The Apartment In Rome Part 11

'She sounded English. A bit posh. Otherwise normal.'

He swapped his phone to his other hand and hefted his backpack over his shoulder. 'I don't like it,' he said, banging out of the changing room and into the lobby.

'No,' agreed Corinne. 'I don't like it either.'

'Are you suggesting I should go out there and drag her back?'

'I think you need to get hold of her, find out what she's up to.'

A fellow gym member, waiting by the drinks machine for his can to descend, hailed Mitch.e.l.l as he pa.s.sed. Usually he'd have stopped for a chat, maybe got a drink for himself, but in this instance he charged through the swing doors and into the car park. 'I'm on my way home. I'll ring her as soon as I get in.'

'I won't be here,' said Corinne. 'I'm meeting Nadia. We have to go over some stats.'

'It's Sat.u.r.day.'

'It's the best time for both of us.'

Nadia's PhD was on a subject similar to his wife's. Even so, he felt their meetings were far more frequent than strictly necessary. Suspicion burrowed beneath his skin like a maggot. He'd barely met Nadia but he knew she wasn't one of Corinne's closest friends. How could he not conclude that she was a front for someone else?

Five years ago, entering his house, particularly after a spell away, had been a joyful experience: Sasha, peachy, pre-p.u.b.es-cent, hair in a high ponytail, rolling on the carpet with the dog; Corinne, calm, capable, singing in her glorious husky voice as she turned the meat or drained the vegetables, responsive to his embrace. Today there was only the disembodied beeping of the burglar alarm, which he switched off.

He poured himself a beer and went up to Sasha's room, where the ghost of his little girl lingered. A medley of stuffed toys was lined up on her bed, some stained with spilt squash from childhood tea parties. The walls were patterned with horses' heads. The wallpaper had been a trial to match up and, though proud of his handiwork at the time, it looked especially incongruous now it was plastered with posters of Daniel Radcliffe and the Arctic Monkeys. The contents of the wardrobe, where a galaxy of high street labels spilled off their hangers, was the only other sign that this was the bedroom of a young woman.

He set his beer can on her desk, sat down on her bed, pulled out his phone and dialled her Italian number.

She answered straight away but her voice was wary. 'Hi, Dad!'

'Your mother's given me some guff about you missing the flight this morning. What the h.e.l.l do you think you're up to?'

'I'm sorry. Truly. It just seemed too good an opportunity to pa.s.s up.'

'What did?'

She was instantly defensive. 'My German friends, you know, I already told you about them loads? They've invited me to go with them to the beach and it's not like I've had a proper holiday this summer. I took all those GCSEs and then what? I go off and do even more studying! It would be kind of nice to have a break.'

He hated coming over authoritarian and high-handed. He longed to indulge her, sweet sa.s.sy Sasha and protect her too. 'As I remember, it was your choice to go to Rome.'

'Well, you always used to go on about how great it was!'

It was true he counted it as one of his favourite cities, although he hadn't flown that route for years.

'Plus you wouldn't allow me to do anything else. Anyhow, I've had an ace time. My Italian's really come on. I fancied a couple of days swimming in the sea. No big deal.'

His antennae were wired for duplicity, but she sounded plausible. And perhaps she had missed out compared to other cla.s.smates, with Ruby's glandular fever throwing a spanner into the works. 'So why on earth did you wait till the last minute to tell us? It would have been easier to rearrange your flight than sort out a fresh one.'

'Because we only decided at the last minute. We fixed it up yesterday. They're travelling by train, you see, so it's easy for them.'

A detail was nagging him. 'Hang on a second. We don't know anything about these German girls.'

'Yes, you do. Renate and Ilse?'

'But Corinne said you were staying with an Englishwoman.'

'That's for tonight, before we set off. So I thought maybe Thursday, if that's okay, for the flight? No sooner, really, and Gina said '

'Who's Gina?'

'She's the woman who's putting me up. Honest, you'd like her.'

It was a coincidence, it had to be. How likely was it, after all, that she was still in Rome? 'This is the Mrs Raven your mother mentioned? Is she there? I'd like to speak to her.'

'Sorry, no,' said Sasha. Did he sense relief rather than regret? 'She's got a wedding.'

'She's getting married?'

'Duh! She's a photographer. It's her job. I can give you her number, but I don't think you should call her for a bit because she'll be, like, really busy. She's got two, one after the other. But Mum's already spoken to her, so it's cool.'

'Give me the number anyway,' said Mitch.e.l.l, reaching into the jar on her desk for a pen. Not wanting to mark her school folders, neatly arranged by Corinne, he wrote it on the palm of his hand. 'I'll call you back when I've sorted something, but you ought to know that neither of us is too pleased about this. In fact we are seriously p.i.s.sed off.'

'No worries, Dad,' said Sasha, too d.a.m.n perkily, he thought. 'It'll be fine.'

When she'd hung up, he clenched and unclenched his fist half a dozen times. And each time it reappeared, Gina's number. The digits, unlike those on his ADIRU screen, wouldn't vanish until he washed his hands.

Anyone could be traced these days, through a search engine, Facebook or LinkedIn, though it wasn't the sort of thing he'd ever bothered to do. It would be easy enough to enter Gina's name to settle the issue, but he resisted the temptation. What would be the point? Their parting, all those years ago, had not gone well. He'd tried to be so delicate, so tactful, but perhaps he'd been kidding himself. Perhaps a tactful split was an oxymoron, and she wasn't the type to smooth anybody's path. Fortunately, the break-up had been made easier by the fact that they were living in different countries and the fact that Corinne, with her ready laugh and warm freckled arms, had been waiting for him.

But if it turned out this Gina Raven really was his former girlfriend another conundrum presented itself: was Sasha's meeting with her a totally random encounter? A trick of fate or engineering? For a while he sat on his daughter's bed, debating. Then he thought, what the h.e.l.l, opened his palm to read the number again and punched it into his phone.

13.

Sasha clicked her mobile shut. She decided to contact Ilse and Renate later, when she knew what she wanted to say to them. She felt lousy, not just because of lying to her parents, or because she'd had to throw herself on Gina's mercy, or because her head was throbbing so much but because she was screwed, basically. She couldn't handle being gawped at, so she couldn't go out. And now she'd burnt her boats, she couldn't even go home.

While Gina had been out on her errands, she had lain on the sofa listening to the clock at Santa Maria marking every quarter hour. At each chime she had thought, there's time yet, I can make it. She'd had to go downstairs when the taxi arrived from Parioli. She was glad Signor Boletti wasn't accompanying her suitcase; he'd presumably found it convenient to believe the excuses she'd made to Katya. It would have been easy enough to climb into the cab and ask to be taken to the airport. And then the midday cannon boomed from the Gianicolo and she knew she was too late.

Gina had not been pleased to find her still ensconced. Sasha prepared herself for a scene but Gina, though tight-lipped, had rallied. She'd even vouched for her when she rang home, which was by far the most difficult step of the enterprise. Once she'd cleared everything with her mother, who was hard to deceive, laying it on for her father was a relative cinch.

Gina had breezed out again with her equipment, looking almost as if she might be one of the wedding guests, elegant in linen trousers and silk shirt, her hair tied back, her nails perfect. 'Attention to detail,' she'd snapped, when Sasha paid her an innocent compliment. 'And this time, while I'm gone, you'd really better think about what you're going to do.' Sasha couldn't respond with either a woeful or a meaningful look because half of her face was frozen and her good eye was red and raw from rubbing.

She mooched around the living room, lifting objects, photographs, the funny sculptures, and replacing them carefully. She switched the television on to a bright and squealing game show, then flicked through the channels in search of MTV, which was mainly what she'd watched at the Bolettis. She couldn't use her laptop because she didn't know Gina's wireless code. She pushed open the shutters to the terrace but the light dazzled her, so she retreated. Two matching wooden chests stood either side of the French windows. One was locked; the other opened onto a selection of clothes, mostly men's shirts, trousers and jumpers in expensive materials cashmere, mohair, sea island cotton. She wondered why Gina was hanging on to them, whether for dressing up her portrait sitters, or because they had sentimental or financial value.

She was curious to see what Joe was doing. He had scarcely come out of the second bedroom. He'd used the bathroom once and Gina had gone in to talk to him and take him more painkillers. Sasha a.s.sumed, like herself, he'd been dozing on and off, but he couldn't stay in bed for ever. Besides, the spare room was also a study. It had a desk and a computer in it a regular PC, nothing fancy so as long as it wasn't protected with a pa.s.sword she'd be able to log on to Facebook.

She put her head cautiously around the door. Joe was propped, bare-chested, in a half-sitting, half-lying position against the pillows. He stirred awake as soon as she entered. The computer was in an alcove beyond the bed. 'Ciao,' she said. 'Come stai?'

'Bene,' he said, 'anche tu?' You too? Their private joke.

She moved further into the room. 'Gina's gone out to work. Can I get you anything?'

'Acqua, per favore.'

Behind the theatrical swoop of curtain that obscured the kitchen area, she filled a jug with ice and water and set it on a tray with two gla.s.ses. She carried the tray to a small chest beside the bed and pa.s.sed him one of the gla.s.ses.

'You haven't washed that cut properly,' she said, pointing at a sc.r.a.pe on the span of his shoulder.

He twisted his neck to try to spot it. 'Where is? I cannot see.'

'And there's you with two functioning eyes! Here, let me.' She broke off a piece of cotton wool from a pad Gina had left nearby and dipped it in the water jug. Very gently she dabbed at the raw flesh. The impact of his fall must have driven the cobbles through his T-shirt, ripping fabric and skin. She'd noticed a blue holey rag on the bathroom floor.

'You have kind hands,' he said.

'My mother's a nurse. I suppose I must have learnt something from her.'

'I want to be doctor.'

'You do?' Was that possible? How would he do the training, take the exams? 'Aren't you too old for school?'

'Yes,' he sighed. 'When I arrive, I want to go to school, to study. Father Leone, he try to find me place but I must take tests.'

'To see what you've learnt already, you mean?'

'No. Bones. Teeth. For my age.'

'What the f.u.c.k!'

'Leone, he write many letters, for me and the others, but we wait long time and now is too late.'

'There must be another way,' Sasha said. 'These days, it's easy to be a mature student like my mum. She's going to become Dr Mitch.e.l.l, though that's philosophy not medicine. Me, I wanted to be a vet, but it's really compet.i.tive and you have to do all science A levels to have the best chance and my Chemistry's c.r.a.p. So I'm planning to do Biology, Geography and French, plus Italian maybe, that's why I came here...' Why was she nattering like this when he wouldn't be able to follow her, when most of the time they exchanged simple sentences in a mixture of halting English and Italian? Probably she was nervous because he was staring so steadily at her awful hideous, swollen face.

'Don't,' she said.

'Cosa?'

'Don't look at me.'

'Perche?'

'Because I look a fright. Much worse than you.'

'Non e vero,' he said, but he dropped his glance to his chest and began counting the bruises.

'You missed one,' said Sasha. 'There.' Her fingers brushed the side of his ribs. He seized her hand. 'Sorry,' she said. 'Did I hurt you?' But he was spinning the silver bangle on her wrist so it caught the light. She was afraid it might have dented in her fall, but although the silver was scuffed the marks could be polished away. 'Pretty, isn't it; it was a post-exam present.' She really must stop talking about b.l.o.o.d.y exams, when Joe'd had no chance of taking any. His own wrist, she saw, was almost as slender as hers; she would have offered to let him try it on, but his hand was already moving up her arm, pointing now at a graze below her collarbone.

'Anche tu,' he said.

The graze ran under the strap of her vest and it seemed perfectly natural that he should slide it away for closer examination. And perfectly natural that the other strap should slide off too and the vest wind up around her waist so she was sitting in front of him in only her bra. And what was perfectly amazing was that she didn't feel the least self-conscious. What was the point of being ashamed of her figure when her face already looked like the back end of a bus? Joe was the only person in the world she could countenance right now; the only person she could allow to get this close. So she helped him unfasten her bra and her skirt, and crawled into the bed alongside him.

They started to caress each other, trying to avoid any wounds or abrasions. It was like the game Operation, which she'd played as a child, in which you had to remove a body's organs without setting off the alarm. At each accidental wince or tremor they would draw back, gasping, then giggle and begin again. Sasha's injuries were mostly to her face, but the touch of Joe's lips on her breast, her stomach, the inside of her thigh, seared. Her fingers skimmed his sternum, travelled lightly to his waist and b.u.t.tocks, ventured towards his groin, the parts of him that were not damaged. She recalled, two weeks ago, her first sight of his lithe nakedness. She could never have imagined becoming so dangerously intimate.

'Hang on a sec,' she said eventually, hopping out of bed to fetch her bag from the next room. A packet of condoms was zipped into the inside pocket. They'd been secreted there ever since she and Ruby had first formulated their plans for Italy, when they'd antic.i.p.ated cruising the clubs and bars and pulling as a pair. When they'd had high hopes.

She released a condom from its foil wrapper and pa.s.sed it to Joe to put on while she wriggled out of her knickers. They lay on their sides facing each other because it was the only way to be comfortable. Although he was trying to be tender, she could sense his impatience and did her best to guide his urgent thrusts. She braced herself for the shock of fresh pain, but so many other parts of her were aching and sore she wasn't aware of any; only of excitement and the rich warm substance of this boy inside her.

His movements began to increase in speed and rhythm. She sneaked a look at his face; his eyes were closed, his lips were parted, his breathing fast. She drew up her leg and hooked it over his hip, tensing her thigh muscles, feeling the satisfaction of the deep connection between them. Then he bucked and groaned, she a.s.sumed with pleasure, and for a few moments they both lay completely still. He withdrew from her with caution and she could feel the heat that had built between their bodies slowly fade. He rested his hand low on her abdomen. 'Non ti fatto male?'

'No, it didn't hurt at all.'

His eyes were open now, looking at her searchingly. 'Ti voglio bene, Sasha,' he said.

She wanted to squeeze the breath out of him, but such an embrace would be far too painful so she contented herself with stroking his face. 'Me too.'

He raised himself a little and brushed his lips against her ear. 'Grazie.'

She couldn't smile properly but one side of her mouth curved with happiness. 'Thank you too, Joe.'

Gina had had a long day. After her back-to-back a.s.signments, she'd gone to the studio to upload the photographs and check she was satisfied not a cliche among them. The in-box of her phone was jammed with messages she'd ignored: details of times and meeting places if she wanted to go out that evening. She didn't. She wanted to go home and lie in the bath with a drink and empty her head of clutter. She couldn't. The children, as she thought of them, would be occupying her precious s.p.a.ce. She could get Sami to come and take Joe off her hands. What she was to do with the girl, she'd no idea.

She didn't know whether they'd be hungry, but she called into the alimentari because she needed something to eat herself. She seized a pack of linguine and a tin of vongole there would have been juicy fresh clams in the market, but she was far too late for that. 'Meagre rations again,' she explained to Signora Bedini. Really it was sheer laziness and a reaction, possibly, to the dainty jewel-like canapes at the wedding reception. She'd never pretended to be much of a cook.

The apartment was oddly quiet when she got in. She looked out onto the terrace, thinking her invalids might be enjoying the fine evening healing in the fresh air but it was empty, as was the living room. She noticed Sasha's bag was gone from the floor by the sofa and, having missed her suitcase under the hall console, supposed the girl had already left. She was glad to be relieved of the responsibility but puzzled too; it didn't seem in character.

Then she opened the door to the spare room and found them both spreadeagled, partially covered with a rumpled white sheet, sleeping. The picture they created trumped her indignation; she couldn't resist. Quietly, soft-footed, she took out her camera and began to click the shutter. The north light was perfect. The images were stunning: these battered, spent bodies, the angles of their youthful limbs, the fall of light on the folds of the bedlinen, the setting that veered between tawdry and romantic. Sensational.

Sasha stirred, opened her eye. 'Did you just take my photograph?'

Gina sat back on her haunches. 'Did you just sleep with Joe?'

'Is it any of your business?'

'I think if it happened in my house, yes, it probably is.'

Sasha flushed and tried to cover herself. Joe was quickly awake. 'What the h.e.l.l did I tell you?' Gina raged at him. 'She's too young.'

'It wasn't his fault,' said Sasha. 'Anyway, we didn't do anything. Honest. We were a bit lonely and looking after each other.'

'Like I'm going to believe that!'

'Please don't shout. Please don't be angry.'

The child was so woeful with her distorted, discoloured face, her plaintive voice. Gina decided to dismiss the possible repercussions, decided it was preferable not to know the truth. If she'd made more noise coming home, they might have been alert to discovery, found time to disentangle. She couldn't forget what she'd seen: after all, she'd captured the evidence and was looking forward to examining it. But it showed the aftermath, not the act, and part of its power would reside in the anonymity of the figures.

'I think you both better get dressed.'