17
Mother picks me out.
She takes me to one side, away from the others, and talks only to me.
I am special.
She tells me so.
I am Her favourite and I am to be called Melissa. I will be one of Her Melissae – Her little bees.
She speaks to me about Lagash, Anatolia, Phrygia, Crete and Malta. She talks of Hellenic and Roman civilisations, of the kings and emperors She’s known.
Of rulers who’ve worshipped Her.
Of fools who have ignored Her.
Of Her love for Attis, and how She killed him and then raised him from the dead.
‘Death and Life,’ She whispers in my ear, then speaks for a long time of creation and destruction and Her glorious part in it all.
The part I will play in the future.
Mother holds me to Her bosom and strokes my hair while teaching me how to change sea to sand and sand to grass. She tells me how together we will turn the grass to stone and the stone to marble and the marble to towers of glass and steel that will stretch beyond the sun.
There is nothing Mother cannot achieve. Nothing she cannot create .
Around us there are women of every race, every colour and every age. Mother could have picked any one of them, but She has chosen me.
I am special.
She tells me so.
Outside of the warm womb that is our temple, a pale moon rises and paints its whiteness on the naked flesh of my gathering sisters. The first sparks of a fire crackle close by. A large, flat stone is brought in, laden with bread and wine.
The Galli come.
They beat their drums, fine instruments made from skins of fish and goat, let loose a primal rhythm.
Mother catches it and shares it with us. She seals the rhythm inside us. It becomes our pulse. It flows through our genitals and rests in our wombs.
Mother tells me to close my eyes.
She tells me that She loves me. Loves me from the cool brow of Her stone-figured image on the heights of Mount Sipylus to the bloodstained soil of Rome where She now lies down with me.
I am not to be frightened of what She will do to me.
I am special.
She tells me so.
18
Sunday morning gathers around Valentina Morassi like a cool mountain mist.
She opens her eyes slowly and sees untidy puddles of pale daylight shimmering on the wooden bedroom floor.
Leakage from the real world.
An unwelcome clue that her night’s rest is over.
Not that she got much rest.
Valentina’s normally an eight-hours-a-night person. She squints at her Mickey clock and realises she’s had less than six.
Her own fault.
Hers and Tom’s.
The thought makes her smile. She’s happy to lose a lot more sleep if the man next to her is the reason why.
She has a plan for the day, and it’s a simple one.
Sleepy lovemaking. Breakfast in bed. Less sleepy love-making. Shower – dress – reluctantly think about work.
It’s all a nice change from her normal pattern of putting work first.
Great sex turns everything upside down.
Fill your body with pesky orgasms and suddenly your all-important life-defining job can go hang itself.
Valentina slides close to Tom and drifts her hand down his impressive rack of abdominal muscles.
He stirs a little.
Still asleep.
But not for long.
Before Valentina rouses him, she thinks about yesterday, about how nervous she was meeting him at the airport. About whether he would feel the same way about her as she did about him. Whether any sexual advance would jeopardise their friendship.
Then there was their first kiss.
It seems unfair that romance can live or die in only a few seconds or just a few words. Had she not been bold enough to ask that he kiss her ‘a proper hello’, then maybe nothing would have happened between them.
How many great loves have never happened because someone lacked the courage to make the first move?
She tries to clear her mind and return to the matter in hand.
Her right hand, to be precise.
Tom lets out a sigh that comes from so far inside of him it’s like the distant growl of an animal in a far-off jungle.
Her fingers bring the beast closer.
As he stretches and hardens, she kisses his back and presses her soft flesh against him.
He rolls over and looks at her. Eyes still sleepy, the colour of beaten pewter, but alive enough to show his pleasure at being with her.
Valentina doesn’t even let him say good morning. She presses her lips gently against his. She wants to capture the precious intimacy growing between them. Make sure it never escapes.
Her romantic thoughts and plans for the day come to an abrupt end.
The phone rings.
It’s bad news.
She knows it is.
Bad news has a way of preceding itself. Like the stench of rotting fish – you’re aware of it before you even see it. Similarly, the one thing you can’t do is ignore it.
‘Sorry,’ she says, in a breathy voice as soft as kitten fur.
Tom manages a moan of understanding.
The call is from Federico Assante. He gets straight to the point. ‘I’ve been rung by the hospital – it seems our prisoner had a good night. So good that she gave the staff a real name and apparently is willing to be interviewed.’
Valentina is surprised. ‘Who is she?’
He glances at his notes. ‘Suzanna someone. Hang on, I wrote it down. Now where is it? Grecoraci – Suzanna Grecoraci. Apparently, before we get to see her, the bossy doctor we met yesterday, Verdetti, wants to talk to us, and she’s only going to be at the unit for another hour.’
Valentina glances at the only thing she’s wearing, her watch; it’s not even nine a.m. Her tone gives away a
