though, I stayed at ground level and felt the empty terror of the place. I just shuffled along with the other tourists, and paused for a short while in front of Michelangelo’s Pietà, staring at the sculpture through a sheet of bulletproof glass. It still had an impact though. Indeed, the glass added another layer to the narrative. It seemed to suggest the distance between the dying Christ and the modern world, a distance brought about by the desire to protect.
An equivalent desire was there in the face of the Virgin Mary, sitting strong and father-like, with the feeble-bodied child across her lap. I wished you had been there by my side to see it. The foundation of a religious faith expressed as a parent’s tragedy. A parent whose son had gone away from her, out into a world that killed him. And then too late he was returned to the safety of the parent’s lap. A safety that meant nothing now.
I stayed there for a short while, as tears glazed my eyes. Tourists stood all around, with star-struck faces, ready to tick off another sight before moving on. Of course, none of them displayed any understanding of what Michelangelo was trying to say. They just made the same pleasant mumbles as they had when they stood in the Sistine Chapel, casting their eyes down from the ceiling through the Last Judgement and an underworld that stopped above their heads.
Michelangelo’s message to me, standing in front of the Pietà, was clear. Agony awaits if you let your child out into a world of lost souls. You must protect her, and you must never let her go.
I walked away, without seeing anything else. No chapel, no altar, no memorial or papal tomb could steer me from my course. I went outside and took a moment to find you. For a second I thought you had gone. There were too many people to make sense of the scene, but then my eyes found the column, and the step, and you sitting exactly where you had said. I rushed over, and didn’t notice the two American boys until the last moment. I can see that appalled look on your face as I approached. A shame so intense it spilled into hatred.
‘Bryony, shall we go?’
You rolled your eyes, and the boy-pups laughed and said, ‘See you later.’
‘See you later?’ I asked, as we walked past the Egyptian obelisk towards the Via della Conciliazione.
You shrugged, and said nothing.
A figure of speech, I told myself, as I glared again at your bare shoulders. Nothing to sweat about.
And yet, in that delirious July heat, it was impossible not to sweat. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘The Forum’s the next on the list. I don’t think you’ll require a cape for that.’
I fell from the heavens through a night-blue sky, dropping fast as my body gained form and mass. It felt like an eternity, waiting for the flat earth to come into view. A dark carcass of land bleeding moonlit lakes and oceans. I was heading straight towards the water but landed in my bed feeling worse than ever. Knowing something was wrong, I got up and left the hotel room to go and knock on your door.
There was no answer, so I tried again.
Nothing.
Try to put yourself in my shoes – although, to be precise I was barefoot – as I stood out in that hallway. ‘Bryony,’ I said your name softly at first. ‘Bryony, it’s me.’
The silence scared me, so I kept knocking it away. Voices from other rooms told me, in numerous European languages, to shut the whatever up. I stopped knocking, went downstairs, and explained to the old man behind the desk that something could be the matter. He blew a long sigh, as though I were a regret he had just remembered, but eventually he gave me the key. When I got back upstairs and opened your door I sank at the sight of your empty bed. I scanned the room, and sent your name into every corner. There was nothing but clothes and magazines and all those other empty parts of you.
For your tenth birthday I had bought you a selection of films. Whistle Down the Wind. The Railway Children. Meet Me in St Louis. And your mother’s favourite, Roman Holiday. It became your favourite, too, and I saw no problem with that at the time. ‘Suitable for all’ was the advice of the British Board of Film Classification. Now, though, I hold Audrey Hepburn at least partially responsible for your antics in the Eternal City. A young princess escaping her responsibilities by heading off into the Roman night, to find love and freedom and Gregory Peck. The message of that film clearly infected your vulnerable mind. Why else would you leave your hotel room in that same city to search for whatever adventure you thought was out there?
I walked those ancient streets without direction, for how could I know which direction to take? You could have gone anywhere.
I remember heading down the Via Condotti, where mannequins in designer dresses stared out from dark windows.
A girl about your height turned the corner and I called your name. She was coming towards me, a walking silhouette, but didn’t answer. My heart died as I realised it wasn’t you, but a grubby-faced street urchin carrying a baby. Not even the baby was real. A plastic doll, which she threatened to throw towards me. She hissed at the same time, and then said something in a language I’m sure wasn’t Italian.
‘Money,’ she clarified, realising I couldn’t understand. ‘Mun-eeee.’
I kept on going, at a quickening pace, while the ragged gypsy girl stood in the street hissing curses, snake words, to poison my luck.
I alternated between a walk and a jog as I trod those streets, feeling a rush of hope at the sight of every moving shadow, at the sound of every new footstep, only to plunge into deeper despair when you were not the source.
This went on for hours, this jogging after every new hope, asking drunks and homeless emperors and men stocking up newspaper kiosks if they had seen you. Of course, it was all futile. Really, I should have returned to the hotel and waited for you in the foyer.
Light came, and the city slipped slowly into its daytime colours. The jaundiced yellows of the old and dying.
I had to head back to the hotel. I knew that. But I also knew that if you weren’t there I would fall into a nightmare beyond all imagining. ‘Bryony,’ I called, down every deserted street. What despair your name contained when it was unanswered!
What if you had been kidnapped? I know this sounds ridiculous to you now, and maybe even to me, but I did not know where you were. There was no note in your room to explain where you had gone, and in the absence of explanation the mind torments itself with all manner of horrendous things.
I walked back slowly, as time and hope were equal partners in this, through the Piazza di Spagna, passing the deserted Spanish Steps and the house where Keats wasted away. As I walked by the fountain I sensed his ghost, alone and palely loitering at the window, trapped for eternity in the city he thought would heal him. But not even Keats, that great interpreter of the human soul, could offer me any clue or comfort.
I returned to the hotel and asked the man behind the reception desk if he had seen you.
‘I am sorry, sir, but I am only just beginning,’ he said, as oblivious to my pain as to the strange poetry of his words. He was a younger man, a less obvious misanthrope, but such was my delirium that I had thought it was the same one as before.
I was, by this point, quite dizzy with fear, and again my mind was beginning to fuzz and tingle.
I must have muttered some kind of thanks and then climbed the stairs up to the third floor, as an ashy darkness tinged away at the periphery of my vision.
If you were there, in your room, I was going to hug you and kiss your forehead and stroke your hair. I was going to tell you ‘I love you’ and you were going to tell me ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you’ and I wasn’t even going to think about telling you off. The relief was going to be so much, so perfect and so complete, that it would be impossible to scold you. It is peculiar, isn’t it? The way our minds bargain with fate when every future possibility still hangs in the balance.
I knocked on your door, as the darkness crept closer. Were you asleep? The seconds ticked by without you answering, and I felt the corridor tilt under my feet. I had to steady myself by placing