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She pulls a silver chain from the neck of her blouse and begins to fiddle with the clasp. Her fingers are stiff, and she mutters under her breath.
‘No,’ she snaps as I open my mouth to offer help. ‘I can do it.Oddio… there!’ She takes off the necklace and presses it into my hand. ‘Wear it or don’t wear it, but it’s yours. Take it.’
I look at the necklace in my palm. A heavy silver locket tarnished with age and wear; I can just make out an ornate cross engraved into the metal. I pop it open and there’s Achille, defiantly facing down the camera. His curly hair is slicked back and he’s wearing a kerchief knotted around his neck.
‘But…’
‘Take it, please.’ She looks as fierce as he does, and for the first time I see the resemblance between them. ‘My mother wore it every day, and she made me promise to wear it once she was dead. I don’t want to carry it – to carry him any more. He belongs with you.’
Her tone brooks no argument. I close my hand over the locket. ‘Thank you,’ I say, though it sounds incredibly inadequate.
Stella pats my arm. ‘Don’t thank me. Now go to your young man – I can see him waiting out there in the yard.’
And Marco is waiting, sitting patiently in the red Comacchi. ‘I thought you were meeting me at the bus stop,’ I say as I open the door and slide in.
He snorts. ‘And let you break an ankle coming down that damned path in the dark? Not a chance.’
‘I appreciate it.’ I’m rooting through my bag, looking for a safe place to put Stella’s locket. Marco switches on the overhead light and leans over.
‘What’s that you’ve got there?’ he asks, and I open my hand and show him the necklace. He takes it from me and runs his thumb over the engraved surface. ‘Wow. This must be an antique.’
‘Stella gave it to me. Open it.’
‘Wow,’ he says again. ‘Red kerchief and all. What a face! Are you going to put it on?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose it’s the safest place for it.’
‘I think so. Lean forward.’ I gather up my hair and he fastens the chain around my neck, his warm fingers brushing my skin. ‘There,’ he says, patting the locket where it rests against my breastbone. ‘You’re Achille’s guardian now. Wait, what did I say?’
‘Nothing, really. It’s just… that’s what Stella said, pretty much. I didn’t realise what a hard time she had.’ I shiver remembering her words.I don’t want to carry him any more. ‘I’ll tell you all about it when we get home.’
Home. The word slipped out before I could think about it.
‘Home,’ Marco says, and smiles his dazzling, crooked smile. ‘I like the sound of that.’ He turns the key in the ignition of the Comacchi and the engine thrums into life. ‘Ready to go?’ he asks.
I take a deep breath and look ahead. The valley lies before us and in it is Florence, lit up against the night sky. I can just make out the dome of the cathedral.
‘Ready,’ I say.
33
Stella
It was the summer of 1955 when I first met Rita Craye. I remember that I’d had to go up to Rifredi to see Pierfrancesco about something – some detail about the running of the bar, perhaps, or some other minor issue – and I had my youngest, Carlo, with me. He was two years old, and at a stage where he rebelled against everything but never wanted to be apart from me, either. So we had a long and sticky tram journey and arrived at the Legni Editore offices rather late and dishevelled. But Pierfrancesco was running over time as he so often was. His secretary brought a coffee for me and some biscuits and a couple of picture books to keep Carlo occupied, and we settled down to wait in the lobby.
We must have been there for about ten minutes when there was the sound of high heels coming down the stairs, tac-tac-tac, and Rita appeared. I recognised her right away, of course, because her face had been all over the papers when Achille died. She looked much as I thought she would: slender and blonde and so beautifully dressed, wearing the kind of simple clothes I knew even then had to be expensive. But there was a terrible, heavy sadness about her. Haunted, that’s the best word I can find. She looked haunted.
I’m ashamed to say I stared. There was something shocking in being confronted with this legendary figure, this foreign socialite who had been the love of my brother’s short life. She said a warm goodbye to Pierfrancesco’s secretary, who was rushing forward to open the door, and then she smiled at me and Carlo and saidarrivedercito us, too.
‘Go on up,’ the secretary said as she hurried back to her post.
In his big office upstairs, Pierfrancesco was looking out of the window. He turned as we came in, and his face lit up at the sight of Carlo; he adored children and they adored him. Carlo could be a terror for me, probably because I indulged him – I loved him so much that I had a horror of being too harsh, of treating him like my parents had treated me. But he always behaved for Pierfrancesco. He climbed up into one of the chairs in front of the big desk and looked at him, just looked, as if waiting for his orders.
‘Now, comrade Carlo, let me see what I have for you today.’ Pierfrancesco opened a drawer and brought out a wooden toy: a steam engine, painted all in black with a bright red star on the side and Cyrillic writing underneath. He told me later that it was meant to be Commissar Trotsky’s armoured train; a Russian exile friend had made it specially. ‘What do you think of this?’ he asked, holding it out, and Carlo smiled and reached out his fat little hands to grab it.
‘Say thank you,’ I reminded him.
‘Fank you,’ Carlo whispered. Clutching the toy to his chest, he slid off the chair and sat down on the floor, where he ran the engine over the tiles and made chug-chug noises.
