Christobel Kent - Dead Season

‘You all right?’ said Maria Grazia sharply.

Roxana let out a long breath and in her mind’s eye Valentino, wherever he was, sitting in some remand cell somewhere, dwindled to nothing. Ash on the breeze, along with Marisa, Roxana’s job, the bank, that old life led in the half-light. Yes.

‘I think so,’ she said.

‘So,’ said Maria Grazia, eyeing her warily, ‘what’s next, then?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Roxana, who had had a job of one sort or another continuously since she was fifteen years old. At peace. ‘Something’ll come up.’

Autumn

‘It’s perfect, don’t you think?’ Anna beamed.

‘Perfect,’ agreed Luisa.

Giuli looked at her. ‘But-’ she said, and at the sound of her raised voice, the baby, who’d been asleep on her shoulder, squirmed, her fingers splaying against Giuli’s arm. Giuli dosed her mouth.

But, she’d been going to say. This is your place. This is your apartment, yours and Sandro’s, the dream place, the iron balcony, the view of the hills.

Anna’s nest egg, the money left her by her adoptive parents, it turned out, was not a couple of thousand euros, after all.

‘Oh, no,’ Anna had said. ‘I told you, didn’t I? The farmhouse, twenty hectares of land in the Casentino — well, it’s not Chianti but it was quite a lot of money. I put it in the bank, of course, when I came to the city, to work for Signora Capponi. I didn’t want to live alone, you see?’

Giuli had just nodded, wordless. It had been more than enough for this place, the third-floor apartment in San Niccolo in need of work. It had been Luisa who’d suggested it.

The baby squirmed some more, properly awake now. Josef, who’d been sticking a screwdriver into a damp patch in the kitchen, came towards her with his arms out, and Giuli handed the baby to him. He still couldn’t quite meet her eye, she thought. Was he good enough for Anna? Anna thought so. Was he after her money?

Luisa, having taken a look at him, didn’t think so. ‘Leave them be,’ she’d said.

Where the baby had been lying against her shoulder, the sweat was cooling now, a damp patch under her chin where the baby’s mouth had been. It was all right, though.

*

In bed a long time later, in the comfortable cool after more rain and with the street outside quiet for once, Luisa rolled over and set her cheek against Sandro’s chest. She heard the thump of his heart. Nothing need change, she thought. Nothing.