The Rome Affair

by Karen Swan

  But there was no dramatic summing up, no great surmises of Elena’s life story, for there was still one thing – something vital – which she didn’t yet know. The copy of Aurelio’s death certificate that she had requested had come through: heart failure, it had read; not a broken neck or head injury, not blood loss or any of the other likely causes of death from a car crash, as the papers had reported. Only Elena really knew the full truth of what went on that night.

  ‘I’m afraid it will have to wait,’ Alberto insisted. ‘Her Grace is resting after the journey. She wants to be prepared for when she meets with her son later this afternoon.’

  Cesca looked past him, through to that open sitting-room door again. She could do with a rest herself. This project had been the perfect distraction from Nico’s betrayal; completely immersing herself in Elena’s life meant she hadn’t had to confront her own. But the heartbreak that came with his treachery was still there, waiting for her, and as the adrenaline of her deadline ebbed away, exhaustion was claiming her. Her body felt as shattered as her heart.

  ‘Fine,’ she said loudly. ‘Well, could you please pass on to her that I need to see her urgently? Tell her ... tell her I spoke with Signora Dutti.’ That would surely flush her out.

  The butler’s brow puckered at the mention of his predecessor’s name. ‘I shall pass on your message. And this,’ he said, lifting the manuscript from her hands before she could object. ‘Good morning.’

  And the door closed in her face.

  Cesca stared at it for a few moments, knowing she was out of a job. Once Elena set eyes on what she’d written, she’d fire her for . . . insubordination. Or . . . or treason.

  Well, she wouldn’t have changed any of it, Cesca reassured herself as she walked slowly back through the galleries of gold, feeling all those eyes on her back and secrets snapping at her heels. Because she had to live with herself. She knew better than anyone that sometimes it was silence that was the lie. That sometimes it was silence that could kill.

  Cesca kept her eyes right as she walked, watching through the galleried windows the men pulling out all the equipment which had stabilized the sinkhole for the past six weeks. Struts, joists and boards were being piled up on the gravel in neat piles, ready to be carried through the palace and loaded onto the lorries which had special temporary permits to park outside in the piazza. It was strange to think that probably this time next week, none of them would be here – not them, not her, not Nico.

  She was grateful to see there was no sign of him – was he underground, making last desperate recces for any sign of his beloved ancient map that was now scattered in buildings and lost in ruins around the city? Or had he moved on to the next job, the memory of her fading already?

  ‘—it’s not an option. You know what she’s like!’

  The violence of the whisper made her stop in her tracks. Fifty metres ahead, at the far end of the gallery, was a man she had never seen before. He was suited, dark-haired, his back to her. And he was arguing with someone on the phone.

  She knew he must be Elena’s son, Giotto – the way he was leaning one arm outstretched on the pillar suggested intimate familiarity with his surroundings – but from the tension radiating off him, this clearly wasn’t the time to make his acquaintance. Discreetly, grateful for her stealthy Stan Smiths, she turned and went to leave. There were other ways out of this labyrinthine palazzo.

  ‘Christina, I don’t care—’

  She stopped dead again. Christina?

  ‘I already told you what I heard . . . No, it’ll be too late.’

  ‘Cesca.’ The hand on her arm made her jump and she flew around, coming face to face with the one – the very – person she desperately didn’t want to see. ‘Can we talk?’

  ‘No,’ she said, wresting her arm free, her heart pounding at double time because it was him, because he’d found her eavesdropping. ‘I have nothing to say to you.’

  ‘I have things to say to you.’

  ‘Tough.’ She heard footsteps and saw Giotto walking away towards the garden room, the phone still clamped to his ear. ‘Dammit, now look what you’ve done!’

  ‘Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you all week.’

  ‘I’ve been staying with a friend; not that it’s any of your business.’

  ‘With Matteo?’

  ‘What?’

  He shook his head, as though trying to push the word away. ‘Look, we have to talk about the other day.’

  ‘No, we don’t. I don’t care.’

  ‘I’m not engaged.’

  ‘I don’t c—’ she insisted. ‘. . . What?’

  ‘She broke it off after the party.’

  ‘Wait – what party?’ The man was mad. She hadn’t been at any parties where he’d—

  The penny dropped. Bulgari.

  The other penny dropped. ‘Isabella?’ she whispered. ‘She’s not your sister?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘She was your fiancée?’

  He nodded.

  ‘So you lied!’ she gasped, fresh and even more righteous indignation billowing up inside her.

  ‘Yes. I didn’t want to tell you the truth. Not then.’

  ‘Oh, I bet you didn’t!’ she raged.

  ‘No, I don’t mean it like that.’ He looked impatient. Frustrated. ‘I thought it would scare you off if I told you she was – or, rather, had been – my fiancée.’

  ‘Damn right it would!’ she blustered, hardly able to get the words out. ‘You’re practically a married man.’

  ‘No. I’m not.’ His voice was calm, his face impassive as ever and she wished she could read what went on behind those dark eyes. She wished, too, that they weren’t so beautiful . . .

  She straightened up, determined not to fall for his act again. ‘Well, I’m . . . I’m glad she saw you for what you are. Good on her. She can do better.’ She paused, running out of indignation. ‘Good riddance,’ she muttered, beginning to wilt under his continuing stare as he waited for her to finish. Did the man never blink? Was no situation ever awkward for him? Finally, she asked curiously, ‘Why did she break it off with you?’

  ‘Because she said she saw how I looked at you.’

  Oh crap. ‘Really?’

  He shrugged. ‘I didn’t know. Not back then. She knew before I did.’

  ‘Knew what?’ But the twitch of his right eyebrow was all the answer she needed.

  ‘But you hardly know me,’ she whispered. ‘And you knew me even less then.’

  ‘I know, and I told her that. I told her there was nothing going on between us; she said that was obvious. She said you were like the cat on the hot roof trying to get away from me. She doesn’t think I stand a chance with you.’

  Cesca sighed. ‘Look, that’s all very flattering but I’m not going to be the other woman in this—’

  ‘You’re not,’ he said bluntly. ‘And you’re not why we broke up. You are just the reason why we had the conversation. It wasn’t right – or not right enough – between me and her.’

  Cesca frowned, flummoxed. ‘But she’s so beautiful.’

  He shrugged again, as if to say, ‘So?’ All he said aloud was simple acknowledgement of the fact of it: ‘Yes.’

  ‘God, I’d marry her,’ she mumbled. Nico looked baffled again.

  ‘Do you love her?’

  ‘Yes. But we were always more friends than lovers. We have known each other a long time. We’re very comfortable together.’

  ‘Comfortable? What, like a mattress?’ She arched an eyebrow. ‘Perhaps that was the problem.’

  ‘Well, you, on the other hand, are not comfortable for me.’

  She allowed a wry smile and indicated her Annie Hall-inspired wide-legged cream trousers and braces, with shirt and panama. ‘I hope you’re not being rude about my dress sense again.’

  He shook his head despairingly, but his eyes had come alive and she could read him now. Tentatively, he hooked an arm around her waist, pulling her into him, and he stare
d into her eyes. ‘I don’t know what it is about you,’ he murmured. ‘But you are the single most frustrating and fascinating woman I have ever met.’

  ‘Likewise. Man version, I mean.’

  He bent to kiss her – but a sudden round of applause and cheers outside the window made them spring apart again.

  ‘Oh God,’ they both murmured, yet they were not quite able to stop their own grins as they saw the team were all watching and clapping. Pulling down a frown, Nico waved his arm to get them back to work. He winked at her as they dispersed, still laughing.

  ‘Will you be my date tonight?’ he asked, putting back on the hard hat she had grown to know and love on him.

  ‘Hmm?’ she smiled, feeling dreamy and light again after five days of alternating tears and rages. ‘Oh, wait. No.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you mean the gala thing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I can’t go to that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, because for one thing, it’s Elena’s bash and I’m going to be officially persona non grata.’

  ‘Why?’

  She grimaced. ‘I may have just presented her with some cold, hard truths.’

  He looked baffled.

  ‘Just trust me when I say she will not want to see me there.’

  ‘Well, I do. Listen, I know the organizers. You are coming as my guest.’

  ‘But—’

  He shook his head, pressing his finger against her lips to silence her. ‘No. No “but”s this time. No more waiting. We are going together. I will pick you up tonight at eight.’

  ‘Well, if you’re going to be bossy about it . . . fine,’ she grinned, happy to give in for once as she watched him go, her stomach flipping over at the sight of him.

  ‘And dress up tonight. It will be smart,’ he called, walking backwards.

  ‘Says the guy in the boilersuit,’ she quipped just before he turned out of sight, his eyes on her till the last.

  She settled on a vintage white swiss-dot cotton nightdress that fell to her feet; it had a low scoop behind, a gently billowing skirt and frilled straps that criss-crossed at the back. She usually wore it as a sundress, cinched in with a tan belt and worn with roman sandals, but Alé had loaned her a pair of strappy red suede heels and she wore a string of large turquoise beads at her throat to take it up a level. She had blow-dried her hair, too, tonging it into soft curls and pulling up the side sections, letting the rest hang down her back.

  Nico arrived at ten to eight.

  ‘Don’t you know it’s rude to arrive early?’ she asked, styling the last section of hair.

  ‘Actually, I was hoping to catch you before you were dressed,’ he said with dancing eyes as he leaned in the doorway. He had pulled off another of his transformations – showering, shaving and changing into a dinner suit. He looked so handsome, it was just rude. She giggled, putting down the curlers as he crossed the room to her, his eyes all over her. ‘You look beautiful,’ he said, before grinning. ‘But that’s a nightdress, isn’t it?’

  She laughed. ‘Yes.’

  He laughed too, his arms reaching for her. ‘Then it’s no wonder all I want to do is take you to bed.’

  They walked hand in hand across Piazzetta Palombella and Piazza Angelica, to the public parking area at the bottom. Only Elena’s cars had special permits for parking at the top of the square. Cesca saw tourists looking at them as they walked past the fountain in their finery, the sky aglow with a celestial light, the statues on the buildings beginning to darken against the horizon, slowly becoming shadows of the night.

  ‘Here she is.’ He stopped at an old Fiat 500, pillar-box red and gleaming.

  ‘Do you fit in that?’ she asked, astonished.

  ‘Yes. But I’m a little worried about you. You’re so long,’ he grinned, picking up one of her arms and waggling it playfully, as though she was Mr Tickle.

  He opened the passenger door for her.

  ‘I hope I won’t have to stick my feet out the window,’ she laughed, gathering her skirt and showing off her red shoes and dainty ankles as she tucked herself in.

  ‘Hmm. I hope you do!’ He winked.

  The little car gave a groan as he got in too and they rumbled over the cobbles. It was slow-going through the back streets, tourists and pedestrians walking in the middle of the roads, their eyes on the dinner menus or shop windows or the spectacular molten sky. As a former tour guide, she knew the city well but, as a local, Nico knew every shortcut, every turn. They zipped through the streets, glimpsing the Pantheon at the end of an alley, merging with the city and its tired commuters at Corso Vittorio, passing the crowds still queuing outside the Bocca della Verità, awaiting their own Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck moment.

  They stopped at some traffic lights, rooks cawing in the cloud pines, Mussolini’s grand monuments looking mighty in marble. A heat haze made the city shimmer as they whizzed past the illuminated flower stalls and ancient churches, the magnificent fountains that were more intricately worked than most cathedrals.

  The Colosseum hove into view, patched up and half-covered in scaffolding but still standing, as much a surviving warrior now as the gladiators who had once fought for their lives within her. Cesca kept her eyes on the stadium as Nico sped them past, merging with the sea of scooters on the peripheral road. This city would never stop being awe-inspiring to her; she could never grow bored of it.

  Or of this, she thought, glancing at Nico in the driver’s seat, both their knees tucked comically high on the tiny seats of the dinky red car. The night felt sparkling, somehow; she couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she had a feeling of being on the cusp of something momentous, as though, tonight, their lives were about to change.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Massimo’s Forum lay in the foothills of the Colosseum and the encircling ruins were duly colossal, huge and ancient slabs that were eight storeys high, lit up in red and purple lights. Cesca noted there were no signs of any scaffolding anywhere and she wondered whether Christina had been as successful in rectifying the truffle shortage. Tables had been set up in the grassy area in the middle and a small podium was set off to the front, behind which stood a vast screen showing a black-and-white image of Vito in a suit and tie. He looked older in it than in any of the photos Cesca had so far examined in the boxes.

  At a glance, she guessed there must be 500 people there. Naturally, she was the only redhead. ‘I feel conspicuous,’ she mumbled to Nico as heads began to turn at their entrance.

  ‘That’s because you are.’

  ‘You’re not one for sugar-coating things, are you?’

  ‘No,’ he said, but his eyes were gleaming as they looked down at her. She couldn’t wait till this was over and they were alone again. The first time they had got together it had happened so unexpectedly – sheer animal instinct, no reasoning, no logic involved – but this time, the anticipation was almost more than she could bear.

  Elena, the guest of honour, was already there, making her way through the crowd with her son, Giotto. The likeness to his father (and, ergo, uncle) was staggering; he was like a third twin, with deep-set elongated brown eyes, a broken nose and wide mouth. It was an aristocratic face that had surely been painted and cast many times over the generations; Cesca felt sure she’d seen marble statues of his ancestors in the British Museum. Or the Louvre, perhaps.

  ‘You know an awful lot of people,’ Cesca said through another smile as Nico was greeted by almost everyone they passed. He solicitously introduced her, names and faces fast becoming a blur as they waltzed through the crowd. Cesca wanted to hold his hand but didn’t dare, for how many of these people knew him with Isabella? And how many knew that the engagement was off? Not many, she could tell, as she sensed them regarding her with quizzical eyes.

  ‘Friends of my family.’

  They mingled, making small talk with everyone, but, inevitably, the point of the gala was soon reached and everyone was invited to take their seat
s at their tables.

  Nico led them through the crowds to a centrally positioned table that—

  ‘Oh God,’ Cesca mumbled, as she saw Elena’s distinctive tiny back. Even from behind, she looked impossibly chic in a teal silk belted kaftan with ostrich feathers at the neck and cuffs.

  ‘Stop worrying,’ Nico said, squeezing her hand. ‘You’re with me.’

  The man she had seen in the whispering gallery earlier that day greeted Nico at the table with a friendly, though formal, handshake. ‘Nico. It has been a long time,’ he said.

  ‘Too long. You look very well.’

  ‘Thank you. And you likewise.’

  ‘Giotto, may I introduce you to Francesca Hackett?’

  Giotto’s expression changed slightly at the mention of her name. ‘Signorina Hackett?’

  ‘Hello. Please, call me Cesca,’ she said, shaking his hand.

  ‘You, if I am not mistaken, are the writer of my mother’s biography?’

  She swallowed. Present tense. She wasn’t fired yet, then? ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘And how have you found the endeavour?’

  ‘Fascinating,’ she said diplomatically. ‘Your mother has led a quite remarkable life.’

  ‘Indeed she has.’ There was a coolness to Giotto’s demeanour. His manner was relaxed and she guessed he was a consummate host, but he emitted no personal warmth. She felt he had stood at a thousand of such evenings as these – a drink in his hand, small talk on his lips. ‘I must admit, I was very surprised when I first heard about the project. I have always considered my mother to be discreet to the point of evasive when it comes to talking about her life. She has certainly never been forthcoming about the events of her life before meeting my father.’