Dead Season (48 page)

‘All they could go on about was the mess,’ said Roxana, smiling. ‘So cross, they were, about having to use the washing line, and the stupid boy falling into one of Carlotta’s big geraniums, and another bit of the fence had gone. So they got him back. The handyman.’

Maria Grazia sat up to get a better look into next-door’s garden. ‘I think they’ve got an ulterior motive,’ she said. ‘He’s quite good-looking, isn’t he?’

Roxana laughed. ‘A bit young for them,’ she said.

Maria Grazia shoved her good-naturedly. ‘Not them, you idiot.’ Roxana didn’t even blush.

‘You lot,’ she said. ‘You never stop.’ She felt as though she was on a different plane altogether. Work, her single status, Ma: none of it a problem any more.

Other priorities: she was working through them. Disposing of them: conscientious, methodical, Roxana had that talent at least. The bit she couldn’t stop rerunning in her head had been not being able to move: watching Sandro Cellini and Valentino struggle as if in slow motion at the centre of the room. It had seemed like an hour, but had probably been thirty seconds, and then she’d flung herself on the thrashing monstrous shape they made together, not knowing which one of them she was clawing at.

He’d collapsed under them quite suddenly in the end, like a child, as though, as with everything in his privileged life so far, Valentino Sordi simply couldn’t be bothered. Sandro Cellini had told her afterwards, still breathing heavily with the effort, that it was a chemical thing: addicts fight like that – like animals with a limitless supply of energy, then suddenly the fuel runs out and they stop dead.

They’d taken him away in a police car, handcuffed. Cellini watching from the lobby of the Carnevale, feeling his age, exposed in the flat light after the storm.

Valentino. Stupid, superficial, narcissistic Val, and she’d always thought killers were made of different stuff, of something tougher and fiercer and sharper. Turned out vanity and greed and stupidity could make a murderer too: that was the reality. Thank Christ, was all she could think, thank Christ I never fell for it. He might even have taken me home, for a joke or something, or to make sure I didn’t cotton on. I might have slept with him. There’d been that fraction of a second after all when she’d thought, could I? She rubbed her eyes. No. Never.

‘You all right?’ said Maria Grazia sharply.

Roxana let out a long breath and in her mind’s eye Valentino, wherever he was, sitting in some remand cell somewhere, dwindled to nothing. Ash on the breeze, along with Marisa, Roxana’s job, the bank, that old life led in the half-light. Yes.

‘I think so,’ she said.

‘So,’ said Maria Grazia, eyeing her warily, ‘what’s next, then?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Roxana, who had had a job of one sort or another continuously since she was fifteen years old. At peace. ‘Something’ll come up.’

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-T
WO

Autumn

‘I
T
’
S PERFECT
,
DON
’
T YOU
think?’ Anna beamed.

‘Perfect,’ agreed Luisa.

Giuli looked at her. ‘But—’ she said, and at the sound of her raised voice, the baby, who’d been asleep on her shoulder, squirmed, her fingers splaying against Giuli’s arm. Giuli dosed her mouth.

But, she’d been going to say. This is your place. This is your apartment, yours and Sandro’s, the dream place, the iron balcony, the view of the hills.

Anna’s nest egg, the money left her by her adoptive parents, it turned out, was not a couple of thousand euros, after all.

‘Oh, no,’ Anna had said. ‘I told you, didn’t I? The farmhouse, twenty hectares of land in the Casentino – well, it’s not Chianti but it was quite a lot of money. I put it in the bank, of course, when I came to the city, to work for Signora Capponi. I didn’t want to live alone, you see?’

Giuli had just nodded, wordless. It had been more than enough for this place, the third-floor apartment in San Niccolo in need of work. It had been Luisa who’d suggested it.

The baby squirmed some more, properly awake now. Josef, who’d been sticking a screwdriver into a damp patch in the kitchen, came towards her with his arms out, and Giuli handed the baby to him. He still couldn’t quite meet her eye, she thought. Was he good enough for Anna? Anna thought so. Was he after her money?

Luisa, having taken a look at him, didn’t think so. ‘Leave them be,’ she’d said.

Where the baby had been lying against her shoulder, the sweat was cooling now, a damp patch under her chin where the baby’s mouth had been. It was all right, though.

In bed a long time later, in the comfortable cool after more rain and with the street outside quiet for once, Luisa rolled over and set her cheek against Sandro’s chest. She heard the thump of his heart. Nothing need change, she thought. Nothing.

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