The Rome Affair

by Karen Swan

  ‘Well, it’s . . . it’s a hard thing to do, actually – examining your own past with an almost forensic eye. I’m not sure I’d rush to do it myself and my life isn’t a fraction as long or as interesting as your mother’s. It can throw you into the path of memories or experiences that you might prefer to forget.’ She wondered how much he knew about his own big brother, dead before he was born.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘It’s cathartic, though, too. You get to admit to mistakes, forgive yourself and others, wipe the slate clean.’

  ‘Well, my mother is in the winter of her life,’ Giotto said, glancing over at her diminutive form. ‘I imagine the decision to greenlight this project was not undertaken lightly. She must feel she has a good reason for doing it.’ His gaze flickered back to her and she could see a shade of distrust in his eyes. Did he worry she would compromise his family? Had his mother already shown him the manuscript?

  ‘And it appears rather a lot more has happened at Palazzo Mirandola besides books,’ Giotto said, turning his attention to Nico. ‘Sinkholes, landslides, hidden underground tunnels. It has an almost apocalyptic undertone to it, don’t you think? As though the past is beginning to swallow up the present?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ Nico agreed.

  ‘Of course, it’s been lucky for us that you were leading the investigation. At least you are sensitive to the history of the place. I had no idea you’d moved into spe—?’ he tailed off, the word eluding him.

  ‘Speleology,’ Nico offered. ‘It’s a specialized field.’

  ‘Was your interest in all things underground and ancient prompted by your family’s time in Athens?’

  ‘In part, yes. Papa would take me on expeditions with him.’

  ‘Athens?’ Cesca asked.

  Giotto looked at Cesca, seeing the bafflement on her face. ‘Nico’s father was a diplomat.’

  ‘Oh,’ Cesca said, genuinely surprised. She had guessed he came from a well-to-do family, but the diplomatic world was another step beyond. She vowed to interrogate him later; she wanted to know every last thing about him. He was a tall glass of water in the desert and the desire to know him was like a thirst. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘My father was posted there when I was four and we stayed until I was seventeen,’ Nico explained.

  ‘Which was a great shame for me,’ Giotto said. ‘We used to be partners in crime as toddlers.’

  ‘Giotto, darling—’ Elena’s voice swept over them all, halting as she saw to whom her son was talking, her eyes scanning over their select group. It took her only a fraction of a second to recover. ‘Well, Francesca, how lovely to see you here. You look radiant. I don’t know how you do it – that gown would look like a nightdress on me.’

  Cesca gave a nervous laugh as Elena swooped in for an air kiss. She wouldn’t have been surprised if she had slapped her instead. But, of course, such a response was out of the question – it would never do to make a fuss. That wasn’t how these people operated.

  ‘And Nico, is Isabella not coming?’ Elena asked brightly.

  ‘Isabella and I are no longer together,’ Nico said simply.

  ‘Oh?’ Elena said, glancing at Cesca and, seeing how Nico was holding her hand, realizing the truth. ‘Oh, I see. Well, I have to say I’m sorry to hear that. She’s such a charming young woman and so beautiful too. Your mother must be terribly disappointed. You seemed very well matched.’

  If Nico wondered at Elena’s unusual personal interest in his private life, he didn’t show it. In fact, he didn’t respond at all and an awkward silence developed, the conversation seemingly stalled on the disappointment of his broken engagement.

  Cesca swallowed, knowing this was how Elena exacted her revenge – words as razor blades, hidden behind smiles. It didn’t matter whether Elena had started reading the manuscript yet, she already knew Cesca had spoken to Maria Dutti; she already knew from the way Cesca had used her name earlier – calling it through to her in the bedroom – that the old woman had spoken, revealing her darkest secret: the one that couldn’t be researched or googled, the one that had left no paper trail, just a single eyewitness. It was the old housekeeper alone who had the power to dismantle the myth about Elena’s relationship with her beloved Vito, the man they were all assembled to honour here tonight. With one sentence from her, the fantasies Elena had worked so hard to spin about their love story could be torn in the breeze and left hanging in rags.

  ‘Well, shall we?’ Giotto asked, gesturing for them all to take their places. Cesca saw that she was sitting between Nico and Christina—

  ‘Mother,’ Nico said, lightly kissing on the cheek the tall handsome woman with whom Cesca had had lunch all those weeks ago. She was wearing a grey silk mousseline gown, with her hair combed back into a chignon and held in place with diamond clips. ‘I’d like you to meet Francesca Hackett.’

  ‘Ah! But we’ve already met,’ Christina smiled, greeting her too.

  ‘You have?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. Francesca interviewed me for this book of Elena’s. We were discussing her charity work over the years.’ She looked at Cesca and Cesca immediately recognized in her face Nico’s penetrating gaze and warm smile. ‘Come, you are sitting beside me. I am afraid I always throw out the seating plans; I am a widow but I refuse to bring a companion. What do they call them? “Walkers”?’ She gave a disapproving tut. ‘I may be old but I am perfectly capable of conducting myself on my own at a dinner.’

  Nico had turned away and begun talking to someone at the next table as Cesca took her seat beside his mother. She made a mental note to kill him when they got home. She needed advance notice of this kind of thing. Meeting his mother on their first date was enough to tip her over the edge.

  ‘I imagine you must be very used to these types of events? I understand your husband was a diplomat,’ Cesca said, reaching for what little information she had about his family. It had been one thing talking to Christina as an interview subject, quite another as her boyfriend’s mother.

  ‘Yes. We’ve lived in Costa Rica, Oslo, Madrid and finally Athens. We’ve been very fortunate – we have spent most of our adult lives living in the most wonderful places, places we might never have had the chance to visit had Sigmundo not been in such a privileged position.’

  ‘But you are from Rome originally?’

  ‘Originally and always. In my heart, this is where I belong.’

  Cesca nodded, still more than a little stunned to discover that Nico was from a family every bit as noble as the Damianis – a cousin, in fact – and yet he spent his days working, getting mucky, being a normal person. ‘I guess that’s the thing about Rome – it’s almost impossible to leave. I wasn’t born here but I love it as if I were. And clearly Elena feels the same way too. One might have thought she would return to the States after the death of her husband.’

  ‘Yes. One might.’

  ‘I . . . I hadn’t realized that Nico is your son. It’s quite extraordinary, isn’t it, that he has been working in the very tunnels you used to play in as a child? There’s something almost poetic about it,’ she said, trying not to look over her shoulder at all the striking, well-to-do people thronging past them on their way to their own tables. There were a lot of jewel-coloured silks and taffetas passing by, yet more serious jewellery.

  ‘Oh, absolutely. But then, I’m a great fatalist. I believe everything happens for a reason, even the sinkhole opening up like that. If you ask me, the ground at Elena’s feet has split open because it is literally trying to push a truth back to the surface.’

  Cesca blinked, not quite sure what to say to that. ‘Well, it looks like you pulled out all the stops for tonight,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘No scaffolding, I see.’

  ‘Thank God! Though if you’d been here at eleven o’clock this morning, you wouldn’t have thought I was quite so on top of things.’

  ‘Well, you’ve done Vito proud,’ she said, her gaze on the huge image of him on the screen a
gain. His body was slightly turned away, but his eyes – guarded, reserved and gentle – were to camera.

  ‘I do hope so. We were so close. I always sensed he needed me, somehow.’ Her eyes flickered towards Elena as she spoke and Cesca glanced over too, to see whether Elena – on the opposite side of the table – had overheard. She had a feeling Christina’s comment wouldn’t be well received; Elena’s devotion to her late husband had a decidedly territorial bent to it.

  ‘But not Aurelio?’

  ‘Oh no, Reli could handle himself. He had a freedom Vito could only have dreamed about. There was no pressure on him as the second son. He just travelled, drank, caroused with women . . .’ She looked thoughtful. ‘Although that isn’t to say he wasn’t vulnerable in his own way. He’d always had a certain resilience, but after the shooting in Kenya, I think it made him reckless, angry even. He pushed people away. I don’t think he believed he would live to old age.’

  Cesca felt confused; she vaguely remembered Elena telling her about the vengeful husband. ‘But he . . . survived the shooting?’

  ‘Yes, but the bullet had to stay where it was. It was too close to his heart for the surgeons to remove.’

  ‘Oh! My goodness,’ Cesca said. Elena hadn’t mentioned that. Or perhaps she simply hadn’t known. ‘But how did you ever tell them apart? There’s only one photo I’ve seen of them both in Elena’s archives and it doesn’t matter how much I look at it, there is nothing I can see to distinguish one from the other.’

  ‘It’s true, the differences between them were fractional, but – perhaps because I knew them from childhood – it was easier for me. I have a photograph of them in my purse,’ Christina murmured, reaching for the yellow satin clutch on the table. ‘Yes, see here? I take it everywhere. I took this of them at their twenty-firsts.’

  Cesca took the black-and-white photograph from her and stared at it. If it was their twenty-firsts, then it would have been 1961, but it could have been taken at any time in the past fifty years – there was nothing to date it. The twins were in classic black tie, their dark hair short and swept back, each holding a glass of wine. They were standing side by side in what Cesca knew at a glance was the mirrored gallery. A deliberate pun? she wondered.

  ‘And so, which one is Vito?’ Cesca asked after a moment, for she was still completely unable to make a judgement call.

  Christina smiled at her and pointed to the twin on the right of the photograph. ‘That’s him there.’

  Cesca squinted at it. ‘But how can you tell?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, if you look closely, you can see Vito had a freckle immediately below his left eye.’

  ‘One freckle?’

  ‘One freckle.’

  ‘But surely that could change in the summer, if he had a tan?’

  ‘Precisely. So if ever I wasn’t sure, I’d just throw a ball at them and see which hand they caught it with.’ She gave a shrug. ‘Vito was right-handed, Aurelio left-handed.’

  Cesca looked at the photograph and saw now how they were holding the wine glasses in opposite hands. ‘Wow, so they really were mirrors of each other.’

  ‘Yes. Going on physicality alone, it was almost impossible to tell them apart, but in terms of temperament? You couldn’t mistake them: they were completely opposite to one another. Vito was calm. An old soul, my mother used to call him. Aurelio, on the other hand, was like a whirlwind.’ She tutted.

  ‘Yes, Elena said the same,’ Cesca murmured, wondering if Christina had any idea of what had gone on between Vito and his brother and his wife.

  ‘Did I hear my name?’ Elena enquired and Cesca looked up with alarm to find she had the full attention of Giotto and Elena, both of whom were looking at her avidly.

  Cesca wondered just how long they had been listening in on the conversation.

  ‘We were just talking about how impossible it was to tell the twins apart,’ Christina said.

  ‘Well, to those who didn’t know them, perhaps,’ Elena replied crisply, straightening up.

  ‘Of course. And now Giotto is the image of them, too,’ Christina smiled, looking across at him fondly. ‘Looking at you is like stepping back in time, darling.’

  ‘Do I look like one more than the other, would you say?’ Giotto asked with interest.

  Christina tipped her head to the side as she studied him. ‘I could not say. There’s really nothing in it. But you have your father’s manners, that’s for certain.’

  Giotto nodded. ‘Did you know, in a standard paternity test, there need only be fifteen matching genetic markers to link a father and his son, but when dealing with identical twins, the number of genetic markers required for a match jumps to six billion?’

  ‘Really?’ Christina asked, looking fascinated.

  ‘Why would you know such a thing?’ Elena asked, looking ashen.

  Giotto shrugged his eyebrows, then his shoulders. ‘I’m not sure. I just do.’

  Cesca watched the exchange, a growing unease blooming in her mind as something shocking occurred to her – she wondered if the same thing had occurred to Giotto. She knew that Elena and Aurelio had been having an affair, yes, but she only knew the day on which the affair ended – which was the day it was discovered, the same day Aurelio had been killed in the car crash. But she didn’t know when it had begun. Was it possible Elena and Aurelio had been carrying on for months – even years – beforehand? Who would ever have known if Elena had had her husband’s brother’s child? They were identical. The boy would be like his father, regardless of which one that might actually prove to be.

  ‘Tell me, could you tell them apart when you were a child?’ Christina asked Giotto.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Elena straightened in her chair. ‘How?’

  ‘It was easy. I just looked at their signet rings.’

  ‘Their signet rings?’ Elena echoed, with a note of incredulity, as though he’d just said nose rings instead.

  ‘Yes. Papa’s had a V, obviously, and Uncle Reli’s an A.’ He chuckled. ‘You tried to trick me when I met Uncle Reli for the first time, do you remember? He’d been off somewhere, travelling I think, and you both tried to pretend he was Papa. I couldn’t have been more than six at the time. I wasn’t sure if it was a joke or not, because you were telling me one thing but I was looking straight at his ring and it clearly told me another – I was the perfect height at the time, you see.’ He blinked, his gaze steady upon his mother. ‘Do you remember?’

  Elena was immobile. ‘I’m sorry, darling. I have no recollection of that at all.’

  Giotto was silent for a moment. ‘Well, why would you?’ he said finally. ‘It was just you teasing me. Hardly memorable. I don’t know why it even stuck in my mind. I suppose I just remember staring at that ring. But after that, I would always check Papa’s ring, just to be sure it was him.’

  ‘But Uncle Reli died that same day, darling,’ Elena said, gently reaching for his hand and squeezing it, as though he was still a young boy. ‘Why would you have needed to keep checking it?’

  Giotto gave a blank smile. ‘The irrational insecurity of a child, I suppose. Although it’s good to see you remember some things about that day, at least.’

  Elena withdrew her hand. ‘It’s not a day I would ever be likely to forget,’ she said quietly, looking stung.

  Christina straightened up briskly. ‘Well, I just used to tell people to check which hand they wore the rings on. Vito wore his on the left hand and Reli wore his on the right.’

  ‘Did he?’ Elena asked, looking stricken as she gazed at the giant black-and-white image of her husband on the screen, behind Giotto’s head. Sure enough, the signet ring could be seen on the little finger of his left hand, a faint, swirling ‘V’ etched into the gold.

  Cesca watched Elena closely, seeing how tiny, almost microscopically small spasms of pain twitched at her mouth at the mention of Reli’s name. Even looking for it, the response was hard to spot. But then, Elena had had years of practice, half a lifetim
e of hiding her love for one brother, whilst being married to the other.

  ‘And I can certainly share some choice memories of your father and uncle switching places when they were young – it wasn’t just you they teased, darling,’ Christina said, smiling fondly at Giotto. ‘They did it at school, with the nannies. It was one of their favourite things to do.’

  ‘I bet all identical twins do it,’ Cesca said.

  ‘Oh, I’m certain they do. To just what extent, though?’ Christina arched an eyebrow mischievously. ‘Is it something they ever fully grow out of, do you think? Surely the temptation to . . . switch lives, even for a day, would be irresistible? It would be like having a superpower, wouldn’t it? Like being invisible.’

  Cesca nodded, smiling benignly, but she was one of two people at this table who knew perfectly well just how much Aurelio had crossed over into his brother’s life.

  ‘Do you think they ever tricked you, Elena, dear?’ Christina asked teasingly, looking at her from above the rim of her wine glass.

  Elena didn’t appear to hear. Her eyes were still on the image of her husband. She seemed lost to the past.

  ‘Elena!’

  ‘Hmm? What?’ Elena asked, pulling herself back.

  ‘I said, do you think the twins ever tricked you? Switching places?’

  Elena looked scandalized. ‘Absolutely not! Why on earth—’

  ‘But how can you be so certain?’ Christina was smiling. Teasing.

  ‘Because I can. Vito was my husband. It surely goes without saying how well I knew him.’ Elena’s voice was brittle as the joke fell flat.

  Christina smiled beatifically, giving a shrug at Elena’s sense-of-humour failure.

  Elena looked back at her son, reaching for Giotto’s hand suddenly. ‘Darling, did I ever tell you about your grandfather during the war?’

  Giotto suppressed a sigh. ‘Running bombs into the tunnels? Yes, Mama, you’ve told me,’ he said wearily. ‘Many times.’

  ‘But can you just imagine a love like that? One so great that you would put a bomb under your own life to protect it? That’s how I love you, my boy. And it’s how your father loved—’