The Faces of Angels (13 page)

It's seven o'clock on a Saturday evening and not raining, so things are crowded. Stores don't close for another half-hour, and rather than going up Porta Rossa, where half the world will be out shopping, I stay on the Lungarno and cut through the tiny Piazzetta del Limbo, where eight centuries ago the city's unbaptized infants were left for burial. The cemetery is gone now, but the place is still strangely hushed, like a bubble, a tiny pocket of air in the centre of Florence where the twelfth century is still alive. My heels echo on the paving stones as I pass the church of Santi Apostoli and hear the flutter of wings, birds nesting under the eaves, or the whispering of tiny souls begging to be let out of purgatory.

I slip up a side alley so narrow I can touch both sides, hop over rain dribbling down a gutter, and by the time I reach Pierangelo's street I'm breathless, probably more with relief than anything else. I pat my bag and think
Mission almost accomplished.
Then I stop dead in my tracks. Standing across from his building, I look up and see lights in the living-room windows.

I was sure I turned them off when I left. I know I did. I couldn't have made that big a mistake. So, he must be home. He must have cut short his time in Rome and come back early. Probably he's about to call me. Maybe he's doing that now. I left the phone on my bureau, charging.

Pierangelo being back presents a few problems, all outweighed by how happy I am. My goody-goody side announces that I'll definitely tell him what I've done, while the more pragmatic part of my brain points out that, just in case I don't, it will be easy enough to slip into the study and replace the file without him noticing. Then that will be that. As I cross the street and ring the bell, I wish I'd worn something a little nicer, or even brushed my hair.

The intercom light goes on, and I'm about to say something mature like,
Trick or Treat!
or
Are you the guy who ordered the Kung Pao chicken?
when a woman's voice, loud and very clear, says, ‘
Pronto?
'

My finger moves off the bell as though I've been burnt, and I check it's his, that I haven't rung the wrong apartment by mistake.

‘
Pronto?
' she says again, louder this time, and a little annoyed. Then she mutters something in Italian, and I'm not sure, but I think I hear a man's voice in the background.

I can't believe this. Even as I step away, I tell myself to calm down. That it is perfectly possible that there's a very logical explanation for the undisputable fact that there is a woman who is not me in Pierangelo's apartment. He has a brother. Perhaps the brother from Milan, Frederico, and his wife are using Pierangelo's place for the weekend.

I like the sound of that. It's reassuringly banal. And if Piero didn't tell me, well, why should he? I'm not his wife. I don't even live there. My choice: he did offer. Reminding myself of this—that he wanted me to move in lock, stock and barrel, and that it was me who didn't—makes me feel infinitely better, and I tell myself not to be so silly. After all, as the folder in my bag proves, I have a lot to be thankful for.

The bravado sticks with me all the way back to the apartment, but the second I get there I go straight into my room, grab my phone, and call Pierangelo. He doesn't answer, something else I immediately tell myself is not unusual. Even so I try again. Just in case I punched the wrong number or got a crossed line. It happens. When he doesn't answer again, I leave a message. Cheerful. And loving. And not the least bit possessive or jealous or suspicious. As a result I sound disturbingly like Marcia in late-night reruns of
The Brady Bunch
.

‘I didn't know you have a cell phone.'

I whip round to see Billy standing in my doorway, a book in her hand.

She must have come in from the movie while I was out. She considers me for a moment, peering over the top of her granny glasses. ‘Mary Thorcroft,' she says finally. ‘International Woman of Mystery.'

If Billy had any hard feelings about my behaviour over the last few days, she seems to have forgotten them, because when I wake up the next morning she is bouncing around my room shouting, ‘Spring! Spring!' She grabs the cord of the metal shutter on my window and yanks it so the panels rattle like stones in a tin can, which makes my head hurt.

A doctor in Philadelphia gave me a bunch of sleeping pills right after I got back, and although I don't like using them, I took one last night. I blink like an owl in the unexpected sunshine, and when I finally focus on Billy, I see she's wearing a pinafore dress and a pair of pale blue high-topped sneakers that have flowers painted on them. She looks like a funky Alice in Wonderland.

‘Wake up, sleepy head!' she sings. ‘Rub your eyes, get out of bed!'

She puts her hands on her hips, looking suddenly stern. ‘The clocks went forward,' she announces. ‘You have to get up, Mary, Mary. We're meeting Kirk and Henry in half an hour. For the picnic.'

Between Pierangelo's grisly file, which is now stuffed in the bottom of my wardrobe, and the mystery woman in his apartment last night, I admit I haven't really given much thought to Kirk's picnic. In fact, I'd completely forgotten about it. But not Billy. She must have spent most of yesterday at the market, because when I come into the kitchen the table is covered with plastic containers of olives and stuffed peppers, and wax-paper packages of sandwiches. It looks like there's enough food here to feed a small army, and she's busy packing it all into a big straw basket I haven't seen before.

I'm still annoyed with her for messing with my make-up, I haven't heard back from Pierangelo, and the pill has made my head feel like an inflated balloon, all of which makes me inclined to hate pretty much everyone and everything, especially picnics. Grass always gets in your food. Stuff's stale and warm, and things spill. And besides, I remember now that we're supposed to be going up to Bellosguardo, and I've been there about a hundred times. I don't even think they let you have picnics in Caruso's garden, but I'm in such a mean temper, I don't say so. Let them get all the way up there and find out for themselves. When Billy asks me if I want morta-della or ham, I ignore her and go out onto the balcony. I know I'm behaving like a bratty child, but I don't seem to have the energy to stop.

It's about half past eleven, the sun is all the way up and the difference between today and yesterday is so pronounced it feels as if someone's turned on a celestial heat lamp. I lean on the iron railings and look down into the courtyard while in the kitchen Billy sings, ‘Ding dong, the witch is dead.'

Warmth seeps through my shirt, and for the first time the shadows under the portico look potentially cool and inviting instead of just damp. Even the sad, bony lemon trees have perked up. I hear voices, then the clang of the security gate, and little Paolo bursts from under the archway and runs across the paving stones.

He's wearing grey trousers, shiny black shoes and a miniature blue blazer, and from where I'm standing he looks more like a foreshortened adult than a child. A second later, Sophie-Sophia and her husband appear. They're dressed up too. She is wearing a green suit and high heels and carrying a small beret-type hat, and despite the warmth he has on the same fancy camel-coloured overcoat and shiny brown shoes. Watching them, it occurs to me that they have just come back from Mass. As if to confirm this, a priest appears a second later from our side of the building. He stops to talk to the Sassinellis, and I wonder if this is who came to our door. When we met in the shop yesterday, Sophie told me he comes regularly to hear confession and serve Mass for Signora Raguzza and her companion downstairs, who, Sophie whispered, is an illegal immigrant called Dinya.

Signora Raguzza is an invalid, and she is dying. Slowly. Which is driving her son crazy. I also know this because Sophie told me. She pointed out the son, who was scurrying down the street ahead of us as we walked back. Sophie says the son and his wife and children are living with his wife's family in Pozzilatico while they wait for his mother to die so they can move into the apartment, and the whole thing's costing him a fortune. He pays for the companion—even though he does get her on the cheap—and for the doctor's visits, and for the donations to the church the priest comes from so he'll come and say Mass, and for everything else that his mother insists she has to have because she can't walk. Or so she says. According to Sophie, the son occasionally comes over for a grappa with the Sassinellis to recover from visiting his mama, and after a couple he's prone to suggesting she can walk pretty well. If she has to. He even confessed that once, when his in-laws were driving him really buggy, he considered proving the point by, say, setting a fire. Just a little one. Just enough to get the old bat on her feet. Sophie sympathizes, but both she and Big Paolo urged him to reconsider. Now the priest gives a little bow. The long black skirt of his soutane swishes across the paving stones as he merges into the shadows and disappears under the archway.

Little Paolo has been entertaining himself by pulling leaves off one of the lemon trees and dropping them into the wide mouth of the pot. His father says something I can't catch to his son, and guides him towards their door, his large man's hand flat against the little boy's back. Sophie walks a few steps behind. Then, just before they disappear into their entryway, she turns and looks up. Her eyes squint in the sun, and she waves, her hand rising in a little half circle of recognition, as if she has known the whole time that I have been up here, watching.

Ten minutes later Billy yells it's time to leave. I still don't want to go on a picnic, but I can't think of a good excuse to get out of it, so I'm sticky as molasses, deliberately slow. I literally drag my feet as I go to get my phone in case Piero rings, and fuss with my shoulder bag. Out on the landing, Billy opens the elevator doors and sends her basket, which takes up just about all the room there is, down by itself. Then she runs down the stairs to meet it, yelling over her shoulder about the Japanese girls, and how she told Kirk and Henry to invite them, and ignoring the fact that I'm ignoring her.

People are still spilling out of Santo Spirito as we round the corner and come into the piazza. They congregate on the wide apron of the church terrace and on the steps, talking in little groups, commenting on the sermon and the unexpected sunshine. I walk behind Billy, lollygagging, looking in windows I'm not interested in and examining menus I already know by heart while she marches ahead with her basket, using it like a battering ram. In no hurry to join the others, I detour to the church steps where a little black and white pirate dog with a blotch around one eye is giving anyone who passes his best smile. I'm a sucker for dogs, especially mutts, so I give him a pat. ‘Hey, dog,' I say, and he doesn't seem to mind it's in English.

As I rub behind his ears, the dog widens his grin to show me his pink tongue and his snaggle teeth. His fur is silky, and he's wearing a nice leather collar. The boy who obviously belongs to him is sitting on the steps above with his back to us, and I can see that his clothes are clean, but ragged. His blue shirt is fraying, and so are the hems of his jeans, but as much as anything else it's his scuffed trainers that mark him as one of Florence's street people. His shoulders give him away too. Their curled slope is more like an old man's than a young one's.

Half turned from me, he's watching the front of Santo Spirito, so I can't see his face, just a thatch of dirty blond hair, the same colour as Ty's was, and the nubbly, exposed bones at the top of his spine. For a second, the shape of him, the thin shoulders and bent back, reminds me of an El Greco, of one of his emaciated saints with their too large hands and sandalled feet. Then he turns round.

He's not a boy, but the boyishness is still there in his face, which is unmistakably Italian. More than that, it's Florentine. You can see it in any fresco with its wide cheekbones, pronounced, slightly bullish nose, and full, almost flushed lips. But that's not what startles me. What startles me are his eyes. They're golden. Amber coloured, like a lion's. I have only ever seen one pair like them before in my life, and they belonged to my husband.

We stare at each other. Then I step backwards suddenly and trip. The dog gives a startled yip and jumps up, and someone exclaims as I bump in to them.

‘
Scusi, signora. Scusi! Dispiace!
' I turn to steady the elderly woman I've almost knocked over.

‘
Non fa niente
.' She takes my hand and smiles, saying it's nothing, forgiving me my clumsiness, because, after all, it's Sunday and she has just come out of church. I smile back, apologize again, then turn to look for the dog and the tall thin man.

They should be right above me on the steps, but a couple are standing there now, arguing about where to go for lunch. I have to have been wrong, I think. It's the sleeping pill. No one but Ty ever had eyes like that. I imagined it. I know I did. But, suddenly, I desperately need to check. To prove I'm not going completely nuts.