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chapter 76
alex
Luca’s mother raises the edge of her hand to her eyes, blocking out the sun. We’re backlit against it, our faces in shadow, and it takes her a moment to recognise me.
Her reaction is absolutely the last thing I expect.
‘La mia bellissima figlia!’ she exclaims. ‘Vieni qui! Vieni qui!’
She beckons us forward, her face wreathed in smiles as she unlocks the latticed iron gate.
‘Roberto!’ she shouts over her shoulder. ‘Vieni qui presto, sono Alexa!’
‘What the fuck?’ Quinn mutters.
Elena Martini presses her palms on either side of my face, squeezing my cheeks, and then clasps her hands joyfully to her heart, shaking her head in wonder.
‘Mio cara! Questo è un miracolo!Roberto!’ she shouts again.
She looks much older than I remember. It’s only three years since I last saw her at Luca’s funeral, but her hair is almost entirely white now and her weathered skin has an unhealthy yellowish cast to it. There’s a vacant look in her eyes, too, that makes me wonder how advanced her dementia is. She’s always been a petite woman, but now she looks fragile and insubstantial, as if a puff of wind might blow her across the courtyard.
Roberto doesn’t appear. Elena ushers us through an archwayand into a cool sitting room on the far side of the courtyard. A flight of stone steps in the corner of the room leads down to a second, lower courtyard filled with bougainvillea, the purple blossoms a vivid splash of colour against the mellow gold stone. A window set high in one wall reveals sweeping views of the valley below.
I remember being shown into this same room when Luca brought me back to meet his parents. Then, as now, I was struck by its strong Arab influence: the kilim rug in muted shades of blue and red, the engraved Moroccan silver coffee table, the blown glass hookah beside the fireplace. Sicily is as much Arabian as it is Italian, a legacy of the island’s conquest by Saracens in the ninth century, and more than two hundred years of subsequent Muslim rule.
When I first came here, I’d been to Italy several times before with my parents, and I’d even spent one summer waitressing along the Amalfi coast. But the tourist Italy I’d known hadn’t beenthisItaly. Sitting in that Moorish room seven years ago, I’d been struck by a truth whose significance I only realised after we married: Luca and I might both be cosmopolitan Europeans on the surface, but we came from very different cultures and backgrounds.
Elena waves us towards a semicircle of white linen sofas scattered with mirrored cushions. ‘Caffè? Acqua?Tè alla menta?Solo un momento, per favor.’
She returns to the courtyard and we hear her call out to an unseen maid. My sense of dislocation grows. I feel as if I’ve slipped into a parallel universe, in which my child is not missing and my mother-in-law and I are in the habit of spending the afternoon drinking mint tea.
‘My Italian’s pretty basic,’ Quinn murmurs, ‘but I think your mother-in-law just went off to kill the fatted calf.’
‘I told you, she’s crazy,’ I say, going over to the window.‘She saw us coming up the hill. Roberto must be hiding with Lottie while she tries to get rid of us.’
There’s only one road down the mountain: the same way we came up. It’s impossible to approach the villa unseen, but equally impossible to leave without being spotted. If Roberto, or anyone else, tries to spirit Lottie away while Elena distracts me, I’ll see them from here.
‘Youaresure it’s her in the photo, right?’ Quinn asks.
‘Of course I’m sure!’
She looks sceptical. I don’t blame her: despite my confident assertion, suddenly I’m not sure at all.
Could a senile old woman really kidnap a child and smuggle her thousands of miles across international borders? Quinn had to enhance that blurry photograph with some high-tech software to make the woman’s face recognisable. Maybe the process made a passing resemblance appear much stronger than it was. Maybe Iwantedto see Elena’s face, because that would mean my daughter was still alive. Would she really have welcomed me with such open arms if Lottie was hidden somewhere in the villa?
I was wrong about Flora Birch. Am I wrong about this, too?
My former mother-in-law returns and sits down, patting the sofa for me to join her. I pretend not to notice, keeping my vigil at the window.
‘Quindi, chi è questo?’ Elena asks, indicating Quinn.
‘She’s a friend of mine,’ I say.
‘Alexa,cara, why you are here? You have newsdella mia bella ragazza?’
Her beautiful girl?
I’m suddenly filled with anger. After Luca’s funeral, Elena cut me off as if I’d never existed. She never once got in touch with me to see how I was or asked to see her granddaughter. I didn’t pursue it, because of her dementia; when Lottiedisappeared, it was Roberto, not Elena, who sent me a brief letter of condolence, offering to send money and promising to pray for Lottie.
