by Gill Vickery
‘I’m sorry,’ Nico said.
‘Mum doesn’t know what we’re doing. She gets all upset at the thought of Nonno’s Italian family quarrelling with him. We’ve got to find them without her knowing, or Dad, obviously. And then, if we do find the family, Mum’ll never know but we’ll have done what we have to, for Nonno.’
Jade glanced at Nico through her tear-damp eyelashes. ‘You won’t say anything if you see us in Borgo Sant’Angelo, will you?’
‘No,’ Nico said, ‘of course not.’
‘How do we know that?’ Amber said.
‘I just wouldn’t. Anyway, you know my secret – I’m not likely to risk giving away yours when you could give away mine, am I?’
Jade smiled, tremulously. It was going exactly as they’d hoped.
CHAPTER III
THE SIGNORA’S DOOR was solid enough to withstand a siege and Nico’s firm knock sounded feeble against the thick slab. He heard footsteps approaching from the other side of the door and a loud clicking of deadlocks and rasping of drawing bolts. The door opened a crack and Ornella peered suspiciously out. ‘Sì?’
Nico did his best to explain that Mum and James had gone out taking the only key and he needed to borrow a spare. Mr Mowatt’s lessons hadn’t catered for emergencies like this one and Nico got nowhere. Ornella shut the door firmly in his face.
Now what was he supposed to do? He could only see two choices: sit outside the apartment until Mum and James came back or ask the Thompsons for help. He opted for the Thompsons.
Mrs Thompson was very sympathetic and made him a cup of tea and a sandwich. Nico was surprised he had room for it after the giant pistachio ice cream. While he munched away and chatted to Mrs Thompson Amber went downstairs to ask about the pass key.
‘Have you phoned your mum?’ Mrs Thompson asked.
‘Yes. She said she went to look for me because I was late back and my phone was turned off. She’s right on the other side of the river – it’ll take her a bit to get back.’
‘You can stay till then if you like,’ Mrs Thompson said.
Nico shook his head. ‘Thanks, but I’d better be there when she gets back. She gets a bit anxious about me.’ That was the understatement of the year, Nico thought. ‘If I could have a couple of tea bags I can make her a cup of tea to . . .’ Nico stopped; he’d been going to say, to calm her down.
‘I can do better than that.’ Mrs Thompson piled a tray with food. ‘The girls bought far too much this morning. Take this so it doesn’t go to waste. You can make your mum and James afternoon tea.’
Nico noticed that Mrs Thompson didn’t say ‘your mum and dad’; the twins must’ve told her about the relationship with James.
Since Nico’s hands were full with the tray, Jade came down to the apartment with him to open the door. ‘Come and inspect the flat,’ Nico said.
‘It’s exactly like ours,’ Jade said, ‘except you’ve got the garden.’
‘Sorry about that.’
Jade laughed. ‘It doesn’t matter – Mum doesn’t like ground floors. They’re too noisy. Just wait till James hears Amber stomping around upstairs like an elephant.’
Nico’s phone rang with the dirge he’d set for Mum’s texts. ‘My mother’s having hysterics.’
‘Why?’
‘She gets worried.’ He texted back while Jade poked about in the cupboards. She took out a tablecloth and some dishes. ‘Let’s give your mum something better to think about.’ They soon had the table set and food laid out. Nico even found a silver candlestick and a white candle to finish the setting off.
‘You need flowers,’ Jade said.
They picked sprays from a creeper and wound them around the candlestick in a cascade of green leaves and pale violet flowers. ‘I wonder what they are?’ Jade said.
‘Wisteria, there’s a lot of it in Italy.’
Mum’s tune weebled from Nico’s mobile again. ‘She’s going to be about half an hour.’
He texted back, yet again, then stuffed his mobile deep into a pocket. ‘Honestly, Jade, my mother’s going to drive me to murder one of these days.’
Jade looked at Nico with a strange expression.
‘I didn’t mean literally,’ he said.
Jade laughed. ‘I know you didn’t, it’s just . . .’
‘What?’
‘I was thinking, it’s nice you always know for sure I’m me and not Amber. I mean, you know I’m me now – obviously – but you didn’t get me and Amber mixed up when we were in town. People do, even when we make ourselves different.’
‘You’re not completely identical.’
‘Oh?’
Nico switched on his artist’s eye and scanned Jade’s face in a dispassionate way. ‘Your eyes are a bit almond shaped – Amber’s are more round.’
‘And?’
‘Your face shapes are different – you’ve got a classic oval, Amber’s got a slightly more pointed chin.’
‘Anything else?’
What more did Jade want? And why was it important to her? Nico spoke carefully, weighing his words, ‘Your voices aren’t the same, yours is a bit deeper.’
Jade frowned a little and Nico went on hastily, ‘Your styles are different – Amber’s kind of . . . pink.’
A brief grin flashed over Jade’s face. Encouraged, Nico went on, ‘And you’re more individual, more funky.’
Jade’s grin was open now. Nico had obviously said the right thing. He was glad. He liked Jade.
‘I’d better get back,’ she said. She picked up the tray and Nico showed her out which she seemed to find very funny for some reason. ‘Hope you don’t get too much grief,’ she said before she ran up the stairs. So do I, Nico thought as he went back inside imagining Mum storming in saying that he’d caused her unimaginable torments of worry and how could he do this to her?
Nico picked up his book and flopped into a chair by the open doors to the garden. He turned to the chapter where the detective, Commissario Alessandro Lupo, was at a wedding in Montebosco when he was called back to Florence to investigate a particularly brutal murder.
As Nico read the familiar words he found himself wondering if Borgo Sant’Angelo really was ‘Montebosco’; the Signora had seemed very sure of it. The minute she’d told them of the connection Nico had realised two things: firstly, that the Signora wanted them all to go there for some reason and secondly that Borgo Sant’Angelo had some major significance for the Thompsons. He’d been proved right about that when the twins told him about their grandfather. It had been risky letting Jade and Amber know he planned to visit Borgo Sant’Angelo but he’d wanted to make sure that if they saw him there they wouldn’t let it get back to Mum. He was determined to start shaking himself free of his mother while he was in Florence. He didn’t need to feel guilty about it; she’d got James to look after her now.
Nico read on. The sounds of the city – bells, voices, traffic – muffled by high walls surrounding the garden, were background music to the dark story of Semiramide and her death among the glittering mirrors of the shop in the Road of the Silver Unicorn. She was Alessandro’s lover and the call he’d received at the wedding in Montebosco was to tell him she’d been murdered. The Shattered Mirror was Nico’s – and Mum’s – favourite Alessandro novel. James didn’t understand their obsession with E. J. Holm’s books and Nico was glad. He didn’t know what the books represented to Mum but, for him, Alessandro filled the absent space Dad left behind when he walked out. In his imagination Nico had followed the detective as he trod through Florence and stopped with him at every landmark along the way till he felt he could walk the routes in reality – sometimes he dreamed he did. He began to leaf slowly through the book, savouring its familiar words. He had to be sure of every detail, every clue if he was going to find the books’ elusive author. The mild air billowed the lace curtains like the draperies of goddesses in
Nico’s favourite painting. I wonder what the Italian for French windows is? he thought before he lost himself totally in the book.
Jade rolled over on to her back. ‘I can’t believe we’re really going to start looking for Nonno’s people,’ she said.
Amber was sitting on the other bed painting her toenails sugar pink. ‘Me neither. It’s so cool.’ Amber was always confident. That was another thing about them that was different: she never saw the problems that came at Jade from every corner.
‘Amb, are you sure this is going to work?’
‘Course it is.’ Amber squinted at her nails. ‘We’ve already started – we’ve got the bus timetables to Borgo Sant’Angelo – we can go anytime we want.’
It was true. ‘I hope Nico can get away as well.’
‘He can’t come with us!’
‘I know that, obviously. I meant, it’s sad he can’t get away and do stuff by himself, away from his mum and James.’
Amber stopped painting her toenails. ‘You don’t like him, do you?’
‘He’s all right. He’s funny and he’s polite which makes a change from most boys. He even escorted me to the door like a butler when I took the tray down! And I really like the Goth thing.’
Amber snorted. ‘You would.’
Jade had gone out with a Goth boy a couple of times and Amber never got tired of taunting her about it. ‘Nico’s not a real Goth – he’s a Baby Bat.’
‘True – he probably doesn’t know any actual Goths. He’s only doing it to annoy his mum remember, he doesn’t have to get it right.’
‘I suppose.’ Amber swung off the bed and padded over the cool stone floor to the balcony to wriggle her wet pink toenails in the late afternoon sunshine.
Jade closed her eyes and daydreamed of drifting away over the red-tiled city and out to hazy green hills beyond. She imagined drawing closer to them, walking in them, finding the places she’d envisaged for so long – the woods, the pool, the stony track, the house among the chestnut trees.
‘Nico!’ Mum flung her arms round him, then grabbed him and held him at arm’s length. ‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Walking, looking, thinking.’
‘All this time?’ James said. He dropped into a chair and disappeared behind his copy of Intensive Italian for Discerning Travellers.
Nico shrugged off Mum’s iron grip. ‘I stopped for an ice cream with Jade and Amber. We were perfectly all right. Luisa didn’t mind how long they were out – and they’re girls.’
‘They’re not my responsibility and anyway they’re more . . .’
‘More what?’
‘Streetwise.’
Nico knew Mum had been going to say something much more uncomplimentary than that and it annoyed him. He liked Jade and Amber, and their parents. ‘Streetwise? I’d be streetwise if you’d let me out onto the streets occasionally.’
‘How did you get in?’ James asked from behind the guidebook.
‘With a pass key.’
‘Good thinking,’ James said.
‘It was better than sitting on the steps waiting for the search party to come back.’
‘Nico! I was frantic!’ Mum wasn’t going to back down.
‘At least he had the sense to get food on the table,’ James said.
Mum blinked like an owl dazzled by sudden daylight. She stared at the table covered with bowls and dishes overflowing with green salad, olives and tomatoes, cheeses, meats, butter and bread and glasses of ruby wine.
‘Nico, this is a real treat!’
‘I thought I’d make good use of my time.’ It was nice to be appreciated, Nico thought, but why did it have to be James who’d noticed first, not Mum?
CHAPTER IV
NICO PRESSED THE button on the automatic blinds and they folded upwards, slam, slam, slam, like a series of steel doors closing one after the other. He opened the French windows and stepped into the pale morning sun. Luisa Thompson was pegging washing on a rope contraption slung between the flats. She caught sight of him. ‘Ciao, Nico.’
He waved. ‘Ciao, Signora Thompson.’
Luisa added a pair of lacy knickers to the line. ‘They should be nice and dry by the time we get back from exploring Florence. What are you doing today?’
‘We’re going sightseeing as well.’
‘Might bump into you later then. Ci vediamo.’ She waved cheerfully and went back inside.
Florence – Firenze! The very name sent a bolt of excitement through Nico. Then James’s face swam into his mind’s eye and he scowled. James was an embarrassment, waving his guidebook around and lecturing at the top of his voice. Today, Nico vowed, is going to be different.
He started by taking fresh coffee to Mum and James, made exactly the way James liked it. James, in a short robe and towelling slippers, was wincing at the bedroom blinds crashing and pleating their way upwards. Nico prodded his mother’s shoulder. She stayed obstinately under the covers. James took his coffee without a thank you, opened the French windows and strutted outside.
Nico heard, ‘Ciao, Signor Crozier,’ chiming from above James’s head. He smirked as James stumbled back inside as fast as his dignity and his slippers allowed.
‘It’s like a squat out there,’ he snarled.
‘What?’ Mum’s tousled head lifted from the pillow.
‘Out in our garden – those Thompson girls are spying on us and there’re panties flapping on a washing line.’
‘Where else would they put wet knickers?’ Mum yawned. ‘Stop stressing.’
‘Yes, James, stop stressing,’ Nico said. He felt Mum’s foot jab at him warningly.
‘I’ll go and get ready,’ James said.
‘We want to go to the tourist office,’ Jade said. ‘It’s in Via Cavour.’
‘Is it?’ Dad opened his guidebook and looked at the street map.
Amber waved down a narrow lane, packed with stalls selling tourist things. ‘We go down that way, turn left and left again and we’re there.’
‘You might get lost,’ Dad said.
He’s turning into Nico’s mum, Jade thought. ‘No we won’t,’ she said, ‘you can’t get lost in Florence, it’s too small.’
‘We’ll still stick together,’ Dad insisted, ‘just till we get our bearings.’
‘Let’s do the markets before they get too crowded,’ Mum suggested.
‘I could do with a new footie shirt.’
‘Dad!’ Jade and Amber groaned.
‘You’ve got enough already,’ Jade said. ‘You’ve got . . .’
‘. . . wardrobes full of Rams’ strips,’ Amber finished.
‘I haven’t got any Juventus ones though,’ Dad said.
‘Come on.’ Mum the peacemaker led them down the crowded street looking at stuff they’d seen before and stuff they hadn’t: T-shirts with bits of famous paintings printed on them; umbrellas made to look like the cathedral dome; calendars for the still far away next year; plaster statues of David; tiny models of Vespas and bigger ones of Lancias; leather handbags and belts and shoes.
Abruptly the street opened onto a huge square. Jade and her family stopped and let the crowds flow round them as they gazed at the soaring white and green and pink marble buildings. ‘It’s a bit different from Derby,’ Jade said, taking in the cathedral, the slender bell tower and the baptistery with its shining golden doors.
‘Suits me, Derby,’ Mum said. She turned her face and marched away just as the sun moved to light up the marble and polish the golden doors. By the time Jade and Amber and Dad caught up with Mum they’d left the marvellous buildings behind and were in a broad road lined with shops.
‘Why don’t you two find that tourist office,’ Dad said. ‘Me and your Mum’ll get back to the markets. Keep in touch and we’ll meet up later.’
Jade felt Amber’s arm slip into hers. ‘She was s
ad,’ Amber said.
‘I know.’
‘I didn’t know what to say.’
What could anyone say to console their mother? Nonno was dead and visiting his long-lost homeland was Mum’s pilgrimage; a way of honouring his memory and finding out about the country he had come from. Despite that, she had to live with the knowledge that his family had threatened to kill him if he ever returned. Jade pulled her sister close, though which of them it was meant to comfort she wasn’t sure. ‘We’ve really, really got to make sure Mum doesn’t find out what we’re doing.’
Not far now, not far now, Nico silently chanted as he followed Mum and James through the packed streets. Not far now, not . . .
Why was James stopping to stare in a shop? Nico caught up. It was a music shop, Dischi Norberti, with a window display of James’s favourite old bands. He’d gone on about them till Nico knew their names by heart even though he hadn’t wanted to: East of Eden, Black Widow, Atomic Rooster, Van Der Graaf Generator, Xtreme Measures . . . and more – lots more. Nico groaned. If they went inside it’d be hours before they got out again. He stared pointedly at Mum who didn’t look too happy either.
‘James!’ Mum said. ‘Our tickets are for ten o’clock – if we don’t get to the Uffizi by then they won’t let us in – you know they’re really strict about timing.’
James didn’t budge. ‘In a minute.’ His eyes roved greedily over the display.
Nico felt as though he were going to explode with fury. He was in Florence, which had more art treasures than any other single city in the entire world, and James wanted to stop and drool over tragic old heavy metal music. ‘Mum!’ he ground out.
Mum took a firm line with James. ‘Come on!’ She grabbed him by the arm and pushed him up the road.
‘Not far now. Not far now,’ Nico grimly intoned, not caring about the startled tourists who took one look at his set white face and hurriedly backed away. The road ended. The Duomo rose before Nico in all its shining beauty. Even James looked dazzled and stayed silent.