by Karen Swan
‘Mother, have some water,’ he said quietly, handing her a glass. He looked embarrassed by her suddenly vehement ramblings. ‘You’re going to be on stage shortly. Have you brought your speech?’
‘Oh! Look! You’re wearing your beautiful ring again, Elena,’ Christina trilled. ‘How did I not notice it before now? Oh, you must let me see it. You haven’t worn it in such a long time.’ Christina reached her hand across the table and Elena was obliged to extend her arm to allow her to admire the Bulgari Blue. ‘Do you know, I feared you’d mislaid it?’ Christina smiled, looking up at her old friend. ‘Silly, I know. Obviously there’s no way something as valuable as this could go missing and the world not know about it. The insurance industry would have gone into meltdown.’
Cesca held her breath at Christina’s disingenuous words. Surely she knew that the ring had indeed been lost? It was her own son who had found it!
‘It’s not an everyday piece, Christina.’
‘Oh, but on the contrary, you used to wear it daily when Giotto was a child. Vito gave it to you to celebrate Giotto’s birth, don’t you remember?’
‘As if I’d be likely to forget,’ Elena snipped.
Christina smiled at Giotto. ‘Of course, I remember. I was with your father when he commissioned it. We chose the diamonds together.’
‘You—?’ Elena looked thunderstruck.
‘Naturally. Vito wanted it to be a surprise for you so he couldn’t very well ask you to assist, but he needed a feminine perspective, so I went along. It was a very happy experience. I cherish the memories still.’
‘I’m sure you do,’ Elena said tartly.
Cesca sat in alert silence, her antennae buzzing at these verbal drive-bys – what exactly was going on here? – as the sudden whine of a microphone being switched on made them all turn towards the stage. A grey-haired man climbed the podium and asked for their attention.
Nico turned back to the table, straightening his napkin on his lap. ‘Sorry, I got caught. Have I missed much?’ It was a question to the table, but he was looking at her, checking she was okay, checking she was still there. Still his. She smiled back but she felt distracted by the undercurrents sparking between the older women.
‘We’ve just been reminiscing,’ Christina replied in a loud whisper, leaning slightly across Cesca. ‘You timed it well; they’re just about ready to start the presentation.’ She turned to her old friend. ‘Your moment has come, Elena,’ she said in a louder voice.
Elena didn’t reply. She was now looking quite imperious in her chair, her gaze yet again on the enormous black-and-white photograph of Vito projected onto the screen behind the podium. Tears misted her eyes as the man spoke at length about Vito’s life and the achievements of the foundation, prompting spontaneous little outbreaks of applause, coos and laughter.
‘Giotto, you must be so proud,’ Christina said to him. ‘This honour is not before time. When I think of how your father devoted his life to good works for this city . . . Long before Fendi restored the Trevi, long before Tod’s got involved with the Colosseum, or Bulgari with the Spanish Steps, it was Vito who was paving the way for privately funding the historic monuments which make this city so eternal.’
‘Really, Christina, sometimes I think people would confuse you for his wife,’ Elena said in an arch tone, breaking off momentarily from her gracious widow scene. ‘Perhaps you should get up there and speak tonight?’
‘Well, I should be more than happy to step in if you’re not feeling up to it, dear. We’re old friends, after all. Just say the word.’ Christina was smiling as though to a newborn – utter gentleness on her face – even though there was steel in her words.
Cesca slid her eyes nervously from one to the other, wondering exactly how much love was lost between them. Was this really a friendship? Every conversation seemed loaded, tension crackling across the table.
They all clapped as Elena was introduced and Giotto jumped up to help his mother to the stage, giving her his arm as they climbed the steps together. Cesca heard some people on a nearby table commenting on his likeness to his father as Elena pulled some notes for her speech from her bag. A small, tatty blue envelope fluttered out too and Giotto stepped forwards to pick it up, his eyes falling to the name written in brown ink on the front. He handed it back to her without a word.
Cesca blinked, recognizing it immediately – there was no doubt it was the one that had been in the bag she had found in her bin. The letter Vito had supposedly written on his deathbed, the letter that remained unread fifteen years later. Cesca frowned. She had completely forgotten about it, but now the same questions she’d had that first night rushed back at her. Why couldn’t Elena bring herself to read it? What could it possibly say that was so hard for her to face? But Cesca thought she could guess – it was guilt; guilt over what she and Aurelio had done. Elena was too frightened to face up to Vito’s final word on the matter.
Elena began to speak, her American-accented Italian rolling over the people sitting rapt at their tables, their eyes falling continually to the Bulgari Blue on her left hand. It was impossible to ignore. Had Giotto known his father had bought it to commemorate his birth? It had been lost for most of his life, after all.
‘Oh, what I wouldn’t give to know what is in that letter,’ Christina murmured, sitting back in her chair towards Cesca, her lips scarcely moving.
‘The letter?’ Cesca asked, surprised, not entirely sure at first that Christina was directing the comment to her.
‘Yes. Giotto, too. It would give him great peace to know, but she will not let it out of her sight. Not for a second. She even sleeps with it under her pillow.’ Christina was silent for a few moments before she glanced over at her. ‘You do realize you have been the only person in fifteen years to have had any opportunity to see what is inside it?’
Cesca blinked, feeling her heart rate accelerate. Why on earth would she have done that – read a stranger’s unopened old letter? And more to the point, why was Christina talking to her about it? ‘Sorry, I don’t follow . . . It would give Giotto great peace to know what, exactly?’
Christina’s chin tipped up, her gaze remaining on the diminutive figure on the stage. Elena’s voice was wavering with emotion as images of Vito flicked behind her in a slideshow, his love token, the Bulgari Blue, flashing with every movement of her hand. ‘Haven’t you guessed yet?’
Cesca’s stomach clenched. Oh God. Did Christina know about the affair? Worse – did Giotto?
Cesca leaned forwards in her seat to be closer to Christina, who was smiling and nodding graciously as Elena mentioned her name, bringing admiring glances their way. She showed no sign of having just rolled a grenade into Cesca’s lap. ‘Why doesn’t he just confront her directly?’ she whispered, being careful not to put anything in concrete terms. If she was wrong about this and Christina didn’t know about the affair, she couldn’t afford to be the one to tell her.
‘You ask me that, even after you’ve spent an entire summer in her company?’
Cesca knew Christina was right. Cesca wasn’t sure Elena even knew what was truth and what was fantasy any more. She had deceived her husband – and her son – to the extent that Cesca was sure she believed her own lies. Appearance was all.
‘Poor boy,’ Christina tutted, her eyes on Giotto standing stiffly at his mother’s shoulder, there for her lest she should stumble, trip or collapse. She did look incredibly frail. ‘He’s been lied to for all these years and still he has no answers. And now she is declining fast.’
‘Declining? She’s—’
‘Dying. Progressive supranuclear palsy, or PSP as it’s more commonly called. It’s a rare form of Alzheimer’s – tremors, difficulty walking, personality changes, that kind of thing. She’s been getting treatment in Florence but the prognosis is poor.’
Florence? That was why she’d gone up there this week? Cesca felt as if she was being beaten about the head, these new facts coming too fast.
‘In spite of that – o
r perhaps because of it – Giotto deserves to know the truth, but Elena is the only person still alive who can tell him what really went on.’ She turned to face Cesca suddenly. ‘Or you, of course.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. I’ve tried telling him to talk to you about it but . . .’ She shrugged. ‘He is a very private person. It’s hard for him, which I understand; I felt the same way myself.’ Cesca remembered the phone conversation she had overheard in the whispering gallery. ‘But it makes perfect sense. You’ve been Elena’s confidante all summer; you have access to all her material – photographs, diaries.’
‘But she hasn’t said anything to me that isn’t already in the public domain. In fact, quite the opposite. She’s been very guarded.’
‘Really?’ Christina pressed, looking highly sceptical. ‘Well, if she’s that concerned about her privacy, why is she even writing this book?’
Why indeed? Cesca didn’t argue the point but, in actual fact, it wasn’t an unfamiliar dichotomy. As a barrister she’d had a similar issue with witnesses, who could be known to pour forth in the initial interviews, only to retract their testimonies when they got to the courtroom. Elena’s skittish dance with the truth over this biography wasn’t much different. She wanted it to present the realities of her life, but when actually faced with them, she turned away; full disclosure was easier said than done, and it begged the question – what did Elena want to admit to, but couldn’t?
Did Christina even know the truth Cesca had stumbled upon, or was all this a bluff? She knew it was time to speak plainly – and one of them had to go first.
‘You know about the affair,’ Cesca said quietly, barely moving her lips lest anyone should be watching them.
Christina nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘And you think that Aurelio is Giotto’s father.’
‘Yes.’
‘Giotto thinks so too?’
‘Yes.’
Cesca took a deep breath, hesitating to say the words. As far as she was aware, no one else had ever requested to see the death certificate – everyone had bought the official line that Aurelio had been killed in the car crash. ‘. . . And you think Vito killed his brother because of it.’
‘No.’
Wait, what?
‘What?’ Cesca whispered, feeling bewildered. ‘What exactly do you think is in that letter, then?’
Christina looked straight at her, giving up any pretence of looking at the action on the stage. The real story of the night was happening right here. ‘Giotto has told me that after the accident, several times over the years he overheard his mother speaking to his father behind closed doors.’
‘So?’
‘She called him Reli . . .’
Cesca blinked, looking back up at the little old lady on the stage – still beautiful, still formidable, as she held the cream of Rome’s elite in her palm.
‘It wasn’t Aurelio who died in the car accident that night,’ Christina said intensely as Cesca’s eyes flickered to the too-handsome face on the screen behind Elena. ‘It was Vito.’
Chapter Forty-Three
She was silent on the journey back, her face turned towards the window, his jacket over her shoulders to shield her from the plummeting night temperatures. She felt so angry she didn’t know what to do with herself.
‘Can I come up?’ Nico asked, seeing how she wouldn’t meet his eye as he parked in the tiny street off the west side of the piazzetta.
‘Oh, I don’t think so. “Dinner with your mother” has left me rather worn out,’ she said with her best sarcasm, hauling herself out of the tiny car before he could stop her.
‘Cesca!’
But she strode away, refusing to look back. Thirty seconds later, just as she got to the bottom of the steps, he grabbed her by the hand, pulling her up the stairs. ‘I’m coming up,’ he insisted. ‘We’re going to talk.’
‘No. Nico!’ she protested as he retrieved the key from under the geranium by the door.
‘In.’ He opened the door and she stumbled in, feeling how he took up the space in the small room, in her head.
She whirled around to face him, refusing to let him boss her, to let him dictate how this went. ‘You knew!’ she accused.
He nodded. ‘Yes.’
She gawped at the blunt response. Did he not even have the decency to lie? ‘And you never thought to tell me? Your mother just ambushed me, Nico! Did you know what she was going to do tonight?’
‘No. But there are often problems between her and Elena. Their relationship has always been . . . difficult.’
‘Yeah, I got that, thanks. It was just great to be caught up in the middle of them.’
‘Look, whatever she has said is not some sort of action against you, but her trying to do her best by Giotto – she is his godmother. She doesn’t even know about us yet. As far as she is aware, you are just working for Elena.’
‘Oh! So you think she’d have been a bit more diplomatic if she’d known I was sleeping with her son?’
‘Probably not.’
‘You know she effectively wants me to spy on Elena? She wants me to get hold of that letter and read it.’ But even if she did, Cesca thought, was it really going to tell them what Giotto needed to know – to confirm which of them was his father? To confirm Vito’s death, and not Aurelio’s?
Cesca couldn’t imagine what reserves it must have taken the two of them to get through each day – Aurelio passing himself off in public as his own brother, pretending to be Elena’s husband as he quietened his voice and toned down his jokes, swapping the playboy lifestyle for opening fetes and judging at cheese festivals. How had he done it without anyone ever knowing? Had there really been no slip-ups in all those years? They’d even managed to push out Christina, the one person who could have unmasked them.
He shrugged. ‘My mother is a woman of strong principles. She loved Vito like a sister and she believes it is her duty to protect his son.’
‘Really? She loved him as a sister? That’s what you think?’
A pulse beat in his jaw as he looked away and she realized the implications – for him – of what she had said. ‘Nico—’
‘None of this is anything to do with me, okay? It’s between my mother and Elena. I don’t get involved with it.’
‘But you are involved! You’re working there! You’re down there in those—’ She stopped suddenly.
‘What?’ he asked. ‘What is it?’
‘You’re in the tunnels. You knew about the tunnels.’
‘. . . What?’
‘Your mother said she told you stories about how she used to play in the tunnels. They weren’t a discovery at all. You already knew they were there.’ Her eyes widened as the facts began to shuffle into the slots in her mind. She gasped. ‘That’s why you extended through from the sinkhole into the service tunnel. You knew it would connect to the other tunnels that had been bricked off.’
‘Ces—’
But she cut him off by holding up a hand, her eyes narrowed as she began to pace. Pace and think. ‘At the time I couldn’t understand why you looked beyond the sinkhole itself; it was like you knew there was something extra down there.’ She looked at him again. ‘And you did. It’s why you were down there on your own that Friday night; it’s why you were so cross with me for getting you out.’
He sighed, raking a hand through his hair. ‘Yes, I’m sorry.’
She stared at him, not wanting his apology. ‘Why, though? Why were you trying to find the tunnels?’
He sighed, a look of resignation dawning on his face as he saw the intensity on hers. It was clear she wasn’t going to let this drop. ‘Because of the ring. My mother knew it was down there.’
Cesca’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Your mother knew the Bulgari Blue was in that tunnel?’ So she had known it was lost! She had been deliberately provoking Elena at dinner, pushing her.
‘Yes.’
‘And she sent you down there to find it for her?’
‘She didn’t send
me anywhere,’ he said shortly. ‘But when I told her about the sinkhole, she saw an opportunity to see if it could be retrieved and I agreed to help. I knew how important it was to her to try to help Giotto.’
‘And you too, I’m sure,’ she added drily. ‘It bought you time to look for more pieces of your map?’
He nodded. ‘Yes. But you have to under—’
Cesca held up a finger again, as though trying to halt the too-fast thoughts racing through her mind. ‘Why would finding the ring help Giotto?’
‘Oh my God,’ he groaned, becoming exasperated. ‘Now I see who you used to be! Look, I don’t know for sure; I didn’t ask for details. She thought it had something to do with the night of the crash when Aurelio died.’
‘You mean, Vito.’
He shrugged. ‘Yes.’
Cesca tore her eyes away from him and stared at the wall again, her antennae quivering. What was it? What did that ring have to do with the crash? She was reaching towards something, but . . . but she couldn’t see it yet. She squinted, biting her lip. ‘Why didn’t your mother just go into the tunnels herself to look for the ring?’
‘You mean, apart from the fact she is a woman in her late seventies?’
She ignored the sarcasm. ‘That ring was lost almost thirty years ago, Nico. Why has she waited all this time?’
He sighed. ‘Look, why are we even talking about this? We are not working now. It’s supposed to be our night!’
‘Tell me.’
He turned away, his hands on his hips, frustrated. ‘She only found out about the affair recently – Easter, I think. She ran into Maria Dutti and they had coffee – they had always been close. Signora Dutti had never been fond of Elena either. Apparently she found her to be imperious.’
‘But why did Maria only tell your mother about the affair now? Years had passed.’
‘Because they had not seen each other since Aurelio’s funeral.’
‘Vito’s,’ she corrected, rather pedantically.