by Penny Feeny
Gaetano’s bar was empty; he was clearing up. He’d been serving coffees since seven that morning and was polishing to an immaculate shine the chrome of his trusty machine. He shook his head as she came in. ‘Mi dispiace, Gina. I’m closing.’
‘Ouf, I don’t want a drink. It’s aspirins I’m after. Or paracetamol. Have you any to spare?’
He tutted in sympathy and she decided it was best to pretend the need was hers. ‘I can’t afford to get a migraine. I’ve a big day tomorrow.’ She was glad his father, who in theory had retired years ago, wasn’t on duty. He missed the interaction with customers and would have insisted on a ream of information: where precisely was the pain that she was trying to treat? How long had she endured it, had it travelled at all? There could well be a more accurate remedy, to which he could offer the key. Had she not heard that a paste of lemon rind on the forehead could work wonders? Or a poultice of cabbage leaves?
Gaetano fumbled below the counter and produced a full packet of paracetamol.
‘Gae, you’re brilliant! I’ll replace them tomorrow, I promise, as soon as the farmacia opens.’
He wrang out a soapy dishcloth. ‘No hurry.’
‘I don’t suppose you’ve a big bottle of acqua minerale? I’ve a feeling I’m going to need plenty of liquid too.’
He produced a bottle from his chiller, cloudy with condensation. ‘Thanks a million. My saviour!’
Re-entering the apartment she found Sasha in the hallway, scrutinising her reflection in the long mirror. There were grazes on her knees and scratches on her arms but, when she lifted the ice pack, Gina could see her face was the real casualty: a closed eye, a puffy cheek, an egg-like swelling on her forehead. The eye that was open was stricken and appalled.
‘Not pretty,’ Gina said.
‘Oh my God, I can’t believe it! I can’t let anyone see me like this.’
‘The swelling should go down quite quickly. But you’re going to be colourful for about a week, I’d say.’
‘That long? Oh no!’ Her legs crumpled and Gina supported her into a chair in the living room. Sasha clamped the ice pack back onto the left-hand side of her face.
‘Do you want to tell me how it happened?’
‘Everything was going really well. We were having a wicked time. Truly.’ Her mouth quivered and she sank her teeth into her bottom lip.
Gina held out two paracetamol, poured water into a glass. ‘Where were you?’
Sasha gulped them down and continued. ‘Oh, it was a bar in Campo de’ Fiori. Nice chilled atmosphere and stuff, great music, no aggro. But Harry was showing off, playing silly buggers a bit and that’s how it started.’
‘Who’s Harry?’
‘One of the Yanks. Normally he’s, like, sound, but I don’t know whether he was pissed off because Ilse has this new bloke or whether he was just rat-arsed. Anyway, he was doing these stupid tricks with a beer bottle and he ended up arguing with Joe.’
Why, pondered Gina, would Joe get into an argument with an American? He knew how vital it was to stay out of trouble. Could he have been trying to impress Sasha?
‘So then,’ the girl said, ‘these other guys joined in, like they’d been waiting for a chance to have a go. And it wasn’t even fair. Joe was way outnumbered, so I tried to stop them.’
‘You did?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know why. Well, because I wanted them to stop and I thought they’d back off. Which they did… afterwards.’
‘You mean, after you got involved?’
‘Yes. And I suppose I felt a bit guilty because I was the reason Joe was in the piazza in the first place. I mean, Renate was the one who sent the text message, but…’
Gina was revising her opinion of Sasha: foolhardy, but the girl had spirit. This was Mitch’s daughter, all right. She recalled him trying to break up a fight in Sydney. Mitch claimed he’d acted instinctively. He hadn’t anticipated the knife blade that only just failed to puncture his lung. ‘Nine lives, see,’ he’d said, trying to make light of the incident, though it had cast a shadow.
‘When Joe comes out of the bathroom,’ she said, ‘I’ll check him over in case he needs any stitches. You can get yourself cleaned up and I’ll put you in a cab back to the Bolettis.’
‘Oh no, please! Don’t make me go back there.’
‘Why, what have they done do you?’
‘They haven’t done anything,’ wailed Sasha. ‘But look at me!’
‘They’ll be worried about you.’
‘No, they won’t. They knew this was my last night and I was likely to come in late. As long as I contact them in the morning, it will be fine. Can’t I stay here? Please?’
‘I only have one spare bed. I think Joe needs it more than you do.’
‘Couldn’t I crash on the sofa? Maybe I’ll look better in the morning. You could make me up a bit. What are they going to think if they see me like this?’
‘You could tell them the truth,’ said Gina. On second thoughts, that was not such a good idea. She didn’t want Bertie to make any connections between Joe and herself. Now she had finished with him, it was more important than ever to stay beneath his radar. She contemplated her bedraggled visitor and sighed. ‘Okay then, I’ll make an exception. I understand the need to lie low and lick your wounds, but you’ll have to get on to the Bolettis first thing or they’ll report you missing or something and there’ll be hell to pay. We don’t want that.’
‘I’m so grateful, really…’
‘And I’ve got a lot on tomorrow, work-wise, so I can’t hang around being your nursemaid. Is that understood?’
‘Sure.’
Gina did not sleep well. How could she when her home had been turned into a field hospital? Joe’s face had escaped injury – he’d become practised in protecting it – but the rest of his body was covered in bruises, and a flap of skin hung loose on his calf. Gina had given him ointment and bandages to apply and made up the bed. She’d found Sasha a pillow and a duvet and then barricaded herself in her own bedroom, alert for any cries in the night.
At seven she got up again and woke Sasha, who was curled dormouse-like on the sofa. The girl wriggled and jerked upright, alarmed and disorientated.
‘You should ring the Bolettis.’
‘Isn’t it a bit early? I don’t want to disturb them.’
Gina had long nourished a fantasy of disturbing Bertie’s wife, whom she imagined to be complacent and insensitive. ‘It will be the lesser of two evils,’ she said, handing her the phone. ‘Your luggage is in their house, right? So you’ll have to collect it before your flight.’
‘Couldn’t I ask them to send it over here?’
‘Bertie and I aren’t seeing eye to eye at the moment, so I’d rather you didn’t involve me. Anyway, aren’t they going to take you to the airport? Or put you on the shuttle or something?’
Sasha swallowed with some difficulty. Was she trying not to cry? It was hard to tell. ‘I can’t go home,’ she whispered.
‘Of course you can. Home is exactly where you should be, with your mother looking after you.’
‘But they’ll never let me go anywhere by myself again! They won’t understand the way you do. And it will be so rank, travelling all bashed-up like this.’
‘Look, I do sympathise. Maybe you could buy a baseball cap, pull the brim way down over your eyes.’
‘I wouldn’t have to bother you much longer. Renate and Ilse have invited me to go to the sea with them.’
‘So you don’t want to make a spectacle of yourself on the plane, but on the beach you don’t mind?’
‘I can’t go home like this,’ she repeated.
‘Oh, for God’s sake! I’m going to put the coffee on. You’d better make that call.’
As she prepared the coffee and boiled the milk, she could hear Sasha mumbling in broken Italian. She didn’t ask what arrangements she made; she didn’t want to know the detail. The girl began telling her she’d spoken to
Katya, the maid, but Gina brushed this information aside. She gave her a steaming latte. ‘That should revive you. I have to go out on some errands this morning – to the farmacia and the post office – so if I don’t see you before you leave for the airport, good luck and have a good trip.’
If she had thought that by refusing to debate, she would win the argument, she was wrong. When she got back to the flat, to prepare herself for the first of the weddings, Sasha Mitchell was still there.
12
In the gym changing room, towelling himself after a shower, Paul Mitchell could hear a phone ringing. He thought it might be his own, but he couldn’t find it. He dragged his clothes from the locker but each pocket he tried proved empty. Where could the damn thing have gone?
The oddest things had been happening lately; like the disturbing incident in the cockpit when a glitch on his ADIRU had caused him to lose data. He’d watched in disbelief as figures peeled away from the computer screen, the autopilot and autothrottle disconnected and most of his navigation display disappeared. He’d transferred to the back-up unit and crisis had been averted, but it continued to haunt him: the notion that such essential information could evaporate like clouds on a hot day.
An even greater fear was that of losing his family. Sasha was growing so rapidly and Corinne becoming so distant, he was almost superfluous in their lives. He could kid himself, when flying towards the midnight sun, or trying out a new sushi joint in Tokyo or simply enjoying the camaraderie of the mess room, that all was well. But on ground leave the day was a void. Hence the jogging, the gym, and what Corinne called his utterly pointless decision to uproot the privet hedge at the bottom of the garden and build a dry stone wall. He had got satisfaction from selecting and arranging his stones, conquering the challenges of weight and volume, stress and balance. He didn’t allow himself to consider the possibility that, if family life disintegrated, the house, garden and new stone wall would have to be put up for sale.
He was tying his shoelaces when the phone trilled again. This time he could tell it was coming from inside the locker, which meant he had to fumble for a coin to open it. The phone was at the back, where it must have fallen from the pocket of his jacket. Both missed calls were from Corinne. He rang her straight away.
She sounded flustered. ‘Paul? Why didn’t you answer before?’
‘I was in the shower. I told you I was going to the gym.’
‘You said you were going to pick up Sash.’
‘She won’t be landing yet.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘She’ll scarcely have taken off.’
Corinne said on a note of high pique, ‘She hasn’t taken off.’
‘You mean the flight’s delayed?’
‘I mean she hasn’t got on the plane.’
‘What?’
‘She rang to say she’s been invited to stay on for a few days. She wants you to get her onto another flight.’
‘Jesus, Corinne! And you said yes?’
‘She hadn’t even left the city centre, she’d no chance of making the check-in. I’m as angry as you are, but there’s not much I can do about it. She thinks planes are like buses – better actually – you just pick up another one. You and your perks.’
‘You can’t blame me for this. Anyway, I thought she wasn’t happy there. She wanted to come home early.’
‘That was two weeks ago, Paul. Things obviously improved. This was the first call I’ve had in days, which ought to have been a good sign.’
How on earth could you tell when a teenager’s behaviour was typical or erratic? Sasha was like a yo-yo. ‘Is she staying on with the Italian family then?’
‘Well, no.’ A little sigh of frustration. ‘I asked to speak to the mother and Sash admitted she wasn’t actually there. She was in the flat of some Englishwoman she’s made friends with, lives in an area called Trastevere.’
‘What Englishwoman?’
‘Her name’s Mrs Raven. A widow, apparently, but a long-term resident.’
Mitchell pictured an eccentric bag lady, feeding leftover spaghetti to stray cats; not an uncommon sight in Rome. Ministering to dumb animals would appeal to his soft-hearted daughter. ‘Do we know anything about her? Did you talk to her?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did she sound like?’
‘She sounded English. A bit posh. Otherwise normal.’
He swapped his phone to his other hand and hefted his backpack over his shoulder. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said, banging out of the changing room and into the lobby.
‘No,’ agreed Corinne. ‘I don’t like it either.’
‘Are you suggesting I should go out there and drag her back?’
‘I think you need to get hold of her, find out what she’s up to.’
A fellow gym member, waiting by the drinks machine for his can to descend, hailed Mitchell as he passed. Usually he’d have stopped for a chat, maybe got a drink for himself, but in this instance he charged through the swing doors and into the car park. ‘I’m on my way home. I’ll ring her as soon as I get in.’
‘I won’t be here,’ said Corinne. ‘I’m meeting Nadia. We have to go over some stats.’
‘It’s Saturday.’
‘It’s the best time for both of us.’
Nadia’s PhD was on a subject similar to his wife’s. Even so, he felt their meetings were far more frequent than strictly necessary. Suspicion burrowed beneath his skin like a maggot. He’d barely met Nadia but he knew she wasn’t one of Corinne’s closest friends. How could he not conclude that she was a front for someone else?
Five years ago, entering his house, particularly after a spell away, had been a joyful experience: Sasha, peachy, pre-pubes-cent, hair in a high ponytail, rolling on the carpet with the dog; Corinne, calm, capable, singing in her glorious husky voice as she turned the meat or drained the vegetables, responsive to his embrace. Today there was only the disembodied beeping of the burglar alarm, which he switched off.
He poured himself a beer and went up to Sasha’s room, where the ghost of his little girl lingered. A medley of stuffed toys was lined up on her bed, some stained with spilt squash from childhood tea parties. The walls were patterned with horses’ heads. The wallpaper had been a trial to match up and, though proud of his handiwork at the time, it looked especially incongruous now it was plastered with posters of Daniel Radcliffe and the Arctic Monkeys. The contents of the wardrobe, where a galaxy of high street labels spilled off their hangers, was the only other sign that this was the bedroom of a young woman.
He set his beer can on her desk, sat down on her bed, pulled out his phone and dialled her Italian number.
She answered straight away but her voice was wary. ‘Hi, Dad!’
‘Your mother’s given me some guff about you missing the flight this morning. What the hell do you think you’re up to?’
‘I’m sorry. Truly. It just seemed too good an opportunity to pass up.’
‘What did?’
She was instantly defensive. ‘My German friends, you know, I already told you about them loads? They’ve invited me to go with them to the beach and it’s not like I’ve had a proper holiday this summer. I took all those GCSEs and then what? I go off and do even more studying! It would be kind of nice to have a break.’
He hated coming over authoritarian and high-handed. He longed to indulge her, sweet sassy Sasha – and protect her too. ‘As I remember, it was your choice to go to Rome.’
‘Well, you always used to go on about how great it was!’
It was true he counted it as one of his favourite cities, although he hadn’t flown that route for years.
‘Plus you wouldn’t allow me to do anything else. Anyhow, I’ve had an ace time. My Italian’s really come on. I fancied a couple of days swimming in the sea. No big deal.’
His antennae were wired for duplicity, but she sounded plausible. And perhaps she had missed out compared to other classmates, with Ruby’s glandular fever throwing a spanner into the works. ‘So why on earth did you
wait till the last minute to tell us? It would have been easier to rearrange your flight than sort out a fresh one.’
‘Because we only decided at the last minute. We fixed it up yesterday. They’re travelling by train, you see, so it’s easy for them.’
A detail was nagging him. ‘Hang on a second. We don’t know anything about these German girls.’
‘Yes, you do. Renate and Ilse?’
‘But Corinne said you were staying with an Englishwoman.’
‘That’s for tonight, before we set off. So I thought maybe Thursday, if that’s okay, for the flight? No sooner, really, and Gina said – ’
‘Who’s Gina?’
‘She’s the woman who’s putting me up. Honest, you’d like her.’
It was a coincidence, it had to be. How likely was it, after all, that she was still in Rome? ‘This is the Mrs Raven your mother mentioned? Is she there? I’d like to speak to her.’
‘Sorry, no,’ said Sasha. Did he sense relief rather than regret? ‘She’s got a wedding.’
‘She’s getting married?’
‘Duh! She’s a photographer. It’s her job. I can give you her number, but I don’t think you should call her for a bit because she’ll be, like, really busy. She’s got two, one after the other. But Mum’s already spoken to her, so it’s cool.’
‘Give me the number anyway,’ said Mitchell, reaching into the jar on her desk for a pen. Not wanting to mark her school folders, neatly arranged by Corinne, he wrote it on the palm of his hand. ‘I’ll call you back when I’ve sorted something, but you ought to know that neither of us is too pleased about this. In fact we are seriously pissed off.’
‘No worries, Dad,’ said Sasha, too damn perkily, he thought. ‘It’ll be fine.’
When she’d hung up, he clenched and unclenched his fist half a dozen times. And each time it reappeared, Gina’s number. The digits, unlike those on his ADIRU screen, wouldn’t vanish until he washed his hands.
Anyone could be traced these days, through a search engine, Facebook or LinkedIn, though it wasn’t the sort of thing he’d ever bothered to do. It would be easy enough to enter Gina’s name to settle the issue, but he resisted the temptation. What would be the point? Their parting, all those years ago, had not gone well. He’d tried to be so delicate, so tactful, but perhaps he’d been kidding himself. Perhaps a tactful split was an oxymoron, and she wasn’t the type to smooth anybody’s path. Fortunately, the break-up had been made easier by the fact that they were living in different countries and the fact that Corinne, with her ready laugh and warm freckled arms, had been waiting for him.