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Sabrina realised she was touching the necklace with the ring on it again and somehow, at that moment, she knew that it wasn’t her own ring but her mother’s. And that’s why she touched it so much and drew reassurance from it.
Marielle put her head in her hands, ashamed.
‘Oh what must you think of me, Sabrina? That I’m a horrible person, no doubt.’
‘You couldn’t be more mistaken,’ Sabrina said gently. ‘And how are you and Cilla now?’
‘As good as we’ll ever be. She’s infuriating but ironically I can’t help worrying about her. And I worry about Flick because Cilla has got all her priorities wrong. She gives these transient flash Harry boyfriends more attention than she does her daughter and it’s unfair. This latest… thing, she says he’s loaded but I don’t buy it, it’s straight out of the textbook of gullible women and romance scammers. He says his money is tied up in long-term investments so she pays for everything. He said his huge pile in the Home Counties is being renovated and he won’t take her there until it’s all done. He says his car, which just happens to be a vintage Rolls-Royce, is waiting for parts to be shipped from overseas. There’s nothing about him on the internet because he’s ex-military intelligence and has to fly under the radar. I mean’ – Marielle threw her hands up in the air – ‘who believes all this… crap? But people do because we’ve all seen the TV programmes and still they think it’sdifferent in their case.I’m waiting for him to suddenly announce he’s got a serious illness, because that’s what they do, isn’t it, these… vampires. She bought him a car to run around in but did she give her own daughter so much as a penny towards one when she passed her test? She says Flick has to learn the value of money, which is a joke if ever I heard one, seeing as she barely earned a penny of hers.’
‘She’s not in your mad cow group, I’m guessing,’ said Sabrina.
‘No. In our little group we all trust and like each other and… I’ve said too much. I’m not being kind.’
‘You’re allowed not to be a saint, Marielle. I’m sure there are people in my life I don’t like.’ Sabrina wished she knew who they were and who the people were that she did like. ‘Besides,’ she went on, ‘anyone who walked in here could tell from the ambience that it belongs to someone very lovely.’
‘It does have a nice feel to it, doesn’t it?’ Marielle replied, looking around. ‘I loved it as soon as I walked in. The old man who’d had it before me used the flat as a storage space but I liked the idea of it being somewhere I could have people to stay. I had more than enough money to do it up. And I gave Mum’s money to Teddy so that one day he could buy his restaurant and that’s what he did with it.’ She topped up her glass again, wondering how it had got so empty so quick. ‘And now those Ciaoissimo bastards want to take everything away from him.’
Ciaoissimo.Again that feeling Sabrina knew the name that was somewhere in her head, like a splinter in her brain.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Marielle. ‘I’ve drunk too much and I’m going to make us both a coffee now.’ After two failed attempts on her part to get up from the sofa, Sabrina got up instead and said she’d make them. By the time the kettle had boiled though, Marielle’s head had dropped forward and she was snoring softly. Her arm was still out to the side, glass in her hand, and Sabrina rescued it just in time from falling to the pale blue carpet.
She cleared the drinks and the plate of nibbles away and closed the curtains. Marielle’s house was an upside-down construction, so she had to go downstairs for a quilt and apillow. There were three bedrooms and a bathroom on the lower floor, the largest of the bedrooms being obviously the one Marielle used. It smelt sweet, like freesias, Sabrina thought. There were photos on the bedside cabinets. On one, a young Marielle with long dark-red hair holding a smiling toddler, and, at her side, a man who had to be Teddy Bonetti’s father because the family resemblance was so pronounced: handsome, rugged, dangerously good smile. On the other a photo of a heavily pregnant Marielle, Salvatore’s arm draped around her shoulder. They were looking at each other and laughing joyously. Sabrina touched her stomach and remembered being pregnant, she remembered putting her hands on the swell and feeling her daughter flutter underneath. She’d named her Linnet, after the small, bright bird with a voice like a song, and she was presently living her best life, travelling, just as Sabrina had wanted for her. But she couldn’t see her face in her mind’s eye, no features discernible, and she asked herself for what reason was her brain also keeping her child from her?
Chapter 25
Sabrina was outside the restaurant at quarter to nine sharp the next morning. She’d checked in on Marielle before she left. She was still on her sofa and hadn’t woken to take the two ibuprofen or the glass of water that Sabrina had set out for her. She really was out for the count.
Flick rounded the corner within five minutes, her ponytail swinging as she walked with her long stride.
‘Morning,’ she said and opened up the front door, turning off the alarm and lifting the electric security blinds with practised hits on switches and buttons.
‘First job in the morning is very important,’ said Flick. ‘Putting on the coffee machine. I drink gallons of it. You can have a coffee whenever you like by the way. Come on and I’ll show you how it works.’
She was just doing that when Teddy walked in, his face bearing a not too happy expression.
‘Buon giorno, Teodoro,’ said Flick in an affected Italian accent. ‘Whatsa uppa with you? You have the face of a decomposing crab.’
‘Tripadvisor, that’swhatsa uppa.More bad reviews.’ Teddyripped the phone out of his pocket, found the page and read. ‘?“Rude waiting staff, cold inedible food that we had to wait half an hour for”… “Dirty toilets. Inappropriate sexual comments from waiters towards my wife”… “Found foreign object in pasta…”. A nice mix covering all the ground, don’t you think? Oh look… “cold mozzarella sticks”. We don’t even serve mozzarella sticks.’
‘Blimey, that is bad,’ said Flick, closing up her happy morning smile.
‘Have you answered them?’ asked Sabrina.
‘Sorry?’ said Teddy.
‘Have you replied to them? Asked them to contact you to give you more details about when they were here? I’m presuming they’re fake reviews, aren’t they? If other people see that you’ve answered them and… called them out basically, they’re less likely to see them as gospel. And definitely make the comment that you don’t serve mozzarella sticks. Also put up an announcement that you’re getting fake reviews and are currently liaising with a technical expert to uncover where they’re being generated from…’
Sabrina’s voice tailed off. She wasn’t sure if Marielle had told Teddy what she did for a living. If she hadn’t then he was going to think that his new cleaner had a right gob on her.
What he said was, ‘That’s actually a really good idea that I hadn’t thought of. I presumed the best plan was to ignore them.’
‘How do you know all that?’ said Flick, well impressed.
Sabrina gave a small, almost embarrassed shrug of her shoulders. ‘I’ve come across it before.’
Flick picked up her coffee. ‘I’m going to get on to that straightaway,’ she said.
‘Can you tell me where the cleaning stuff is, please?’ askedSabrina. Whatever she was in her other life, this was the only one she was living at the moment and she guessed she needed to start with scrubbing the toilets.
