by Karen Swan
Cesca didn’t know what to say; she’d never been in love. She sat back a little on the sofa, her eyes freely roaming the room again. Now that she was sitting, she took in details she hadn’t noticed earlier – the small side tables either side of the sofas, which were carved from wonderfully twisted chunks of wood and inset with glittering semi-precious crystals; a white alpaca-fur throw over a seat cushion; a potted blossom tree in one corner.
‘But let’s not talk about me. I’m far more interested in you.’ Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. ‘Because you, I think, are the girl in the hat.’
Cesca looked back to find Elena watching her with interest. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘You usually wear a hat.’
‘I do, usually, yes,’ she said in surprise.
As if reading her mind, the Viscontessa continued. ‘I’m not as mobile as I once was; I spend a lot of time at the windows. I enjoy watching the comings and goings of the square.’ She smiled. ‘I often see you hurrying past in your hat and I wondered what you must look like. I have only ever seen your hair clearly.’
Cesca rubbed her bare, freckled arms self-consciously, still scarcely more tanned than she’d been when she’d arrived here just over seven months ago in rainy November. ‘I have to wear a hat because of my colouring. I burn to a crisp otherwise.’
‘It’s worth it. You are so distinctive – like a flame. I can see you when you turn into the piazza from the far corner.’
Cesca smiled shyly. ‘That’s what my groups say too. It has its benefits, definitely.’
‘Your groups?’
‘I’m a tour guide.’
‘Oh, I see.’ She looked at Cesca with curious eyes. ‘I wouldn’t have guessed that. Do you enjoy it?’
Cesca shrugged. ‘It pays the rent, I guess. And I meet some pretty interesting people sometimes. But I write a blog, too. I guess that’s my real interest.’
‘A blog,’ the Viscontessa echoed, looking blank.
‘It’s a bit like an online diary or journal. It’s called The Rome Affair. I write posts about beautiful things I see in the city or which attract my attention. This city is so full of history and intrigue.’
‘Indeed it is. Why, just look around us here,’ she said, indicating the Renaissance building they were in right now. ‘Do you have many readers?’
‘Forty-three thousand.’
‘Heavens! And do they all contact you every time you write something?’
‘Thankfully not!’ Cesca guffawed. ‘But that really isn’t a huge number. The very biggest blogs have readerships in the millions.’
‘Do they really?’ the Viscontessa breathed, looking fascinated. ‘And how often do you write something?’
‘Some people post daily, so that they appear higher in search engine results, but I prefer to do it weekly. I don’t want it to become too pressured, worrying about having enough content. The point is it’s a celebration of everything I love about this city. I don’t want to have to post for the sake of it. I think my readers appreciate that there’s an authenticity to what I do – they know I only write about something if I really love it.’
‘So then, really, you are a writer.’
Cesca considered it for a moment. ‘Umm . . . I guess you could say that.’
Elena nodded, just as Alberto came back in with the two drinks, holding them aloft on a silver tray. Cesca flickered her eyes towards him as he set hers down on the quartz side table beside her, first wiping the immaculate surface with a silk cloth. ‘And what made you come to Rome?’
Cesca felt her heart catch, as it always did when she was asked this question. ‘It’s just always been my favourite place in the world. I think I probably first fell in love with it watching Roman Holiday when I was a little girl and then, when I came here, it was exactly as I had hoped it would be.’
The Viscontessa smiled and nodded as she talked, looking over at her with those extraordinary eyes, her gaze roaming Cesca’s unmade-up face, her wild, unbrushed hair pulled back ready for her bath, her vintage clothes.
‘Do you work?’ Cesca asked politely, feeling the chill of the glass in her palm.
‘Me?’ The Viscontessa paused for a moment as though having to consider it. ‘I suppose you would say, these days, I paint.’
‘Oh? What type of thing?’ she asked, sipping on the bellini and wondering how she had gone from dinner with friends in Trastevere to drinks with a princess in under an hour.
‘Landscapes, mainly,’ the Viscontessa replied, her eyes trained inquisitively on her guest. ‘Occasionally portraits too. You would be wonderful to paint. That glorious hair of yours.’
‘Oh . . .’ Cesca demurred, shaking her head modestly. She couldn’t think of anything worse. ‘Are . . . are these yours?’ she asked, motioning towards the giant canvases on the walls.
‘Sadly not. Would that I were so talented. No, I’m afraid I’m just a silly old woman with delusions of skill.’
She was smiling, her self-deprecation charming and deployed – Cesca sensed – to put her at her ease, but she wondered how old the Viscontessa really was. Her skin was beautiful and no doubt the result of an intensive and expensive skincare regime begun in adolescence. Perhaps she was in her early seventies?
The Viscontessa’s hand tremored suddenly, so that the bellini splashed perilously close to the top of the glass. Alberto rushed over and took the glass from her grasp as Cesca held her breath; to spill anything on these sofas or rugs seemed unthinkable.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Elena tutted under her breath as Alberto fussed.
Cesca quickly rose to standing, not wishing to prolong the Viscontessa’s embarrassment. ‘I should get back. It’s late and I’ve already imposed on your time as it is.’
‘Nonsense.’ She smiled, but rose, shakily, too. ‘I wish I could have offered you greater hospitality than a mere drink. If it were earlier, I would have invited you to stay for dinner.’
‘You’re very kind but I assure you, that’s not at all necessary. I’m just sorry your bag was stolen at all. I take it you’ve cancelled your credit cards?’
The Viscontessa waved away the enquiry with another of her dismissive shakes of her head. ‘The only thing of any value in it was still there. It contains a letter from my dear late husband, which he wrote on his deathbed. For fifteen years, I have taken it everywhere with me.’
‘Fifteen—’ Cesca frowned, faltering, confused. ‘Forgive me, I’m sorry. I wasn’t prying – I was looking for identifying details and I saw the letter, it had your name on it. But it hadn’t been opened.’
‘Oh, no, I haven’t read it yet,’ the Viscontessa said in a tone that suggested to do so would be rash. ‘Fifteen years I’ve been holding it close to me, waiting for just the right moment. It sounds silly, I know, but I fear that . . . to open it would end the conversation somehow. This way, there’s still something left to say between us. It gives me a reason to get up each morning. Every day I wonder if today will be the day I finally open it.’
Cesca didn’t know what to say. Fifteen years carrying around a love letter? ‘Maybe today really is the day then,’ she shrugged. ‘It so easily could have been lost forever and you would never have known his last words to you.’
The Viscontessa nodded. ‘Perhaps you are right. I am in your debt, Miss Hackett.’
‘Please. You really aren’t.’
‘Well, I am pleased, at least, to be able to offer you the reward. Alberto?’ Her eyes flickered towards him in the corner behind Cesca and she looked over to see the butler holding out a thickly wadded envelope towards her.
There was a reward? Cesca shook her head even as her eyes widened at the sight of it. It was so thick! ‘That isn’t necessary, really.’
‘I should like to.’
Cesca should have liked to, too. ‘But it’s the principle of it. I don’t believe you should have to pay people to return something that’s rightfully yours.’
The Viscontessa looked flabbergasted. ‘But it is fi
ve thousand euros. Surely it would be helpful for you?’
Cesca swallowed. It was months of rent but she knew she could never accept it; she simply wasn’t made that way. ‘Thank you, but no.’
The Viscontessa’s expression perceptibly changed. ‘I don’t often meet people with principles.’
Cesca held out her hand. Unlike when her host had done the same earlier that evening, it was a straightforward proposition with the palm side on. Everyone knew where they stood with her handshake. ‘It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Viscontessa.’
‘Please, you must call me Elena,’ she replied, looking at her with what appeared to be both bafflement and intrigue.
‘You have a beautiful home,’ Cesca added.
Elena laughed at the gross understatement, the throaty sound still as surprising as it had been on the first occasion. ‘It is pretty, isn’t it?’ she replied with even greater under-estimation. ‘Well, I must say, I’m very pleased to have met you at last.’
Alberto opened the door, ready to escort her out through the interconnecting salons, the gaudy gold trims and absinthe-green walls stretching out before them like the physical manifestation of a headache. Cesca took a deep breath, not wanting to step into it again. In here, the space was calming, reflective, expansive. But beyond those doors – what was it? She had a feeling of needing to galvanize herself just to walk through it, a sense of inescapable history trapped in the walls; of a past that still ruled the present; of a world that had been built on secrets and lies.
Chapter Three
The gasp was like a scream, a bullet, a punch – shocking and violent, wresting her from her sleep like a soul being ripped from its body. She was sitting up in bed, the sheet twisted around her hips, her muscles trembling from the sudden shock of oblivion to consciousness, her heartbeat as panicky as a trapped bird.
She stared at the stubby shadows without seeing them, trying not to see instead the images that were burnt in her mind, tattoos that would never fade no matter how she clawed or rubbed or scratched at them. They had become a part of her now, another shadow stitched to her heels and trailing her through the sunlight and the snow, coming alive every night when the moon rose and her eyes closed.
She rolled back down to the mattress, pulling the sheet up over her shoulders, her body curled into a comma – but there would never be a pause from this. She closed her eyes and tried to fall back to sleep, knowing it would come again, knowing it was only right that it should.
This was her just deserts for what she had done.
She deserved everything she got.
The sound of the steps being swept, of the toppled geraniums being righted again, was more effective than any alarm clock and Cesca sat up in bed with a sudden gasp. She didn’t need to check her phone to know the time would be seven-forty, but she did it anyway, giving a little scream as she saw that the ‘alarm ignore’ icon was on the screen.
‘Oh no! No, no, no,’ she whimpered, throwing back the sheet and clambering into the clothes she’d discarded last night – Edwardian camisole, check; long daisy-print skirt, check; destroyed yellow Converse, check. There wasn’t time to brush her teeth or her hair. Grabbing her panama from the pine table as she sped past, she was out of the apartment in under ninety seconds from when she’d first opened her eyes.
‘Buongiorno!’ she cried to Signora Dutti as she scrambled down the steps awkwardly, trying to avoid the sweeping brush.
Signora Dutti straightened up with an expectant look and Cesca could tell at a glance that she wanted to have a conversation about her meeting with the Viscontessa last night. ‘I’m so sorry, can’t stop. I’m really late. Really, badly late,’ she cried over her shoulder.
She flew across the tiny, slumbering Piazzetta Palombella, the steel shutters to the pizzeria still down, the tables and chairs still stacked in the osteria opposite, although delicious smells were already wafting from the vents of the bakery. With one hand holding her hat onto her head, she sprinted across the Piazza Angelica without even a glance at the imposing pale-blue palace she had visited last night. A few beer bottles on the rim of the fountain were all that remained of the carousing partygoers, but unlike in her tiny pocket of Rome a few hundred metres away, where the piazzetta remained quiet at this time, here the day had already well and truly begun. A bin man was pushing his cart over the cobbles, while two carabinieri were walking slowly around the cordons which pedestrianized the central section of the square. Busiest of all, in the centre of it, were the stall-holders setting up their stalls, arranging buckets of flowers in dense tiers, displaying stripy coloured ribbon and bow pastas in open boxes, and hanging clusters of chillies and smoked sausages from the gazebo struts.
When she had first moved here, she had fallen in love with this market. It had become a normal sight to her now, but in those early days its colours and shouts and smells (some good, some not) had been all the proof she’d needed that she had been right to do the unthinkable and leave her old life – for here, everything was bold and chaotic, fresh and unformed, too big to press into a box. It gave her exactly the freedom she’d needed, the chance to escape and start afresh as someone new. Someone better.
She ran through the intermittent shadows – already hard-edged and black even at this early hour – jumping over low-slung chain railings, weaving between scooters, her long pale limbs flashing like switchblades. She passed from square to narrow street, short alley to narrow street again, the rumble of traffic on the Via del Corso like thunder as she emerged, panting, into the swarm of commuters. Dodging and ducking, she weaved her way to the front of the crowds, sprinting through the stationary cars when the lights turned red before diving into the back streets again. She outpaced a Mercedes airport limo trying to navigate a road with no more than thirty centimetres’ clearance and ran through the middle of a group of Chinese tourists, all wearing red caps as they followed their guide. She was running up the middle of the street, legs pumping, when a scooter suddenly rounded the corner at terrifying speed.
Cesca gasped as it headed straight for her. With a parked car to her right, she was forced to jump left, but she hadn’t seen the low-slung spiked chains looped between bollards and they tripped her. As she fell in a tangle of limbs towards the shiny cobbles, she got a good look at the driver – mid-thirties; athletic; dressed in navy cargo shorts and a once-white polo shirt, with his biceps bulging at the tight sleeves; and straight, brown, longish hair that peeked out past his helmet. Most striking of all were his arrogant eyes – as though he expected nothing less than for her to fall onto spikes to let him pass.
‘Hey! You bloody hooligan!’ she shouted after him in furious, native English – her Italian wasn’t strong enough yet to be truly effective at hurling insults – as he continued on without stopping. ‘Seriously?’ she asked aloud as he turned out of sight without so much as a backwards glance.
For a moment, she sat there on the ground, the cobbles chilling her skin through the cotton of her skirt, before she suddenly remembered what she’d been doing before the fall and why she’d been running. Her knee was bleeding but there was no time to worry about it, clean it or even feel it, for she had to pick herself up and carry on.
She sprinted again, trying to ignore the throb in her knee as well as the stitch in her side, but she knew it didn’t matter how fast she ran – she was two hours late. She would be getting there just as she was supposed to be finishing the tour. A few seconds, a minute wasn’t going to make any difference at this point; they’d have called someone else in ages ago.
She rounded the corner into Piazza di Trevi, the torrents from the magnificent, justly famous fountain as loud as a waterfall but, for once, the square itself was quiet. That was the point of the Sunrise Tour, after all – grabbing the opportunity to see the great Roman landmarks free from the hordes, hawkers and street-sellers that blighted the daytime trips. She sprinted past the steps, past the great statue of Neptune, and on to the tiny building around the corner, which thousands passe
d every day without noticing. There was no time for beauty right now, though, no time for culture, for—
Sonia, the girl in the ticket office, was sitting in a small kiosk by the door and jerked her head towards the inside of the building as Cesca careered through the doorway. ‘He is in the office,’ she said, with a sympathetic look.
‘Thanks, Sonia,’ Cesca gasped, still keeping up a jog past the little cinema – whose construction had been the reason this wonder had been discovered in the first place – and down the metal staircase into the Città dell’Acqua, as the subterranean space was known. It was well lit, the smooth foundations of the modern buildings sitting within metres of the rough stone of earlier dwellings – dwellings which existed, even now, under Rome’s streets. Most Romans, much less tourists, had no idea that so much of the ancient architecture that had shaped this city still stood partially intact below its streets. Trickling through the cavern was an ancient aqueduct, too: the Acqua Vergine, first built by the Roman statesman Marcus Agrippa in 19 bc, had been delivering pure drinking water to the city for over 2,000 years, and scarcely any of the millions of visitors to the impressive Trevi Fountain round the corner knew that it was fed by this very water source. But she did. She loved this city and knew it inside out and underground.
Cesca ran lightly past the narrow stepped alleys – ancient roads that now led to nowhere – for once not looking at the thin, hand-made bricks that had once formed basilicas and stadia but now stood as half-formed arches. Instead, she had her eyes fixed only on her boss’s office. The door was open, as though he’d been waiting for her to arrive.
‘Giovanni, I’m so sorry,’ she panted as soon as she reached it, hanging onto the doorframe and taking off her hat so he could see her eyes, which were wild with apology.
He glanced up at her with the hangdog look of the long-suffering, the expression in his round eyes even sorrier than hers. ‘Francesca. Look at the time. Look,’ he said, stretching out the last word to at least four syllables as he tapped his watch.