I reach for Beth’s hand. It’s wet, ice-cold. Her silhouette curves against the light from the villa. Her head. Her hips. Her calves. I expect her to get up and walk away. I expect her to call my name or say something annoying. But she’s still as that statue in Salvatore’s villa. Cold and still.
Eventually, it’s Ambrogio who calls me.
“Beth, come on. Let’s go inside. There’s nothing we can do.”
Beth, Beth, Beth. He keeps calling me Beth. He finds my hand at the end of my arm at the side of my body. His fingers are wet from the pool. I snatch my hand away, afraid. I don’t want to go anywhere with this man. He wants me dead. He wants to kill Alvie! But he reaches back down and grabs onto my hand with an iron grip that I can’t resist. He yanks me back up to standing. I look into his eyes. A strong jaw. A handsome face. He’s as beautiful as Channing Tatum. But I won’t be deceived; I know I can’t trust him. What the hell was this plan?
Ambrogio pushes the pram with one hand and holds my shoulder with the other. My handbag is hanging on the handle of the pram. I pick up Beth’s shoes from under the lounger. I’m acting on auto, my mind racing. I feel like I’ve survived a tsunami: destruction around me, disorientation, persistent ringing in my ears. I stagger forward toward the villa, one step at a time: a lost child stumbling home. We don’t speak as he leads me to his bedroom, the bedroom he used to share with Beth. I stand in the middle of the room and look around. Beth and I got changed here only hours ago. It feels like a different room, another life.
Ambrogio finds two towels in the en-suite bathroom; he offers one to me. I don’t move. He drapes it over my hunched-up shoulders, then dries himself. He takes off his shirt, his trousers, his boxer shorts, and rubs himself all over with the towel. He is completely naked. His penis looks smaller than I remember, but that was a long time ago and I guess it isn’t erect now. . . . I watch him dry his muscular body, his back, his thighs, the tan lines on his bum. I am completely numb. I look down at my hands and play with Beth’s ring, spinning it around and around on my finger. Her engagement ring looks good on me.
He thinks I’m Beth. He thinks I’m dead.
Ambrogio rolls his wet, bloody clothes into a ball and throws them in the bin. He changes quickly into a brand-new set: a white shirt, cream chinos, blue-and-white–striped socks. How does he do that? It took him two minutes and he looks as polished as a catalog model; too cool to be true. He walks over toward me.
“Beth,” he says, taking my hand. It’s as limp as an eel. I let him hold it. “Beth, please, get dressed. Come on. You’ll catch a cold.”
A cold is the last thing I care about. “Don’t we need to call an ambulance?” I say.
“I’m afraid it’s far too late for that.”
I look up at Ambrogio, at the worry written all over his face. He has no idea. He doesn’t have a clue who I am. I lean my cheek against his chest and try not to cry; mascara streaks across his shirt. He’ll have to get changed again.
“We need an ambulance to take the body away.”
“Shh, Beth,” he says, stroking my hair. “Let’s get you dry.”
He takes my hand and leads me to the bathroom on shaking legs. I feel as though I were a hundred years old. I lean on the sink and Ambrogio unzips the back of my dress.
“No,” I say. He can’t see me naked. “Let me do it . . . on my own.”
I take the towel, push him out of the en-suite, and close the door. I lock it. I stand with my back pressed up against the door and take a deep breath. Holy fuck. What just happened? I peel off wet clothes: Beth’s dress, the Wonderbra, my soaking knickers, and throw them on the floor in a heap. There’s blood on my hands, my arms, my face. I look like a fucking ax murderer. I look like an extra from Saw. I run the shower over my feet, washing off vomit, over my hands, washing off blood caked under my fingernails, the red streaked across my forearms, my neck, my cheeks.
“I’ll put Ernie to bed,” Ambrogio calls through the door.
“OK,” I say. Baby Ernie . . . oh my God, now I’m his mum.
I turn off the tap and step out of the shower. I still don’t feel clean, but I’ve been under the water for what seems like an hour. I pull on Beth’s dressing gown—warm and fluffy—and a pair of Beth’s slippers, the complimentary kind from some fancy hotel. I stand in front of my reflection in the mirror and study my face. Do I really look like Beth? I’m squinting, swaying, light-headed from the shower. I steady myself on the sink. I can’t see any resemblance.
I still have mascara streaked down my cheeks like fake, black clown tears. Beth’s cleansing cream is on the side; I wipe off the makeup over my eyelids and under my eyes, scrubbing and scrubbing until my skin’s red raw and all of the blackness has gone.
Chapter Sixteen
It was an accident. She slipped,” I say.
“It’s OK, Beth, you don’t have to explain.”
Ambrogio sits on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. He looks up when I enter the room. I creep into the bedroom slowly, slowly, millimeter by millimeter, inch by inch, as though approaching a sleeping tiger, as though avoiding a roadside bomb. Ambrogio’s face looks pale and drawn, it’s almost like he has suddenly aged. There are wrinkles on his forehead I hadn’t noticed before. Is that a gray hair on his head?
“It was an accident,” I repeat, sinking down next to him. If I keep on saying it, perhaps I’ll believe it?
“What do you mean? Of course it wasn’t an accident. We were going to kill her. Just not in our own backyard. Merda.”
They were going to kill me. He can’t mean it, surely? Beth would never agree to something like that. And anyway, why would they want me dead? That’s ridiculous. I’ve done nothing wrong. I know my sister said she hated me, but that was in the heat of the moment. She didn’t mean it. Not Beth.
“I didn’t mean to,” I say at last. My voice is phony and weak.
“What are you saying? It’s just a coincidence?”
“We were arguing by the pool and she fell.”
Ambrogio looks up in disbelief. He studies my face with searching eyes. He thinks I’m lying.
“It was. It was an accident,” I say. “Synchronicity? Serendipity?”
Ambrogio sighs.
“OK. Fine. It was an accident. But it might not look that way to the authorities. If we call the ambulance, the police will get involved. A British tourist dying out here? The press would be all over us: a media circus. You could get done for manslaughter. I can’t have a scandal. I can’t be investigated by the fucking police.”
He speaks quickly, urgently; there’s a desperate tone to his voice like an infant whining. He can’t be investigated? What’s his problem? Keep your mouth shut, Alvina; if you were Beth, you’d know.
“It’s not a risk I’m willing to take. Not now in the middle of this deal. . . .” His voice is raised. He leaps up from the bed and punches the door—BANG! The wood cracks. He stands with his back to me, shoulders heaving. What the fuck is he talking about? Is he angry with me? Will he punch me too? I shrink back against the headboard and curl into a ball, brace myself for the hit.
Nothing.
Ambrogio turns; his face is hard. He paces the room, pacing, pacing, an angry gorilla in a cage at the zoo.
“So, what do we do?” I say at last, when I see he isn’t going to jump me. “We can’t just leave her lying there.”
“Let me think,” Ambrogio snaps.
He paces some more.
All he cares about is getting busted. He doesn’t give a shit about Alvie. About me!
“Listen,” he says, coming toward me. “Who knew Alvie was coming to Sicily? You, me, and British Airways. Anyone else?” I shake my head. “Any of her friends?”
“She didn’t have any friends.”
“No friends? Are you sure?”
I nod.
“Everyone has frie
nds, Beth. What about at work?”
“I doubt it. Honestly. I think she just got fired.”
I look down at my hands, play with Beth’s ring. Diamond and onyx, black and white.
Ambrogio sighs. “It’s all happened too quickly. The plan was to wait. The plan was to fucking stay in control.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, because I feel like I should. “I’m sorry about everything.”
Ambrogio sits down on the end of the bed.
“If anyone checked her flights, it would show that she landed in Catania. Who knows she arrived here at this villa?”
“You, me, Emilia, Salvatore,” I say. I think of Ernesto and the guard at the amphitheater, but I don’t know his name. Beth knew his name, but now I can’t ask her.
“Is that it?”
I hesitate. “Yeah, yeah, that’s everyone.”
“OK, now listen to me, this is what we’re going to do. Under ordinary circumstances, of course we’d call an ambulance. But given the nature of my business, our business, we can’t have the authorities snooping around.”
He’s lost his cool. An angry vein has appeared on his forehead, purple, throbbing, jagged.
“Now, this bit’s important,” he says, moving toward me up the bed and leaning in close. He takes hold of my hand and squeezes it hard. There’s a fleck of white spit on his lower lip. He lowers his voice. “We tell Emilia and Salvo that Alvie went home. It’s tragic about your sister. I’m very sad. But you have to understand: we’re going to have to deal with her body ourselves.”
I leap up from the bed.
“‘Deal with her body’?” I repeat. “She’s only just died and you’re talking about what?”
“Beth, listen to me: we only have a few hours left before it gets light. Emilia will come. The neighbors, the postman . . . We can’t just leave her bleeding all over the fucking patio. Even if it was an accident—”
“What do you mean if?”
“Even though it was an accident . . . the police will be all over us. There’s too much at stake.”
Why, what’s at stake?
“They could even suspect you of murder.”
There’s that m word. I don’t like it. I hold his gaze. I think he’s trying to protect me.
“So what’re you going to do? Bury her in the garden?” I say at last.
“And then the gardener finds a woman buried under my lawn? Are you out of your mind?”
I don’t think I meant it, but I have no idea. I’ve never done this before. I don’t know the protocol.
“What then?” I say.
Ambrogio lowers his voice. “I’ll call my guys. They owe me a favor; they’ll sort us out. But it has to be now. Right now. Tonight.”
“Where will they take her? What about a funeral?”
“Shit, Beth, you’re not exactly a devout fucking Catholic. Don’t go all religious on me now and pretend you care about a church fucking burial. That was only part of the plan to give us time to get away. Don’t pretend you’re worried about her soul. Cristo! Dio!”
He punches some buttons into his phone, then shouts into the mouthpiece in angry Italian. It’s supposed to be a beautiful language, mellifluous, romantic, but tonight it echoes like gunfire. I glance at the clock on the bedside table. The numbers are jumping, flashing red on black. I can only just read it: 1:13 a.m. After a while, he hangs up the phone. His voice is softer now, gentle.
“Beth, do you want to go outside and say goodbye?”
Oh, shit. I do not want to see her. I suddenly feel sick. I can still taste the vomit at the back of my throat. “Where will they take her?” I ask again.
“That’s not our problem. We don’t need to know. In Sicily a lot of people disappear. Right now, I need to make another phone call.” He gestures to the door.
Would Beth be cool with this? Disposing of my body in the middle of the night? Calling some guys up to make me “disappear”? I shake my head in disbelief. Beth would definitely not be cool with this; there’s no way in hell, it’s fucking insane. But me? You know what? I don’t want the police showing up here either. That’s one thing that’s going my way. . . .
Chapter Seventeen
I look at the hand as though it were a stranger’s; I don’t seem to recognize it. I can’t remember who it belongs to. I don’t know the back of my own fucking hand. It’s shaking, shaking so hard I can’t steady it. I try to reach the handle and open the door that leads out to the patio, leads out to my sister, but I can’t quite grasp it. My fingers tremble; my palm slips away and I can’t—can’t even open the fucking door.
Ambrogio’s on the phone again, speaking to his “friends.” Who are these guys who owe him a favor? Who dispose of dead bodies in the middle of the night? I don’t care as long as they get rid of her. I never want to see her again. I don’t know how long I stand here trembling with my hands flap-flap-flapping like a bird’s broken wings, but eventually the handle snaps down and I step through the door.
It’s dark. It’s quiet. I expect to see a policeman leap out from the shadows—“You’re under arrest!”—hear Salvo sprinting up the driveway, “Ma che cazzo hai fatto?” But it’s silent; there’s no one. The cold night air is making me shiver. It seems to have dropped by twenty degrees. Beyond the pool, the garden stretches out into nothing, nothing but blackness. The light from the villa illuminates the pool and the long, monstrous figure of my sister’s corpse, lying along the edge of the water.
The stars look down at me, judging me, blaming me, like trillions of tiny eyeballs, the eyes of God. The moon is beginning to set behind Etna. Soon, the sun will rise and reveal the bloodshed. The postman will come. Salvatore. Emilia. I need to hurry up.
I concentrate on moving my legs. And I’m walking, one silent foot after the other, soft slippers padding. Dreamlike, I’m floating, walking on air. I look down to steady myself; focus on the ground to stop myself drifting up, up, and away. I’m weightless, lunar, walking on the moon. I stop a few inches from my sister’s head. A pool of blood spreads out from her skull: a slick black lake. And now that I’m here I don’t know what to do. I just stare. Once again, I am staring at Elizabeth, silent and speechless. Elizabeth’s body. Elizabeth’s face. Elizabeth’s hair. A shiver runs down my spine. She’s dead and I killed her. So effortless. So quick. It’s like nothing has happened. The stars are still shining. I’m in the same garden. The volcano’s still there. It doesn’t seem real.
I can’t believe it.
I need more proof.
I reach my hand toward the blood, extend a finger, dip it in. The blood feels warm in the cool night air. It feels slippery, thick, and wet. I study my fingertip: shiny, red-black. It’s something instinctive, primitive, primal. I have to do it. To check that it’s real. I lick my finger: warm, wet iron. Unmistakable. Blood.
◆
Ambrogio stands as I burst into the room. He’s finished on the phone. There’s a strange look on his face I can’t read. He raises a hand toward my head—oh, fuck!—I wince and turn away—but he wipes a strand of hair from my cheek.
“What’s the matter? You flinched.”
“Nothing,” I say. I’m hypervigilant, jumpy as a cat.
“You did, you flinched. Amore, come here. You know I’d never hit you! What is this?” he says. He pulls me in close and squeezes me tight. I think I believe him. Just about. Perhaps he’s not a wife beater after all? He wouldn’t hit Beth, but would he hit Alvie? The scary thing is, I don’t know.
“Did you say goodbye?” he asks, at last.
“Uh-huh.” I nod.
“Bene. Good.”
He puts his arm around my waist and leads me over to the bed. “Nino will be here in fifteen minutes. I’m going to start cleaning up. I think you should sleep, try to get some rest.”
“OK,” I say. Who is Nino? I down a glass of water and the nausea pas
ses.
“I’m so sorry, Beth,” he says again, planting a kiss onto my forehead. “It sounds awful, but . . . I’m just so glad it wasn’t you.”
My stomach sinks; the Earth falls away from beneath my feet. What the fuck?
I give him a look like I want him to die. I must look cross because he says straight away, “I’m sorry, that was out of order. It’s just—I love you so much.” He tries to kiss me, but I turn my head. I can still taste vomit. He hugs me instead. “The whole point of this is to keep you safe, don’t forget that. This is for you! You, me, and Ernie. When I saw her lying there—the spitting image of you—I just . . . We’re doing the right thing. For our family.”
“Thank you,” I say, because I can’t think of anything else. My brain isn’t working; I’ve forgotten how to talk. I pull back the sheets and sit down on the bed. Beth’s bed. My bed.
I’m about to lie down, when Ambrogio says, “Don’t you want to wear your nightie?”
I don’t know where Beth kept her pajamas. I look up at him, lost. I have no idea. I can’t let him see that I’m struggling here. I’m aware of my heart: BU-BUMP, BU-BUMP. All the muscles in my shoulders tense. Eventually, after what feels like hours, he turns to the mahogany chest and pulls out the second drawer down. Oh. So that’s where. He hands me a tiny silk night dress by Giorgio Armani. It’s lighter than air. I hold it and look at it, at the little pink roses embroidered along the hem, at the beautiful lace, the delicate straps. It smells of Beth: Miss Dior Chérie. I lie down on the bed and close my eyes.
There’s a rap on the door and Ambrogio jumps.
“Ah, Nino,” he says.
DAY FOUR
Lust
“My Lady Bits Clench
Like My Grandmother’s Gums
Around a Turkish Delight.”
@Alvinaknightly69
Chapter Eighteen
It was Beth’s fault my heart got broken.
It was the last night of Freshers’ Week and our nineteenth birthday. It was lust at first sight.
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