‘Did he go to see Liza then?’ Holly asked curiously.
‘Yes, I took him in. She looked terrible, attached to all those machines. I was going to tell him not to touch her, but I didn’t have to. He never moved, just stood staring at her as though he didn’t know who she was. Then he turned and walked out.’
‘I don’t understand that,’ Anna said. ‘He’s always adored her, almost as much as his wife. I heard someone make a joke with him once, about how he’d feel differently when he had a son. And he said, “Who needs a son? No child could mean more to me than my Liza.” I’ll never forget the way he said that, or his face as he looked at her.’
‘Well, he wasn’t like that in the hospital,’ Berta said. ‘Mind you, men can’t cope with that sort of thing as we do. Even the strongest of them get scared and freeze up.’
It might be true, yet somehow Holly wasn’t satisfied with this facile explanation. There was a mystery here, the same mystery as the one that made Signor Matteo Fallucci, a judge with a career and a reputation at stake, harbour a suspicious character for the sake of a child he seldom saw.
On the one hand, there was the love so vast that it would take any risk. On the other hand, there was the frozen withdrawal. If she could understand that, then perhaps she would begin to understand him.
But she did not think he was a man who could be easily understood. She was even more sure of it a moment later when Anna said,
‘He never speaks of her. The only one who’s allowed to mention her name is Liza, and even then he steers her off the subject as soon as he can.’
‘But that’s terrible,’ Holly said, disturbed. ‘He’s the person who knew his wife best, and Liza needs to discuss her mother with him.’
‘I know,’ Anna said sympathetically. ‘But he can’t make himself do it. And he doesn’t even have the signora’s picture on his desk. He doesn’t act like a grieving widower at all, and yet he must be, because he built that fancy monument, and he keeps going to it, as though he couldn’t keep away.’
‘Night after night,’ Berta confirmed.
‘One night I was out there,’ Anna remembered, ‘and I saw him close enough to tell that he was talking to her. It was really scary.’
‘You’d better not let him know you spy on him,’ Berta said darkly. ‘That would be the end of you.’
‘I know. I dashed off before he spotted me.’
Berta was so delighted with Holly’s coming that she asked no awkward questions, almost as though she had a superstitious fear that to query her good luck would make it vanish.
She gladly showed Holly the mechanical part of caring for Liza. A physiotherapist attended twice a week, and from her Holly learned some simple exercises to be repeated every day. She mastered them without trouble, and Liza was more relaxed with her.
To show her preference she insisted on talking English with Holly, even when Berta was there.
‘That’s not very polite to Berta,’ Holly protested. ‘Her English isn’t too good.’
‘Non e importante,’ Berta said with a grin. ‘Tonight I see my Alfio, and we don’t talk English.’
Holly went regularly to the library to study the newspapers that were put there every day, to see if there was any mention of herself. But there was nothing.
Like every other room in the house this one was luxurious, furnished with ornate oak bookshelves that came from another age. The volumes were mostly history, philosophy and science. Some of them were very old, suggesting a family that had collected books for centuries.
She had the answer in a portrait of two ladies, dressed in the style of a hundred years ago, both of whose faces so strongly resembled the judge’s that it was clear he was their descendant. A small plaque at the bottom announced that this was the Contessa d’ Arelio, and her daughter, Isabella.
‘That’s his grandmother,’ Anna said, coming in with a duster. ‘The younger lady, I mean. She married Alfonso Fallucci. They say there was a terrible row because her family wanted her to marry a title.’
‘Alfonso wasn’t good enough for them?’ Holly asked.
‘They thought he was a nobody, but she insisted on marrying him. She was right, too, because he made a fortune in shipping.’
So that explained how he came to be living in this extravagant place, far beyond what most judges could afford. Much of it was shut off, the rooms surplus to such a small family, but what she could see was still sumptuous, both inside and out.
A small army of gardeners worked in the grounds. There was one whose first duty was to care for the memorial to Carol Fallucci, keeping the fountain clean and flowing freely, and the flower beds perfect. Taking a stroll that afternoon, Holly saw him busily weeding, and exchanged a smile and a wave.
Walking on further, she came to a sight that checked her. Here was a small swimming pool, surrounded by trees and invisible from the house. It would have been perfect for a summer afternoon, except that it was empty and neglected.
Empty and neglected. The words repeated themselves inside her head. In some mysterious way they seemed to apply to this place, despite the extensive staff keeping it in order. It was an emptiness of the soul, and nobody was more afflicted by it than the master of the house.
She wondered how she was so sure of this, since she barely knew him, but she had no doubt.
Liza’s most treasured possession was a book of photographs, containing everything, starting with the wedding of Matteo and Carol Fallucci. There were pictures of them with their newborn baby, their year-old baby, and so on.
It was his face that caught her attention. Carol would sometimes look at him, sometimes at her child, but most often she looked directly at the camera. The judge did this only once. His eyes were for the two women in his life, always with a look of blatant worship. In one he rested his cheek against Carol’s hair, as though here lay all joy and contentment.
Some of the pictures showed the family gathered around a swimming pool, all in bathing costumes. Carol was at her most glamorous, in a black bikini designed to show off her glorious figure, her fair hair tumbling over her shoulders. Sitting beside her was Liza, sturdy and cheerfully belligerent, her face so much like her mother’s that the effect was startling.
And there he was, Matteo, as Holly could never have imagined him, lean and lithe in swimming trunks. A stranger, seeing the breadth of his shoulders, his flat stomach and muscular arms and legs, would have put him down as an actor or a model. But not a judge, she thought wryly. Anything but a judge.
Neither did his face belong in a courtroom. This was a healthy, handsome man, with powerful enjoyment of life and a desire to savour every moment.
The picture that really transfixed her showed Liza and her father, gazing into each other’s eyes, both of them blissfully, adoringly happy, oblivious to the rest of the world.
That was what it must be like to have a father, she thought.
From Liza’s appearance the picture must have been taken the previous summer, yet Matteo looked years younger. His smile was that of a completely different man; one still young, blazing with hope and happiness. He had almost nothing in common with the man he was now.
Holly felt she began to understand him. His beloved wife had died, leaving him sunk in despair. He would find it hard to confide in anyone, and the exaggerated monument in the garden was his only way of showing his feelings.
Even Liza was somehow lost to him, as though his heart had frozen too much to let him respond to her needs. They might have consoled each other, but he was reduced to commandeering help from a stranger. He wasn’t an easy man to like, but she found that her heart mysteriously ached for him.
Then she looked again and realised why the pool seemed familiar. It was the one she’d seen in the grounds. So glitteringly joyous then, so desolate now. It seemed to sum up the change that had come over this house when the woman who was its heart had died, leaving her husband and child bereft, yet unable to communicate.
As she returned to the house Berta waylaid her.
‘The judge is home,’ she said. ‘He’s with Liza and he said not to disturb him.’ She looked around before asking in a conspiratorial voice, ‘That online catalogue you were looking at-did it have any wedding dresses at reasonable prices?’
‘It didn’t have anything at reasonable prices,’ Holly said. ‘I’ve never been so scared in my life. So, you’ve
