by David Elvar
He smiled back. He understood.
‘Right!’ he said. ‘Let’s have that coffee then see to Elisa’s things…’
THIRTY
It took all of two days for the brown stuff to hit the fan. I couldn’t have known just how far my Facebook post would spread, I had no way of checking, but when I found out, it surprised even me. And how did I find out? It went something like this…
I was with the U-boat in a lesson when the front door suddenly slammed open then slammed shut again. She stopped talking about Italian history and I stopped pretending to listen to her. We looked up. There were footsteps coming down the hallway. Determined footsteps. Footsteps that sounded as though they wanted to get somewhere and get there quickly. We had no time to wonder who it might be or if we were about to be murdered with a sharpened setsquare because the door slammed open. My father was standing there. Just standing there. Red-faced. Like he was angry about something. No, scrap that: like he was furious about something.
He stood there for a full half-minute. Not speaking. Not moving. Like he was frozen to the spot, his laptop tucked incongruously under one arm. Us? We just looked at him, the U-boat probably wondering what the hell was wrong and me knowing only too well.
‘Signora Di Scoglio,’ he breathed eventually and shakily. ‘Signora Di Scoglio, I would like you to leave us for a moment. I would like you to leave me alone with my daughter.’
She didn’t argue, she scuttled from the room faster than I’d ever seen her move before. I didn’t blame her: he really was steaming about something, steaming and glaring at me, glaring Grade A, triple-filtered fury at me.
I leaned back in my chair and regarded him coolly.
‘You’re home early,’ I said casually. ‘What’s happened, have they got fed up with your bullying opinions at last and fired you?’
‘You know perfectly well why I am here,’ he breathed. ‘Earlier this afternoon, I received an e-mail from a colleague. It contained a screenshot of his daughter’s Facebook page—to which he has access, as any good parent will insist upon. I think you know what this screenshot was of.’
‘Er…his daughter telling the world she’s fed up with spaghetti?’
‘THIS IS NO LAUGHING MATTER, ELISA!’ He screamed it with such force, it made me jump in my seat. ‘THIS COULD HAVE RUINED ME!’
‘Yeah? A lot of what you’ve done recently could ruin you if it ever got out. Why don’t you give me a clue here?’
‘This!’ he said, striding to the U-boat’s desk and setting down and opening his laptop.
He woke it up with a press of a key. The screen flickered into light. There was an image there, an image of a Facebook page.
‘Well?’ he was demanding.
I shrugged. ‘So you want me to deny it? I put that up and asked it to be shared, yes. So sue me.’
‘Haven’t you been listening to me? This could have ruined me! I have a position, a position of standing, a position of responsibility that means I have to handle millions of Euros of public money in my work. If there was even a hint of scandal attached to my name, I would be finished.’
‘So let’s get this straight: one of your colleagues at the university sees this and instead of reporting it to the authorities, he tips you off and saves your sorry butt. What’s the big deal?’
‘This came not from one of my colleagues at the university,’ he said coldly, ‘but from one in the United States of America.’
That was news! I mean, I don’t have any Facebook friends in the U.S. I peered more closely at the shot, at the number of shares. There were a lot, and I guessed from that that pretty much all of my friends had done the same and shared it, and they would then have asked their friends to share it, who in turn would have asked their friends to share it, and so on, and so on. Just as I’d asked, just as I’d hoped. No wonder my father was steaming.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘what is your problem here? All I’ve done is posted what you did, posted the truth—’
‘THE TRUTH DOESN’T MATTER!’ he screamed. ‘ALL THAT MATTERS IS THAT YOU SUPPORT ME IN WHAT I’M DOING!’
‘BUT THAT’S JUST IT!’ I shouted back. ‘I DON’T! AND I NEVER WILL!’
Silence. Yeah, we’d been here before, each of us glaring coldly at the other, neither of us giving way. But this time, it was different. I could feel it. This time, I held the upper hand, I was in control.
‘This is not going to end,’ I said quietly. ‘I will fight you and fight you and fight you again until I’m back in England with mum, where I want to be, with who I want to be with. You won’t win. You can’t. Because you’ve already lost.’
He didn’t answer. I think in that moment, he realised for the first time just what he was up against here. He just folded his laptop up again, thrust it under his arm and stormed from the room. And I sat back in my chair and waited for the U-boat to return with her inevitable fifteen-minutes-to-be-added-to-the-lesson-for-this-interruption.
But even as I sat there, I knew there would be backlash from this one. I was not wrong.
THIRTY ONE
Lockdown. I think that’s what they call it in those American prison dramas when things get out of hand and the inmates have to be brought back into line. Yeah, that’s what happened to me.
My father couldn’t have known for certain when it actually was that I managed to get into Facebook but it doesn’t take an Einstein to put school visit and opportunity together. I heard him grilling the U-boat and her assuring him that no, I hadn’t been let out of her sight for even a moment, that yes, it was a straight in/pick up/straight out job with no chance whatsoever of my getting even near a computer or the internet. He probably didn’t believe her, probably knew she was covering her butt to save her job, but there was nothing he could do to prove it so he had to let it go. But he did issue an order that things were to change. And they did. Big time.
My every move was monitored. The U-boat got me up in the morning, stood outside the bathroom while I did the usual stuff you do when you wake up, waited outside my door while I got dressed then escorted me down to breakfast. If that wasn’t enough, the two of them would then watch while I struggled through the espresso-and-fatty-biscuit ritual, my insides churning with every mouthful, my urge to spit getting a workout like you wouldn’t know.
That thankfully over, it was time for my father to leave for work and me to start what passed for my day’s schooling. And yeah, there were changes there, too. The lessons got more intense, not just more of the same but more and more of the same. Payback, I thought at the time, payback for almost landing her in it over the Facebook post, though she never said as much. I still got my exercise periods in the yard—sorry, garden—but these were now in all weathers: hammering down with rain or searing under a merciless sun, I still had to trudge round and round that small patch of grass until she called time. She really did have it in for me.
But the upshot of all this was what they wanted: I had no time to myself, no time to call my own, no time even alone. I think they figured if they couldn’t stop me cooking up my wayward plans, they could at least make sure I couldn’t carry them out. And in that, at least, they succeeded.
And that’s how it went on, day after day for the next few weeks. They shut me off from the outside world, shut me off so totally, so utterly completely, that that same world could have ended and I would have been none the wiser. To break out, to break back into it, a place where I could breathe and feel and know I was alive just by being able to experience stuff, I needed a miracle. Yeah, right. I don’t believe in miracles, or at least, I didn’t until my father came home from work one day and announced that he was taking us out for a meal to celebrate. To celebrate what, I hear you ask? Well, that was what kind of led to the miracle.
We had just finished school for the day, the U-boat and I, and he arrived home. Usually, he kind of trudges in, goes straight to his study, starts up his laptop then thinks about maybe greeting us. Always the same, his priorities mapped out and followed to
the letter. But that evening, no. That evening, it was different.
He didn’t trudge in, he didn’t just walk in, he waltzed in. Yeah, I mean it! It was like he was dancing, like he’d just pulled the hottest girl in the university and couldn’t believe his luck. But that wasn’t the reason, of course it wasn’t. And like he always does when he gets something to shout about, he didn’t waste time in telling us what that reason was.
He stood there in front of us, beaming.
‘Elisa, Signora Di Scoglio,’ he said, ‘whatever has been planned for supper tonight, cancel it! We are going out for a meal! All of us!’
‘Dr. Pellegrino!’ the U-boat began. ‘…I don’t know what to say…I mean…To what do we owe this honour?’
He didn’t answer, just looked at me as though waiting for me to join in with this sudden burst of enthusiasm. But I couldn’t speak. You see, as mum will tell you, he was always something of a skinflint when it came to money, always expecting her to do the most with the least. And never, ever, had he taken her out for a meal. So you might say I was a little surprised.
‘Today,’ he went on when he saw I wasn’t going to fall into line, ‘is a very special day. For these past two years, I have been doing important research for a multinational corporation, and I have just had it reviewed by a colleague, a scientist of major standing, who has endorsed it. My work has been recognised at the highest level’
‘Dr. Pellegrino!’ the U-boat breathed. ‘Such an achievement! A matter indeed for celebration.’
I glanced at her, saw wide eyes and flushed cheeks, and it was like seeing Anya again. She had the hots for my father. Someone as old as beloved nonna and twice as crabby, and she had the hots for my father.
‘Thank you, Signora Di Scoglio, thank you,’ he was saying now. ‘There is a restaurant worthy of such an event but a ten-minute walk from here. I have reserved a table, we are expected at six. So I suggest we take the time available until then to get ready, and I am sure we will treat the occasion with the respect it deserves.’
He was looking at me as he added that last part, like it was a warning. I didn’t answer, I just turned for my room. To get ready for his special occasion.
The restaurant he’d chosen I knew only vaguely, only by passing it day after day with mum. I remember she would often glance wistfully inside as we passed the window. Maybe she was wondering what the food was like, if she would ever find out. Like I said, taking mum out had never figured highly on my father’s list of priorities, not even for things like her birthday. He never forgot that, though, and you’d probably think Yeah, good man, but he never forgot it only because he had a reminder set on his laptop which nudged him at the right time every year. And he would do the same thing year after year: he’d order some flowers and chocolates to be delivered, and he’d give her some money to go and buy whatever she wanted. Duty done, he’d return to his study and close the door on her and her annual intrusion. More than once, I’d see the disappointment in her eyes as she watched him disappear through the doorway. More than once, I knew, she would have settled for just a card that he’d taken the trouble to choose, himself.
As I sat there at the table and gazed round, I could see that she hadn’t missed much by not coming here. The interior was highly polished but old, even shabby, and dimly lit, the waiters flitting like shadows in the dark. I think the place was trying to be romantic or something but in that it failed, only managing instead to look like someone had forgotten to pay the electricity bill. Either way, the reality didn’t live up to the promise.
I looked back at my father and the U-boat. She seemed to have loosened up since the announcement about the meal, and now she was sitting there like a servant enjoying a special treat—which in effect she was but I wasn’t going to shatter her illusion by telling her that. She was making all the right noises in all the right places, asking my father about his work and its importance, and he—and I couldn’t believe this—he had brought his laptop along and had it set on the table, and was giving her a brief rundown on what he’d been doing while she did her best to know what he was talking about.
‘Good evening, Signori,’ said a voice, and we looked up. It was the waiter. ‘We are happy to see you here this evening,’ he went on automatically. ‘Can I get you something to drink while you choose from our delicious menu?’
—and he started to lay said menus on the table, one in front of each of us. But even as he did so, my father gasped. I looked up, couldn’t think what was wrong, but he was already purple with rage.
‘IMBECILLE!’ he shouted, jumping up and hurling the menu to the floor all at once. The waiter stepped back, looking astonished.
‘But…Signore! Is there something wrong?’
‘Wrong?’ my father shouted. ‘You ask what is wrong? These menus you hand out without a single thought, have you taken a look at them, a close look?’
The waiter took a look but seemed as puzzled as I was.
‘There is a magnetic strip embedded in the spine, is there not?’ my father hissed by way of vindictive rescue.
‘But…yes…but…Signore, it is there to allow these menus to be stacked in a pile without falling over. They allow order where chaos might reign.’
‘WHAT IT IS THERE FOR IS IRRELEVANT!’ my father screamed. ‘I HAVE A LAPTOP COMPUTER HERE HOLDING SOME WORK OF THE HIGHEST IMPORTANCE!’
Still the waiter seemed none the wiser.
‘The hard drive can be corrupted by a magnetic field,’ my father went on patiently and venomously. ‘All my valuable work could have been lost. NOW TAKE YOUR MENUS AND GET OUT OF MY SIGHT! AND DON’T RETURN UNTIL YOU ARE SUMMONED!’
The waiter didn’t argue, he just turned and fled, and my father sat down again.
‘My apologies for the outburst,’ he said to the U-boat. ‘But such people as waiters…ah, what do they know of technical matters?’
‘There is no need to apologise, Dr. Pellegrino,’ she soothed. ‘All your valuable work possibly lost…it does not bear thinking of.’
He shook his head. ‘Not wholly true, perhaps. Hard drives on computers can fail, so everything I have on this machine is backed up separately. I was just not going to let that dolt know that,’ he added, grinning. ‘It would have lessened the impact of my words.’
‘And rightly so for one such as he,’ she agreed. ‘As you say, what do mere waiters know of technical matters?’
I didn’t say anything, I just buried my face in the menu. I saw they served my favourite swordfish rolls and decided that that was what I’d be having. But swordfish rolls were the last thing on my mind just then.
THIRTY TWO
You know, the thing about prisons is they have a lot of people to keep watch over the inmates 24/7. They take it in turns: when one shift is off, another takes its place. So there’s always someone around to keep an eye on things, make sure the inmates aren’t getting up to something they shouldn’t. And that was what was kind of missing at home. Every night, my father and the U-boat would sleep while assuming that I would be doing the same. Big mistake.
That night, the one after the meal, we got to bed late. Well, my father has never been one to hide away when there’s an audience around, and as the place started filling as the evening went on, he spoke in a louder and more puffed up voice, explaining to the U-boat the importance of his work and emphasising the impact it had obviously made on persons of major standing, blah, blah, blah—I think you get the picture here. Only when the restaurant started to empty did he think it time to leave.
So anyway, we eventually got to bed. There was nothing beyond the ordinary: I was sent first (as usual), my father and the U-boat exchanged a few pleasantries before retiring (as usual), and the house drifted off into silence. I was a bit sleepy, I will admit, but I was equally determined not to succumb. No, I had things to do. I waited maybe an hour before thinking it was safe enough to make my move. And that was nothing dramatic: I just got up.
I tiptoed quietly to my door and clicked it open
, then peered out onto the landing. No sound. No movement. They were asleep. Good. Let them stay that way. I slipped out and crept along to the stairs. There was a good chance I would be caught but I had the excuse already up my sleeve: the swordfish rolls had been a little on the salty side and I needed a drink. That would explain why I was downstairs at that time of night. And explanation there would have to be: like all prisoners, I was living under the strictest of curfews.
I slipped silently down the stairs, what I had to do already planned. First stop, the kitchen. There wasn’t a door, no telltale click of a latch to give me away. I didn’t even need a light. I was sure of myself…at least, until I got to the refrigerator. There, I stopped.
What I was about to do, it was pretty drastic, pretty final. It would be the biggest assault yet on my father, a sneak attack in the night he might never recover from. But then I thought of mum and all he’d put her through, both before and after we went to England, and my mind was made up.
The first one came away easily, too easily. I let it go, went along trying each one in turn until I found one that was almost stuck like a limpet to the cracked white of the fridge door. That would be the most powerful, that would be the one. I prised it off, wrapped my whole hand around it as though to make sure it didn’t escape. A fridge magnet. One of many innocent pieces of fun that mum and I used to collect and put up and my father used to sniff disdainfully at. Part one of my plan complete.
I tiptoed back along the hallway to my father’s study. The door was lockable but rarely locked, and I hoped it wouldn’t be, tonight. And it wasn’t. It gave way with a loud click in the dark, one that I was sure would wake someone, and I froze. Waiting. Listening. But the stillness of the night didn’t stir, and I pushed the door back and went in.
His laptop was on his desk, like it always was, occupying pride of place in his tiny world of lectures and learned papers. I had no idea where the hard-drive in it would be but also had a plan to take care of that: I would just rub the magnet all over it. Sooner or later, I’d have to hit the right spot.