The Perfect Couple

by Lexi Landsman

  ‘They’re gone,’ I said in shock. ‘The phone was badly damaged in the car accident and the photos must have somehow been wiped.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Sarah asked, taking the phone from me and searching herself. She sighed. ‘My phone has been acting up since the accident. I need to have it replaced.’

  I ran my hands over my head. I couldn’t believe it. Those photos were the only proof we had that we’d found the necklace.

  ‘So, there are no photos, then?’ Captain Gammino said, with a slight upward tilt of his chin.

  ‘We only took photos on Sarah’s phone,’ I answered, humiliated and enraged. How could all the photos we took have disappeared? Now not only had my wife lost her memory, but the tangible records of her forgotten past were gone too. It felt like someone playing a cruel trick on us.

  ‘What’s the necklace worth?’ First Marshal Dominici asked, snapping my thoughts back into the room.

  ‘Somewhere around the one hundred and fifty million euro mark.’

  Dominici raised an eyebrow, but other than that his expression remained unchanged.

  Gammino jumped in, his voice flat. ‘That’s a lot of money. Is that why you’ve been looking for it? To claim a piece of it for yourselves?’

  ‘That’s an outrageous accusation,’ I snapped, sitting upright. ‘We’re archaeologists, not thieves. The value for us is in finding a piece of history. Not trying to claim it for ourselves. You obviously know nothing about the work we do.’

  Sarah rubbed my arm in an attempt to placate me. As she did, I watched Gammino make notes. I could tell from the subtle twitch at the corner of his lips that he was pleased that he’d got a rise out of me.

  Sarah spoke calmly, as if she was trying to make up for my outburst. ‘Every object we discover belongs to its country of origin. Our job is to report everything we find.’

  Gammino’s expression gave nothing away. ‘So, did you report it?’ he asked, looking at me.

  ‘It was the middle of the night. We were going to the next day.’

  Now that they know we did indeed find the necklace, the case will quickly escalate up the ranks. ‘What did you do with the necklace after you found it?’

  ‘We studied it for a while, photographed it and then we locked it in the lab’s safe. We were planning to go back there first thing in the morning before our team arrived. But then Sarah had her accident.’

  Gammino clicked his knuckles. ‘How do you think it looks that you find a necklace worth hundreds of millions of euros, don’t correctly document its discovery, don’t alert authorities and then it simply goes missing?’

  Gammino’s deadpan approach was getting under my skin. ‘We didn’t know Sarah was going to have a car accident on the way home,’ I spat out. I was trying to keep my cool by gritting my teeth but I could feel sweat gathering in the folds of my shirt.

  Dominici jumped in with a softer tactic. ‘Let’s take a step back. If you were planning to come back to the lab first thing in the morning, why didn’t you just leave a car there and go home together?’

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. ‘I honestly don’t know. I guess we were both caught up in the exhilaration of the discovery and not thinking clearly.’

  ‘So, you went straight home, Marco?’ he asked, gazing directly at me, testing me. I gazed at their full mugs of coffee. ‘I filled up with petrol and then went home.’

  ‘Which station did you go to?’

  I looked down at my shadow; it was large and looming from the angle of the ceiling lights, an ugly reflection of my guilt. ‘I don’t know how any of this is relevant.’

  ‘We’re just trying to build a timeline of the events.’

  Again I didn’t make eye contact when I answered. ‘I went to an Esso station on Via Bersaglio.’

  Gammino had been quiet for a few minutes but now he cracked his neck and leaned forward. ‘When did you realise the necklace was not where you left it?’

  ‘After I’d been to see Sarah at the hospital, I went to the lab, about seven o’clock in the morning. I opened the safe and it was gone.’

  ‘Did anyone else know about the discovery?’

  Yes. Sofia. My twenty-eight-year-old mistress, who I’ve blindly trusted.

  ‘No, no one,’ I lied instead.

  ‘Who has access to the lab?’

  ‘Our team, and that’s it.’

  ‘We’re going to need a full list of everyone who has worked on the excavation site. And anyone at all who has been into the lab. Is there anything else we should know?’

  I hesitated for a moment and then rubbed my temples. ‘Yes.’ I swallowed. ‘I did something very foolish. I sent an email to our team and to the media from the lab to say we had an important announcement to make the following morning.’

  That email was now the best alibi I had. If I had planned to steal the necklace, why would I have sent that message? Why would I have even whispered a word about discovering the necklace?

  Gammino raised his eyebrows and exchanged a stern glance with Dominici. ‘We’ll need a copy of that email and all the contacts you sent it to. There are two cases we are now dealing with here,’ Dominici said, his body stiffening. ‘The theft of a valuable Italian antiquity.’ He paused a moment, his voice low and serious. ‘And potentially, attempted murder.’

  SARAH

  It’s been three weeks since my car accident and though it was a singular event of which I have no memory, it seems to have caused a ripple effect that has changed my life irrevocably. My children have been deeply concerned and watch me round the clock, and Marco has been extra tender. The excavation site and our lab have been temporarily locked off while investigations continue into the necklace’s disappearance. My ribs aren’t as sore, although they hurt when I make sudden movements, and while I’m still plagued by daily headaches, they’ve lessened in their severity. Painkillers have helped ease the ache in my broken wrist, and fortunately I’m right-handed, so I’ve managed to cook some dinners to keep myself busy.

  It seems that while my physical wounds are healing, my mind is not. I’ve become somewhat obsessed with regaining my lost memories. They are sharp in their absence, hanging in my mind like empty frames with missing pictures.

  It’s the two hours of unexplained time that worries me most. What was I doing? Where did I go? And what if something sinister did happen to me in that time that could explain the disappearance of the necklace?

  So I decide to research cognition techniques for memory recovery, and one of the exercises suggests revisiting the place where the traumatic event occurred.

  It’s the perfect time to go because no one is home to talk me out of it. Marco has taken our team to lunch today to thank them for their patience while the police investigate and to outline our policy of not disclosing anything to the media.

  Of course, Marco would approve of what I’m doing, but I don’t need more pressure from him. He’s been trying to jog my memory by repeatedly talking me through the events of that night in minute-by-minute detail, as if one piece of information might snap the whole sequence of events back into place in my mind. He’s getting increasingly frustrated with me, which doesn’t help the situation. It’s not like I have any control over the intricacies of how my brain works. He refuses to believe the doctor’s prognosis that I will never regain the lost time.

  Daniel is at university and Emily is at school, and both of them would be against what I’m about to do. They think I’m traumatised by the accident, and in their own caring ways they keep trying to shield me from reliving it. Daniel hides the newspaper articles and Emily changes the subject whenever it comes up. What they don’t understand is that you can’t be traumatised by something you can’t recall ever happening. I don’t remember what it felt like to lose control of my car, or the agony that must have seared through my wrist when it snapped, or the terror of careening down the embankment before splashing into the shallow river. I don’t know if I felt any pain when my head hit the steering wheel, or if
I heard the crack of my ribs break when the air bag hit me. I don’t even know when I fell unconscious or if I was afraid I might die.

  And if Marco is right and it wasn’t an accident, I have no memory of being beaten into submission and forced to hand over the greatest discovery of my career. All I know are the things I’ve been told and what the police report said.

  I’ve conjured horrific images in my mind of myself lying bleeding, alone and unconscious, but these are drawn from my imagination. They’re not real. They’re not even from my perspective. When I picture that night, it’s as if I’m an omniscient narrator observing the scene from afar. I’m not the one in the car but the one looking through the window at a woman’s unconscious body.

  It’s pitch black, except for one flickering car light that wasn’t smashed in the impact. My head is pressed on the steering wheel, my left eye is hidden, a gash of blood is dripping from my forehead down my face, over my lip. My mouth is open. My left wrist is resting limply on my lap. The scent of fuel and exhaust smoke rise in the air. A couple are shouting in Italian, running down the hill to the riverbank. The woman has a gown wrapped around her; the man is wearing only shorts. He comes to the window, feels for a pulse and yells something to her in Italian. She dials for an ambulance. There’s a wave of flashing lights. And then I wake up in the hospital.

  When I picture that scene, I feel like I’m just the character of a story other people are telling. It’s deeply disconcerting.

  As I walk towards the Mugnone River, I cradle my plastered wrist close to my chest. When I’m not with Marco, I enjoy the anonymity of going unnoticed for days at a time. But now that the articles on my accident and the missing necklace have run with pictures of me looking out from newspaper pages, I feel like everyone is looking at me. I’m sure it’s all in my head, but even passing the local pizzeria I see a couple put their slices down and stare at me as I walk by. A woman in the street drops her keys on the footpath and when she bends to pick them up, she pauses to gaze at me. Even an old lady seems to glare in my direction as she ushers her grandson inside a toy store.

  The feeling of being watched only adds to my unease. When I near the river, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and goosebumps appear on my arms. I wonder if my body is reliving something I can’t recall.

  With reluctance, I walk on the footpath beside the low barrier wall. Cars pass at speed beside me and the wind whips through my hair. I have that out-of-body feeling again as if I am watching myself from a distance. I reach the area where I’m told my car crashed and plummeted down. The barrier has been replaced but I can tell where my car smashed through from the fresh slab of concrete. I touch the line where the old part meets the new. A thin crack. A fissure. The space I fell between and nearly died.

  I’m stalling, afraid to look down. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Then I open them and peer at the river below. My heart is racing and my breath comes out in hot, uneven bursts. I wait for a flood of memories to return – but nothing comes. And yet, my body is rigid with fear. I’ve forgotten but it seems my body hasn’t. If only I could reach into the abyss of lost time and reclaim it.

  Thankfully, the Mugnone River here is no more than a stream.

  As I stare at the shallow water, still hopeful and simultaneously fearful that it might spark a memory to return, I see my reflection gaze back at me – my red hair, the same blonde-orange hue as my mother’s, and my pale green eyes with their defined dark-emerald rim. I suddenly feel nostalgic for a place I haven’t missed in a long time. Home. The only real home I’ve ever known, back in Berry. I picture my house preserved like a time capsule: my parents sitting in front of the television, eating snow peas, sausages and mashed potato. It was such a simple existence. There was warmth and homeliness in our small three-bedroom house. Love in bounds and so few expectations. And now, here I am in Italy, a grown woman with two children of her own, with no fixed address. What I would give right now to be back in that house, a child again, sitting by the fireplace, wrapped in the security blanket of my parents’ unwavering love.

  I haven’t told my mum and dad about my accident. I don’t want to upset them even though I desperately want to hear my mother’s calm and soothing voice tell me that everything will be okay, despite a gut instinct that tells me it won’t.

  Eventually, I pull away from the edge of the bridge and turn to walk towards our apartment, reluctantly accepting that the memory technique has failed and I’m back to square one.

  Marco kisses me on the cheek when he gets home. It’s early evening and I’m surprised the lunch stretched out so long. Marco doesn’t drink but I assume the rest of the team did if drinks were on him. A part of me is jealous that everyone else has resumed a normal life and I’m stuck at home, tortured by what I can’t remember. ‘I made your favourite dish for dinner – gnocchi alla sorrentina,’ I say. ‘Daniel went to a movie with a friend.’

  ‘A friend,’ Marco says, with a grin. ‘Do you think he could be seeing someone?’

  Daniel has never brought a girlfriend home to meet us and we’ve never met his university friends either. ‘Well, he certainly looked like was going on a date. He wore a white shirt and his black jeans. I almost didn’t recognise him.’ I smile. ‘So yes, perhaps there is a new lady in his life.’

  Marco smiles. ‘And where’s Emmy?’

  ‘She’s in her room on the phone for a change. How was lunch?’

  He fills his bowl with the potato dumplings and stretchy mozzarella, and then sighs. ‘I can’t help it, I just feel like I can’t trust anyone on our team anymore. I keep thinking that one of them has to know something. So I spent most of the lunch subtly watching them all to see if anyone was acting strangely. I’m still convinced it was an inside job.’

  I’m probably being needy, but I just wish he would stop and ask how I am feeling today, or what I did to occupy my time for another day trapped inside. But Marco seems completely distracted. He lathers my homemade tomato sauce over the gnocchi, twirling the melted cheese around his fork for each mouthful. He folds and unfolds his napkin repeatedly. ‘So, I was invited to speak at the Roman Archaeology Conference in Naples.’

  ‘That’s great, honey,’ I say. ‘When is it?’

  ‘That’s the thing. It’s next week. I accepted the invitation a few months ago and completely forgot about it until I received the program when you were in hospital.’

  I sigh. ‘It’s a pity you’ll miss it.’

  ‘Actually, I was wondering how you would feel if I went? I thought maybe you and the kids could go up to Lake Como for a few days while I’m gone so you can relax and get away for a while. James is happy for you to stay in his villa in Menaggio. And if you’re enjoying it, I could meet you there when I get back.’

  I look down, not wanting to meet his eyes because I can feel tears brimming. I’ve been so sensitive since the accident that I barely know myself. It’s selfish but I want him here, with me. ‘Oh,’ I manage, softly.

  He puts his cutlery down and leans towards me. He moves the hair away from my cheek and tilts my chin up gently to face him. ‘I’ll only be gone for four days. I’ll be back before you know it.’

  A tear falls down my cheek and he wipes it away tenderly. I’m not usually a dependent person, so I’m embarrassed by my show of emotion. ‘Of course,’ I say. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m just a bit of a nervous wreck since the accident.’

  He gazes at me lovingly. ‘Are you sure, tesora? I hate to see you like this. I won’t go if you don’t want me to.’

  His hand is resting on my cheek and I place mine on top of his, thinking about how much I love him. ‘No, you should go. It’ll be good for your career. And the kids are here with me. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Thank you, tesora,’ he says, kissing me on the forehead, and then returning to finish the last dregs of sauce in his bowl. ‘I really think you should consider going to Lake Como for a few days while I’m gone. It will be nice to get some sunshine and escape for a
while.’

  I smile softly. It’s thoughtful of him to think of me and to go the trouble of organising a getaway. James was the executive producer on a documentary Marco presented on Pompeii four years ago, and they became good friends. He’s a wealthy businessman with a side passion for archaeology, so I imagine the place will be beautiful. ‘It is a good idea. I’m sure Emmy would love a few days off school and it would be nice to get away, I guess. I’ll think about it.’

  While my husband cleans up in the kitchen, I stay seated, thinking about the prospect of him going away to the conference. As much as I want him to do what’s best for his career, I can’t help but feel disappointed that he’s leaving me when I’m at my most vulnerable. But I force myself to snap out of it. Lake Como will be lovely this time of year, and it will be a good opportunity for me to clear my head and spend quality time with my children. So, I make up my mind.

  ‘I’ll go,’ I tell him with a smile.

  After all, what could possibly go wrong?

  DANIEL

  Daniel woke in the early hours of the morning to sun streaming through the shutters and falling onto Caterina, who was standing by the stove in a yellow T-shirt as she boiled water. He watched her graceful movements and thought about how strange it was that she, this light and vivacious energy, had entered his life at such a dark time.

  She must have sensed him watching because she turned and smiled. ‘Good morning sleepyhead,’ she said. ‘I’m making us coffee but I’m afraid that’s all I have to offer.’

  He sat upright and smiled. ‘Coffee will be great.’

  Daniel’s relationship with Caterina had moved quickly in the weeks since his mother’s accident. He met her for lunch on the days she worked and they went for dinner, a stroll or a movie most evenings. Last night was his first night staying over in her apartment. He’d had girlfriends before but something about her was different. Maybe it was her quirkiness, her unyielding confidence or the fact that she was a nonconformist. She didn’t seem bothered that he was without a career and was following what some would call a pipedream.