Seated at one of them was a woman with greying black hair and a stern expression. She swivelled around to see me. ‘Doctor Moretti,’ she said and stood up to shake my hand. Her handshake was strong and firm. ‘You made it.’ She gazed briefly at the officer. ‘Thank you, Lieutenant Abbiati,’ she said, dismissing him. Once he had walked off, she turned her attention back to me. ‘We’ll need to interview you at some stage today. In the meantime, if you’re looking for Sarah, she’s in the kitchen.’
There were police everywhere I turned. It was hard to think. I felt like a deer in headlights as I found my way to the kitchen.
‘Marco, thank God!’ Sarah ran towards me and wrapped her arms around me. She put her head to my chest and took a deep breath. I held her close, feeling her small body beneath my arms. She looked exhausted and ghostly pale, and there was a fragility to her every movement. ‘I’m so glad you’re here. I couldn’t have dealt with this on my own for much longer.’
‘I’m so sorry I haven’t been here.’ I wiped a tear from her cheek. ‘But I’m here now. Everything will be okay,’ I said, hoping like hell that it would.
‘Our poor baby girl,’ Sarah cried.
My absence – not just physically, but in my drunken state of mind last night – had proved toxic to my family. Now I just wished there was a way to undo what had already been done.
Our baby girl. The words triggered me to recall a memory from twenty years back to when I first contemplated the prospect of being a parent.
Sarah’s cycle was a full week late so she took a pregnancy test. I remembered standing outside the bathroom door, my heart in my throat, hoping she would walk out and show me the stick with one line instead of two. It felt like hours passed before she finally opened the door, even though it couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes. ‘I can’t look,’ she said, holding it in one palm, her hand covering the result.
‘It’s okay,’ I said, registering that she was as afraid as I was. ‘Whatever the result is, we can handle it.’
‘I’m scared,’ she admitted. ‘I’m scared that it will be positive.’
I exhaled with relief knowing that if it was, we would agree on our way forward.
Her hand cupped the test delicately as if it were an egg, so fragile it could break. Then she leaned against the doorframe, a subtle tremor in her hand. Her gaze was down at her closed fist but then she looked up, her watery eyes meeting mine. ‘And I’m scared that … it will be negative.’
It was only then that I realised Sarah might actually want a child. I didn’t know what to say, so I pulled her close and hugged her, feeling the rawness of emotion entangle us.
Did I want a child? What I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to be like my father, but what if having a baby was like a new link in a broken chain? Something strong enough to heal what you thought couldn’t be mended?
Eventually, she pulled back from my embrace and slowly opened her cupped fingers. And in them, two blue lines glistened. The first lines of life.
She started to cry and I felt something tug inside me – joy and fear and uncertainty and everything melded together into a tight knot in my chest.
‘You’re pregnant,’ I said softly, in disbelief.
She smiled then with a look on her face that was forever imprinted on my memory – serenity and utter joy and a sense that her whole life had been building to that very moment. The chance to create a new life.
I realised that I hadn’t factored her wishes into thoughts of our future together. It had always been my career, my goals, my dreams that had played on my mind – until then. This would change everything.
I didn’t have to ask whether she wanted to keep the baby. I knew. It terrified me. I would have responsibilities. A family to care for, a financial burden, lives other than my own to consider. With a child, I could make the wrong choices. I could scar them emotionally. They could ache like I had from a paternal lack of love.
Sarah grabbed my hand and curled her fingers around mine. ‘You’ll be a wonderful father,’ she said, watching me, as if she could read my mind.
Her touch sent a pulse of calm through me. She believed in me. She saw a different future for me to the bleak one my father made me believe was written in stone.
At that moment, it suddenly occurred to me that if nothing else came of my life, I could say I was someone’s papà. And that’s when I realised that maybe I did want to be a parent.
I gripped Sarah’s hand and felt my body relax. ‘We’re having a baby,’ I said and felt a smile play on my lips.
‘Now that you’re here,’ Sarah said, ‘they want to hold a press conference to see if the public will call through with any information or legitimate sightings of Emily.’ The shade of her green eyes seemed brighter against the dark shadows beneath them. ‘The media aren’t going to go away, so they say it’s best to use them to get any information we can. You can do the talking.’
I’d done scores of press conferences, but now, with my daughter missing, the thought of all the attention made me uneasy. I felt like an insect being dissected under a microscope; when you examined something so closely, you were bound to find imperfections. ‘Surely they have other stories to follow. Can’t they leave us alone?’
She sighed. ‘If only. All the media know at this stage is that Emily is missing. They don’t know about the ransom note. The police want us to keep that quiet, for now.’
‘Where’s Daniel?’
Sarah scratched at the edges of her plaster cast. ‘He must be in his room, I guess.’
‘So, what happens next?’ I asked.
She leaned her elbow on the kitchen table and rested her head in her uninjured hand. ‘We wait.’
And so we waited. With each passing hour, I became more anxious and guilt-ridden. My actions, my poor choices had led us here. I’d put my children’s lives at risk and proven myself right: I wasn’t fit to be a father.
It was a cold hard truth that I truly hoped wasn’t the case twenty years ago when I held my newborn son for the first time, feeling the flutter of his tiny heartbeat against my bare chest. I remembered looking at his perfectly formed fingers and nails, his ears, the flare of his nostrils as he took his first breaths, and thinking, This is my child. This perfect being is mine. Sarah and I had made this life that I held delicately cradled in my arms. She had nine months to bond as she felt him grow inside her, but for me, the connection only came then as I stared into his wide, grey-blue eyes that were seeing the world for the first time. He wrapped his whole hand around my pinkie finger and I watched him open his lips as he made soft whimpering noises. I had a sense of euphoria and innate protectiveness, thinking that this was life’s real mystery – not the relics of the past or the secrets of history that I decoded as an archaeologist, but this. New life.
Having our second baby did nothing to dilute the miracle of fatherhood. I remembered with clarity the softness of Emily’s newborn skin, being mesmerised by the perfect features on her tiny face and the late nights I’d stay up just to watch her sleep. My beautiful baby girl.
I had vowed to myself back then when I held each of my children for the first time that I would never let anything hurt them. That as long as I was around, they would be loved and cared for, and safe. But somewhere along the way, I had let my work overshadow my devotion to them. And now I felt the truth like a rifle to my temple … I had failed.
DANIEL
It was early afternoon and Daniel was exhausted from a sleepless night where he had tossed and turned restlessly, continually replaying the image of the stranger with the binoculars watching them and then, hauntingly, picturing the same man trailing behind his sister as she ran, blissfully unaware of his presence, through the cobbled backstreets of Menaggio.
His eyes fell on his guitar, which sat against the base of his bed. He picked it up and strummed a single chord, which reverberated through him as if his body were made of strings and the only sound that it could play was one of sadness. He propped it b
ack down and headed downstairs in search of his mother. He found her in the kitchen hugging his father.
‘Papà. You’re here,’ Daniel said, surprised.
Marco let go of Sarah and came over to give Daniel a sort of hug that felt more like a pat. Daniel was so unaccustomed to affection from his father that he went rigid in his arms.
‘How are you holding up, figlio mio?’
His dad referring to him endearingly as ‘my son’ in Italian was unusual. ‘It’s been tough,’ Daniel said, trying to hide his anger towards his father for his mother’s sake. He still couldn’t shake the image of Marco kissing Sofia. Since then, he hadn’t believed a word that came out of his dad’s mouth. And Daniel simmered even more over the fact that Marco had left them to go to Naples – he was probably having a fling with his mistress while he was there, which was why he hadn’t answered his phone the night Emily disappeared.
‘I’m sure,’ his father said, his eyes narrowed, his face uncharacteristically warm. ‘We’re going to get her back. This will all be over soon.’
‘Mamma and I tried to call you ten times last night, but you didn’t answer and your hotel line was off the hook. Where were you?’ Daniel said with ice in his voice.
Marco seemed caught off guard by Daniel’s tone. ‘I saw my father. He said some hurtful things, unforgiveable things, which is a story I’ll save for another time.’ His father sighed and looked down. ‘After seeing him, I started to drink. I got drunk for the first time since I was a teenager, and I passed out in my hotel. I’m not proud of what I did and I’m sorry it happened, and that I wasn’t there for you when you needed me most.’
Daniel stared at him. If he was setting up an alibi to cover a liaison with his mistress, he was doing a good job. His mother seemed to swallow it whole, and even Daniel found himself believing his father.
‘Oh sweetheart,’ Sarah said, taking Marco’s hand. ‘It’s okay. How could you have foreseen this?’
Marco shrugged and prised the blinds open with his fingers to peek out. ‘Every newspaper, radio and television station in Italy is out there,’ he said, swiftly changing the subject. ‘Why can’t they leave us alone? Do they have no sympathy?’
Daniel knew he should have given his father a break and dropped it there, but he couldn’t. ‘You know the media is here mainly because of you. You’re an Italian “personality”. You’re probably on a first-name basis with most of them out there. Your email made the press aware of the necklace in the first place. Then there was Mum’s accident. And now Emily’s abduction. It has all the ingredients for a sensationalised story.’
Sarah squinted her eyes. ‘Daniel, what has got into you?’ she snapped at him.
Marco looked at him curiously, with an expression Daniel couldn’t place. It wasn’t quite shock and it wasn’t anger; it was almost defeat.
‘I’m sorry,’ Daniel said, mostly for his mother’s benefit. ‘I just wish they weren’t here.’
‘They’re not going away any time soon, Daniel,’ Sarah said diplomatically. ‘So, we need to be smart about this.’
‘They’re like vultures. Nothing will stop them until they get blood,’ Daniel said harshly, but then regretted his poor choice of words when he saw his mother wince. ‘Vittoria asked me to choose some pictures of Emily to give to the media,’ he said quickly.
His mother sat down at the breakfast table and put her hand over her eyes. ‘I have a few on my phone. One taken on the boat from yesterday. I’ll send it to you. If they want more, maybe pick some from her Facebook page or Instagram account.’
Daniel sat beside her as she scrolled through pictures on her phone until she came to one of Emily from yesterday as they travelled on the ferry. In the photo, Emily was wearing the black-and-white dress he had handed over to the dog tracking squad. She was sitting on a chair on the open upper deck, with a view of the lake and villages behind her. She had one hand holding her white, wide-brimmed hat from flying away. Her strawberry-blonde hair fell over her shoulders and her head was tilted back slightly as if the camera had caught her mid-laugh. She looked like the definition of a healthy, happy teen.
His mother sent the photo to Daniel’s phone and then continued staring at it. ‘She had no idea of what was coming hours after I took this photo. It’s so cruel.’ Then she looked up at Marco, who was still standing by the window gazing out vacantly. ‘Why would they use our daughter’s life as a bargaining tool to get something she had nothing to do with? Our poor, sweet girl. She must be so terrified.’
‘I don’t know,’ Marco said softly, with his back facing her.
His father hadn’t moved to comfort his mother, so Daniel put his arm around her. She leaned against his shoulder as if she had no strength to support the weight of her anguish. He gave her a warm hug as she dissolved into tears. ‘I just want my Emmy back.’
‘We’ll get her back, Mamma,’ Daniel said firmly. He felt like the roles had been reversed and he was the parent lying to the child just to soothe them.
Marco turned around now to face them, as if he suddenly remembered where he was. He took in Sarah’s distress and Daniel comforting her and seemed frozen, confused. ‘Do the police have any leads on potential suspects?’ Marco asked after a brief silence.
‘Not that they’ve told us,’ Sarah replied.
‘Do they think there is more than one person involved?’
‘Vittoria said she’d let us know if they had any developments, so I assume they don’t know yet,’ Sarah said, stifling her tears.
‘You know, I’ve being thinking,’ Daniel said, ‘the one thing that doesn’t add up is that the newspapers had reported the necklace to have been stolen and not to be in your possession, so whoever is behind the abduction either doesn’t follow the news, which seems implausible, or for whatever reason doesn’t believe you.’
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ Sarah admitted.
Marco narrowed his eyes. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
‘Why would someone abduct Emily in a bid to get the necklace if they knew you didn’t have it?’ Daniel replied. ‘Maybe it’s an inside job – one of your team members doesn’t believe you don’t have it. Maybe they think you took the necklace, and this is their way to test that theory.’
Marco seemed to consider his suggestion and then shook his head dismissively. ‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘Anyway, there’s no point trying to get inside the abductor’s head; we know they want the necklace, so we need to figure out what actually happened to it so we can get Emily back and put an end to this nightmare.’
Sarah exhaled. ‘Daniel, you better get those pictures of Emily to the police.’
Daniel went upstairs, closed his bedroom door and shut the blinds quickly so the media couldn’t see in. He turned on his laptop and started to go through Emily’s Facebook photos. There were so many to choose from. It seemed like she and her friends spent a huge part of their time together posing in photos and making them appear as though they hadn’t been staged. There was a shot of Emily leaning against a doorway, her neck poised and slightly turned down as she gazed at her dress; it was captured as though she didn’t know her photo was being taken. There was another of her and a friend sitting at a cafe, sunglasses on, looking at each other and laughing. And plenty of them pouting, posing and trying to appear glamorous.
He came to an image of Emily at her athletics carnival. She was wearing shorts and a cobalt blue T-shirt, and had tied her hair back in a ponytail. She was not wearing any make-up. His parents were in the stands that day, so one of them must have taken the photo. She’d stopped on the tracks and gazed at the lens, smiling. Daniel saved that photo for the police, thinking it summed up his sister best – athletic, happy, fun and in the prime of her life. His mum’s photo of Emily on the ferry taken only hours before the abduction would surely quash any suggestion that his sister was a disgruntled teen who had run away.
Daniel’s phone rang. He answered to hear Caterina’s voice. ‘Daniel, I heard the news. I’m so sor
ry. Are you okay?’
What was it about receiving sympathy from others that made him suddenly feel so vulnerable? ‘It’s awful. A nightmare. And I feel guilty because the night she disappeared, I was on the phone to you and I didn’t even realise she hadn’t come home.’
Her voice was full of warmth and compassion. ‘Oh, Daniel,’ she said sweetly. ‘You can’t blame yourself.’
He began to flick through Emily’s Instagram pictures as he spoke. ‘I keep wishing I’d offered to run with Emily. I should never have never let her go alone.’ He sighed. ‘There’s going to be a press conference soon to plead with the public to come forward if they know anything. My father will do the talking. Fronting the media is second nature to him,’ he said, trying to hide the bitterness in his voice.
‘But not in these circumstances, of course,’ she said, her voice full of sympathy. ‘Your poor father. How’s he coping?’
Maybe it was a combination of sheer exhaustion, his anger in Marco’s presence and his growing fears for his sister, but for some reason when Caterina asked after his father, he realised what the niggling feeling he’d been having was. He could barely follow through the thought. It was Caterina. He’d met her the night of his mother’s accident. She was a jewellery designer who had read his father’s paper on the San Gennaro necklace. And he’d been on the phone to her when Emily went missing; in fact, she’d seemed reluctant to end the conversation and they’d talked for longer than usual. But surely it was all a coincidence. It wasn’t like she’d scoped him out at the bar and tried to keep him from leaving. She was with friends. And the fact that she was interested in the San Gennaro necklace was simply because she happened to be a jewellery and gemmology student. And when they’d chatted on the phone at the time Emily disappeared, he’d been equally as keen to stay on the line as she had seemed to be.
The Perfect Couple Page 19