The Apartment In Rome Part 23

'David?'

'Yes, hon?'

'I'm willing to sell. The sooner the better.'

'I knew you'd see sense. So, what '

'Get as much as you can for them. I hope he's loaded, this buyer.'

'Could be. I've not come across him before.'

'What's his name?'

'Let me check.' She heard the rustle of papers, diary pages perhaps or filing cards. He spoke in a low tone to the pretty boy who worked for him. Then he came back to her.

'Franco Casale,' he said.

23.

The girls were waiting outside the pizzeria at a table covered with a green checked cloth. Sunlight dappled the paper place mats, sparkled on the gla.s.ses and the cutlery. Sasha and Ruby with their tousled hair and little pastel cardigans looked fresh, young and expectant though not as relaxed as Mitch.e.l.l had antic.i.p.ated. Sasha was chewing her bottom lip, a habit of hers when she was troubled. He hadn't wanted them to arrive in Rome ahead of him but it had been unavoidable, and they'd insisted they could cope for such a short length of time.

He dumped his soft holdall no need for a trolley case on a casual trip and hugged his daughter as she rose to greet him. 'h.e.l.lo, sweetheart, everything all right?'

'Yeah, fine.'

'No problems on arrival?'

She flashed a quick eye-roll at Ruby. 'No, not really.'

'Not really? Did the airport transfer meet you okay?'

'Sure.'

'The apartment,' Ruby began.

'What's the matter with it?'

'Nothing, Dad. It's great. Only...'

'Only what?'

'Wicked location,' said Ruby. 'Done up recently too.'

'It isn't the one we thought we'd booked, that's all. It's similar though.'

'Oh well.' He was annoyed by the subst.i.tution, but glad it was nothing more serious. 'These things happen. Not worth stressing over.' The girls exchanged a look of surprise tempered by relief. 'Have you ordered yet?'

'We were waiting for you.'

'And now I'm here,' he said jovially, determined he was going to enjoy this week and the company of the two young women. He was not going to dwell on what kind of holiday his wife might be having. No point even in wishing a downpour on her: she'd probably revel in it. 'Choose whatever you like. Let's push the boat out.'

Their order was modest: c.o.ke and pizza Margherita. He went for Peroni and a Capricciosa. The drinks and a basket of bread were soon set in front of them.

'So tell me,' said Mitch.e.l.l, 'what have you been up to this morning?'

Ruby jumped in. 'We went to Piazza Navona but it was murder.'

'So what brought you over here?'

It was a simple enough question but they seemed uncertain of the answer. At length Ruby said, 'I wanted to see the river and Sash said there were all these d.i.n.ky shops over this side. So we've been, like, browsing.'

'Did you buy anything?'

'Not yet. We don't know how far our money will go. But Sash saw these earrings she really liked, turquoise and pearl and silver. They were in this proper quirky shop full of random accessories, peac.o.c.k feathers and stuff and...'

Ruby was keeping up her end of the conversation but Sasha wasn't joining in. He'd expected her to persuade him of the necessity of viewing these earrings, of coming up with a hundred reasons as to why she couldn't go home without them although she must know he'd say yes. Sasha had never been a greedy or demanding child, easily contented with small things. And if some of her wishes had been unfeasible like a horse it was all the more reason to indulge the harmless requests.

Ruby's account was interrupted by the waiter arriving with their three crisply baked pizzas. Sasha was bringing her first forkful up to her mouth when her phone rang. Mitch.e.l.l identified its distinctive ring tone, a clip from the Arctic Monkeys' 505, but she appeared not to notice until Ruby nudged her. And when she answered, she paled as if she'd heard bad news.

'Right now?' she said. And then something about a plumber. She was mumbling, half turning aside.

His eyes met Ruby's across the table. 'Something up with the apartment?' he said. 'I thought you might be trying to let me down lightly. G.o.d, they're villains, aren't they, these short-let landlords. Take the money and run. At least you know where you are in a hotel.'

'The apartment's sound,' said Ruby. 'Not ma.s.sive, but it's okay.' To Sasha, she said, 'What was all that about?'

'I don't know. She says she can't get into her flat. She can't unlock the door.'

'That's nothing to do with us.'

'I know! I told her we didn't do anything. It wasn't like we were supposed to hang around and wait for her to get back. She said we could go.'

'D'you think something's fallen down behind the door and blocked it?'

'Even if it has, it's not like we planned for it to happen.'

Mitch.e.l.l had been sawing through his crust. He noticed that Sasha hadn't picked up her fork again; her mozzarella was congealing. 'What's going on? If it's not the place we're renting, what apartment are you talking about?'

'Oh...' Sasha's explanation came in a garbled rush. 'You remember the Englishwoman who put me up last year? Mrs Raven? She lives nearby and because we were in the area anyway we called on her. We weren't going to hang out for long, only she had this plumber due and he was late and she was busy and... oh heck... it doesn't matter, it's way too complicated. She'll be here in a minute anyhow.'

'She'll be here in a minute,' repeated Mitch.e.l.l, a piece of anchovy fillet catching in his throat. He knew, from accessing her website, that Gina Stanhope was a photographer working in Rome; he'd worked out from what Sasha had told him that she and Mrs Raven were the same person. So how did he feel about this information? Curious probably. Twenty years, no, eighteen, was a long time. 'What does she want you for?'

'I don't know,' said Sasha miserably. 'Except that she's locked out.'

She had hardly dented the cartwheel of her pizza. Most of the time she spent peering at the view behind him. He would not turn. You came across old girlfriends from time to time; it wasn't a big deal. Generally the meeting would be uneventful, inauspicious: a brief embrace, an exchange of news and you moved on.

Gina, he suspected, would be different. She'd always been volatile and their relationship tempestuous though with such long intermissions that every encounter had been like rain after a drought. Mobiles were scarce back then. If they were lucky they could both access a landline on the same continent; if not, they'd developed a convoluted method of pa.s.sing on messages and arranging escapes. Theirs had been the mad pa.s.sion experienced in youth they'd met in their twenties and were completely taken up with each other until real life and common sense had intervened.

Ruby spotted her first and elbowed Sasha. Mitch.e.l.l laid down his cutlery, prepared to rise in greeting, to show irreproachable courtesy to this woman whose history his daughter had no inkling of.

At his back a whirlwind approached, slammed an enormous handbag on the table top, from which came the jingle of keys, and roared, 'What I want to know is what the f.u.c.k were you two playing at?'

It was difficult for Mitch.e.l.l, hemmed in by container-grown shrubbery, to push back his chair, but he managed to get to a standing position, to touch her upper arm with a tentative gesture. 'h.e.l.lo, Gina.'

'This is my dad,' said Sasha.

Gina was looking straight at him with what he thought of as her cat's face: wide green eyes, narrow pointed chin. You couldn't say to a woman like Gina that she hadn't changed a bit because she reinvented herself all the time. She was still lithe, still carried herself with a.s.surance, but would he have known her if they'd pa.s.sed in the street? Her skin wore the soft honeyed sheen of a life lived in the sun; her hair was short and streaked; her brows were finer than he remembered, arching expressively above deep shadowy sockets. But the eyes the eyes don't change and once you gaze into them all the minor amendments of time become irrelevant.

'I know,' said Gina. 'Ciao, Mitch.'

'How are you?' he asked, because he couldn't think of anything else to say.

'Do you, like, actually know her already?' said Sasha, chewing her lip furiously.

'It was a long time ago,' he began.

'Since you ask,' said Gina, 'I'm b.l.o.o.d.y fuming. Someone's been messing with the lock to my front door.'

'Well, I don't see why you think it was us.'

'You were the last people there, darling, that's why.'

'Sit down,' said Mitch.e.l.l, out of his depth. 'Please join us. Let me buy you a drink.'

'Join you? Do you really think I can afford the time to... Oh, what the h.e.l.l.' She semaph.o.r.ed at one of the waiters. 'Renzo! Mi porta una birra? Grazie.'

Then with the effortless elegance of her training, she slid into the seat. Compared to her, the girls opposite, so appealing on his arrival, looked clumsy and raw, like unfinished sketches.

Mitch.e.l.l was sitting beside Gina because there was no other option. Their bodies were a few inches apart. It might have been a pleasant enough scenario: the two of them reminiscing about some of their more outrageous adventures his intervention with the knife wielding thief in Sydney was the one he was least likely to forget; a small white scar still hovered between his ribs. Digging into the past, stirring up old emotions could be dangerous territory, but there was no doubt she'd remained a very striking woman. And in other circ.u.mstances...

Sasha had given up her lunch, pushed her plate aside. 'I don't believe this.' She was staring at Gina in bewilderment. 'That all along you knew my dad.'

'Like he told you, it was years ago, before you were born.'

'Well, obviously. Did you work together or what?'

'I guess you could say we were both frequent flyers.'

Mitch.e.l.l didn't feel he could add to this.

'Why didn't you say something last summer?'

'How could I have known you were related? It's not exactly the rarest surname in the book.'

'I told you he was a captain.'

'Did you? Four stripes? Oh well done, Mitch.' But her tone was perfunctory, underlaid with sarcasm. 'And, of course, I'm pleased to see you again. Only I'm struggling with this happy reunion concept because I have a more pressing problem.'

She put her hand on his sleeve in a softly familiar way that sometimes used to irritate the h.e.l.l out of him and at others made him want to devour her on the spot. The moment of confusion it aroused pa.s.sed when the waiter set down her foaming gla.s.s of beer; he ordered another for himself. 'What problem?'

Gina drew a line in the condensation on the gla.s.s. 'Your daughter came to see me this morning with her friend. This was, I a.s.sumed, a social visit.'

Sasha squirmed and nodded, but didn't speak.

'Unfortunately I couldn't show them much hospitality. I was due to discuss a publishing contract. Maybe she told you I've become a photographer?'

'Er, yes. A logical career choice, I thought.'

'An artist-photographer,' she stressed. 'Spare me those macho guys who are for ever insisting their lens is bigger than yours. So anyway, I had to go out and these two offered to wait in for the plumber who was, naturalmente, overdue.'

'He came,' said Ruby. 'Sorted.'

'You can see how desperate I must have been for hot water or I wouldn't have been so ready to trust them. And clearly this was stupid, because they decided it would be fun to play a trick on me and put glue in my lock. I can't imagine why?'

She was focusing on Sasha, whose complexion alternately reddened and blanched. He sensed threats and counter-threats, but neither his daughter nor his ex-girlfriend gave anything away and the accusations remained unspoken.

Ruby said with some belligerence, 'That is so unfair. We didn't play any trick. We did what you said. We shut the door behind us after the plumber had gone, posted your keys, and then we left the building.'

'When? What time?'

'I dunno. We moseyed around a bit. About an hour ago.'

'Did you shut the portone too?'

'What's that?'

'The main door into the street.'

'Did we, Sash?'

Sasha considered. Mitch.e.l.l was disturbed by the unhappiness in her eyes, but he didn't believe for a moment that she'd have any motive for a stupid pointless prank. 'I'm not sure,' she said. 'I think maybe one of your neighbours was coming in as we went out.'

'Have you met any of my neighbours?'

'Um... no.'

'What did this person look like?'

'I think it was a man coming home for lunch or something.'

'Old or young? What was he wearing?'