The Perfect Couple

by Lexi Landsman

  ‘Caterina?’ I ask, and I see his cheeks flush.

  ‘Caterina is the girl I’ve been seeing,’ he says quietly. ‘We were on the phone for ages,’ he says almost to himself and then pauses with a look of worry so intense that I can see it consume him.

  I rub his back with my one good hand. ‘Look, Daniel, I know you feel guilty. God, I feel guilty too. If I hadn’t fallen asleep, maybe she wouldn’t have gone for a run at all. You can play the “if only” game from every angle, but we couldn’t have predicted this, so there was no way we could have prevented it from happening.’

  He wipes a tear from his eyes. ‘I’m scared for her,’ he says in such a soft voice I have to strain to hear him.

  I rest my head against his shoulder and fight the urge to break down crying. I need to keep it together. I’ll be of no help to anyone if I fall apart. ‘Me too,’ I say.

  I can’t hold off the frightening scenarios playing in my mind. I imagine Emily jogging happily through the cobbled streets, music blaring from her headphones, not a worry in the world. I can picture her strawberry-blonde ponytail swaying as she runs, her cheeks softly flushed, her green eyes sparkling. Then I picture a man grabbing her from behind. Dragging her away and into an apartment or a car, or even forcing her onto a boat. If her music was playing loud enough, like it usually is, she wouldn’t have sensed that someone was following her or heard them approach. I rub my eyes, trying to push away the dark thoughts. Shuddering, I think of my poor girl and the terror, the overwhelming fear that must have gripped her. Did she try to run away? Did she fight back? Was there more than one person? Did they hurt her? Where is she now?

  I stand up to try to shake off my cascading thoughts. ‘I’m going inside,’ I tell Daniel.

  I scan the villa for the two officers but I can’t see them anywhere. Then I notice that the front door is open, and I spot them standing at the gate by a mailbox. The shorter officer is holding something in his gloved hand, an intense expression on his face.

  They gaze up and see me staring. They whisper to each other, and then walk over. As they draw closer, I see the item in his gloved hand is a piece of paper.

  ‘What is it?’ I say, feeling panic rush like a current through my blood.

  ‘We found something,’ the officer says, his expression grim.

  He hands the piece of paper over to me and it trembles in my hands as I read the English words cut out from a magazine and pasted down.

  We have your daughter. She will not be harmed if you meet our demands. You have three days to hand over the San Gennaro necklace.

  MARCO

  I woke up with a pounding in my head like a drum. My lips were dry and my body felt brittle. It was a struggle to simply open my eyes. Having a hangover was not a feeling I was accustomed to and not one I could ever get used to. It made me understand how an alcoholic might fall into the cycle. If you woke up like I had, the first thing you’d want to do would be to start drinking again to numb the nausea.

  I rolled onto my side, and even though it was a small movement it was enough to bring the contents of my stomach rushing up my throat. I made it to the bathroom just in time. With my eyes closed, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and then leaned forward to retch again. I vomited until the back of my oesophagus felt bruised and scratched, until there was nothing left but bile. When I finally stopped, my ears burned and I felt dizzy, like I’d been on a boat. With the alcohol escaping my body, my father’s confession about my mother came rushing back to my mind with such force that I vomited again.

  Yesterday, when everything had come to light, I pushed it aside so I wouldn’t have to deal with it. But now, with no desire to drink myself again into blind oblivion, I had no choice but to confront it. The anger was overwhelming. My father had no right to make those decisions for me. He had robbed me of a mother, and she of a son. I thought of her now, her thick ash-brown hair, her deep-set eyes, the single freckle above her lip, the warmth of her hugs, the way she always smiled in front of me even if she was hurting. I imagined her writing letters to me, and posting them only to receive my father’s cruel lies in return. If only one of those letters had reached me, how different my life might have been.

  My father’s recollection of her final days choked me with sadness. I could picture her arriving at his door, bald and pale, and my father, with his wicked eyes and cold grin, denying her dying wish to see her only child. I hoped she hadn’t lived out her dying days alone, painfully ill, with no one to care for her. The knowledge that she had died believing I didn’t want to ever see her again was shattering.

  All this time, I had never understood how my loving mother had left me with my pathetic excuse for a father. And now that I did, I wished I could rewind the clock, fold into one of her warm hugs again and start our lives over. What I would have given to see her one more time. To tell her that I’d always loved her and that I had never held any resentment towards her. I knew why she had left; I just never knew she came back for me.

  I lay back on the bed and closed my eyes, trying to absorb it all, even though my head still felt like I was underwater, swimming against a tide of regret. It made me think about how much of our lives are predetermined for us, shaped by our parents’ hands. Reflecting on the cruelty of my father’s actions made it patently clear to me that I didn’t want my children to bear the scars of my mistakes.

  I searched for my phone, wanting to tell Sarah about my awful encounter with my father, but when I found it I was startled to see so many missed calls and a series of text messages from her, with the last one saying: Call me urgently. It’s about Emily.

  I looked at the time; it was nearly 11 am. I couldn’t believe I’d slept so late. But then again, the amount of alcohol I had consumed was probably enough to put me in a coma. I quickly dialled her number, hoping Sarah was just overreacting about something. But it wasn’t like her to send me panicked messages. She was usually level-headed and rational, but she had been uncharacteristic ally on edge since her accident.

  Sarah answered on the first ring. ‘Marco, where have you been?’ she snapped. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you all night.’

  ‘I was asleep,’ I said, confused. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘It’s Emily,’ she spat out in a haunting tone. ‘Marco,’ she said with a pause, her voice teetering on the edge of tears, ‘she’s missing.’

  My skin went cold. ‘What do you mean she’s missing?’

  ‘She went for a run and never came back. The police have been searching for her.’

  I felt nausea wind back up my throat again and I quickly held the phone away as I vomited into the bin.

  ‘Marco, are you okay?’

  I wiped my mouth and swallowed hard. ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘Last night. She left the villa at six pm and didn’t return.’

  My head was spinning. I tried to make sense of what she was saying through the haze of my hangover. The dark hotel room felt like it was getting smaller and smaller, closing in on me.

  ‘She posted a picture to Instagram of her standing at the fountain in the piazza, so they know where she was shortly before she vanished. Her phone’s last signal was at six fifty-five, two kilometres away from there. The police combed the area. They even looked in wells and brought in tracker dogs,’ she said. ‘And then they found something at the villa.’ She paused, a quiver in her heavy breaths. ‘A ransom note.’

  I sat back down, dizzy and nauseated as she read to me the chilling words in the note. ‘Per Dio!’ I swore in Italian, and punched my hand into the headboard, leaving a crack in the wood and inflaming the welt on my knuckles. ‘How could this happen?’

  ‘It’s our fault, Marco,’ she said softly. ‘We put her in this danger. We should have been more careful, more vigilant. Maybe if you were with us, this …’

  Her voice trailed off, so I finished the sentence for her. ‘This wouldn’t have happened.’

  There was silence on her end of the line. My headache retur
ned with full force and I cursed myself for drinking. I couldn’t think straight. If I hadn’t drunk myself into a blind stupor last night, could I have prevented all this?

  ‘You’re right,’ I said softly. ‘I should have been there with you and the kids. I put my career first.’

  Again, she said nothing in response, which was Sarah’s way of showing her disapproval. I could hear other voices in the background. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m at the villa. The state and military police are here. A top magistrate is heading the case.’

  ‘A magistrate?’ I asked, surprised that the search had gone up the ranks so quickly.

  ‘Her name is Vittoria Belardo. Apparently she’s one of the best in the country.’

  ‘I’m going to head to the station now and get on the next train out of here.’

  ‘Marco,’ she said, her voice now so fragile it was barely more than a whisper, ‘I’m terrified. I keep thinking of how afraid she would have been when they grabbed her. Our poor girl.’

  I hadn’t even had time to think those details through but now an image rose in my mind: a man wearing gloves and a mask, grabbing Emmy, catching her completely unaware. It made me feel even more ill than when I woke up.

  ‘She’s a resilient girl. She’s smart and she’s not easily scared. And if they told her why they had taken her, she’d know we would get her out of there. She can handle this,’ I said, trying to be reassuring even though there were too many unknowns to be sure of anything.

  ‘She’s sixteen, Marco.’ Sarah began to cry. ‘Can you imagine how terrified she would be? We don’t know where they’ve taken her, if they’ve hurt her, what conditions they’re keeping her in, if they’re giving her food or water. We know nothing. I mean, what if they’ve got her in some cold, dark cellar with rats and they’re letting her starve?’

  ‘If what they want is the necklace, they’d be foolish to harm her. The kidnappers need to keep her well for us to cooperate with them.’

  ‘Well, what are we going to do? We don’t know where the necklace is. I can’t remember anything from that night – you know that.’

  ‘You need to remember, Sarah,’ I said firmly. ‘You need to do everything you can to retrieve those memories. Our daughter’s life depends on it.’

  ‘God, Marco, you can’t put all this on me! If I could remember, I damn well would have by now,’ she snapped. ‘And even if I did, I might have no helpful information to offer and we’d be in the same position.’

  I softened my tone. ‘You just need to try. That’s all I’m saying. I know you and I know you can overcome whatever it is that’s blocking your memories.’

  She sighed and took a deep breath. ‘When they find the bastards who took our daughter, I hope they suffer every day for what they’ve done,’ she said with venom in her voice.

  When I hung up the phone, I quickly packed my bag, putting my mother’s letters in my briefcase as though they were precious cargo.

  I was plagued with guilt, thinking of the fear Emily could be experiencing. What emotional scars would she carry after this ordeal? What hatred would she harbour towards me for letting my career put her in danger? How would this end if Sarah’s memory didn’t return?

  I felt like I was drowning in a broth of emotions. Each one sizzled and burned, rose to the surface, then fell down again, giving way to another. First there was guilt, which was then replaced by anger towards Sarah. If she remembered that night, this would never have happened. She needed to remember. Our children were everything to her and if ever there were a trigger to spark back her memories, this would be it.

  Once on the train, I felt fidgety and anxious. I worried about Emmy the entire way. I checked my two phones – my normal one and the secret one I kept to communicate with Sofia.

  How had returning to Naples so swiftly brought my life undone? Why did it seem like my birthplace had a vendetta against me? I thought about everything that had happened while I was there and then my thoughts turned to my father and the man he had become. And even though I had vowed my whole life to be nothing like him, last night I had been a drunken mess and now I had proved to be a useless husband and father. Maybe there was something to be said about nature and nurture. Maybe no matter how far I travelled, I would never be able to escape my genetic code.

  I prayed that this ordeal would end soon and that my daughter wouldn’t spend her life hating me like I hated my father.

  SARAH

  The ransom note changes everything. The police are no longer treating it as a missing persons case. It is now a kidnapping for ransom. The closest police station is across the water at Bellagio, so Vittoria Belardo, along with her team of state police and carabinieri, are using our villa as a base for their operation, particularly because it may be there that the abductors reach out to us next. She has asked all the officers to gather in the reception room to await instructions. No one has asked Daniel and me to leave, so I’m staying put and listening to whatever it is she has to say.

  In the light, I can see why people take Vittoria seriously. She is in her mid-fifties but seems older. She has a hardened face with parched skin and bears the expression of someone who hasn’t smiled in years. She’s short but stocky, with a broad nose and the kind of eyes that give the impression of being in a permanent state of judgement. I get the feeling that she is not a person whose bad side you want to be on but is the exact person you’d want behind you on a case like this.

  ‘As some of you know, a ransom note was found in the villa mailbox,’ Vittoria says matter-of-factly. ‘This escalates the case. We need to act quickly and with every resource we have. We are treating the ransom note as genuine and exploring the possibility that there is an international connection, with a number of participants.’ She flicks her glasses higher up on her nose, and continues, her voice firm. ‘You’ll be aware that the ransom note specifically mentions a recent archaeological discovery made by Emily’s parents. Even if we were willing to negotiate with criminals, the necklace the ransom note mentioned is missing, presumed stolen.’ She casts her eyes at the many officers standing in the room. ‘It is unclear at this stage if the circumstances of Signora Moretti’s car accident are related to her daughter’s kidnapping. We are exploring the possibility that the crash may have been attempted murder. So, with those preceding incidents, we have to assume that those behind the abduction are serious. This will be a major operation that could take hours, days or weeks.’

  I feel my body tremble. I won’t even contemplate the possibility that this could go on for weeks. The thought of it even taking a few days to find my daughter is intolerable. Vittoria looks around. ‘I need to know that everyone in this room understands that you are not leaving until we find Emily.’

  Not a single officer so much as blinks. I like this woman more and more. She’s heavy-handed but she clearly knows how to get the job done.

  ‘Given that Marco is a well-known television personality and has already made headlines recently following Sarah’s accident and the missing necklace, the media interest in this case will be enormous, so it is crucial that we take extreme measures to avoid this leaking. On top of that, Emily is a beautiful young teenager, popular at school, athletic and a dual Italian–Australian citizen, which will no doubt give the story international appeal. Immediate action will be taken against any officer who does not maintain the utmost confidence and secrecy. We don’t want a swarm of media jeopardising our recovery efforts.’

  There is complete silence among the officers. I get the sense that none of them would dare put a foot out of line in front of Vittoria. ‘Good,’ she says. ‘Now that that’s clear, we have a lot of work ahead.’

  For the rest of the day, the ground level of the villa is transformed: work desks are brought in, along with computers, a technical support team and phone tappers.

  I feel a desperate urge to escape for a few minutes, to be alone and gather my thoughts. So I walk to the lake, picturing myself like a broken mirror, with missing piece
s. When I reach the end of the jetty, I stare out at the misty mountains and the light dancing on the pearly surface like glitter. The lake is the picture of serenity, so far from the storm brewing inside the walls of our villa and deep inside my chest.

  I think of water’s perfect memory, of the whispers it’s heard, of the secrets it’s buoyed in passing boats, of the things it hides in tangled vines deep below. And then I wonder if Emily was running by the lake when she was grabbed – if the water was the last thing she saw before she was taken.

  I turn my back on the lake and return to the villa, feeling like there is a hole in place of where my heart was.

  EMILY

  When Emily woke up, she was in a strange bed in a room with no windows. At first she thought she must be dreaming, but then she remembered the tight hand over her mouth, the smell of chemicals before she passed out. A shot of panic ran through her, and she jumped out of the bed and immediately collapsed to the floor. She was woozy, off balance, her vision blurred. So she sat, holding her knees pressed up to her chest, and took deep breaths. Whatever they had used to knock her out was still in her system. She waited until her vision became clear and the jelly feeling in her legs passed, and then she stood up and went to the door to try to yank it open, but it was locked so firmly it didn’t even budge a millimetre. Her body began to tremble and she felt sick all over as an unimaginable sense of terror overcame her. She cowered behind the bed, hiding from whatever lay on the other side of the door. Her heart was beating so fast she thought she was going to faint from fear. Where was she? Who had taken her? And why?

  Emily was wearing her running clothes but her shoes had been taken off. She shivered at the thought of them being removed as she lay unconscious. Scanning the room, she prayed she’d find her phone but it was nowhere in sight. A stream of horrifying thoughts rushed through her mind. She’d been abducted and they would rape and kill her, or keep her drugged and sell her into the sex trade. She knew of stories where it had happened in real life, like the schoolgirls in America who were abducted and kept as sex slaves, only managing to escape their captors ten or fifteen years later.