‘Perhaps this isn’t a good idea,’ he murmured.
‘On the contrary, it’s a great idea,’ she said quickly. ‘Your daughter has just proclaimed her faith in you, and when you go up those stairs she’ll know she was right, and that you’re not too busy for her.’
She waited for his face to brighten at this simple answer, but he didn’t move, and she realised that he was at a total loss. He was a judge, schooled in order, method, decisiveness. And he didn’t know what to do with his own unhappy child.
‘It’s a fantastic chance for you to make her feel better,’ she urged. ‘If only all life could be that easy. For pity’s sake, stop and think.’
In her eagerness she took his arm, realising too late that he would see this as impertinence. But he only glanced at her hand in the second before she snatched it away.
‘You’re right,’ he said.
She thought his voice sounded oddly defeated. But she must surely have imagined that.
‘Poppa,’ came Liza’s delighted shriek from above them.
He looked up, and his mouth stretched in an effortful smile as he began to climb the stairs with Holly.
‘Not so noisy,
‘I have to say goodnight to Holly.’
‘You’ll see plenty of her now that she is staying with us.’
Liza gave a shriek of delight and tried to do a little dance, but her bad leg got in the way, and Holly grasped her to stop her falling. Liza immediately hugged her.
‘You’re staying for ever and ever,’ she crowed.
‘No darling, not for ever. Just for a little while.’
‘But I want you to stay,’ Liza said.
‘Holly will be here for some time,’ her father put in quietly. ‘Don’t worry about that.’
Holly flashed him a look, which he met with a quiet, implacable one of his own. There was nothing she could say in front of Liza.
‘Now, come on, back to bed,’ she told the child in a rallying tone, reaching for her.
‘Poppa!’ Liza reached for him over Holly’s shoulder.
He took her hand and they all moved into the bedroom together. Holly laid her in her bed and gave her a hug. Then her father leaned down and kissed her cheek.
‘Be a good girl and go to sleep,’ he said briefly, and left the room.
Liza was still holding on to Holly’s hand. ‘Don’t go,’ she said.
Berta slipped quietly out of the room, leaving the two of them together. Now Liza snuggled down, contented. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was becoming more even. At last her fingers relaxed enough for Holly to draw her hand away, and tiptoe from the room.
It was dark outside and she almost missed the figure standing there, silent and still. She waited for him to speak, but he only looked at her from the shadows before turning away.
When Holly reached her room she found a buxom young woman turning down her bed.
‘I am Nora, your maid,’ she said, smiling. ‘I have set fresh water by your bed for tonight. Do you prefer tea or coffee in the morning?’
‘Tea. Thank you.’
‘Then I will wish you
‘No, thank you.’
She was suddenly desperate to be alone with her thoughts, but she found that they were troublesome companions. What had happened tonight was impossible. It hadn’t happened because it could not have done.
Yet in this incredible house all boundaries seemed to fade. If she could only talk to an outsider she might recover her sense of proportion.
She had no close family, but an acquaintance would do, someone back in England who knew her in her real life, maybe even someone who would send help.
There was a telephone by the bed, and, with a sense of relief, she lifted the receiver.
It was dead.
Next morning Nora appeared, bearing a tray with a pot of tea, a jug of milk, a bowl of sugar and a saucer of lemon slices.
‘I didn’t know how you like your tea,’ she explained, ‘so I brought everything.’
‘Thank you,’ Holly murmured, trying to pull the sheet up so that Nora wouldn’t see that she had slept naked, having no nightgown.
‘Shall I run your bath, or would you prefer a shower?’
‘I’ll take a shower. It’s all right, I can look after myself.’
Nora left the room, having first given something that was perilously like a curtsey.
Holly drank the tea, which had been perfectly made, and went into the bathroom. A shower refreshed her, and when she returned, wrapped in a huge towel, Liza was there, in her wheelchair, with Berta.
‘She wished to come here and make you welcome,’ Berta said, smiling.
‘I could have walked,’ Liza insisted.
‘Not so early in the day,’ Berta said. ‘It takes time for you to be strong enough.’
Holly seized her clothes and vanished hastily back into the bathroom. When she emerged the three of them breakfasted together. It was a cheerful meal, but Berta seemed to be working herself up to saying something. At last she found the daring to say,
‘Would you mind if I went away for a few hours? I need to do some shopping, and now Liza has you…?’ She spread her hands in a pleading gesture.
So this was the reason Berta had accepted her intrusion so easily, Holly thought, amused. She saw the chance of a little extra freedom. She hastened to declare that she and Liza would be fine together, and Berta departed, humming.
‘What are we going to do now?’ Holly asked when breakfast was over.
‘Come and meet Mamma,’ Liza said eagerly.
Carol Fallucci’s memorial had been erected in a shady corner of the grounds. The first time Holly saw it she had a feeling of something not quite right. She could not have defined it, except to say that she would have expected more restraint from the judge. There was something romantically gothic about this fountain with the marble angel, wings extended, that didn’t quite fit with the coolness she had encountered from him.
He must have been deeply in love with his wife to have erected such a monument. She tried to picture him consumed by passionate feeling, but she couldn’t do it. Nor could she imagine this self-possessed man in the abandonment of grief.
And yet it must be so. Nothing but the most terrible love and yearning could explain such an extravagant monument. And perhaps it was all the more painful for being so fiercely controlled.
Now Holly understood Liza’s reference to ‘meeting Mamma’. As with many Italian gravestones, this one carried a picture of the dead person. It showed a woman of about thirty, with fine features that were as exquisitely made- up as her hair was elegantly arranged. She looked exactly the kind of wife that a judge ought to have: sophisticated, assured, beautiful.
A million miles from me, Holly thought wryly. Now,
To Liza this place was the nearest thing to happiness. She could come here and sit on the step, or dip her hands in the cool water, and talk about the mother she missed desperately, and who had died just before Christmas.
‘“December 21st,”’ Holly said, reading the inscription. ‘That’s the worst possible time. Not that any time would be good, but to happen then-’
She felt a small hand creep into hers and Liza nodded in silent agreement.
‘Do you have a Mamma?’ she asked after a while.
‘Not now. She died almost a year ago.’
‘Was that just before Christmas, too?’
‘It was last October, but Christmas was my first one without her.’
