The Soul Room (22 page)

I had just steeled myself to speak when they abruptly left the room, locking
the door behind them. There was a moment of silence. Dan’s breath was ragged,
his arms hanging loosely at his side.

‘What the fuck do we do Dan?! How do we get out of this room?’ I started
to rush around, indiscriminately, furiously, trying to open the door, shoving
the bed out of the way, checking the corners of the room, pushing things off
the shelves.

‘It’s no good.’

‘Come on Dan! We’ve got to get out of here!’ I shoved a chair against the
wall, started to get up onto it in an attempt to get at the tiny high windows.

‘Maddie, for God’s sake!’ Dan came over and forced me off the chair.
‘There’s no way either of us is getting out of those windows.

‘I’ll shout for help then!’

‘There’s not a farm or cottage for two square miles. The only people
who’ll hear you are Fabrizio’s henchmen.’

‘I can’t just...’ I stopped, deflated. Dan suddenly bristled with energy
and stormed over to the door, started to bang on it.

‘Please, for God’s sake just let us out!’ he screamed.’ She’s pregnant!
Do you want her blood on your hands? The blood of her baby? You know Amarena’s
a bad man, you could let us out now and we could all go to the police. Put a
stop to this for good. What would your
Mamma’s
think of you to see you
doing this to a woman who is
incinta,
imagine their shame!
Per
favour, Per l’amor di Dio!’
He raged some more then finally ran out of
steam. There was a bed and an arm chair in the room but he went and sat on the
smooth stone of the floor, his back against the wall, head deep in his broad
dark hands. I went and sat down beside him, grunting as I struggled to get my
bulk down to the floor. I leant against the hard wall, stretching out my back
muscles with an involuntary release of tension. I shuffled closer to him until
I could feel the warmth of his shoulder against mine.

‘It’ll be all right.’ I found myself saying, but without conviction.

He lifted his head from his hands, incredulous. ‘It’s not going to be all
right Maddie! It’s not going to be fucking all right! You and your baby are in
terrible danger, and it’s all because of me. I feel like dying.’

‘We’ve got one thing in our favour, something they don’t know about.’

A flicker of hope passed across his face. ‘What’s that?’

‘I left a note with Nonna saying that if I wasn’t back by morning she
must call this friend I have in Brighton Police. He’ll come straight away.’

‘You mean officially? With other police officers?’

‘Well…not exactly…’

‘Not exactly?! And what do you think this one
unofficial
copper is
going to do against the most powerful man in the region? A man who has the
whole local constabulary in the palm of his hand??’

My tiny chink of optimism evaporated. I felt small and stupid. ‘And not
just that Dan, if I don’t call home every day at 7pm, Dad said he’s going to
come too.’

‘Dad?’ Dan sounded incredulous. ‘What can he do?’

‘He’ll kick up a stink, he’ll get the police to look into this
officially. We’re his kids, he won’t stop till they listen to him!’

‘They’ll have moved us by then, it’s no good. Fuck Maddie, what have I
done?’

‘Please Dan, don’t. You didn’t mean for any of this to happen.’ I paused,
momentarily stalled by my platitudes but unable to think of anything better.
‘It’s not your fault.’

‘It’s never my fault is it Maddie? Even Mum and Dad let me get away with
murder; I used my difference, my eccentricity as an excuse for selfishness. If
I’d been aggressive, if I’d been
stupid
, it would have been different,
but I was always protected, never made to take the consequences...’

‘We’re in this situation because Fabrizio is a self-obsessed sociopath
not because you have a slightly inflated ego.’

He snorted and shook his head. ‘Really? Is that really why? Isn’t the
reason why I’m actually here
because
of my ego? Because I had to be the
one to shake the skeletons out of the family closet – I had to be the one to
find
myself
like some gauche pre-pubescent who thinks the world revolves around
them.’

‘But everyone has the right to to try to find out the truth about
themselves and who they are.’

He looked at me keenly. ‘Do they? Should they?’

I shook my head to try to make sense of the frenzy of conflicting
emotions that were bombarding it. I was terrified, but I had to know, I had to
know everything that had led us to this point. I couldn’t go on without it.
‘Why
did
you come to confront him?’

‘After Mum told me about him, I just had to.’

 ‘How did she tell you? When she was dying? When she called us into her
room that last time – before she lost consciousness?’

‘Sort of, she told me there was something I needed to know. She was sorry
but she didn’t have the courage to tell me then, but that when I was an adult,
my 30
^th
birthday, I would find out. She said she had always loved me
with all her heart, that she hoped I would forgive her.’

‘How did you do it, how did you wait all those years, wondering what it
was?’ Our faces were close, conspiratorial. There was so much to say, so much
to ask, and we didn’t know how much time we’d have before they came back.

‘It wasn’t so bad at first, I was busy grieving, and building a life. But
as I got older, got nearer to my birthday, those last few months, it was
unbearable.’

‘So how did you find out?’

‘A letter, lodged with her solicitor. They’d written down the date wrong,
12
^th
instead of 17
^th
, so I got the note five days before
my birthday.’

‘And it told you Fabrizio was your...’ I hesitated, struggling to say the
word in this context, ‘...father?’

‘Yes, and about her diary, where to find it, how it was disguised; said
that it would break her heart to write it out again, that her diary would tell
me.’

A wave of desperation came over me. ‘But why has he done this?’ I wailed.
‘Why is he keeping you like this? Does he know you’re his son? Surely if he
knew that he couldn’t do this to you!’

‘Mum told him. Remember that day he came to the house?’

‘When she’d found out the treatment hadn’t worked?’

 Dan nodded. ‘Fabrizio hurried past us in the hall, he looked pale, like
he’d had a shock. He only stayed a few minutes.’

‘I remember. I wonder how she made him come to her? Maybe she threatened
to tell Rosa.’

‘Probably. I think he feels little more than disdain for me. I’m only
half an Amarena, and a gay one. And there’s a small amount of shame for how I
was made as well I think. Maybe just enough shame to make him unable to hurt
me.’

I shifted my weight, linked my arm through his and leant my head on his
shoulder.

‘But then why has he kept you here all this time? Why not just let you
go? You can’t prove he’s a rapist, it’s just one person’s word against
another’s, and a dead person’s at that. You’d have to have incontrovertible
evidence to dent Fabrizio’s cast-iron reputation.’

‘I’ve got something on him and he knows it. Something big, that’s why
I’ve been here ever since, while he tries to work out what to do with me.’

 ‘What, what have you got on him?’

‘He’s been using the vineyard to launder money, money that comes via
corrupt policemen, from drugs deals, racketeering, fraud, you name it.’

‘Shit. How on earth did you find out?’

‘When I’d read mum’s diary I had to find out more about him. It was such
a shock to find out he was my Dad, I needed to know more so I started to look
into him, used some contacts I’ve made through my investigative journalism.
Less than savoury contacts, but the type who know how to get information.’ He
had been talking relatively calmly, but he crumpled again. ‘What are we going
to do Maddie? What the fuck are we going to do?’ He started to cry, laid his
head in my lap, his hands cradling my bump. I stroked his hair absently, my
mind at war: the practical half trying to work out if we could escape; the
other, scared witless and incapacitated. 

After a few minutes he calmed down, wiped his face with the back of his
sleeve and sat up again. I put my arm around him, tried to comfort him. His
shoulders were shuddering with tension. He looked up at me with his near-black
eyes, and for the first time I noticed the hint of a feline curve at the far
corners; so like Sergio’s, I suddenly realised; that it made my heart jump with
recognition.

‘I’ve often taken pleasure in making people look stupid,’ he said, his
deep voice trembling, ‘including, at times, those that didn’t deserve it. If I
look into myself I see...’ he leaned his head back against the wall and closed
his eyes, ‘...I see a man who has always wanted to be at the top of the heap in
his career, made little effort to find out if those he has ridiculed or exposed
actually had something to teach him. But I don’t...don’t think that I have been
motivated by wanting to hurt.’

I struggled, sent a line deep inside myself, trying to hook some words.
‘That’s the difference Dan. That’s why you mustn’t compare yourself to
Fabrizio. He has taken pleasure, all his life, in taking what he wants from
people. He’s a predator.’ I spat out the word. ‘Think of Mum, what he did to
her. In terms of morals and integrity, dear brother if in nothing else, I am
afraid you are deeply ordinary. You are flawed, just like the rest of us. You
can try to mend it, or you can ignore it, but you are nothing –
nothing
like him.’

‘But what are we going to do?’ He said, his voice ragged with emotion
again. ‘You and the baby are in so much danger, I can’t bear it.’

‘We know we can’t escape from this room, and we don’t have the strength
to overpower the guards, so we’ve got to think about other ways of getting
through this. Anyway, it’s you we need to worry about. He won’t do anything to
harm the baby, he wants it too much. He knows he can’t get it without me, so I
couldn’t be safer right now. ‘

‘I don’t understand – why would he want the baby?’

‘Of course...you don’t know.’ The baby kicked hard against my spine. I
gasped. ‘I’ve got to get up Dan.’

‘I felt it! I felt it kick! My...’

‘Nephew.’ I put in for him.

‘How do you know it’s a boy? From a scan?’

‘No, I knew already.’ I got up with difficulty and went over to the bed.

‘How?’

‘It’s a long story. Not for now. You wanted to know why he wants the
baby, why he will do anything to protect it?’ He nodded fervently. ‘Because the
baby’s father was his favourite son, Sergio, he died just a few months ago.’

‘I knew he had grown-up children, but I didn’t see them. He was very
cagey about his life. How did Sergio die?’

‘A brain tumour, he knew about it but didn’t tell me, didn’t talk to his
family about it although they knew. He was full of life and excitement about
his baby, but I had no idea it would happen so soon. And then he was gone.’

‘I’m sorry Maddie.’

‘It’s OK.’ I felt the tears start despite myself. ‘I wasn’t in love – or
at least not as strongly as I think he was with me – but he was a beautiful
young man in every way and he would have been a wonderful father – even if we
hadn’t ended up staying together. You would have liked him, because he wouldn’t
have been intimidated by you. He would have looked you calmly in the eye and
made you laugh at yourself.’

Dan laughed ruefully. ‘My half-brother, but a stranger.’

‘His memory is powerful to Fabrizio. He loved Sergio so much because he
was everything
he
was unable to be.’

Dan looked at me fiercely, gripped my arm. ‘I promise you Maddie that we
are going to get out of this, and I am going to be a wonderful uncle.’

For some reason his avowal made me want to cry again. I smiled and looked
away. ‘Do you have any water in here? I’m so thirsty all of a sudden.’

He got up and went over to a small cupboard in the corner of the room.
Inside were several shrink-wrapped six-packs of bottled water, packets of
crisps, bags of apples several tins and basic crockery. He took out a bottle,
got a packet of crisps and brought them over. Looking in the cupboard, seeing
Amarena’s planning laid bare, I suddenly saw the elephant in the room, the
question I hadn’t thought to ask yet. ‘How did it happen? How did he get you?’

Dan sighed and threw himself into the armchair. He pinched the bridge of
his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. ‘After getting the letter I struggled with
myself for a couple of days, thought about writing to him, threatening him.
Deep down though, I knew I needed to see him face-to-face. I met up with that
contact I told you about, got him to start doing some digging. I changed my
name by Deed Poll. I knew the first thing anyone would check would be flights,
and I didn’t want to be found until I’d confronted him. I bought a cheap mobile
phone, took out some cash from my savings and left for Italy. That was it – I
just went. No plan, just the absolute belief that I needed to confront him.’

‘No word to any of us.’

‘I left a note for Nicholas.’

‘It blew off the table, he didn’t find it for days. Have you any idea
what we’ve been through?’

‘You’ve got to understand Maddie, I had no idea it would happen like this,
that he’d lock me up. Until I got to Italy I thought he was just a rapist...you
know what I mean...that’s the worst thing that he could be, but I knew I
couldn’t prove it, couldn’t use it against him. It wasn’t until I arrived here
that my contact called me and the money laundering, the police corruption came
up too. I knew that that would be a far more dangerous thing to challenge him
on.’

‘It’s been so awful, not knowing if you were alive or dead, or what might
have happened to you.’

‘The worst punishment of the last five months has been the time to
myself. No distraction, nothing to stop the relentless inward gaze.  A part of
me always knew, Maddie, if you think about it, you knew it too. I was different
from you and dad, however much you loved me, I always felt it. And it makes
sense to me now, Mum got ill, not because of genetics or lifestyle, but because
there was always something rotting, chewing away at the inside of her. The
diary told me what it was. I can’t explain to you what I went through …when I
read about...about what he did to her…about how I was made. To know that
despite it, she loved me as much as if I had been made with love like
you...instead of violence. I couldn’t help it, suddenly I saw myself in a new
light. That perhaps he had rubbed off on me, even a bit...’