understanding and supportive was her cousin, Antonio.
She curses herself for letting her guard down and thinking about him.
One moment of sadness, and memories of him flood in on her.
She blinks tears from her eyes. ‘This damned disciplinary case could take weeks.’
‘Then I’ll stay weeks.’
‘Or months.’
‘Then I’ll stay months.’
She doesn’t laugh, but there’s a suggestion of a smile. ‘Years? Maybe a lifetime?’
‘Now you’re pushing it.’
Finally the laugh comes. She looks into his eyes and thinks that if he does stay, then she might just cope with all the madness that Caesario and his cronies are going to throw at her.
They ask for the bill while drinking the last of the Valpolicella.
Tom tips the waiter, and at the door helps Valentina into her coat.
Outside, the night is crisp, and they link arms snugly as they walk back towards the Spanish Steps.
Valentina is feeling mellow and more than just a little drunk. She gestures to the fountain at the foot of the steps. ‘Rome is beautiful – but it doesn’t stop your life turning to rat shit.’
‘Your life’s fine, Valentina. You are defined by who you are and who you love, not by your job and what your boss does to you.’
Even through the haze of too much alcohol, she knows he’s right.
She holds him tighter and hopes she doesn’t fall and make a fool of herself before they reach the hotel.
An almost full moon shines on them, and Tom briefly looks up at it. For the first time that night he isn’t thinking of Valentina.
His thoughts are with another woman.
One lying in a psychiatric bed across the city. A woman terrified of the dark and the evil she’s certain it will bring.
74
There are no windows in the room.
No natural light can spill in from the world outside the hospital and make the occupant feel part of normal life.
There’s only the homogeneous, alien whiteness of the forever-buzzing fluorescent tubes.
But Anna Fratelli knows the day is over.
It is night-time.
She knows it as surely as if she was standing outside and watching the great Roman sky grow black around her.
She clutches a bible that one of the nurses has given her and rubs it over her body like a bar of soap.
No inch of skin is left unlathered.
The words of the Lord will protect her.
His are the only true words.
Mother is wrong.
What She says about Him is wrong.
Anna kisses the bible and stands it, cover facing her, on the cabinet beside her bed.
She kneels and prays.
‘ En ego, o bone et dulcissime Iesu, ante conspectum tuum genibus me provolvo, ac maximo animi ardore te oro atque obtestor, ut meum in cor vividos fidei… ’
They will come now.
From out of their own darkness, from places beyond the womb, the others will come.
And one will take her.
‘… spei et caritatis sensus, atque veram peccatorum meorum poenitentiam, eaque emendandi firmissimam voluntatem velis imprimere
…’
The doctors have given her medicines. Pills. Liquid on spoons. Drips. They’ve put them in her mouth and in her veins and told her they’ll make her better.
She doubts it.
Maybe it’s the drugs that are making her sleepy.
Or – more likely – it’s the others.
It’s always tiring when they take her. They sap her energy and drain her.
She feels increasingly listless.
She looks across the room for the paper and crayons that the nurses let her have.
No pen. No pencil. You might hurt yourself.
She’s too tired to reach them. Her eyes close for a second.
Cassandra is there.
She’s dressed in a beautiful white intusium topped by a lavishly embroidered white and gold stolla. She looks as pale as moonlight as the soldiers trundle her past in a rough wooden chariot.
Cassandra’s eyes see Anna. She calls to her. ‘Have faith, sister. You and I are strong. I am coming to help you. I will be with you soon.’
Anna can feel Cassandra’s voice penetrating her.
Touching her soul.
In the wall mirror in the hospital room she sees her lips moving, but it is Cassandra’s calm and dignified voice she hears.
She walks to the mirror. Stands before it and sees Cassandra talking directly to her.
‘Mother cannot hurt you. Whatever She does to you, sweet Anna, She cannot harm you.’
Behind Cassandra, crowds are jeering and throwing things at her. Stones. Rotten fruit. Broken pottery.
Anna covers her face for fear of being hurt. She turns from the mirror. She slowly rotates three hundred and sixty degrees.
Cassandra is there again.
Her hand has been cut off.
Blood drips in pools of jelly from the stump.
Her eyes roll back in their sockets.
Anna turns back to the mirror.
Behind the bible, blood pours from her stitched arm while she mouths the words that Mother says most…
You mustn’t tell, Anna.
Mustn’t tell
Mustn’t tell.
75
For a fleeting second, Valentina has forgotten about yesterday.
Her eyelids blink, her brain tells her body she’s awake, and her first thoughts of the day are about Tom.
But they’re quickly chased off.
Someone has let the bad thoughts out as well.
Suspension, Caesario and court martial.
They’re all there again, banging on her window and pulling faces at her.
