instead of dumping her somewhere and making off with one of her best friends.’
‘Who also just happens to be supremely good-looking and very loaded,’ Freddy chipped in.
Celia started washing dishes furiously as the girls got up to leave the table. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever encountered someone quite as boy crazy as you are, Janey Gordon. It’s Luca one day, Brandon the next. I can’t keep up with you! I’m not sure what kind of role model you’d be for my daughter . . .’
Freddy quickly hauled Janey out of the kitchen before she could open her mouth to defend herself.
Pompeii
‘Thanks,’ Freddy laughed as she yanked Janey up the hallway towards her bedroom. ‘I owe you one!’
Janey made an outraged gargling sound and Freddy giggled.
‘Mum doesn’t like me hanging out at Luz’s place because she thinks Luz is a spoilt, snobby diva with an attitude problem. And she’s right! But it’s still fun to see how the other half lives! Luz has got what her family grandly calls “retainers” but I’d call personal slaves. She’s waited on hand and foot. Nothing’s too much trouble. Scrambled eggs and Sevruga caviar at three in the morning? No problem! Her dad’s some kind of duke or something, and her mum’s a Colombian coffee baron’s daughter. They are off-the-scale rich.’ She pushed Janey inside her room and shut the door.
‘Because I just protected your backside again,’ Janey spluttered, ‘y-your mum thinks I’m some kind of a . . .’ She’d just about had it up to there with saving Freddy from Celia’s wrath when all Freddy seemed to do was dump her in it!
Freddy shrugged nonchalantly. ‘You’ll be gone soon, and she’ll forget about it. Don’t take things so seriously! You wanna hang out tonight? My buds and I are hitting the Duke’s bar in Parioli, then moving on to the Jackie O for some dancing. Brandon will be there,’ Freddy added cheekily. ‘We don’t have any fake ID for you, but I can make you up to look way older than you actually are. So it should be a cinch to get in.’
Remembering Brandon’s suspicious phone call at lunch, Janey replied stiffly, ‘Thanks, but no thanks, I think I’ll pass.’ She didn’t think she could stand losing Freddy and her friends in the crowd again, especially at some venue she’d never been to before, filled with potential sleaze buckets! And if Brandon looked right through her again, like he had today, she wasn’t sure how she’d handle it.
‘Suit yourself.’ Freddy started buzzing around her bedroom, blinging up for her big night. Still seething, Janey let herself out and hit the shower.
Later that night, still a little upset by how her day had turned out, Janey headed down the silent hallway to the study and logged into her MySpace page. While her last posting had been all about Luca, her latest one was all about Brandon and how he’d basically blown her off at the end of their swanky date. She needed help working through it all.
What do U think? Reckon he’s got a girlfriend stashed away somewhere? Thoughts + input please. Real confused.
It was late enough her time that Em and Gabs had just woken up back home and were online at their respective computers. Janey refreshed her page a few times with a smile on her face and was soon rewarded with Em’s first comment.
Hey babe. Still think u shld give Luca benefit of doubt. Brandon sounds GROSS blowin hot / cold dat way.
The Divine Miss Em
Gabs, who was busy catching up with a bunch of other people, took a little longer to chime in.
O, I concur. Brandon = rich brat playing w U . Luca = happily eva after.
Gabstar
Not sure what to think. Brandon beautiful one moment, freezing the next!
x X Janey G X x
The three of them messaged back and forth for another half hour until Em wrote:
Catch u tonight ur time maybe? Signed up for 1 day script writing master class. Big name American out to tell it like it is in HOLLYWOOD! Gotta motor. Easy.
The Divine Miss Em
Pretty soon after, Gabs signed off too.
Im out!
Gabstar
Janey updated her page with a few holiday snaps, including one of Brandon and a sneaky profile shot of Luca she’d taken one morning as he was driving Celia away to her office. He looked like a secret agent of some kind, in shades, with tousled hair. She also added a comment about how much she was looking forward to her trip to Pompeii the next day, promising to upload more photos on her return. She refreshed her page one more time and was on the verge of logging out herself when she noticed a new comment had been posted.
Fellini was back, poisonous as ever.
Like a person who looks like u could ever pull guys like dat!
Fellini
There was a tiny orange and green ‘Online Now’ icon under his avatar. Janey was so angry she was shaking. Who was this freak? How dare he get so personal and in her face? Especially here. It was supposed to be MySpace, not OpinionatedKookSpace. She felt violated.
Get off my page! JERK. No one asked U.
x X Janey G X x
Janey waited to see how Fellini would reply, adrenaline roaring through her body. It was frightening, but also kind of empowering, dealing with this cretin head-on. Fellini shot back seconds later.
JERK best u can do? u need ME to keep uself REAL. U getting ideas, chicken head.
Fellini
Fellini was feeling talkative this evening, Janey thought distastefully as she typed back.
Who asked u? u and me r nothing. LEAVE ME ALONE.
x X Janey G X x
That’s right. u and me r nothing, and it stays that way! And LEAVE is the operative word. U leave, it stops. And not B4. Get it?
Fellini
Janey hurriedly logged off, feeling like she’d been slimed. If she’d only gone with Freddy and her friends to Duke’s Bar, she would’ve avoided this little confrontation! Although the way she’d left things with Brandon, a night at Duke’s might only have been marginally better, she told herself grimly.
Suddenly she was glad to be leaving in just over a week. The trip of a lifetime had suddenly become a nightmarish game with rules she hadn’t a hope of understanding. She couldn’t wait to go home to her non-judgemental friends and her low-key life. Thanks to Fellini, Rome had suddenly turned from a magical place into a frightening one.
Janey suddenly missed her mum so much it was like a physical pain and hot tears spilled down her cheeks.
Janey woke the next morning to a sky as dull and overcast as her mood. She slipped into her freshly laundered orange tank and white shorts, because the forecast for where she was headed was sizzling. Celia had already gone to the office and Freddy had no doubt crashed at Luz’s or somewhere, because the apartment was all Janey’s as usual.
She resisted the urge to log on again to find out whether Fellini had caused new mischief on her page overnight, deciding instead to head out for a strong coffee and a little breakfast before boarding the bus that would take her down to the archaeological ruins of Pompeii. Ever since she’d learnt in history class about the city that had been lost for almost two thousand years after Mount Vesuvius had erupted and buried it in layers of ash and rubble, she’d wanted to see it. So when she’d been invited to go to Rome, it had been pretty easy for Janey to jump on the web and work out that Pompeii was only three and a half hours away. She’d organised a day tour from the comfort of Gabs’s place and now all she had to do was show up at Rome’s Termini Station and board a bus. The same place Luca had suggested she meet him, his sister and their friends for a trip to Ostia in a couple of days’ time.
Just thinking about Luca, and about Brandon, made her head hurt. She didn’t know what to believe about either of them, and was determined to put them out of her mind for the day and just enjoy the tour. The bus was scheduled to head south from Rome along the delightfully named Highway of the Sun, with a stop in Naples for lunch, then a two-hour tour of Pompeii.
Janey worked out that she’d get back to Rome by about eight that evening. Plenty of time for Fellini to wreak more havoc on her MySpace page, she thought, as she stopped at an espresso bar near Termini station and ordered a macchiato and a sweet Italian doughnut, or zeppola, to go with it.
Soon after, she boarded the tour bus with a nice Spanish couple, three elderly Canadians, a New Zealand guy, and a Hungarian couple with a toddler son. Taking her seat, she suddenly broke into a sunny smile; Fellini could text his heart out today, but unless he’d booked a ten-hour tour to Pompeii at exactly the same time as she had, he’d have to cool his toxic little backside back in Rome without her!
Janey reclined back in her seat and pulled out an apple. ‘Here’s to a Fellini-free day!’ she told herself as the bus pulled away from the terminal with a roar. Janey bit into the apple with relish and looked out the window with sparkling eyes.
It was after nine in the evening by the time they re-entered the outskirts of Rome, and all Janey wanted was a cool shower and a session of uploading photos to her MySpace to share with her friends.
First, she’d strolled the seaside boardwalks surrounding the serenely blue Bay of Naples, then eaten a huge three-course lunch at a hillside taverna overlooking the modern town of Pompeii. A guide had taken her tour group through the high points of the first-century ruins of ancient Pompeii before leaving each of them to wander the eerily well-preserved city under blazing blue skies.
Here and there among the ruined homes, shops, public baths, temples, amphitheatres, public squares and villas, Janey had chanced upon the scarily lifelike plaster casts of Pompeii’s people, lying exactly as they’d fallen. Some parts of the city were still so intact – the cobbled streets and laneways in such perfect condition – that she almost expected to see the ancient Pompeiani emerge from shadowy doorways and go about their business. She wished her friends could have seen the place for themselves. Astonishingly, parts of the original multicoloured frescos and mosaics that had adorned the walls of Pompeii’s homes and public buildings were still visible. It was hard to believe that it was a ghost town, and had been for centuries.
The only hitch to an otherwise ideal day was when the tour bus broke down with a transmission problem just outside a rest stop in the middle of nowhere. As tour bus after tour bus had rolled past, disgorging its hot and tired passengers, then rolled out again after everyone had had their obligatory toilet stop and overpriced snack, Janey and her tour group were still there, waiting for the replacement bus to come and get them.
As the bus finally lumbered back to the drop-off point near the Termini Station, Janey swapped email addresses with the friends of all ages that she’d made on her tour, promising to write. Apart from the delay in getting home, she decided, as she started walking slowly back in the direction of Celia’s apartment, the trip had been a real highlight of her holiday so far. She’d felt so incredibly free and anonymous. Her mobile hadn’t even rung once.
As if to remind her that it was there, however, it buzzed now and Janey tensed, taking a quick look around her at the small groups of people moving languidly by. It was dinnertime for many Romans, and the sidewalk cafés were packed. Perhaps it was Celia asking her out to dinner.
With her radar finetuned for trouble, though, she didn’t think so.
Janey stopped and rummaged through her daypack, thumbed the mobile warily, and read:
What kept u?
She dropped the phone back inside her bag as though it was made of molten lava and picked up her pace.
Immediately, it buzzed again.
Don’t look at it! Janey told herself. It’s what he wants.
But halfway up Via Volturno her curiosity got the better of her, and she snatched it up again.
U look like something the
cat dragged in. Orange is
SO not ur colour.
Janey began to run.
Città Universitaria
Going by memory alone, Janey ducked and wove her way through the warren of streets to the north of Termini Station, which looked a lot seedier at nightfall than she remembered from only that morning.
Those stores that weren’t open at this hour had steel shutters pulled tight across their windows, many of which were covered in dense graffiti, and the streets and lanes were crowded with dingy two or three star hotels. Touts stood outside many of the less popular restaurants and cafés she passed, and they reached out and tried to catch Janey by the arm as she raced by, which only made her more jumpy.
Part of her hoped that if she kept on the move, she would somehow lose the spiteful presence that was intent on making her waking hours a nightmare.
But her phone buzzed again in her daypack, demanding her attention:
Look around! If you dare.
Janey took shelter on the front step of a busy, well-lit pharmacy. Scanning the street, at first she saw nothing out of the ordinary. But apprehension made her look harder and she glimpsed, lounging in the shadowy doorway of an apartment block across the street, a tall figure with curly black hair wearing what looked like a golden mask.
It was a carnival mask, the sort Venetians wore in the annual Carnevale. It hid the wearer’s face from jaw to hairline, and looked grotesque! The eyes were blank ovals, through which the watcher peered at Janey, and the nose and mouth were taut and emotionless lines.
Janey shrieked and retreated into the shop, asking the first customer she stumbled across where she was. The elderly woman shrugged and rattled off several phrases in Italian with a vigorous waving of hands. The next middle-aged woman Janey tried to approach just shook her head and moved away.
‘Does anyone speak English?’ Janey called out. ‘Please, where am I?’
Several people looked up curiously, then went back to what they were doing.
Half-angry, half-terrified, Janey launched herself out of the pharmacy and headed back up the road in a northerly direction, not stopping to see if the shadowy watcher was following.
She knew she’d be in a lot of trouble if she didn’t beat Fellini back to Celia’s place.
Janey wrapped her fist around her house keys, and started looking for a taxi she could flag down, all the while getting more and more lost.
Janey was running scared. It might have been her imagination playing tricks on her eyes but she seemed to see shadowy figures everywhere she turned. She’d taken refuge in one crowded bar after another as she made her way uptown, but each time she’d emerged after being hit on a thousand times by over-eager young men, some cute, some definitely not so cute, who all wanted to buy her drinks she couldn’t even understand the names of, she thought she saw it again. Just the faintest glint of a gold-masked watcher, waiting. Somewhere just out of sight.