hang it on a wall somewhere,’ she adds calmly.
I don’t know where because we are always moving and I can’t see how we can stick it on top of the car as it won’t last with the rain and certainly not with the conferences outside Rome where they even steal the tyres off you. Pado is sure that’s an exaggeration though and that others are just as deceitful and clever at stealing.
Ama brings out the sandwiches Machance had made for our lunch. Salmon, avocado and tomato. I open mine up to make sure there’s no chin hair tucked away inside. I examine the fish for germs lost inside the pink pleats. I hold it up to the light. ‘Stop fiddling and hurry up,’ Pado tells me. We have to eat fast. The ‘legionnaires” conference starts soon. Pado wonders whether he should quickly update his diagram of an air conditioner water tank. Ama thinks that it would be clearer if he’s going to bring in recent theories on cooling systems and airborne microbe reproduction. We drop Pado off outside a large grey building. He rushes up the main stairs. Giulio shouts out that he’s forgotten the rat book from the glove compartment.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Ama shrugs, because he has all that stacked away in his mind.
We drive on, not knowing what to do in Pado’s absence. Ama buys a newspaper and flicks through the film and exhibition pages. She keeps on checking her watch, but there’s not enough time to fit anything in. She starts up the car, with a resigned turn of the wrist, and we push on to a park. Ama stops at the entrance and tells us to get out and play on the bit of lawn in front of her. It’s still raining and we come back after a few minutes. Ama is looking at her newspaper again. She’s ripped out sections, book and theatre reviews. She lays the strips of paper across the dashboard and reads them quickly. When she sees us, standing in front of her, she begrudgingly folds them into a wad in the glove compartment, stacked reminders of occasions to be missed.
We get back in the car and Ama wearily drives on past a few shops. She asks Duccio to get out and see if they have any dresses in the windows. He runs alongside the car, stopping and peering into each shop. He points at a dress. Ama leans over the steering-wheel and shakes her head at him. Duccio tries the next shop and then the next one, till we get to the end of the street and have to turn into another road. Eventually we find something for Ama in a decorated window, two streets further down. We park and Giulio is instructed to wait in the car. He’s sulking at being left behind. He says it’s not fair that it’s always him who looks after the car, but Duccio reads the guidebooks and I have to watch the petrol gauge.
‘Don’t you bloody start. Don’t make me angry Giulio! Not today! Everyone has to help with something,’ Ama warns.
She waves back at Giulio as we enter the shop: ‘If a traffic warden comes then pretend you don’t understand. Speak French or something! We won’t be long!’
In the shop, the assistant is all smiles. Ama tries to find something that Pado might like too. Duccio and I tease her by repeating what Pado says about her bottom being dipped on one side. Ama doesn’t find it funny at all, especially in front of the shop assistant and she whips a ‘Ca suffit. Assez’ at us in French so that only we understand.
It doesn’t work because the shop assistant says, ‘Where are you from?’ and Ama replies ‘England’ rather pointedly.
Then a man comes in and he is drifting across the shop looking for some clothes for his wife. The wife apparently likes red so I point him to a pair of reddish trousers I’ve seen on a rack in the corner. He has hardly started walking across the floor when he notices Ama. He compliments her on the dress she is trying on. Ama pulls back into a changing-room to get away. The man carries on talking to her through the curtain.
I can see her head coming up over the curtain. ‘Kindly leave me alone,’ she says in a curt voice.
The shop assistant intervenes and asks what kind of red clothes the man wants. He can’t answer because he’s got Ama in his mind and he can’t think of his wife’s shape and size any more. Ama pushes past him holding a black-grey dress. She wants to pay. The traffic wardens are coming and we have to go. The clinging man, who wants red clothes, follows us outside and pats me on the head. He hangs in front of the car and tries to help Ama get out of our parking space.
Giulio keeps on asking, ‘Who is that man? What’s he doing?’
Ama refuses to answer. She’s in a fluster. As we are leaving, indicator clicking down, the man blows a kiss at Ama.
She shouts, ‘Petit con,’ and we all laugh because the man doesn’t understand he’s just been insulted.
Giulio doesn’t like him either even though he didn’t see him leering over the changing-room curtain.
‘Not a word to your father,’ Ama begs, as we are all afraid that he will drive bumper to bumper at top speed if he finds out.
We arrive in time to pick Pado up outside the conference hall, before it starts raining again. He’s only been waiting a few minutes, so he’s happy. He has a colleague with him from Denmark. He agrees with Pado: ‘It’s a clear international policy on the regular maintenance of air conditioners that is needed.’
We’re going to be late for our next meeting at the Association of Toxicologists. We get away without anyone blowing kisses and speed across the city. Pado is in a good mood and he still can’t stop laughing about the fact that Duccio thought that he would have to strip off for Elizabeth.
‘Used to be a pretty woman in her day,’ Ama tells us.
‘What’s happened to her now?’ Pado wonders.
Ama explains that Elizabeth has been a little unhappy lately. Things haven’t worked out for her. ‘She even takes Polaroid photos of herself every day to see if she’s growing old. She has two years’ worth of photos stashed away. A photo for every day, and if you look at the first photo two years ago and the ones this month, you can tell her face has slipped and the wrinkles have appeared. But if you look from day to day, there’s no change at all.’
Giulio wonders whether she takes her photos in the morning or the evening. Ama doesn’t know. I’m thinking that she must take them in the morning, so that the thoughts that make up a day don’t weigh down her face.
Pado is convinced that this photo business goes to show Elizabeth still hasn’t got over her husband leaving.
‘Why did he leave?’ Duccio asks.
‘It’s a long story,’ Ama sighs. ‘Her husband told us he simply couldn’t cope, that’s all.’
‘How do you not cope?’ Giulio demands.
Ama glances sideways at Pado. ‘It’s a bit long to explain!’ but now Duccio and I want to know too. ‘Okay, okay,’ Ama says, ‘basically, one day, Elizabeth’s husband was sitting having breakfast with her and he noticed that her jaw clicked every time she chewed.’
We’re all a little taken aback. ‘Her jaw!’
‘Yes, her jaw,’ Ama replies. ‘He’d never really noticed it before. Anyway, he tried not to mind, but the more she ate, the more her jaw clicked away.’
‘Then what?’ Giulio is as curious as me.
‘Well,’ Ama continues, ‘he thought he’d be able to ignore it, but he couldn’t. Even when she stopped eating, her jaw clicked as she talked. It sounded like a bicycle chain against pedals.’
‘Why didn’t he tell her?’ Duccio objects.
‘There are some things you can’t say,’ Ama answers.
‘But then what?’ Giulio demands.
‘So,’ Ama carries on, ‘one night, after a supper when he’d listened to Elizabeth’s jaw click and click, he realised that he was always getting up to clear dishes, to go to the loo, sort out papers, anything just to avoid the noise. Elizabeth got angry and said if he kept on getting up and down, he might as well go and do something useful like walk the dog. He thought about