Justine didn’t know where she was going, but she had to get out. At the door the boys were crowding in, oblivious to the turmoil unfolding inside, and they pulled back to let her out. As she passed she registered their little golden-brown faces, crowned with fringes bleached platinum by the sun, looking up at her curiously.
Justine stood in the doorway, not knowing where to go. The heat fell on her like a stifling blanket; she passed a hand across her face and closed her eyes briefly, willing the images behind them to disappear. She could hear his voice down the fractured line from Wales, cheerful, then sympathetic, soothing her. It’ll be all right, she’ll turn up. Sickened, she wrenched her thoughts away. Think of something else. Someone else. Where’s Dido? At the gate beneath the trees, twenty yards away, she could see two figures: Paolo, tall and broad-shouldered, and a smaller figure: Anna. No Dido.
Paolo and Anna were approaching, no more than a couple of yards away now, and she could see concern in their faces. Paolo was looking at her, and she found herself looking back at him. There was something in his expression, a kind of gentleness, and for a moment she had the impression that this almost-stranger could somehow help her out of all this; briefly she experienced the urge to fling herself at him, beg him to make everything go away. Stupid, she thought, hopelessly. And she looked away again, past him at the empty, rain-sodden pasture. Behind her in the house she could hear the sound of voices raised, fierce argument across the table, and she couldn’t stand to listen for a moment longer. She ran out into the rain.
By the time she reached the barbed wire that ran alongside the woods, Justine was soaked to the skin. As she left the pasture and went into the trees any remaining brightness was leached out of the air and a filmy luminescence remained. It smelled musty down here, as though the warm rain was activating the decaying process of the forest floor, bringing the spores of some ancient fungus back to life. It was very quiet, and every tiny movement, every leaf disturbed by the rain, seemed to make itself heard.
She skirted the shadowy hazel grove, its arcaded gloom cavernous and sinister as the light faded. Dido, she murmured to herself, poor Dido. We’ll be in this together. Once through the gate she made her way between the shoulder-high hemlock and teazels shedding seed as fine as dust in the damp air; almost there. The great lichen-blistered cliff loomed on the far side of the dark water, but there was no Dido. Panic ballooned in her chest.
The dusty beach of mulch and bark was empty; not even a sweet wrapper to show they’d been here. Its surface was scuffed here and there by feet, and Justine could see a depression where someone had been lying; in the shadow of the cliff the dark surface of the pool, where Justine half expected to see Dido’s dark head pop up like a seal’s, was undisturbed. The river glided on, regardless, and Justine thought of the weight of all that water, moving, never stopping. She could feel her heart pounding, and breathed slowly to fill her lungs again.
‘Dido?’ she called, turning back to the river. ‘Dido!’ She was shouting now, but no one appeared. Justine waded into the water.
Upstream, the river was quite empty, it flowed down towards her between the trees and not a movement or a sound interrupted the softly falling rain. The water around her ankles was cold, as though it had come from a long way up; between her toes the texture of the river bottom was elusive; sandy, gritty, slimy. The shining wet green of the bushes on the bank as far as she could see offered no clue to Dido’s disappearance, no movement other than the minute bounce of raindrops on the leaves.
Rossella, thought Anna as she looked through the door and saw the gleam of red hair, a pale profile barely illuminated by the weak light from the door, and for a moment she had the curious sensation that she was seeing something from a great distance. ‘Rossella,’ she murmured under her breath but Paolo still heard her.
‘What, Mamma?’ Inside the room the tall, beautiful red-haired woman got to her feet and turned towards them, mother and son, as they stood, dripping, on the threshold, neither in nor out.
Something’s been going on here, thought Paolo. There was an atmosphere inside the house, thick as fog, the echo of voices raised in anger still hung in the air. He turned back to look across the drenched pasture; what must have happened to make her rush off like that, into the rain? Justine. Someone should go after her, he thought, and just as he decided it should be him the husband, Lucien, pushed past him and headed for the gate. Paolo frowned as he watched the man go, hunched under the downpour.
‘It’s her daughter. Amalia’s daughter. Luca’s –’ Anna broke off, and she looked about her distractedly. Then she pulled back from the door and sat down, weak suddenly, an old lady, on the stone bench against the house, barely sheltered from the rain.
‘What?’ said Paolo, astounded. ‘Luca’s daughter? No, mamma. No. How – how could you possibly tell?’ But Anna nodded sadly.
‘It’s her. She looks – just like her mother. She’s the right age, isn’t she?’ She shrugged helplessly. ‘I can’t explain it. But it’s her.’ Shaking his head in astonishment, Paolo turned back to look inside, and there she was, at the door, coming out to meet them.
Rossella smiled apologetically. ‘How do you do,’ she said. ‘Rossella Bandini.’ She held out her hand. Speechless, Paolo took it. ‘Paolo Viola,’ he said. ‘This is my mother, Anna.’ Anna sat on the bench, hardly sheltered by the overhanging eaves, looking down at her hands.
‘A pleasure. There’s a lot going on in here,’ said Rossella, apologetically. ‘A lot of confusion.’ A man appeared at her shoulder from out of the gloom; a tall, fair-haired Englishman Paolo hadn’t seen before, rather weary-looking. His hand was offered.
‘Tom,’ he said, ‘thank you for looking after my boys.’ He seemed to take in their bedraggled appearance, then. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘you can’t sit out here; shall we go into the house next door? You can dry out a bit. Rossella – ?’ he appealed to her wordlessly.
At the sound of the name Anna’s head dipped even further, and Rossella took her by the arm. ‘Shall we go next door?’ she said, concern in her voice, and helped Anna up.
Inside the house Louisa watched Rossella go to the door with something like relief; the burden of hospitality to Paolo and Anna was, under the circumstances, too much for her. Martin stood, silent, in the shadows at the back of the house, looking out into the darkening green of the woods that seemed closer now, somehow. Sam and Angus were on either side of her on the sofa and gratefully she held them against her for a moment, damp and warm. ‘Where’s Dido?’ Louisa asked, feeling a little dazed. ‘Did you see her – at the waterfall? On the way?’
‘No,’ said Sam.
‘But we found her thingummy,’ said Angus. ‘Her scarf thing.’
‘Her bandanna,’ Sam pronounced confidently. ‘It was in the water.’ He thrust his hand into his soaking pocket and held it up, a squeezed pink rag.
Louisa frowned and reached out her hand for the scarf, trying to fit this small piece of information in with everything else. She sighed, her head hot and aching with the effort of understanding what had been going on. ‘Upstairs,’ she said, trying to gather her thoughts, trying to sound firm. ‘Get some dry things on.’ When they didn’t move she pushed them a little. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘go on.’ And reluctantly they shifted.
Once they were upstairs, their footsteps audible as they ran from room to room in some new game now they had been released from adult supervision, Martin turned towards her. ‘Do you think I did the right thing?’ he said, an uncertainty in his voice Louisa had never heard before. Again she sighed.
‘Well, of course – I’m relieved, actually. Of course I am. That it had nothing to do with Tom.’ And she looked away, at the door where Tom had left with Rossella.
‘But you always knew that, didn’t you?’ said Martin robustly, his old self again briefly. ‘I did. Tom couldn’t have done it to you. Or to Dido and me. He couldn’t have left the boys. And even if it had been Tom – I think they’d be here now. He wouldn’t ha
ve let Evie down. He’d have done whatever she asked, they’d have gone on their world tour, he’d have pushed her round Venice in a wheelchair. Only – she wasn’t going to die, that’s what I can’t stand. She’d have come back, in the end, if she hadn’t – if she’d never met Lucien.’
Louisa shivered; she felt a little feverish, and her cramped legs ached. Cautiously she stretched out her swollen ankle on the sofa. ‘Do you think –’ She felt light-headed suddenly, and she wasn’t sure how to proceed. ‘Do you think – could it have been all in Evie’s mind? You know –’ she searched desperately for an explanation that would allow them to restore the status quo. ‘She might have gone a bit mad, with all the stress. Started fantasizing.’
Slowly Martin shook his head. ‘Do you think that’s possible?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Louisa helplessly. ‘I can’t believe – do you think he went with her on that boat? Do you think he – had anything to do with – with –’
‘With Evie’s death?’ Martin finished for her. ‘Lucien? Can you imagine it? I don’t know if I can.’
‘Surely the police – if he’d been there, they’d have seen him. On the close-circuit television or – or something. The way they found Evie.’ Louisa’s eyes were dark, horrified at the picture their speculation was conjuring up. She looked about, desperately, and there Tom was, in the doorway, and he looked at them.
‘Only Lucien knows,’ he said, his voice rough with emotion. ‘Evie’s dead, so only Lucien knows.’
‘Poor Justine,’ said Louisa. ‘Poor Justine.’
28
Justine closed the gate behind her. She was soaked through now and her throat was hoarse with shouting. In the rain she blinked back tears of desperation. What a mess, she thought, what a mess. All of it: Evie, Lucien, Dido. Me. She thought of Evie and Lucien, talking in the garden at Tom’s house, thought of Dido, looking up at her from the river, asking if she knew why Evie had gone. Why didn’t I see? How did I allow this to happen?
Justine forced herself to slow down, brought the nauseating whirl of speculation in her head to a stop. Evie and Lucien. She thought of Lucien, sleeping sound and unworried beside her every night, and of Evie’s haunted face, Evie at the doctor’s, Evie staring at Dido, until she thought she’d go mad. As though she was someone else she watched and saw how it could happen, how Evie, desperate and afraid, seeing her life slipping away from her, might want someone like Lucien – unthinking, irresistibly self-absorbed, amoral, whose even breaths would get her to sleep at night. And it wasn’t as though Justine didn’t know what Lucien was like. She had no claim on him, he’d made sure of that: no bank account, no children, no property in common. It was all quite clear to her suddenly, and curiously, she didn’t feel sick any more, or angry, just a kind of numbness.
Overhead the glare was gone from the sky; and it was getting dark. Dido. The thought of the girl in the forest at dusk came back to Justine and with it the sickening realization of the mess they had got her into. Trying to subdue her panic, she wondered what time it could be. Five, six? She could feel fear creeping around the edges of her rational mind, looking for a way in; her breathing felt shallow and rushed. I’ve got to get help before it gets dark. She turned to walk back to Il Vignacce.
It was quiet at first, the forest dripped around her, but as the gloom intensified Justine seemed to hear more and more; rustling, crawling sounds, the snap of a branch. At one point she heard the unmistakable trampling of something large blundering through the undergrowth, shadowing her, and she stopped. ‘Dido?’ She meant to shout, but it sounded more like a frightened whisper when it came out, and there was no reply.
She turned back, forced her trembling legs on over the uneven ground, the rocks and branches, boggy bits that might have been mud underfoot, a patch of fading light appeared above her. Gratefully she focussed on the opening between the trees, stumbling on up the slope as quickly as she could. Then, from out of the shadows, something came at her, something dark and solid, breathing heavily. She screamed, or thought she did; the sound that emerged was a hoarse whisper.
For a moment she thought she was going to faint; her legs felt as boneless as rubber and she felt nausea rising inside her. She swayed, and would have fallen if Lucien hadn’t taken hold of her arm. Close to like this she felt no familiarity; it was as though a stranger had come up to her out of the shadows. He even smelled different; there was something sour, sweat and foul breath, coming off him in the dark.
‘Lucien,’ she forced herself to say, ‘let go.’ He dropped her arm.
Neither of them moved; Lucien said nothing. Justine looked past him, up at the fading watery light in the pasture. ‘Were you having an affair with Evie, Lucien?’ she asked, feeling that horrible calm descend on her once again.
‘I – no,’ he said, ‘I mean, it wasn’t – you have to let me explain.’ He sounded as though he was trying to hold his voice steady, give it the old casual confidence.
‘You were,’ said Justine. She knew it for absolutely certain now.
‘But it wasn’t – I didn’t start it,’ he said, defensively. ‘You know what Evie was like. It was hard to say no to her, sometimes.’
‘You’re not a child, Lucien,’ Justine said, and as she spoke she realized that that was exactly what he was. A spoilt child. She pushed him away.
‘It was – it was like a game,’ he said. ‘Just a bit of fun. Not like you and me. I can’t lose you.’ He sounded almost outraged. ‘You’re – you’re everything to me, Justine. I need you. Evie had this – fantasy. That we’d travel the world together.’
‘And you went along with it,’ said Justine, as cold as ice. ‘You booked that week in Wales. You let her think you were going to go with her.’
‘She wouldn’t listen,’ he said, flatly, sulkily. ‘I tried.’
‘You mean you were too much of a coward to say anything.’
She heard Lucien sigh, as though she was the child, refusing to understand. ‘It didn’t mean anything. She got the wrong end of the stick. It was just supposed to be a bit of – light relief, you know.’
From me? thought Justine, feeling ill, suddenly, really ill, her head spinning but Lucien went on, unaware of the effect his words had had.
‘But no, it had to be some great tragic romance, for Evie.’ He sounded impatient, and Justine realized he expected her to sympathize with him, but she felt nothing but disgust. Standing there in the gloom she was overcome by a terrible flat, empty feeling, confronted by the evidence of her failure, of her misjudgement, and suddenly all she wanted was to be rid of him, never to have to listen to him again.
‘I don’t want to hear it, Lucien,’ she said, shortly. ‘Listen to me. Dido’s gone. She’s disappeared. We’ve got to look for her.’
‘God, kids,’ said Lucien. ‘She’ll just be waiting under a tree. I bet this is what she wants, everyone running around looking for her. God, you should have seen the fuss she made, this afternoon, just because Martin and I were –’ He stopped. Justine heard an echo of his old bravado, and was suddenly, furiously, irrationally enraged.
‘Were what?’ she shouted, her face close to his. ‘Did you have a row with Martin? Did he ask you about Evie? And she heard it all? No wonder she doesn’t want to come back.’
‘She couldn’t have – well, how was I to know she was listening? She’s not my responsibility.’ He sounded quite cold now, and she could feel him shutting down against her, giving her up. She became steely in response.
‘Just listen, Lucien. Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage here?’ She felt him turn away from her sullenly at the reprimand. ‘Go back, tell the others we need to look for her. Get – get Paolo – the Italian, the doctor. Get him to call the police, or the forest patrol or the farmer – anyone. Tell them – I’ll follow the river. I’ll go upstream, that’s the most likely way she’d have gone.’
For a moment they both stood there, immobile. Justine felt as though her entire body was humming, galvanized with a
nger and exhilaration. Then, with an angry sound Lucien turned and went; she could hear his quick, agile movements as he climbed the slope, leaving her. It was only then, alone in the dark, that Justine realized what she’d done.
29
There had been a small pile of dry wood in the fireplace where the three of them, Paolo, Anna and Rossella, were now confined by the rain, and more logs were stacked beneath the pergola outside. The fire was burning strongly now and the light flickered around the rough whitewashed walls; Anna sat on a small brick seat built in beside the fire but she couldn’t seem to get warm. Paolo was pacing up and down in the dim light, and she knew what was bothering him; Rossella, who didn’t, was looking from one of them to the other with increasing concern. Then Anna took a deep breath and she spoke.
‘Bandini?’ she said, faintly, looking at Rossella. ‘That’s your surname? Or your husband’s name?’ In Italy married women, as a rule, keep the name they were born with; Paolo looked at his mother, and she shook her head at him.
Rossella frowned a little, puzzled. ‘I’m not married,’ she said. ‘But – well, once I was something else.’ She paused. ‘My father died when I was very young; I didn’t really know him at all. I took my stepfather’s name. My birth father was called Magno.’
‘Ah,’ said Anna, and she exhaled slowly, a long sighing breath, ‘yes.’
‘You knew him?’ Rossella smiled, interested and quite unconcerned. Anna thought, she can’t remember him. Luca. I mustn’t cry, she thought, not after all this time. Poor Luca.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and your mother too. Amalia. Is she – ’
‘She passed away,’ said Rossella. ‘Five years ago. She had cancer.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Anna. ‘She was kind to me – a long time ago.’ She paused, and felt that perhaps more explanation was due. ‘In Rome. You used to live in Rome. I was a seamstress, and your mother came to me for a fitting. You came to my workshop once, too. When you were a very small girl.’ Anna felt a fluttering in her throat, thinking of that small, serious, red-haired child, as though she wanted to say more but she didn’t know how.
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