One Year Later

by Sanjida Kay

  ‘What about being in our house? Those photos he took of Chloe?’

  ‘Si. The boy admit he look to your possessions, maybe move them a little, but he does not steal. He say that he and Chloe take the photo together.’

  ‘He’s admitted it? He told you he’s been in our house? Looking through our things?’

  Ruggieri speaks over me. ‘Is his house. No crime has been committed.’

  ‘It’s trespass!’

  ‘It is his family’s house,’ Ruggieri repeats. ‘Nothing is missing. He is a teenage boy – looking to you because he is jealous of what you have and he has not. I think he and Chloe have a little…’ He makes a gesture with his hands as if he is cupping a flower.

  ‘Flirtation,’ says Biondi.

  I look from one to the other and open my mouth to protest, but before I can say anything, Ruggieri says, ‘We believe that your sister is not attacked.’

  ‘But…’ I gape at him. ‘She was hit on the head with a rock!’

  He crosses one polished boot over his knee and leans back. ‘This is what we think too. But it is also the same with a fall. She is drunk, she fall, she hit the head on a sharp stone. There are many, many where she is found, near to il cavalluccio marino. She took the Prosecco with her when she left the house. Your sister like to drink, no?’

  ‘She liked a drink now and again – she was on holiday, for Christ’s sake! But she’s not in the habit of getting drunk enough to fall and hit her head.’

  ‘How do you know? You say you are not with her. We say, she go for a walk to the beach. She drink. She fall. Is simple.’ He takes a sip of coffee and leans towards me. ‘She is not assaulted. She is found with the clothes. No sign of a struggle. Your brother-in-law, he tell me she drink a lot.’

  ‘Only occasionally,’ I say, frowning. ‘What about her black eye?’

  He raises his eyebrows at me. ‘If you mean, the bruise here—’ he points to his own eye – ‘Dr Virgili say it is from when she hits the head. Sharp rock, it go through the skull here,’ he points to his temple. ‘The bone is thin, no? The blood go into her eye.’

  I’m about to protest, to remind him of the other bruises she has, and then I have a sudden, horrible memory. I’m gripping Bethany, my thumbs digging into her skin just below her collar bone, my fingers pinching her arms, shaking her as I shout, “I will never forgive you!” I swallow uncomfortably. I made those bruises.

  ‘Have you thought about the other people who were staying with us? Joe Hart, for instance?’

  Traitor.

  ‘You think Signor Hart hurt your sister? She employ him as her personal trainer, no?’

  I remember Joe and Bethany had an argument the night before she was attacked, but he’s hardly likely to have hit her. Or did he? In any case, he’d already left the island early the previous morning. Hadn’t he? I think of the glimpse I had of the man who looked like him at the Ferragosto festa. Was I imagining it, or could it have been Joe? He might have stayed on after he’d left our holiday house.

  When I don’t reply, Ruggieri shrugs, dismissing me. ‘We have to consider all the option. I have the details for the men who stay with you – Joe Hart and Luca Castaglioni. We speak with them on the phone. We know how to do our job, Signor Flowers.’

  I feel like a balloon that’s been punctured.

  ‘Does Dr Virgili also think my sister simply fell and hit her head? And what about the… the sexual assault?’

  ‘He agrees that it is possible she was not attacked,’ says Biondi. I’m surprised at how good his English is: much better than his higher-ranking colleague’s. He has an accent, as if he’s spent time on the east coast of the States. ‘No one tested your sister for blood alcohol levels, so we cannot be certain. Neither did the hospital staff check for semen, because she was fully dressed. The signs of the assault, as you refer to them, could be from consensual intercourse, or an incident that happened a few days ago. But as Maggiore Ruggieri says, there was no indication of a struggle, apart from the wound to her head and some bruising to her arms and chest. There is no evidence she was attacked. If she had been hit on the head, it is unlikely now that we will find who did it. Most of the holidaymakers have already left. In any case, she remembers nothing – apart from drinking. And, Signor Flowers, we know that your sister has a history of drinking to excess. We interviewed some of her former work colleagues at the BBC in London.’

  The traitorous bastards. Bee once told me she was surrounded by people who’d stab their grandmother to get ahead, but I’d thought she was being overly dramatic.

  Ruggieri looks at his watch and uncrosses his legs. ‘Signor Flowers, we leave now. We hope that your sister is well soon. If she remembers anything, then you can call to me.’

  He gives me his card and holds out his hand. I shake it, because I don’t know what else to do, what else to say.

  I walk across the road to the promenade, heading for the taxi rank at the far end. Although it’s still early, a few Italians have already settled themselves on sun-loungers, angling parasols over their tanned bodies. There’s a cool breeze from the sea; any other time, this would beat my usual morning of instant, hunched over a computer screen in a hot, dark studio.

  I’m certain Bethany was attacked. Of course it might have been a random drunk, but could it have been someone else? I’ve got to get this right – bringing us all together on holiday in Italy hasn’t worked; my family are still barely speaking to each other. I have to find out who did this to my sister, to us. Plus, I want my sister well enough to answer some hard questions.

  If it was someone who knew Bethany, they would have been able to follow her without suspicion. Joe Hart. Ruggieri said he’d already eliminated him from his inquiries, but I can’t be certain. Was it Joe in the piazza on the evening of the festa? And the night before he was supposed to have left, they had a huge row.

  When the taxi drops me off at the port, I spot my family leaning against the people-carrier, looking hot and fed up. The ferry hasn’t turned up yet – running on Italian time – and there’s a jumble of cars clogging the road in the semblance of a queue. Sweat is trickling down my back. I wipe my face with my T-shirt, trying not to expose my scars.

  ‘How’s Bethany?’ asks Amy, as soon as I approach them.

  I don’t want to admit I haven’t gone to see her yet. ‘Just been talking to Ruggieri,’ I say. ‘The Carabinieri are dropping her case. They’re probably on the speedboat back to Grosseto as we speak.’

  ‘What? Why? They can’t do that!’

  ‘They say she was drunk and fell and hit her head on a sharp stone.’ I say it in a sarcastic tone, but my sister and brother-in-law don’t react the way I expect.

  Amy’s face, crumpled with worry, seems to smooth, the way an iron chases the wrinkles from a shirt.

  ‘Oh,’ she says.

  ‘Why aren’t we getting on the ferry?’ asks Theo, scuffing his toe in the sand and sending clouds of dust into the air.

  ‘Wouldn’t surprise me,’ Matt says.

  ‘I’m bored,’ Lotte says. Her cheeks are flushed pink from the heat.

  ‘We’ll be going soon.’ Amy smooths her daughter’s flyaway hair where it’s stuck to her forehead.

  ‘Are you kidding?’

  ‘Makes sense. She walked off with a bottle of booze.’

  ‘I can’t stand this any more.’ Chloe pushes herself to her feet from where she’s been slouched against the shaded side of the car. ‘I want to get off this island right now. I’m not staying here one more minute!’

  ‘You don’t seriously think Bethany really drank a whole bottle of Prosecco? Got so drunk she fell hard enough to knock herself out?’

  ‘What are we doing here?’ asks my father.

  The Italians, less patient with delays than the British, start to honk their horns. A few of them are milling about in the road, and a cloud of cigarette smoke drifts over us. Theo coughs theatrically.

  Matt shrugs. ‘Makes sense to me. I’d be plastered if I’
d drunk that much. You’re right,’ he adds in a grudging tone. ‘She doesn’t normally drink that much, so she’s probably not used to it. But she does go for it in a big way when she’s stressed.’ He looks pointedly at me.

  Amy makes a face. ‘Bee hadn’t eaten anything, and in this heat… It was dark. It would have been easy to slip and fall. In a way it’s a relief. How awful if she’d been attacked by someone.’

  ‘But…’ I say, and then remember I haven’t told them about the sexual assault. The noise from the car horns is making it hard to think.

  ‘That’s it – I’ve had it!’ Chloe strides away from us, her straight dark hair swinging down her back. She’s in denim hot pants and she looks like a child-woman, simultaneously fragile and fierce, sexy and vulnerable.

  ‘Chloe!’ Matt calls after her as she heads towards the dock, where a handful of officials in navy uniforms, lounging on the quay, straighten and smile at each other. One takes the cigarette from his mouth and gestures towards her. It’s not clear from this distance whether he’s welcoming her or highlighting her salient features to the others.

  ‘So that’s it?’ I say. ‘You’re just going to let the police fuck off back to wherever the hell they came from? Jesus, this is your sister we’re talking about!’

  ‘Nick!’ Amy admonishes me.

  ‘That’s a rude word,’ Lotte says.

  ‘Two rude words,’ says Theo.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I notice my father ambling away, in the opposite direction to Chloe.

  ‘Listen, mate,’ says Matt. He’s not looking at me, he’s watching Chloe’s progress as she weaves in between the cars. The ferry men adjust their sunglasses and smile, like sharks.

  ‘Dad? Dad!’ Amy calls after our father. ‘Watch the kids, will you?’ she says to Matt.

  ‘Amy! Leave him! I need to get Chloe.’

  There’s a cheer as someone spots the ferry churning towards us, haloed by a cloud of seagulls, rainbows splintering from the spume.

  ‘I’ll fetch Granddad,’ Theo says and races after Dad.

  ‘Theo! Get back here! You need to get a grip,’ Matt says to me. ‘You – in the car, now,’ he shouts at Lotte, who bursts into tears and starts screaming at him that she hasn’t done anything wrong and it’s too hot to sit inside. Matt’s face has turned purple as he glances from Chloe, who is now surrounded by a knot of Italian men, to Lotte, who’s stamping her foot and refusing to get in the roasting car, and then to Amy, who’s running after Theo and Dad.

  It’s all suddenly become clear to me. Of course Matt would jump at this explanation – that Bethany was drunk and the police were dropping the case. He even told the police she was drunk. Because if my sister wasn’t attacked by a stranger, or by Joe, who else could it have been? Who else knew where she was or where she might go? I feel as if the smoke and the car fumes are choking me. My sister. So lovely to look at; so unloved. Who else could have done this? Who else hated her? Amy doesn’t like Bethany much, after what happened. Has my dad ever shown her any affection? To be honest, it’s not like I’m that fond of her. Although maybe I need to work on that. I can’t hear properly, as the horns continue to blare. The heat seems to be making my head reverberate. Matt. Matt hates her. He pretty much said she was a dumb bitch who could print her Drama Studies diploma on a supermarket receipt.

  ‘For the last time, get in the car,’ Matt yells at his youngest daughter. A vein pulses in his forehead. He looks over his shoulder at Chloe, who has her hands on her hips and seems to be lecturing the men standing in front of her, who are nodding and smiling. Any minute now, one of them is going to reach across and touch her bare arm.

  Matt grabs hold of Lotte and drags her towards the car. ‘Come on! We’ll be leaving in a minute. Chloe!’ he bellows, and several Italians look from him to his beautiful daughter and back, as if they’re at a tennis match.

  I tell myself to stop being so ridiculous – accusing everyone in my family, plus my sister’s personal trainer, of assault and battery – and jog over to Chloe. I mock bow and offer her my arm, as if I’m in a Jane Austen novel, and fortunately the sharks smile out of the sides of their mouths and my step-niece takes my elbow. I lead her back to the car and hug every member of my hot, sticky family. The ferry pulls away from the harbour, scattering seabirds in its wake. Sunlight winks from the cars on the deck. There’s a clear, sharp light on the horizon, blinding in its beauty.

  I wipe my forehead as I enter the comforting chill of the hospital and help myself to the water in the cooler by reception.

  Bethany is awake and sitting up in bed.

  ‘Nick!’ She frowns at me. ‘You look like shit.’

  ‘Thanks. Glad I stayed on to check you’re okay.’ I slump into a chair by her bed. ‘You’re looking a bit better. Listen, can you remember anything? Anything at all about what happened?’

  She looks up to her left as she thinks. The white of her eye is still red, and the bruising round her eye is turning yellow.

  ‘I remember us arguing. I was so mad at you. I took that bottle of Prosecco from the fridge and marched up the hill. I saw Chloe and Carlo and I spoke to them briefly. I told her to leave that little jerk and get back home. She took it exceptionally well. I headed out to the cliff and I walked along there for a while. I watched the fireworks, and then I thought I ought to go back and face the music. I expected Amy would be angry at me for skipping Ruby-May’s anniversary, but I hoped I hadn’t missed all of it. I decided not to go back the way I’d come, though. I thought it would be quicker to head straight down the cliff path to the beach, the one along from il cavalluccio marino. I planned to walk along the sand and up the track to our holiday house. But I don’t remember that part.’

  ‘The police are going to drop the case. They say there’s no evidence that you were attacked. That you could have fallen and hit your head. Ruggieri says you were drunk.’

  She closes her eyes for a moment and doesn’t say anything. I can’t tell if she’s angry or resigned.

  ‘Come on, Bee! I know you. You wouldn’t have drunk a whole bottle of Prosecco—’

  She interrupts. ‘I told them I was drunk.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Carabinieri asked if it was a possibility, and I said it was more like a probability.’

  I’m dumbstruck.

  ‘I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Plus I’d done all those sprints earlier. The alcohol would have gone straight to my head.’

  I stare at her. She looks levelly back and she’s so calm it unnerves me.

  ‘So you’re okay with them heading back to Grosseto?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says firmly.

  I rest my elbows on my knees and drop my head into my hands. I wait until my pulse subsides. ‘I don’t get it. It’s just… The doctor thought you might have been… raped.’

  ‘Oh. That.’

  I whip my head round and look at her in astonishment.

  ‘Yeah. It hurt to sit down for a bit,’ she wisecracks, and then she starts crying.

  ‘Bee…’

  I grab a tissue and thrust it at her, and then I hold her hand. I can’t remember the last time I saw my sister cry. I don’t even recall her crying when I fell from the top of the ruin in the garden and everyone was so mad at her, and she was only nine or ten.

  She blows her nose and winces at the pain in her head.

  ‘It was Stuart,’ she says. She presses the tissue against her lip, which has started bleeding again.

  ‘Stuart?’

  ‘My executive producer.’

  ‘Look, you don’t have to talk about this now if you…’

  ‘I’ve kind of been seeing him.’ She glances at me. ‘Yes, Nick, of course I know he’s fucking married.’

  I squeeze her hand. It’s not like I’m in any position to judge, given what a shit I was to Maddison.

  ‘Never in public. He wanted it to be a secret. He kept promising that he’d get me back on The Show. The exec was a mate of his. So he said.’

>   Tears are running down her blotched and bruised cheeks.

  ‘So what happened?’

  She takes a sip from the glass by her bed, and I hear the slow sound of her trying to swallow the water as if it’s solid.

  ‘It was the night before this Italian trip. We were in the studio after we’d finished filming the programme. Drinking a bottle of wine out of plastic cups. Got a bit drunk. And then – oh, you know how I can be. Told him he needed to make me a star. Annihilate Tiffany, the witch. Why wasn’t I on The Show? He got annoyed. He said, “Bethany, your problem is you’re smart without being intelligent, good-looking without being pretty, and approachable in a girl-next-door way, but no one in their right fucking mind would want to be your neighbour.” So I said I’d tell his wife. Post a photo on Twitter.’

  I shut my eyes to block out the images: plastic cups rolling on the floor, the dregs of wine spilling across the stain-free carpet; Bethany’s face smashed into a Formica-topped table.

  ‘The thing is, I did quite like him.’

  I swing back round. ‘If it was at work, there’ll be CCTV of you leaving; a record of you clocking out; the security staff at the back gate – they’d have recognized you. Noticed if you were… upset.’

  She shakes her head and then sucks her teeth. ‘Not going to do that. His word against mine. End of my career.’ She dries her face with the now sodden and bloodstained tissue.

  I’m not sure what to say. All the time, this abuse had been going on and I never even knew, because I only ever looked at my sister’s Instagram account, instead of actually speaking to her. And even I can see this is really not the right time to ask her about Dad’s dementia appointment and why she lied about it. I’ll do that tomorrow, I tell myself.

  ‘Nick, get me out of here. I want to go home.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Come on! The Carabinieri have left. I can have a check-up at St Michael’s Hospital when we’re in Bristol. I’ll go mad if I have to keep staring at these four walls for a nanosecond longer.’