it in two.
‘Yes,’ I answer.
‘You’ve settled in?’ It isn’t a polite enquiry; there is no warmth or friendliness, more an impatience. I hold my hands together in my lap.
‘Yes,’ I say again, feeling like a schoolgirl outside the headmistress’s office, waiting for punishment. Only in this case, I have no idea what I’ve done wrong.
‘We wished to avoid hiring,’ the voice says shortly, rudely. ‘But the house won’t look after itself – and I can’t very well expect Adalina to do it.’
I’m unsure how to react. ‘I’m glad you decided to,’ I say, and before I can stop myself I’m babbling, eager to please and it emerges as over-share. ‘It came at the right time for me. I was looking to get out of London. This was too good to pass up.’
Stop talking. She doesn’t need to know.
‘Oh?’ comes the voice.
‘Family stuff,’ I say quickly. It sounds weak, a quick step back – and, though it’s impossible, the silence that follows is so loaded that I start to wonder if by some miracle she knows my story. What would she think of the crime I committed?
‘As you’re aware, I rarely take company,’ she says, and I’m relieved to move off subject. ‘You might view this job as an escape clause, or a frivolous holiday, but this house is my home and I will protect it with all that I have. If it’s equal to you, I would ask that we stay out of each other’s way wherever possible.’
My mouth is dry. Relief turns to surprise, then shock. ‘Of course,’ I say.
‘You may go now.’
The end of the meeting, if it can be called that. I’m debating the correctness of saying goodbye, surely too formal but then it’s hardly as if she’s set any other tone, before the door in front of me closes abruptly, a swift sharp snap then silence.
*
That evening I take the bus into town. Florence is coming to life on the cusp of night as only a city can: twinkling lights dance on the river, couples stroll through cobbled piazzas, the scent of burned-crust pizza fills the air along with a heady tang of wine.
I turn on my phone. It seems to take an age for it to switch network, find a signal and connect to 3G. I wait. The moments pass. Each time a message beeps in from my new server, my heart leaps then dives. There’s one from Bill, another from our landlord. Tilda WhatsApps from a Barbadian beach, wishing me luck, lots of smiling emojis. To my shame I’m not waiting for them. I wait for anything from him, an email, a text, a missed call, anything. I blink back tears: of course there’s none. What would Tilda think of her reliable big sister, the person who put her to bed and cooked her tea and waited up each night she went out, being responsible for…?
I can’t say it. I can’t think it.
Shoving my phone back in my bag, I head to the library, so focused on the distraction it will give me that I almost trip up the steps to the entrance.
It’s open late, quiet, studious, deliciously private. As I settle into a booth with a stack of archives, I turn my phone to vibrate, and read Bill’s message again:
Spill, then – who is she? What’s she like? Xxx
Today’s encounter with Signora has set me on edge. Horrible, I start to write back, horrible and rude and weird. Why did I come here? Why did I let you convince me? But I delete the draft. I don’t want to admit the truth to Bill – that the woman I spoke to is hard and cold, cruel and dismissive, but that for some insane reason I’m drawn to her, fascinated by her, and I feel connected to her in a way I can’t express. I need to know who she is. I need to know why she’s cut herself off.
Just like me.
I’ve become protective of my quarantine. Connecting to the outside world makes me panic that I’m about to learn drastic news. It’ll be Bill, or one of my sisters, or my dad, or some random on Facebook I haven’t spoken to in years, emailing me about the exposure at home. I can see it now; rehearsed the way it might unfold so many times. Lucy, what the hell? Is it true? Or perhaps, simply: It’s started.
As ever, temptation lingers to check the websites, Google his name, his wife’s name, see if anything new has cropped up, but I have to trust that Bill would tell me first. She doesn’t reference it, doesn’t even mention it, and I know she’s being kind. She’s trying to help me forget. How could I forget? I can’t. I decide to click the phone off altogether, instructing myself instead to the task at hand. In this, at least, I can distance myself from my plight. However challenging I’ve found the Barbarossa so far, it’s at least proved a change of scene – and however obstructive its owner, she’s given me a diversion. Something happened at that house. I sense it in the walls, the shadows and the dark. From Adalina’s secrecy and Salvatore’s madness. From the voice behind the door; from the noises in the attic, the cold and the quiet…
Something happened.
I begin by looking up the castillo on the library’s bank of computers. A quick search reveals nothing of its possessor, but the local records surrender more. It’s all in Italian so I run a quick translate – the rendition isn’t perfect, but it’s enough, and soon the story is forming. I scan the text, tracing reports back to the earliest point I can find: 1980, when she moved here from America. Her arrival had caused a stir.
Tuscany welcomes home its son, renowned doctor Giovanni ‘Gio’ Moretti, and his wife, Hollywood actress Vivien Lockhart, to the Castillo Barbarossa in Fiesole. The pair married last month in a romantic ceremony in Los Angeles and now return to Italy, according to their spokesperson, ‘to begin family life in a more peaceful setting’. Moretti will be engaged in a top-secret research project, for which he was privately selected, while Lockhart is said to be taking a break from her movie career…
So that was she. Of course it was. Vivien. Seeing the name in front of me, it seems obvious. Her fame was before my time, a bright brief spark in the seventies, but I’m sure Mum had her films on video when I was growing up, and in my mind’s eye I catch a flash of what she used to look like. Even the sound of her voice, lilting, seductive, embroidered with heavenly promise. It doesn’t match the voice I heard today. That voice was coarse with suffering. As if a demon had got inside her…
Moretti’s younger sister, about whom little is known, accompanies the couple; the trio are said to be close, and are ‘looking forward to facing a new start together’. Signor Giacomo Dinapoli, the siblings’ uncle, owned the fifteenth-century Castillo Barbarossa for many years before his death…
I read on, but the relevance to Vivien thins out and it becomes more about the house. I flip to the next article relating to her name, then the next and the next. I’m spoiled for information about the Barbarossa but there is little about its inhabitants. Was Giovanni Moretti the man whose portrait I saw on the staircase? I recall his unusual eyes, the insistence in his glare, and how quickly Adalina steered me on. And who was the sister? Why was she with them? There are items about parties thrown at the mansion, lavish, colourful affairs, a masked ball at Halloween, an annual occasion for which the Barbarossa is, or was, famous, but I’m unable to scratch beneath the surface and uncover what I’m hungry for. What am I hungry for – a scandal to put my own in the shade? Some act that Vivien committed, or was committed to her, that makes mine seem incidental, or not so bad? I try another search, marvel at her glamorous black and white headshots, magazine covers, Vivien laughing at parties where the vintage glitterati sip from teardrops of champagne and smoke Cuban cigars; screen grabs from her movies where she resembles a cross between Marilyn Monroe and Katharine Hepburn, and there is something familiar about her, a face I feel I met in another life, long-lost now. I Wikipedia her, but the material on her personal life is scarce. She was born in South Carolina, a religious upbringing then the move to LA, the swift soar to fame, leading to her marriage to Giovanni and the relocation to Europe.
After that, nothing… the trail ends.