by Joanna Hines
‘Good legs, though,’ said Aiden.
A faint aroma of expensive perfume lingered after she’d passed. Kate turned and watched her as she walked away. At the end of the street the stranger hesitated, as though uncertain whether to go towards the Piazza Signoria or over the bridge. Kate had a sudden urge to invite her to join them, but didn’t want to risk a second rejection.
Don suggested a speedy remedy for such prissy-looking solitary females, and everyone laughed. Aiden linked his arm through Kate’s again and they continued on their way to the party and forgot all about the elegant stranger.
Lungarno Corsini Due, the building which housed the British Consulate, fronted onto the Arno and had therefore borne the full brunt of the flood’s impact. The road outside was still impassable to cars. In fact, it looked as though a large bite had been taken out of it by the river, and the wrecked section was roped off.
But once they climbed the stairs to the first floor the volunteers entered another world. There was an awesome array of drinks, canapés on huge platters borne round by uniformed staff and three sorts of cigarettes in silver cases scattered around the room. And on top of that, the other guests seem to have been invited for the sole purpose of telling the volunteers how heroic they were.
‘Stand in front of me, will you, Kate,’ said Don, who was already emptying the contents of one cigarette case into his pocket.
‘Shouldn’t you leave one or two?’ she asked. ‘It’s a bit obvious taking the whole lot.’
‘Too late now.’ Don was cheerfully helping himself to a glass of wine from a passing tray.
Across the room, Kate could see Aiden sliding a half bottle of vodka into his inside pocket; his large cape had many advantages. She only hoped the British Consul didn’t realize how his hospitality was being abused.
‘Kate, you look fantastic!’
She spun round. ‘David, when did you get here?’
‘About half an hour ago. I thought I’d better get here early before it all got pilfered.’
Kate liked David—but at that stage she liked all her fellow volunteers. He was a couple of years older, and possessed an engaging mixture of naiveté and sophistication. He’d arrived in Florence right after the New Year, same as her, and thrown himself wholeheartedly into the life of the mud angels. He had heavy black eyebrows and a determined jaw. His clean-cut good looks had seemed a bit too clean-cut to begin with, but already his hair was straggling over his collar and his voice was gravelly with pollution and cigarette smoke.
‘Who’s that man Anna’s making up to?’ asked Kate. She was looking across the room to where Anna was doing her sex-kitten impersonation for the benefit of an odd-looking middle-aged man with a goatee beard who looked as if he’d be more at home wearing a pair of lederhosen and scrambling up the side of a mountain than at a consulate party. ‘I wouldn’t have thought he was her type.’
David laughed. ‘It’s the casting couch, Florence style. Apparently he’s been sent over by the V and A to organize some of the work at the Uffizi. So far as Anna’s concerned, he’s the ticket to an easier life than muck shovelling.’
‘Really?’ Kate looked at the London expert with a new interest. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Professor Fuller. Want me to introduce you?’
‘You bet.’ Kate refilled her glass and prepared to be charming. Working with real works of art was what she had been hoping to do in Florence all along.
Promotion turned out to be surprisingly easy to arrange: Professor Fuller was more than happy to add another good-looking girl to his team. He even agreed to take David on as well, just to show he wasn’t only employing pretty women. Three glasses of wine and half a dozen sausage rolls later, she emerged into the night with David, both of them bubbling with excitement at their good fortune.
‘Let’s celebrate,’ said David. ‘I’ll buy you dinner.’
‘Shall we wait for the others?’
‘No, just the two of us, for once.’
He draped his arm across her shoulder. Kate realized he’d reached that stage of drunkenness where the protective male arm becomes surprisingly heavy, but she was not exactly sober herself and in no mood to criticize. David was attractive and good company and she was happy to spend the rest of the evening with him, flirting and maybe kissing a bit if it turned out that way. She hadn’t kissed David yet. She’d kissed Aiden because everyone seemed to have kissed Aiden; it was as though he expected it, felt he’d let you down if you didn’t. And she’d kissed Hugo, who’d been drafted in by the consulate to help with the extra work, because he’d expressed serious interest the night she arrived and she couldn’t think of any reason not to. But that was as far as it had gone. The volunteers talked about sex almost all the time but, so far as she could tell and apart from vague rumours about Anna, not much actual sex was taking place. A fair amount of kissing and heavy-duty petting, but no real sex. Their communal living conditions were a handicap, but also there seemed to be a general reluctance to break up the group by forming serious pairs. For the time being, this suited Kate fine. She’d made love five times with Matt, her serious boyfriend in England, and though she’d have died rather than admit the truth, her main impression had been of discomfort and embarrassment. Escaping Matt and his speedy, unsatisfying grapplings had been one of her unspoken reasons for coming to Florence.
‘Where shall we go?’ asked Kate.
David stumbled on a loose cobble and the arm across her shoulder got even heavier. ‘Let’s go to the other side of the river.’
‘Is there anywhere to eat over there?’
‘Must be,’ said David.
They crossed over on the Pont’alla Carraia. Above the river, the air was even colder, chill damp rising from the black waters. Kate always found the Arno sinister at night. By day it seemed placid enough; in fact, it was often hard to imagine how it had turned into the savage tide that had bounced cars and even lorries through the streets. But after dark it was different, a silent, indifferent force flowing through the centre of the city, elemental and dangerous. She was glad, even in David’s company, when they reached the other side.
They walked a little way, almost to the Ponte S. Trinita, then drifted to a halt near one of the few streetlamps that was still working on this side of the river. There were no cars here and the street was deserted. David was smiling blurrily as he leaned forward and kissed her. His lips were cold and tasted of cigarettes and Scotch whisky. Kate closed her eyes and kissed him back, letting her lips part to receive his tongue, moving her own in response. The proper kissing technique had been much discussed in the previous two weeks, and anyway, she was enjoying herself. By the time they both came up for air, their lips were no longer cold.
‘Oh look,’ said Kate suddenly. ‘There’s that girl again.’
‘What girl?’ David mumbled indistinctly into the collar of her coat. His nose bumped against hers as he moved to kiss her again, but Kate turned her head and pulled back. Something in the way the girl was standing near the middle of the ponte alerted her to danger, clearing the wine- and kissing-induced fuzziness from her head.
‘The one I saw earlier. Look. What’s she doing?’ David sighed, but turned to follow the direction of her gaze. Kate was thoroughly alarmed by now. ‘She looks like she wants to jump in,’ she said.
‘Do you think?’ He seemed to be having trouble switching his attention from Kate to this unknown female. ‘Best not to interfere.’
‘But we can’t do nothing,’ said Kate. The girl was leaning over the parapet, leaning too far. She looked fascinated by the dark water. Then, as they watched, she straightened up, put both her hands firmly on the parapet and hoisted herself up, so she was sitting there, her body twisted round, at an angle over the water, so that if she just shifted her balance a fraction…
Kate was gripped with a cold fear. She took a couple of steps in the direction of the bridge, then turned to David. ‘We have to act as if we haven’t noticed her,’ she whispered, ‘or she
might get scared and—and jump. Maybe if we carry on kissing…’ She put her arm round his waist, turning to kiss him as they walked. Every now and then she broke off to glance at the elegant woman sitting on the parapet, who was leaning ever closer towards that murderous, ink-black water. As they drew near, Kate saw her put her hand to her mouth and tug off a single glove with her teeth. Then, very slowly, she stretched out her arm and let the glove fall. It vanished into the darkness long before it hit the water. An odd little smile appeared on her face. She reached out her arm again, but this time it was her bag she was holding. Then she let that go too…
By the time they drew level with her, Kate was so tense she’d forgotten to breathe. She tried to make her voice sound light, casual even, as she said, ‘Hi, it’s Louise, isn’t it?’
Startled, the stranger looked round. In that moment Kate noticed that she had the most incredible eyes, not beautiful exactly, but compelling. She stared at them, but didn’t answer.
‘Didn’t we meet this afternoon? No? I could have sworn…’ David, she was glad to see, had moved a little further ahead, so that he was on the other side of the girl, while Kate talked on. ‘Oh, well, sorry. Must be my mistake. My name’s Kate by the way. I’ve just been to the party at the consulate and was on my way for a meal. Maybe you’d like to come too?’
By now, Kate was standing right beside the girl. If she made a move, there was a chance Kate could catch her by the sleeve of her coat.
‘Are you English?’ asked Kate. Eyes fixed soberly on her face, the girl shook her head slowly. ‘Oh well, at least you understand English. I’d hate to think I’d been babbling on if you only spoke Italian. I’d feel like a proper fool. It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?’
Maybe the girl just lost her balance. She seemed to lean away from Kate, as though she meant to roll silently over the edge of the parapet and into the swirling dark of the river below. Kate lunged forward and caught hold of her coat, David grabbed her round the waist and pulled, and the next moment the stranger was standing between them on the hard surface of the bridge.
‘You nearly lost your balance there,’ said David.
‘Had me scared for a moment.’ Kate smiled encouragingly.
The woman blinked. Those incredible eyes again. Then she glanced back over her shoulder at the river and shuddered. She looked down at the one glove remaining in her hand and said, ‘I lost my bag.’
‘Yes,’ said Kate.
A tiny smile flickered at the corners of the woman’s mouth. ‘You thought I was going to jump,’ she said. A slight inflection at the end of the sentence made it almost a question. Kate couldn’t place her accent. Not English, certainly, but not Italian either.
‘No, of course we didn’t,’ they both blustered.
The stranger hugged her arms across her chest. ‘It’s so damn cold at night,’ she said. ‘Sometimes it gets hard to think straight.’
‘Doesn’t it just,’ said David. ‘Look, why don’t we all go to a bar and have a drink? Get warmed up a bit.’
Her eyes were sparkling with tears. ‘All my money was in the bag. And my left luggage ticket.’
‘That’s okay. It’s my treat tonight,’ said David.
‘Really? But…’ She hesitated, and Kate got the feeling the woman was uncomfortable with his generosity. She was fascinated by the girl’s eyes. They were long and mysterious, like the eyes you see sometimes in Renaissance paintings. Unforgettable eyes.
Kate said, ‘Let’s go somewhere warm. You’ll feel better then.’
‘Okay.’ But warily. Again that suspicion of their kindness. She must have realized right then that she didn’t have many choices. The stranger held out her hand. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘My name is Francesca.’
Chapter 5
La Valletta
IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN idyllic. First there was the leisurely drive in the taxi from Florence in the September sunshine through a landscape that was familiar from countless paintings, with its little hill towns and winding valleys, olive groves and cypresses, and the verges scattered with late summer flowers of dusty blue and faded yellow, the vibrant pink stars of cyclamen glowing under the trees. It was a landscape that grew wilder as her taxi approached the Villa Beatrice so that Kate had looked out over a vista hardly altered since Renaissance times: a panorama of rolling hills and secret river valleys and blue-shadowed woodland. The air was filled with the scent of aromatic leaves drying in the sun, and that deep silence of the countryside, a silence that is only intensified by the insistent pulse of the cicadas.
It should have been idyllic. But it wasn’t. She had to keep fighting the urge to turn round and escape, back to Florence, back to Rome where David was visiting his daughter, back to London and her own safe world.
As the taxi turned off the country road and began the slow, winding ascent to the villa, Kate knew that she was now on Bertoni land, entering a space she’d never expected to see again—that she’d never wanted to see again. A world she’d filed away in the deepest recesses of her memory. She’d been so successful that until a few months ago she thought she’d finished with it forever. That feeling of having entered another world, utterly remote from the traffic and hubbub of modern life, was exactly how the Villa Beatrice had struck her on her first visit, all those years ago. But what was she doing here anyway? Only the picture carefully wrapped and in a case of its own on the seat beside her kept her focused on the task ahead. All she had to do was find out who’d sent it, persuade them to use a more orthodox way of contacting her in the future, preferably one that didn’t involve vandalizing old masters, and then leave. All perfectly straightforward.
Except she knew that where the Bertoni family was concerned, nothing was ever straightforward.
She’d decided to begin her search at the Villa Beatrice. Francesca’s parents, if they were still alive, must be in their seventies or eighties. But there had been a younger sister. What was her name? Sylvie? Sandra? Something like that. It made sense to start with her.
Kate kept trying to steady her nerves with phrases like ‘It makes sense’ and ‘It’s all perfectly simple’ but her heart was pounding. The place the taxi brought her to was familiar, and at the same time totally different from the way she remembered it that final, terrible weekend. For one thing, she’d forgotten how beautiful the Villa Beatrice was, how it worked its magic right from that first glimpse halfway up the driveway when you saw it soaring pale and perfect high above you, like an exquisite stone bird that has just that moment come to roost on the curve of the hill. The house, in that setting, possessed the kind of beauty that catches at your throat, a seductive beauty blinding you to danger.
Close to, the Villa Beatrices beauty was almost overwhelming. When she’d seen it as a teenager Kate had known only that it was the loveliest building she’d ever been in. Now she was able to recognize it as a near-perfect example of early-eighteenth-century Palladian style, its white colonnades spreading like welcoming arms on either side of the classical facade. The massive blocks of stone had been cut with such skill they seemed almost weightless, mere columns of light, yet as natural as if they’d grown from the soil on which they were planted. Kate got out of the taxi and lifted out the painting. She told the driver to wait; she wouldn’t be long. And all the time, she had to shake off a ridiculous notion that she was stepping onto enchanted ground. Get a grip, she told herself sternly; you saw the sign back there. This isn’t Bluebeard’s Castle—it’s a centre for young people and the arts. Now, just how prosaic is that?
She went up the wide, shallow steps and paused to glance up at the words carved in the white marble above the doorway. A simple inscription read: IN MEMORIAM FRANCESCA BERTONI 1946—67. That was all. Just her name and the dates. She was still standing there, staring at the letters, when a red-haired woman appeared and asked what she wanted. Kate told her she was looking for Signora Bertoni, the sister of Francesca. Ah yes, said the woman, she’s at the Valletta where the theatre is. Simona is at the theatre.
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br /> Kate tried to look as if that was what she’d been expecting to hear.
Simona. That was the name of the little sister.
Simona.
Kate’s nerves tightened. So, the Bertonis were still here after all. She had been half hoping strangers had taken over the Villa Beatrice, half hoping that the picture had been sent from somewhere else and she’d have to admit defeat and return it to the dealer in Florence through whom it had come. But Simona was here: Simona, whom she’d last seen through a cloud of dust, running in panic and distress just before Francesca was killed…
‘Signora, do you want to see her?’
‘Yes.’ The woman’s question returned Kate abruptly to the present. ‘When are you expecting her back?’
The redhead smiled. ‘The theatre is here, signora, at Villa Beatrice. I will take you.’
Kate followed her round the side of the villa and down a long gravel walk that led from the formal gardens near the house through some sparse trees to an area of open ground. La Valletta, it turned out, was an open-air theatre formed from a wide basin in the side of the hill.
‘Shall I tell Signora Simona you are here?’ asked her guide.
‘No, thank you, I’ll wait.’
Kate stood on the rim of the amphitheatre and looked down on the scene below. She assumed some kind of dramatic exercise was taking place, though it looked more like a weird initiation rite. About twenty people were crawling around on the grassy floor of the theatre, but there was no way of telling which was Simona since they were all wearing rigid white masks. Kate had always been uncomfortable around masks. It was something to do with the frozen face and the eyes that didn’t belong, a lack of context for the character, everything hidden from sight. Those rigid masks meant that in theory any one of those figures could have been Francesca’s little sister.
She reached into her bag and pulled out her mobile phone, then scrolled down to David’s number.
‘Are you there yet?’ He answered almost at once. ‘What’s it like?’