A Twist of Fate

by Joanna Rees

  She had so many questions. About all the years they’d spent apart. About his life in the military. His personal life. And what he planned to do next. But she knew they could wait. This wasn’t going to be their last conversation. It was going to be their first.

  ‘I should get going,’ she said, standing up. ‘I’ve got a plane to catch.’

  It was a white lie and he probably knew it. Her company jet would leave any time she chose. She leant down to kiss him goodbye. But this time he stood. He took her in his arms and hugged her close. She held him too and, given a choice right then, she would have stayed like that until the moment she died.

  When they stepped back from one another she was smiling.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  May 2005

  Romy took a slug of wine as she slumped on the worn leather couch, surfing the channels on TV for anything mindless to watch, the remains of a tasteless microwave meal on the chipped metal tray in front of her. But The Simpsons had finished and the news was depressing, with earthquakes around the world and riots in Paris. The only story that had interested her was the introduction of a new act in the UK to make civil partnerships legal for same-sex couples, but it had only made her think of Nico and the boyfriend he’d had before he’d died. With a sad sigh, she switched off the TV.

  She’d only been in this new apartment for two weeks. Removal boxes were still stacked up against the wall and she supposed she should start unpacking them. But she was too tired. Like every day these days, it just felt like she never stopped.

  Through the open window of her top-floor apartment she could hear two people calling out to one another on the road below, their bikes hissing along the tarmac. Listening to the sound of their laughter drift off, she got up to draw the long wooden shutters over the windows, realizing as she looked outside that it was nearly ten o’clock already and the light had only just gone. The trees lining the Amsterdam canal below were all in blossom, but it seemed only yesterday that the city had been covered in snow.

  It was a horrible fact of life, Romy thought, as she shut the night out, that time moved so fast, nothing lasted. Not even grief lasted forever. After it had eaten the essence of you, devoured a piece of your soul, it moved on somewhere else. Then life – at least a pale imitation of life – carried on, whether you wanted it to or not.

  She knew she ought to be grateful. Across the world people had been scarred by the events of 11 September 2001, but the date would be forever etched on Romy’s mind as the date that her life had been robbed too.

  She remembered nothing of the crash itself, even now, nearly four years later. She only remembered the terrifying, fragmented moments leading up to it. The insane look on Claudia’s face as she’d levelled that pistol at Nico and fired. The echo of Romy’s own footsteps in the corridor as she and Alfonso had fled for their lives. The roar of the Mercedes’s engine. The BMW’s headlights rushing up behind. The shriek of sirens.

  She’d been told afterwards, when she’d surfaced from her week-long concussion, that Alfonso’s Mercedes had crashed through the villa gates into the path of two fire engines, which had been hurtling towards an entirely separate incident.

  The first had ploughed at sixty miles an hour into the driver’s side of the car, crumpling it like a Coke can, killing Alfonso instantly and sending the car into an airborne spin. Romy, whose seatbelt had sprung open as the car had slammed into Villa Gasperi’s garden wall, had been catapulted into a thicket of roadside shrubs, which had mercifully broken her fall, saving her life, but had left her with two broken legs and five broken ribs all the same.

  The second fire engine had caught the BMW chasing after them, killing Ulrich, Claudia and their accomplice outright. After the fireball that had resulted, there had been so little left of the bodies that no identifications had ever been made.

  Romy’s recovery had been painfully slow. All she’d been able to think about, as she’d stared at the ceiling of the darkened hospital room hour after hour, had been that her husband – the only man she’d ever loved – was dead. And he’d died because of her. Because of her past. Which meant that it had been her fault.

  And dear Nico . . . her talented, wonderful best friend, who had tried so hard to protect her, the same way he always had. Brutally, cold-bloodedly murdered.

  Her fault too.

  At least in hospital Romy had been protected from the intense media scrutiny of the Scolari family. Even so, like a pack of baying dogs, the world’s press had been camped outside, clamouring for information, waiting to get a picture of Romy’s grieving face. The tragic end of her fairytale story was too much to resist.

  But even just out of reach of the press, there had still been the questions from the police. Endless questions. Ones they’d felt only she could answer. Who were these killers? Why had they come here? How had they got past the guard? How had they stolen so much of the precious art that had been lost in the car crash?

  Romy had told them nothing. None of what she’d admitted to Alfonso and Nico. If she’d admitted that she’d known Claudia and Ulrich, the police would soon have worked out the rest. About what she’d done to Fox. And the orphanage fire.

  None of that would have brought Alfonso or Nico back. That’s what Romy had told herself in the numbness of those first interrogations. And with Claudia and Ulrich already being nothing but charred bones and ash lost on the wind, what difference could knowing their names possibly have made to the police?

  Instead, Romy had done what she’d always done. She’d buried her past down just as deep as she could.

  She’d told herself that it was fairer, also, on Roberto and Maria to let them think that Ulrich and his gang had simply been nameless criminals, there to steal Roberto’s paintings, nothing more. And as her lies had come thick and fast, she’d imagined that they were papering over the gaping hole of the truth of who she really was. Which was surely so much better than admitting to Alfonso’s family that, right from the start, everything she’d ever told them about herself had been a lie.

  But what she hadn’t been able to deal with was Maria and Roberto’s grief. Watching it, being close to it, feeling it mix in with her own misery and multiply. Rather than their proximity being a comfort, it had left her wishing herself dead.

  They’d waited patiently – Maria and Roberto, the sisters – one of them coming each day to the hospital to visit her, encouraging her through her therapy sessions, ready to take her back with them the moment she was discharged. Flavia even bought her designer shoes, but Romy couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for them. How could she think about shoes – how could she even bear to walk again – when Alfonso was dead?

  For all their good intentions, Romy had felt suffocated by the Scolaris – the family she’d wanted as her own. For all their loyalty to her, she was a traitor to them. It had soon reached the point where she’d barely been able to look them in the eyes.

  And there’d been another reason she’d kept silent too. Another reason that she didn’t dare admit even to herself, until nearly three months after Alfonso’s death.

  But it had been reason enough to make up her mind. Reason enough to leave a note for Alfonso’s family, check herself out of the hospital and sneak away. Reason enough to start again, somewhere new, on her own.

  ‘Mamma?’

  Romy quickly turned away from the window and went through the door behind the sofa.

  Alfie was sitting up in bed, bathed in the soft glow of the night-light. He had long black eyelashes, just like his father, and Romy felt her heart contracting with love as she went to her son.

  ‘Hey? What’s the matter?’ she asked, sitting beside him on his duvet and stroking his forehead.

  ‘I can’t sleep.’

  Now she kicked off her slippers and tucked herself under the duvet with Alfie, cuddling him tight in his little bed.

  ‘Is Papa with angels?’ he asked her. She was amazed at his ability not only to express himself, but to ask such searching questions. Since
he’d started talking at just eighteen months, he hadn’t stopped. Now, at three, Romy was constantly surprised by his grasp on the world.

  ‘Yes, he is.’

  ‘Do the angels have cars?’

  ‘Of course. Papa’s got the fastest car in heaven. Didn’t you see his tyre tracks across the sky earlier?’

  It was an old joke between them that the vapour trails left by the planes taking off from Schiphol Airport, which often drifted this way over the town, were really left by Alfonso, who was constantly driving over the city to check that they were OK.

  Romy had bought a new computer and spent her evenings trawling through old press cuttings and buying posters online. The one at the end of Alfie’s bed that they’d put up earlier was Romy’s best find yet: a black-and-white poster of Alfonso spraying a magnum of champagne when he’d won the Japanese Grand Prix. They both stared at it now.

  ‘What is he like?’ Alfie asked, as if they might meet one day soon.

  ‘He has nice hair. Just like yours,’ she said, kissing his head. ‘And he’s funny, like you. When he was here and not in heaven, he could make great pasta.’

  ‘Can I make pasta too?’ Alfie said, yawning.

  ‘Of course,’ Romy said as she pressed her face into his hair, breathing him in.

  She turned off the night-light and lay in the dark holding him, stroking the soft, downy skin on the back of his neck to get him off to sleep, the same way she’d done every night of his life. But in her head she felt words forming, as if Alfonso were speaking to her from the dead.

  Mamma . . . Maria . . . she should be teaching him to make pasta. Papa . . . Roberto . . . should be reading him to sleep.

  Memories of that wonderful Tuscan kitchen and the smell of that delicious spiced-pumpkin ravioli seemed to fill Romy’s nostrils.

  She knew it was wrong to deny Alfie his grandparents and his aunts. She’d thought about it so often. She’d even written to them dozens of times, but the first letter – a grovelling apology, telling them that she was fine and needed to be alone in order to heal – had been the only one she’d sent. She’d assured them that she’d be back soon. That she’d be in touch.

  But once again it had all been lies. She hadn’t mentioned how the morning sickness and grief had assaulted her in wave after wave through the day and night, until she’d felt shipwrecked. So many times she’d wanted to call Flavia or Maria and beg them to rescue her. But she’d stopped herself. The Scolaris were wonderful people, and Romy had only brought them heartbreak and bad luck. They were better off without her.

  But then Alfie had been born, and everything had changed. Her self-imposed rejection from the Scolaris had changed to self-imposed protection from them.

  Because Alfie was hers – the only thing that had ever been just hers. And she couldn’t, wouldn’t, share him with anyone.

  He’d felt like a miracle. A gift sent from Alfonso to heal her. She’d been so absorbed in him, so fascinated by him, that hours had flown by just watching his fist curl around her little finger. Then, all too soon, he’d sat up and she’d helped him to crawl. The months had flitted past like a sped-up calendar in a movie.

  But now that time had gone and life was still moving on, faster and faster. And she knew it wouldn’t be long before Alfie no longer accepted her standard explanation that his grandparents all lived a long, long way away. And then what? What would she tell him? How would she answer when Alfie told her that he wanted to meet Maria and Roberto? How could she risk letting him see them when, anonymous as she and Alfie were here in Amsterdam, they were both so safe?

  And what about my own parents? she thought, rolling onto her back now, still holding Alfie as his breathing grew deeper and he drifted into sleep. Parents. Whoever they were, they’d never been that. She felt a sickness in her stomach, the same sickness she’d used to feel in the orphanage, where each night she’d made herself push down the useless, poisonous hope that one day they’d arrive to take her back.

  Had her own mother felt about her, as a baby, the way she did about Alfie? Surely she must have felt some kind of emotion when she’d held Romy for the first time? Maybe not as intense as Romy herself had felt, when she’d seen Alfie’s face and had experienced falling in love in a way she’d never thought possible. But her mother must have felt something. How could she just have given up her baby? What horrible circumstances had driven her to dump Romy in an orphanage? Had she ever regretted not cuddling her as a little child, the way Romy cuddled Alfie now?

  How could she not have? How could she have left me like that?

  Wasn’t there anyone in the world who ever thought about her? Any long-lost relatives out there who missed her?

  Romy still felt unsettled when she woke up the next morning in her clothes, cramped up in Alfie’s tiny bed. They both got up and ate cereal in the kitchen, and when Romy said they had a whole weekend stretching ahead of them, Alfie started to make plans to go to the zoo and on a boat trip. Romy laughed, marvelling at the way in which he so effortlessly filled their social agenda.

  They struggled together down the crazily steep stairs with Alfie’s new scooter, which Romy had bought him for his birthday in March.

  Lars, their new neighbour, was standing outside his apartment’s open doorway downstairs. He waved and said hello, before staring back into his apartment and calling out, ‘Hey, come on. Hurry up!’

  Lars was probably around the same age as she was, Romy thought, and was tall and thin, with a friendly, lopsided smile, as well as terrible taste in jumpers, she’d noted. He might even be called handsome, she considered, under his thick reading glasses and unruly mop of dark hair.

  Since she’d arrived in Amsterdam, Romy had kept a low profile and deliberately not made any friends. She’d cut her hair and dyed it and changed her name to Susan, terrified at first of the media finding her again, but then afterwards anxious to protect her own and Alfie’s blissfully anonymous life together. She never went out without wearing large shades.

  But Lars seemed harmless enough. Unobtrusive. The few conversations she’d had with him had been about the pros and cons of the local amenities and the lack of true musical talent displayed by their Austrian neighbour, who played his bongos late into the night and sang ‘like a wounded pig’ (Lars’s words) whenever he got drunk. That was the other thing about Lars – he made Romy smile.

  She didn’t know him very well, but it was still a surprise now when she saw a little girl, probably just a few years older than Alfie, come charging out of his apartment into his arms, before giggling hysterically as he flipped her upside-down and whipped her up into the air.

  ‘This is Gretchen,’ Lars explained to Romy and Alfie in English, putting the giggling little girl back down. He proudly placed his hand on the top of her head. ‘It’s my weekend with her.’

  Was he divorced? Romy wondered, her curiosity aroused. She wondered what his wife was like and why they no longer lived together. She couldn’t imagine living away from Alfie, surviving just on weekend visits.

  ‘We’re going to the park,’ Alfie said and Romy ruffled his hair, amazed at his confidence with new people.

  ‘Can we go, Daddy?’ Gretchen asked. She was a sweet little thing, Romy thought, in a corduroy green jacket and jeans, her blonde hair in bunches. She was pretty, with big grey eyes – the same as Lars’s, Romy now saw.

  ‘I’ve got to go to the office, I told you. You’ve got to come with me. Not for long, but—’

  ‘She can come with us,’ Alfie said.

  Romy looked at him and then at Lars, embarrassed. ‘Oh, no, Alfie, um . . . ’

  ‘Please, can I?’ Gretchen begged.

  Alfie turned to Romy. ‘Mamma?’

  Romy was about to protest, but Alfie was so much like Alfonso, so trusting and sure that life would turn out all right. She recognized the forcefulness in his voice, and his eyes didn’t waver from hers until she started speaking. Just like his father, he would get his way.

  ‘Well . . . I don�
�t . . . I don’t mind,’ Romy told Lars. ‘We’ll only be a couple of hours. I can bring Gretchen back here.’

  Lars looked endearingly flummoxed, but when Gretchen put her hands under her chin in a prayer position, he relented. ‘OK. I’ll get her scooter too, if you’re really sure it’s OK.’ Alfie and Gretchen grinned at each other.

  Outside it was a perfect spring day. A spider’s web was glistening in the doorframe, as Romy crouched down and made sure that Alfie’s safety helmet was done up tightly under his chin. He squirmed, keen to show off in front of Gretchen. Romy warned him not to go too fast, before handing over his scooter, but her request fell on deaf ears. He set of in an elegant wide arc on the pavement, calling for Gretchen, the cherry blossom on the pavement swirling around him. A barge honked as it passed on the sparkling river below the canal bridge.

  ‘I work over in Herengracht. This is my number, if she’s any problem,’ Lars said, writing on the back of a cab receipt.

  Romy didn’t tell him that she didn’t own a mobile phone. His assumption that she did – that she must have a whole network of friends and family – made her feel nervous. But it was too late to back out now.

  ‘Actually I have a card somewhere.’ He patted the pockets of his waterproof jacket and then handed over a card from his wallet.

  ‘European Network and Information Security Agency,’ Romy read. ‘That sounds important.’

  ‘I fight cybercrime,’ Lars said, striking a Superman pose, which made Romy laugh. ‘White hat hacking,’ he explained. ‘Pretty boring in reality. I try and keep banks and council offices safe. But today we have a small crisis and my boss is away on holiday. But don’t worry, I won’t be long.’

  Smiling again, he leant down and kissed Gretchen and talked to her quietly in Dutch. Romy watched as they touched knuckles in some kind of secret pact. For a part-time dad, he sure wasn’t bad. Gretchen closed her eyes as she hugged him, pressing her face up against his chest. Would Alfie have been like that with Alfonso? Romy wondered. She felt an ache of sadness. She thought so – yes, he would.