by Victoria Fox
‘Have you seen Bella this morning?’
His question was so aptly timed that it made her flinch.
‘No,’ she said.
Gio frowned. ‘She hasn’t been out of her room in a couple of days. Adalina hasn’t seen her for meals. I think Alfie’s arrival has unnerved her.’
Vivien gritted her teeth. She was amazed at her husband’s perseverance. He was all too conscious of the hostilities, how Vivien couldn’t bear the sound of the sister’s name and how the very existence of Isabella had nearly broken them so many times – but still he persisted. Perhaps he sensed that if he ceased to mention or care for Isabella then Vivien would consider it as good as a death. So he revived his sister every day, breathed life into her name, massaged her heart until he could hear it thumping; he reminded Vivien that she was still a real part of their lives, and one he was not, under any circumstances, even his wife’s misery, willing to relinquish.
It took a monumental effort to say, ‘I’m sure she’s fine. It’s an adjustment for all of us.’
He put an arm round her, the other holding their son close. ‘Hmm,’ he said, ‘perhaps you’re right.’ We’re stronger now, thought Vivien. You can’t get us.
‘It’s just I worry,’ he went on. ‘Now we have our family, I’m concerned she feels… out in the cold. We have to make sure she’s included.’
How could we not? Vivien considered sourly. It was on the tip of her tongue, as it was every minute of every day, to blurt Adalina’s solidarity – that the maid knew of Isabella’s sinfulness, that the precious baby in their arms wouldn’t even be here if Isabella had had her way. But she knew it would be the final insult to tear them apart.
‘Would you check on her, bellissima?’ Gio asked. ‘It’s just I’m already running late at the lab…’ In his eyes, she saw uncertainty and hope. The hope never waned in Gio that his wife and his sister would find reconciliation.
‘Of course,’ she said, taking back her baby.
*
Later that day, when the Barbarossa was quiet, Vivien left Alfie napping with Adalina while she ventured upstairs to the attic. It was months since she had come this way, the ascent too much on her heavy stomach and aching knees, and she had never set foot inside Isabella’s room. It was always locked. The only reason she had for coming was to admire the view from the uppermost windows, all across the surrounding Tuscan hillsides, gold in summer and mauve in winter, and the endless skies above.
Gio hadn’t specifically told her that she could use the skeleton key, but he might as well have done. How else was she going to get access to his sister’s quarters? Even though Isabella’s voice had been unleashed, she still barely treated Vivien to it, and if Vivien were to knock on the door and enquire after Isabella’s welfare, there was a good chance she would be ignored. So, this was the only way. If Gio wanted to know how his sister was, Vivien would tell him.
‘Are you sure about this, signora?’ Adalina asked. On pain of death would the maid part with the skeleton key. Vivien could see her desire to consult with the master of the house, but the women’s friendship overrode it, as so often women’s friendships did. Besides, since their confidence, Gio was a third party, excluded by his ignorance.
‘Trust me, Lili,’ said Vivien. ‘I’m sure.’
Now, she inserted the key in the lock and gently turned. It rotated smooth as butter, and as Vivien pushed the door she prepared herself for what she might find: Isabella in bed, the sheets pulled up over her dark, dark hair, in the slump of a mighty depression; or upright by the window, immaculately dressed; or sitting at her desk, engrossed in study. Any one of these was plausible. Vivien didn’t know her at all.
But what she discovered was none of these. Isabella was nowhere. Gone.
Vivien stepped inside. It was draughty, the window open a crack. She went to close it, and, once she had, the silence and stillness surrounding her was total.
The walls held an eerie sensation, as if Isabella were about to emerge from thin air, or her voice whisper at Vivien’s shoulder, the mesmerising tone that had captured her husband’s fascination and his colleagues’. She felt she was being observed, and when she turned to the room there appeared a flash of black on the bed, like a wave of jet silk rippling across the covers then vanishing.
Vivien gasped, before catching her breath and telling herself not to be so easily rattled. She’d had three hours’ broken sleep last night, par for the course these days, and couldn’t trust what she was seeing. Get a grip. This is your chance.
Chance at what? To find something on Isabella, something conclusive that would settle their score once and for all; that would prove to Vivien as much as anyone else that she wasn’t imagining Isabella’s vitriol, and that their rivalry ran as hot and fast and sure as the blood in her veins.
She began by going through Isabella’s clothes. There weren’t many of them here, just a few black dresses, and the same went for the furniture in the room. It was sparse, just a bed, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers and a side table with a lamp on it. Isabella left no clues: she was the eternal enigma. Vivien checked the pockets of her gowns, rifled through a purse on the mantelpiece, and found nothing but a handful of lira and some postage stamps. Who was she writing to?
Oh, to uncover a diary like the one she kept herself! It struck her that she was just as infatuated with Isabella as her husband was, the sheer mystery of her, the refusal to reveal anything, and opening a journal would be like delving into an instruction manual, sating her like a long cool drink. Just as Vivien was giving up, as a last attempt she lifted the sister’s pillow and what she saw surprised her. It was a pair of ticket stubs to Francesco Rosi’s Carmen. Vivien drew them out. They were dated a couple of years ago, the seats together, the stubs torn imperfectly at their perforations as if done in a hurry. She remembered her own longing to see the film at the time, hinting to Gio to take her, but he was always too busy with work. Who had Isabella gone with? Vivien swallowed her dismay. She turned the tickets over.
On their reverse, the same mantra was repeated:
I want him I want him I want him I want him I want him I want him
Her hands trembled. The attic swelled and shook. In a far reach of the castillo, she heard her son’s cry ring out and quickly she pocketed the stubs and left the room, her heart and throat burning all the way to take him in her arms.
*
‘We have to get rid of her.’
Vivien took a drag on her cigarette and blew a plume of smoke out of the window and into the night, where it curled on the purple for a moment before dispersing. She could hear her ragged breath, ragged still after hours away from that place. The attic. It chilled her to the core. The starkness of Isabella’s confession, proof if ever there were any that she coveted Vivien’s husband. That she was obsessed.
‘Signora, I would urge you to speak to Signor Moretti.’
‘What’s he going to do?’ Vivien whirled on Adalina. ‘You know it’s as good as useless. He won’t accept it. She’s a danger to us, do you understand?’
‘Perhaps the note was not about him.’
Vivien laughed, a high, harsh sound. ‘Of course it was. Who else was it about? She wants my husband, Lili, her own brother. She’s wrong in the head. She’s sick.’
‘We must talk to her.’
‘No. She’ll deny it, deny everything… We have to be more cunning than that. We have to get her away from this place, away from us, once and for all.’
She could see Adalina panicking. Vivien bet Lili wished she’d never said anything, never told Vivien what she suspected – because there was no reclaiming that. It was a mark in the sand that the tide could never wash. Every day, Vivien saw the maid fight her loyalty to Gio, torn between her ingrained urge to serve the master and the nagging reminder of her better judgement.
‘What are you going to do?’ Adalina whispered, afraid of her response.
‘I don’t know yet,’ said Vivien, grinding her smoke out on the sill, where it
left a chalky mark. Her eyes fixed on the flourishing night, the stone fountain with its still water, a liquid, unseeing pupil, at the centre of which that grotesque fish blurted its guts from dawn until dusk. ‘But believe me, I’ll think of something.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Italy, Summer 2016
Morning comes. I’ve hardly slept, fitful imaginings keeping me up past two, three, all hours of the night. I think I hear that cry again, long and lean, a child’s cry or a baby’s cry, but I no longer know what is real and what is not. When my alarm sounds at seven, I go to the bathroom and am sick. Blood throbs in my temples and behind my eyeballs. My stomach contracts, empty.
It’s happened. I know it without needing to be told.
I shower, dress and pack my bags. Downstairs, Adalina offers me breakfast but I say no. I am being cowardly, taking the easy way out, but I don’t care. I’ve walked the hard way for too long, and I have enough confrontations ahead of me.
‘I need to go out this morning,’ I say, hoping she won’t notice the dark rings round my eyes or the rasp in my voice. My bags are ready to be swept down just as soon as they leave for Vivien’s doctor’s appointment. ‘Would that be OK?’
Adalina eyes me suspiciously. ‘As long as you’re back by midday.’
‘I will be.’
‘You’re not planning on meeting Max Conti, are you?’
The question floors me, as does the sound of his name. What does she know about Max? Momentarily I consider denying all knowledge of him, then realise how false that will sound. I haven’t the energy to deceive. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Why?’
‘He isn’t a good influence.’
‘I’ve only met him a few times.’ I remember our last encounter with an ache of regret, and I pinch out my feelings. I’ll never see him again. ‘We’re barely friends.’
I turn to leave when Adalina’s cough stops me. It sounds dreadful.
‘Are you all right?’ The maid is red in the face and I rush to collect a glass of water, which she accepts, her hands shaking. Gradually, the hacking subsides and she draws the back of her wrist across her mouth, reassembling her dignity.
She makes a movement for me to go, and I’m grateful because her weakness has granted me acquittal, a swift exit where she might otherwise have tripped me up.
*
I take a shortcut across the lemon groves, instead of the main road. There’s a chance of Vivien and Adalina coming past in the car and I don’t want to risk them seeing me. It’s clear I’m making an escape. Such is the distraction of my hollow stomach and my aching head that I haven’t time to dwell on what it means to abandon the Barbarossa. It’s been my safe haven these past weeks, by turns a sanctuary and a welcome diversion. It was the place where I started to let go of James, and to realise that life existed without him. A pity that came too late…
My phone jolts in my pocket, once, twice, three times, four. I was prepared for this. There’s another, and another, messages flooding in from Alison, my sisters and my dad, from Bill, from my colleagues at Calloway & Cooper, from James, no doubt, call upon call unanswered. I had thought about switching it off but what would be the point? The truth is out. It’s there in black and white. There’s no taking back what has already been done and I will have to face the music; I will have to survive.
I stop by the wall to the road, shrug off my rucksack and sit with my back against it, unscrewing a bottle of water. I’m reminded of my first walk here all that time ago – how long it seems, how much has changed. I’m different now, stronger.
Taking my phone from my pocket, I bring up the messages. Contrary to what I’ve envisaged ever since Grace Calloway’s death, they don’t go into searing detail about how awful I am. There are no random numbers of people I knew long ago, telling me they always knew I’d wind up like this. The ones from my family read:
Lucy? Please phone home.
Big sister, I need to speak to you.
Luce, what is going on? Are you all right?
The ones from Bill are more to the point:
You probably know but the shit’s hit. Call me. Xxx
I’ve twenty or more missed calls. There’s an email from Alison attaching the article and thanking me for my time. She hopes this ‘clears things up’, and when I read the item I understand why. She has been true to her word, recounting the story of James’s and my love affair with sincerity and truth. I actually don’t sound that bad, less like the murdering harlot the public were ready to slay and more like a girl who fell in love. I wince at a couple of junctures where James is painted badly. ‘He made me believe I was everything,’ I’m printed as saying. I guess I did say that. ‘And then he left me with nothing. His marriage was never in crisis, it was all a lie.’
Alison has wholeheartedly taken my side; if anything she’s leaped to my defence more than was necessary. I feel oddly grateful to her, to have found this clear, clean outlet where all others were dirt-stained. But James…
Six of my missed calls are from him. It’s not so much the number as the intervals the calls came in, mere seconds apart, as if he fell to a burst of pure fury.
It’s only a distant part of myself that is troubled by this. I’m afraid of his rage but I’m not saddened by it. If ever a blade could be driven into the heart of our relationship, this is it. There is no turnaround; he’ll never speak to me again. I observe this as if it doesn’t quite involve me, as if I can understand the remorse it provokes but cannot feel it. I think I stopped feeling it the day he arrived in Florence.
My screen dances to life once more. It’s a local number and I assume it to be James trying from an anonymous landline. Or else it’s Max.
Max.
Is it possible he’s found out? I’m sure of what I would have done in his position… I’d have Googled me. Until today, he would have drawn a blank. This morning, he’d have stumbled across a jackpot. Shame washes through me and tears spring to my eyes, which I swipe away. Why should Max be the one to elicit this response? James didn’t, my family didn’t, so I’m not letting him.
The number rings off. I wait for it to leave a voicemail but it doesn’t.
All at once, my attention is diverted to a sound from the road: an approaching engine. Keeping low to the wall, I peer over and spy Vivien’s car. Staying out of sight, I wait for it to pass. It’s moving slowly, and when it comes near I see why. Adalina is at the wheel, coughing violently. I hear her through the open window.
As the vehicle passes, it slows almost to a stop. I’m about to forsake my hiding place and run to her aid when something pulls me up short. There is no Vivien in the back – at least, not from my vantage point. I move to get a better look, emboldened by Adalina’s preoccupation. Still, I see no one. Even if Vivien were lying down, I’d spot her from here. I try to think what happened. Was Vivien unable to leave the house today? Has the doctor’s appointment been cancelled? In any case, it looks as if it’s Adalina who should be the one seeing the doctor, not Vivien.
I linger in a bizarre moment of uncertainty as to what to do next, wholly visible to anyone who cared to notice.
Finally, the car moves on and out of sight. I look after it, torn in all directions, and then decide what it is I must do.
*
Before leaving Florence, I buy a postcard from the train station and sit at a trattoria to write it. The postcard is standard, innocuous, a tourist shot of the Duomo.
Vivien
Max’s aunt says she is sorry. You will know what that means.
I’m sorry, too, that I have to leave. I wish you the best for the future.
Lucy
There’s more I want to say, but I’m not sure what – or how.
I scribble the Barbarossa’s address, affix a stamp and post it into the nearest box, before rushing down the platform to catch my train.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Vivien, Italy, 1986
The next months passed in a fog of sleepless nights, first smiles and burbling laughter. Having a
baby was hard work. Adalina was on hand to help but Vivien wanted to take the lion’s share herself. She had to prove she was good at this; that, for the first time since discovering she could act, she had an aptitude, a knack, an instinct. She was determined that Alfie would grow up feeling secure and loved, and each time he cried or didn’t cry, ate too much or ate too little, she worried that she was harming him.
‘You are doing wonderfully, signora,’ Adalina told her. If only her husband were as reassuring. Producing a child had shone a spotlight on their collapsed marriage, with every blip and crease magnified once initial elation gave way to ordinary life. These days they snapped too readily at each other, engaged in a perpetual and pointless contest as to who was the more tired, who did more for Alfie, who should be working harder and who wasn’t working enough. Vivien had seen it happen to other couples and had always vowed it would never become her. I don’t want us to be like this, she thought, even as she was screaming at Gio for not heating the baby’s milk properly, or for leaving him to cry a moment too long. Gio was equally to blame. He came home exhausted and tetchy, leaving her and Alfie with the dregs of his mood. Of course it didn’t help that Vivien felt he was spending his days with his mistress. Gio was more reluctant than ever to tell her about his time away, and the less he told her, the less she wanted to know, and the more their discussions became solely about Alfie and the practicalities and logistics of taking care of him.
The gulf between them grew. Vivien’s birthday passed with little note. Gone were the days when Gio would bring her breakfast with a dozen red roses. This year, before rushing out of the door, he managed a card and a promise of a getaway, though he didn’t say when or where. She didn’t want to challenge him – he’d tell her she was overthinking it, and that they simply had less time to focus on themselves since the baby came along. It was all about Alfie now; she came second.