by Karen Swan
She knew he was still working there – Elena’s increasingly irritable mood as the hole in the courtyard became ever more established, with props and ladders and a winch with scanning equipment, told her as much – and she hated, no, deplored, how crushed she felt by the disappointment that he hadn’t sought her out again after their lunch. Clearly, that spark she’d thought she had detected between them, albeit intermittent, had only been there for her. She felt stupid and idiotic and she couldn’t understand why it bothered her so much, when most of the time she didn’t even like the guy.
‘You sound grumpy,’ Alé said, her voice echoing on the loudspeaker of her phone as Cesca sat cross-legged on the floor in the Victorian bloomers she liked to wear as shorts. The acoustics in the gallery were fantastic.
‘I’m not grumpy,’ she denied. ‘I’m just . . . tired.’
‘Oh, poor baby. Life in the palace too tiring?’ Alé teased. ‘You should spend a day in the classroom with my fourteen-year-old literature students, see how you like it then.’
‘You’re right. You’re a saint and I’m a loser.’
There was a pause. ‘Okay, that’s it – we’re going out.’
‘I can’t go out. I’m still working.’
‘You know the rule – first sign of sarcasm? Tequila.’
‘Alé—’
‘Don’t argue. It’s Friday night, anyway. What the hell else did you think we were going to do? I’ll be at the bar in twenty minutes.’
She hung up.
Cesca looked back out into the empty garden: the hard hats were all lined up on the grass like a row of plastic ducks. Everyone was gone for the weekend; only Elena’s light shone from her apartment on the top floor, and she really didn’t fancy getting into yet another discussion about her fabulous life at this time of night. Alé was right. What was she even doing here, hoping to see a guy who clearly couldn’t care less about seeing her, for whom pizza had merely been thanks for a life saved, who enraged her as much as he intrigued her, whom she only knew by his last name? It was a Friday night in Rome and she was a tired, sarcastic twenty-seven-year-old. What the hell else was she going to do?
Blue light spilled out onto the streets, hot bodies cooling in the night breeze. Alé had got them a table at the back by the toilets – far from ideal, but it meant they could sit. The boys were possibly going to join them later, although the girls both knew that depended on whether they got lucky at the place they were at now.
They’d been there an hour and were on their fourth shots when Alé cut to the chase.
‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ she said, leaning forward earnestly, her pupils beginning to dilate as the liquor danced in her bloodstream. Her wild hair was caught up in her usual messy bun, a turquoise bra strap on full show beneath her white vest, the pockets peeking through the bottom of her super-short cutoffs. Cesca was certain she must be the sexiest teacher any of her pupils had ever seen. She certainly made a decided contrast to Cesca, with her floppy plait and panama, white cotton bloomer shorts and Edwardian camisole.
‘Fire away,’ Cesca said, raising her shot glass and downing it, finishing with a hiccup for garnish.
Alé’s mouth opened for a long time before she could say the words. ‘. . . I’m having an affair.’
Cesca’s mouth dropped open – but not with shock at the revelation. Did Alé really think she didn’t already know about it?
‘Nooooo. That’s not the bad bit,’ Alé slurred, cutting her off before she could say a word. ‘. . . It’s with my headmaster.’
‘Oh God, Alé, why?’ Cesca wailed, slapping her forehead with her hand and realizing at some level that her own reaction was also a very drunk one.
‘Because I wanted to try an older guy. You know, to see if it’s true what they say about . . .’ She arched an eyebrow.
‘No, I meant why him?’
Alé shrugged. ‘Because he was there?’
Cesca curled her lip in response. ‘How old is he?’
‘Fifty-four.’
‘Eww!’ Cesca cried, half-laughing too as Alé grabbed her hand and squeezed it, collapsing into giggles. ‘. . . And is it true?’
‘Yes!’
They both laughed wildly again, throwing their heads back. ‘Well, I guess that’s something!’ She shook her head, looking across at her wild and free friend as she refilled their glasses with the bottle, tequila splashing over the side.
‘I really love you, Alé,’ she gushed, slurring her words too. ‘You’ve been such a good friend to me this past year.’
‘Aw, I love you too, baby,’ Alé cooed. ‘I don’t know how I ever partied without you. We’re a master team.’
‘No, no, but it’s not just that.’ Cesca managed to smack the table emphatically, trying to focus. ‘I so admire you, Alé. I wish I could be more like you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re free. You’re completely true to who you are. You know what you want and you go get it. Me, I can’t cross the room without changing my mind.’
‘That is not true.’
‘It is. It is,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I can’t even hold an opinion long enough to hold a grudge.’
‘Well, why would you want to do that?’
Cesca’s shoulders sagged. Why indeed?
The thumping bass made the floor vibrate and she looked down at it worriedly. ‘Did you know that, right now, there could be just a few inches of earth between us sitting here and an ancient quarry? And that every single one of these drumbeats could be dislodging it, bit by bit, until . . . whoosh!’ She blew out through her cheeks and threw her arms up in the air.
Alé looked at her, aghast. ‘No!’
‘Yes!’ Cesca said, shaking her head like an anxious sage. ‘We could be seconds from disaster.’
‘Not here,’ a voice said, interrupting. ‘It’s only a category one risk here.’
Cesca looked up, finding herself almost nose to nose with a man bending down at their table.
‘Cantarelli!’ Cesca exclaimed, almost falling backwards off her chair. ‘What are you . . . you doing here?’ It seemed incongruous in the extreme to see him relaxing in a bar.
‘Having a drink with friends,’ he said, jerking his head in the direction of a group of guys by the bar, but his eyes were steady upon her, assessing her level of drunkenness and probably grading her as a category four.
‘You have friends?’
‘That’s rude.’ But he grinned. He actually grinned. Clearly, this was off-duty Cantarelli. ‘Yes, I have friends.’
‘You’re . . .’ She wanted to say various things. Handsome. Sexy. Interesting. Bad-tempered. Forgetful. Bossy. ‘Not dusty,’ she managed.
He cracked another smile, clearly amused by her altered state. ‘No. I showered.’
‘Oh.’ She tried not to think about that too. She couldn’t trust her face right now.
He looked over apologetically at Alé. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt,’ he said in Italian.
‘No, by all means, continue. This is fascinating. I’m Alessandra. Call me Alé.’
‘Hi Alé. Nico.’
‘Take a seat. Join us.’
‘Well, just for a minute. Thanks.’
‘Nico?’ Cesca echoed, just about keeping up. ‘Now, I didn’t know that.’
He looked at Cesca again, then arched an eyebrow at Alé. ‘Been here long?’
‘Not long enough. Cesca was just about to tell me why she can’t hold a grudge.’
‘Huh?’ Cesca hiccupped.
‘Sounds interesting. Who have you got a grudge against?’ he asked, looking back at her again.
She wished he wouldn’t. It made it too hard to concentrate. ‘No one.’
He pinned her with another one of those stares. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘It’s just a p-person—’
‘Oh yeah?’ Nico grinned, more amused by the minute.
‘—Who’s really . . . annoying.’ She finished with a hic
cup.
‘Why are they annoying?’ Alé asked, leaning in closer and looking deeply sympathetic.
‘Because he is mean to me. And then he’s nice.’ Her voice rose up on the last word, highlighting her bafflement. ‘I mean, if I want to hate him, then he should just let me hate him. He can’t just suddenly be all nice and sexy. He must stay hateful. For all of the time.’
‘So this annoying person’s a he then,’ Nico said, watching her.
‘They usually are,’ Alé nodded earnestly. ‘And if they’re annoying, then they’re out: that’s my rule. That’s what I’ve told my guy. I don’t want any of this “falling in love with me” crap.’
‘Alé’s having an affair. With an older man,’ Cesca said dramatically.
‘Good for you,’ Nico said diplomatically. ‘How much older?’
‘Twenty-five years.’
‘Ah.’
‘I wanted to see if it was true about—’
‘Yeah, right, got it,’ he said quickly.
‘How old are you?’ Alé asked after a pause.
‘Thirty-six.’
Alé’s eyes widened. ‘He’s an older man,’ she said to Cesca, as though Nico wasn’t actually still sitting there.
‘Alé!’ Cesca spluttered.
‘You forget that Cesca’s got her annoying grudge man to deal with first,’ Nico said.
‘Ah yes.’ Alé pouted. ‘Shame. You’re hot.’
He grinned. ‘Thanks.’ He noticed Cesca staring at him. ‘What?’
She frowned, studying him intensely. ‘Have I ever seen you . . . without a hard hat?’
He laughed again. ‘Yes, you have. Lunch, remember?’
But Cesca didn’t remember. She couldn’t think straight right now. ‘No, I don’t think I have. I think I thought it was surgically attached to his head,’ she said in wonderment to Alé.
‘He looks good without it. Good hair,’ Alé said, reaching up and ruffling it, before leaning back to get a better look at him. ‘Good everything.’
‘You look good without the hat,’ Cesca said to him.
‘Thank you. So do you. You have beautiful hair.’
Cesca’s mouth parted. She frowned as she did remember something. ‘You said I have bright hair.’
‘It is bright. Bright and beautiful.’
‘You are very annoying,’ she sighed, resting her cheek in her hand and feeling incredibly weary.
Nico blinked at her.
‘Cesca used to hide her beautiful bright hair under a wig all day. Can you believe that?’ Alé asked him.
‘A wig?’
‘She was a barrister.’
Nico looked back at Cesca but her eyes were closed. ‘Then what are you doing talking fairy tales with that foolish woman all day?’ He sounded cross, he sounded like Guido. He was back to on-duty Cantarelli again. ‘Why would you give something like that up?’
She didn’t reply except to open her eyes reluctantly, squinting against the too-bright lights of the bar. Was that one glass in front of her? Or two?
‘Because I did,’ she shrugged, feeling so sleepy now.
‘But why?’ he asked, tapping her arm, as though to get her attention, as though to keep her awake. ‘Cesca? Are you mad? Why would you do that?’
‘Well, you would too if you’d killed someone,’ she mumbled.
His hand fell away, his heat off her skin. ‘What?’ he whispered. ‘You . . . ?’
Somewhere in her mind, Cesca knew a terrible thing had just happened but she couldn’t quite reach it. She felt very far away. Oblivion was claiming her.
There was a long silence. Even Alé wasn’t talking.
‘Come on. We need to get her to bed,’ Nico said.
‘I’ll take her,’ Alé said, swaying slightly as she tried to get up.
‘No. You need to go home too.’
‘What’s going on here? Alé? Cesca?’
Faintly, Cesca could hear Matteo’s voice.
‘They’re drunk. They need to get home.’ It was Nico.
There was a pause. ‘That’s fine,’ she heard Matteo say. ‘We can handle it from here.’
‘I’ll call a cab,’ Guido said, slightly further away.
‘I’m happy to take Cesca back. I know where she lives,’ Nico said.
‘Yeah?’ Matteo sounded prickly, Cesca thought. ‘Well, thanks for your help but we’ve got this.’
‘Okay. Whatever. Just trying to help.’
Cesca felt arms around her, lifting her to her feet. She opened her eyes. Matteo had his arm around her waist, her arm slung over his shoulder. ‘You okay, Cesca? We’re going to take you home now.’
‘Matty?’
‘Yeah. Looks like you started the party without us.’
He began to walk her out. ‘Where’s . . . where’s Nico?’
‘I’m here.’
She saw him standing just off to the side, his hands jammed in his pockets, that angry look in his eyes again.
She pointed at him. ‘You . . .’ She faltered, trying to think of the words. ‘You are a very annoying man.’
He nodded. ‘So you said.’
‘Did I?’ She pouted, unable to remember, unable to think as he followed her with his eyes until Matteo led her out of sight.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Rome, August 1980
Even by her standards, the palazzo was magnificent. Fronting onto one end of the majestic Piazza Angelica in a charming wash of baby-blue plaster dotted with ivory shutters, it was a country house in the city, a fortress amidst the cafes: somewhere she could be safe. Her father would have approved, though he would never know of it now. His death – eighteen months earlier – still stunned her. Was he really gone? Could it really be true?
For the first week, as Vito attended to business, she had walked the full length of the building with the housekeeper, Maria, trying to remember the names of each of the near-1,000 rooms: the Papal Suite, the Whispering Gallery (with walls clad entirely in onyx), the Mirrored Gallery . . . Their unapologetic baroque richness was a culture shock to her clean-cut preppy sensibilities; the fact that they remained today exactly as they had been 600 years earlier was a concept difficult to comprehend for the woman who was used to waking up every week in a different hotel and refurbishing her homes on a biannual basis.
Vito’s private apartment was a mere ten-room suite on the top floor of the east wing. He needed no more space than that, he said. Laney loved his modesty – they both came from excess but she felt inspired by this man who wanted no more than just enough. Apart from some black-and-white photos of his parents and himself, and the white monogrammed linen envelope which held his folded pyjamas on the corner of the bed, the only evidence that the apartment was private to the rest of the palazzo was that his furniture was brown and not gilded. Standing behind the metre-thick stone walls, watching the colour and clamour of the markets outside the windows on one side of the room, and then revelling in the bucolic peace of the garden on the other, she knew she had found the refuge she had been seeking.
The garden was five acres of symmetrical perfection, beginning with a formal parterre and orange and lemon tree courtyard nestled within the colonnaded wings of the building, before opening out into terraced lawns with conical clipped box trees and mirrored ponds. Every time she looked down upon it – as she did whenever Vito was in a meeting or on the phone – she could just see herself drifting through it with a basket of cut flowers on one arm; she could see the parties they would have – just like her parents’ ones at Graystones; she could see their children running through the maze . . . A new life was unfolding, she could feel it. After so many false starts and losses and tears and frog princes, the real thing had arrived and from now on, her life would be here. She would be Vito’s wife, the Principessa Elena dei Damiani Pignatelli della Mirandola (Elena was so much more elegant, Vito had reasoned).
For the first time, she felt she was what she’d been told all her life: lucky.
September 1980
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br /> ‘She is my oldest friend. I promise you, you will adore her. She has a wild spirit like you. When we were children, we would run like wolves through the halls and play football in the ballroom.’ He tapped her nose with his index finger. ‘One time, when Maria Callas came to stay, she even sneaked into her bedroom and put a frog into her water glass beside the bed.’
Laney smiled, looping her arms around his waist. ‘Well then, I like her already.’
‘You will be firmest friends, you’ll see. You will be so busy talking and making plans, you will have no more time for me.’
She tightened her grip around him, resting her chin on his dinner shirt and looking up at him; she knew she would never tire of looking at that handsome face. ‘Never.’
‘I’ve told her all about you; she can’t wait to meet you.’
‘Tell me her husband’s name again.’
He smiled. ‘I have told you five times already. Sigmundo. He is the Count of Carbonana.’
‘I just like to hear you say it. Sigmundo, Count of Carbonana,’ Laney echoed in her best Italian accent. She had been having lessons for the past month but her voice kept going down on the stresses when it should go up and she could never remember how to pronounce ‘cc’ and ‘ch’.
‘He works as a commercial attaché to the US Embassy here but it looks likely he’ll be made Ambassador to Madrid.’
‘Does he know about his wife’s wild past?’ she teased with mock horror, pulling away and seeing a smudge of her foundation left on his shirt. ‘Oh dammit. Let me see if I can—’
‘No. Maria will deal with it.’ He rang the bell that connected to the staff quarters, and unbuttoned his shirt while he waited, reaching for a fresh one on the hanger; Maria appeared at their elbows not a minute later.
‘Would you attend to this, please, Maria?’ Vito asked her, holding out the shirt.
Laney crossed the room and put in the drop emerald Bulgari earrings that he had given her as an engagement gift. She went to put on the necklace too – a magnificent emerald, ruby and diamond sautoir with a suspended hexagonal emerald of almost 45 carats. ‘Darling, would you?’ she asked, lifting her hair off her neck in readiness.