by Victoria Fox
I don’t know what to say. It was a stupid, stupid thing, and to repeat my apology only highlights this, and the woeful inadequacy of my defence.
‘I was talking to Salvatore…’ I begin.
Her head snaps up, mad-eyed. ‘What did he say?’
‘Nothing,’ I backtrack, ‘he… I don’t listen to him anyway.’
‘Good. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.’
The way she’s speaking seems suddenly unfamiliar, like it’s a different person I’m talking to, somebody I’ve never met. It might be the gloom, silvery now with ash and despair. Water puddles on the step; the walls drip.
‘He frightened me,’ I say. ‘The candle, I dropped it and…’
She’s just staring at the portrait. At the face that once was.
The flames have caught the sheets covering the other likenesses and now I see glimpses of their models. One is Vivien, her movie star glamour unmistakeable. The other, still partly obscured by the cloth but with an insistent, passionate glare that demands to be addressed, is a darker woman. I put her at a similar age to Vivien, but her appearance couldn’t be more different. Her hair is jet and her eyes are urgent, spitting a silent message. I connect her immediately with the man, with Gio, and seeing the three of them together like that, it becomes clear.
‘I have to speak to Vivien,’ I say. ‘I’ll explain this to her.’
‘There is no explanation,’ says Adalina flatly.
‘I feel terrible.’
‘Not as terrible as she will.’ Adalina’s voice cracks, before righting itself and coming back stronger. ‘You will only make it worse. I will relay what happened.’
‘I really think I ought to—’
‘I don’t.’
I suppose I am clutching at straws. Maybe if I had the opportunity to speak to Vivien, there would be a chance, however thin, however scarce, but still a chance that she would keep me on here. Coming from Adalina, this won’t be the case. I might as well pack my bags now – and I deserve to. This portrait is more than the sum of its charred parts. It’s an irretrievable emblem of the life the woman upstairs once had.
Abruptly, the ancient chandelier sputters to life above our heads. It’s like a spotlight on my disgrace, illuminating all the chaos this night has caused.
Adalina stands and lifts the portrait of the man. She handles it tenderly, securing it under one arm. It is heavy and I see her struggle but she won’t accept my help. Weary, heavy-boned, she embarks on the stairs.
‘Clean up,’ she calls behind her. She is choked, the words dry. ‘I don’t want to see any evidence of this by the time you’ve finished.’
She doesn’t wait for me to reply, but then I have nothing to say.
*
‘There was a baby?’
Max brings me a mug of something warm to wrap my hands around. I’m shaking. I didn’t know where else to come, just turned up on his doorstep, my words spilling out in random bursts. I’m too terrified of running into Vivien that I cannot stay at the Barbarossa. The next minute I’m terrified of meeting Adalina, having her serve me my notice – or, no, that’s too kind, it would be instant dismissal.
‘According to Salvatore,’ I concede. ‘But he was wild – I thought he was going to hurt me.’
‘Why would he make up something like that?’
‘I don’t know.’ The mug is trembling; I put it down. ‘Max, I don’t know anything. The only thing I’m certain of is that they’re going to get rid of me. What will I do then? Where will I go? I can’t go home – I can’t!’
Max sits opposite me, his soft brown eyes looking enquiringly into mine. He was in the middle of painting a wall when I arrived, his T-shirt splattered with white flecks. Even in my hectic state, I can appreciate the contrast the fabric makes with his arms, and the hard line of muscle beneath it. He’s stockier than my usual type – if James can be called my type: yes, he was tall, but he was also in a completely different league to every guy I’d dated before and therefore it would be unfair to pit him against potential suitors. I catch myself. This time a month ago, I’d never have considered a future romance. I hadn’t been capable of it.
‘Why are you so mixed up about going back to England?’ he asks.
‘I’m not,’ I say. ‘I just need the money, that’s all.’
‘Don’t your family want to see you?’
‘They see enough of me.’ Which is a complete lie – and, judging by the look on Max’s face, he knows it. In an appalling slam, I remember the salacious reportage flooding through the UK news. Events at the Barbarossa have distanced me from it; the castillo isn’t quite the real world. It’s possible to forget.
Until I am banished, and I have to face it: my family, my friends… my life.
‘What’s going on, Lucy?’
He asks it so gently that, for a mad moment, I imagine telling him everything. But what I like about our friendship is, I admit, the woman he thinks I am. An English rose, pretty and pure, because that’s the woman I would like to be.
‘I can’t tell you,’ I say, looking at my hands.
‘You can.’ His gaze is serious. ‘You really can.’
It comes as a relief when there is a knock at the door, and the moment is lost. Max doesn’t move and I worry he’s going to leave it, but then it comes again, more insistent this time. Reluctant, he stands. ‘I’d better get that.’
When he leaves the room, I can exhale. I realise I’ve been holding my breath. The situation is impossible. I want to get to know Max better, I want to see him and spend time with him, but every time I do I am putting off the unavoidable. Sooner or later I will have to come clean about the person I really am, and then what? I’m tricking him, giving a false impression, and that makes a liar of me as well as a cheat.
I hear Max talking with his visitor. A woman’s voice, and I can’t make out what they’re saying but then I don’t need to, because he’s back in the room.
‘It’s for you, Lucy,’ he says.
The woman follows him in. She is young, brunette, attractive, and she smiles at me. ‘Lucy Whittaker?’ she enquires. She is English. My heart plummets.
‘Alison Cooney,’ she introduces herself. ‘I’m a reporter with the Onlooker. I traced your whereabouts to the Castillo Barbarossa and followed you here today. I want to give you a chance to speak before somebody else does.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Vivien, Italy, 1984
Vivien opened her eyes. She felt as if she had slept for a hundred years. Her head hurt, her teeth were sore. Her limbs ached and it took several moments to position herself back in her own body, the black cloud of memory clearing to daylight and with it the realisation of what she had been through. Her tongue bloated. She had to speak.
There was only one question.
‘The baby…?’ she said to no one, just a strip of bright lights. Hospital.
Then Gio appeared above her, his face a wreck of worry, and she thought, It’s you again, just as it had been when they had first met.
‘The baby,’ she choked. ‘Please, Gio, tell me the baby—’
‘The baby’s fine.’ He touched her face. She was crying; tears of fear and relief soaked her cheeks. ‘Viv, I thought you were dying. You’re OK. The baby’s OK.’
‘I fell…’ She tried to piece it together, stalled as once again the release of knowing her baby was well overwhelmed her. The slip, the stairs rushing up to meet her, the hard smack of the tiles against her skull before she’d passed out. Moving a hand to her tummy, she felt a reassuring squirm, and smiled. Thank you, she thought.
‘You frightened me to death.’ Gio’s features pulled in and out of focus; he was trying to contain his emotions – and among them was anger, a stormy fury that tightened his brow. He must have found out what happened. He must know.
What did happen? Vivien touched it in her mind, that damnable, horrifying thing. Gio knew. He knew. But then—
‘It was an accident,’ he said, ‘the wet floor. Isabella’s mortifi
ed.’
Isabella…
Vivien clenched her fists on the sheets. Suddenly, she remembered seeing the sister’s face on the staircase, a swift frame before the dark descended. The ghost of Isabella had been hovering in her memory since she’d come round, a shadowy, looming presence that left a bitter weight in the pit of her stomach.
‘Is she here?’ she whispered.
Gio frowned. ‘She’s at the Barbarossa.’
‘She did it. She saw me fall.’
‘Thank God she did,’ he countered. ‘Otherwise nobody would have found you.’ There was that flash of anger again – only it wasn’t for Isabella, it was for her. ‘I told you to be careful,’ he said harshly, torn between compassion and rage, as different as the colours of his eyes. ‘Didn’t I say that? You’ve got to be more responsible. There are two of you to look after now. I can’t be there all the time.’
Vivien blinked. ‘I am responsible,’ she returned. ‘This is the most important thing that has ever happened to me.’ How could he suggest that she was unable to take care of herself or the baby? That she would ever, ever deliberately put their child in danger? And she had been taking care, she had, until…
‘If you’d been there,’ she said, ‘it wouldn’t have happened.’
‘No, because I’d have been looking out for you.’
‘And you’d have seen Isabella.’
He watched her stoically. ‘You need to be careful, Vivien.’
Oh, she was. She was taking care to remember.
‘What time?’ she said.
‘What time what?’
‘What time was I found?’
Gio was impatient. ‘Salve called me at three.’
Vivien couldn’t help her bitter smile. ‘It wasn’t then. I didn’t fall, then. The accident happened right after you left for work.’
Gio knew where she was going. ‘Come on, Viv—’
‘You’re telling me that Salvatore found me hours after I fell? How can that be possible, when Isabella was there? She was right there. I saw her.’ She wanted to shake him: how could he not see? ‘She made it happen and then she left me!’
Gio put a hand on her forehead. ‘You’re running a fever,’ he said coolly, ‘the doctors told me you might. There’s bound to be some delirium.’
Delirium?
‘You knocked your head, Vivien.’
‘I know what happened.’
‘It was an accident,’ he said again.
Vivien had to bite her tongue to stop herself lashing out, cursing Isabella’s wretched, devil-sent name, even though she knew no words could sufficiently convey the dreadful reality of her act. Was it possible? Was it? Was Isabella really so despicable as to want Vivien to lose her unborn child? Wicked as she believed Isabella to be, even she was appalled at the lengths the witch would go to.
‘Vivien…?’
But she couldn’t look at him. Isabella might be able to kid the rest, she might be able to kid her own brother, but she wasn’t kidding Vivien.
‘I’d like to be alone now,’ she said, turning to the window.
Gio waited a while. ‘I love you,’ he said.
She watched a breeze move through the trees. He closed the door behind him.
*
In the weeks following her recovery, Vivien’s body changed. She had always been so precious about it, honing it into shape for her work at Boudoir Lalique or making sure to snag the next movie role, but now that it was performing a function, an incredible miracle, she watched with astonishment as her curves grew and her edges softened.
Gio took care to bury their argument. He acted as if nothing had been said in that hospital room, no inference made, because for Vivien to accuse his sister of what she had was a point from which they could not come back. Instead, he lavished her with devotion, vowing that she wouldn’t lift a finger, insisting on knowing where she was at all times – an unprecedented level of attention that, given the years since Isabella had entered their lives, she welcomed – and constantly bolstering her with compliments.
‘You’re sexy like this,’ he told her, sneaking up behind her before he left for work to plant a kiss on the back of her neck. Vivien loved it; she felt just as she had when they’d first met. Since the drama of her fall, Gio had taken a step back from whatever assignment he was engaged in at the laboratory: Vivien was seeing more of him than ever. It finally felt as if their lives were settling; the baby was their anchor.
And she did feel sexy – sexier than Isabella, who, as Vivien blossomed and grew, seemed to fade, disappearing ever more into the gloom. Isabella spent much of her time now closeted up in her attic. Frequently she skipped meals, leaving Gio and Vivien to dine alone and feel like a properly married couple. When Vivien did see her, it gratified her to notice that the sister’s beauty was diminishing. The sultry darkness that had rimmed her jet-black eyes was no longer seductive and appealing; instead it looked haunted and tired. Her high, sharp cheekbones appeared less cut glass and more tortured ghoul. Her once shiny hair, so glossy as to be the envy of every woman this side of Florence, was matt and dull. Vivien supposed that guilt did that to a person. You know what you did, she thought. But she never confronted Isabella. To do so would be to award the sister a satisfaction Vivien was unwilling to give. She sensed Isabella waiting for a showdown, the proof that her efforts had been gratified and that Vivien was crumbling as a result, but the showdown never came.
Gio seemed hardly to notice his sister’s absence, which was the best part.
‘Do you think Isabella’s all right?’ Vivien asked over Adalina’s artichoke gnocchi one night, deliberately agitating the issue because it pleased her to appear the merciful wife. She wanted Gio to see her as the mature, enlightened, forgiving one, while Isabella became stranger and more reclusive by the day.
Gio scratched his chin. ‘She’s fine,’ he said.
‘I hope she isn’t still upset after my… accident.’
‘I’m sure she’s not.’
‘Good. Because I thought we were all past that.’
Gio disliked talking about his sister; he could rarely be drawn on the subject and would never elaborate, even when pressed. But, the way Vivien saw it, the more she tugged at that string, planting suggestion after suggestion, the more their tight knot of siblingship would start to unravel. She was carving her own niche in their relationship, hollowing it out and smoothing it down until it was a perfect fit.
The catch was that she herself was not past the so-called accident.
She would never be past it.
Each time she glimpsed Isabella’s hateful glare, each time she felt the sister’s sinister presence blowing on the leaves outside, scattering like wind on the stone fountain or drifting like fire-ash through the great hall, she felt more certain of what had happened. Isabella was a guilty would-be murderess. Not only had she sought to finish off Vivien, but her baby as well. It was a reprehensible act.
It was no wonder Gio couldn’t bring himself to suspect her of it.
With any luck, Isabella’s shame would keep her in solitary confinement forever, and out of their lives.
‘Anyway, darling,’ said Vivien, sipping her Montepulciano, ‘tell me: what are our plans for the weekend?’
*
Their plans, it turned out, were meant to be a surprise – but come Friday evening, she could tell Gio was hiding some exciting reveal, his nervous energy and propensity for jumping from one topic to another was a giveaway.
‘I’ve commissioned an artist to visit the house,’ he told her. ‘Now is as good a time as any,’ he pulled her close, ‘especially now, to record our family.’
Vivien was delighted. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Portraits.’ He kissed her. ‘Shouldn’t we document our residence at the Barbarossa? And when the bambino is born, he or she will have a space as well.’
Vivien was elated at this prospect. She had long admired the rarefied painting of Giacomo Dinapoli that adorned the ballroom, and throug
hout the castillo were littered many generations more, going right back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: coiffed, seated women with their bejewelled hands resting in their laps; striking men draped in finery or out on hunts, and a particularly impressive one of a teenage girl lolling beneath an olive tree somewhere on the estate, her eyes dreamy and her flowing, ebony hair captured so wonderfully that it looked like liquid.
Soon, she would have a portrait all her own. She couldn’t wait. It was one thing to live in the Barbarossa, and quite another to be initiated into its vaults. There was a timeless quality to it, permanence, meaning she would exist here long after the decades had passed. She would be sewn into the tapestry of its history. Vivien had never thought this important before, but now cherished the roots this place gave her.
‘Gio, what a wonderful idea.’
‘I was hoping you’d think so. I thought we’d hang them on the stairs.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I know that’s a sensitive place for you, but…’
‘No,’ she interrupted, with a smile. ‘It’s ideal.’
On Saturday morning, Vivien enjoyed a peaceful few hours’ sketching in the Oval, surrounded by birdsong and with the warm sun bathing her face. Her baby nudged and kicked as her pencil moved across the page. One day I’ll draw you, she thought, and in that moment the world seemed utterly right and lovely in every way.
So content was Vivien that she hardly noticed the time. It was only when the chapel bell rung out for midday that she realised she was twenty minutes late for the portrait appointment. Gathering her things, she hurried up to the house.
Gio was out on the gravel, calling her name. She was surprised at his countenance, wound like a spring, his face a mask of frantic concern.
‘Vivien, thank God!’ He rushed towards her. ‘Where have you been?’
‘In the garden,’ she said, lifting her sketchbook. ‘I thought I’d—’
‘Do you know how worried I’ve been?’ He gripped her roughly; it hurt. His eyes sparked danger, one black, one green, and she thought again how his temper rode that same knife edge: her loving husband one minute, a fervent stranger the next.
‘I’ve been going out of my mind,’ he went on. ‘I’ve been looking all over for you. Adalina has, too. I thought something had happened to you!’