they were indoors, lying by the fire. She knocked on the door and was relieved when it was opened by the butler.
‘I’m afraid the family are not here, signorina,’ he said. ‘They are in the country.’
‘Vicenzo too?’ she asked.
‘Yes, signorina,’ he replied. ‘Can I give him a message? I will be going there myself this afternoon.’ He gestured towards his suitcase, standing ready in the hall. ‘We are closing up the house, you see.’
‘Oh,’ she said, trying to hide her disappointment. Her fingers touched the parcel in her coat pocket. Should she leave it with the butler to give to Vicenzo? She could imagine him announcing it when he arrived at their country house. ‘Signorina Bellucci brought this for you,’ he would say. If Luciana was there, she would doubtless find it hilarious – the idea of yet another actress besotted with her brother. His parents would be more generous, she thought, but they would all inevitably pity Isabella, and she would emerge as a tragic figure – desperate and pathetic. That was the last thing she wanted.
Determined to appear unconcerned, she pushed the parcel back into her pocket, and muttered, ‘No… no message. I was just passing. I’m sorry to have bothered you.’
She decided to walk back through the park. To return home too soon would only invite her mother’s inevitable curiosity. She walked around Villa Borghese until the sun began to set, the sky glowing dark pink, fused with violet, casting shadows across the snow. The colours reflected her mood – pensive and melancholic.
Vicenzo really was the most perplexing man, she thought. To go away for Christmas without even saying goodbye seemed heartless. He could be filled with love and affection one day, sending her flowers and little intimate messages, only to ignore her for weeks at a time. How could the man who had chosen her over his own family in the ‘tower game’ be the same person who could go away without a word?
Isabella was relieved when Christmas was over. La Bohème was due to start production early in the new year. At least she would be busy and less likely to brood. It was to be shot at the Victorine Studios in Nice, which since November had been part of the Italian-occupied section of south-east France.
‘I should be coming with you,’ her mother said, as she watched Isabella pack her trunk. ‘I don’t like to think of you being there all alone.’
‘Mamma, what on earth would you do all day in Nice? Much better that you stay here and look after the house.’
‘You talk to me as if I were the housekeeper,’ her mother bridled.
‘Mamma…’ Isabella put her arm around her mother’s shoulders. ‘You know I didn’t mean that. You’d be bored up there, all alone.’
‘Well at least it wouldn’t be so cold there.’ Giovanna stared miserably out at the snow-covered garden. ‘Firewood is running low again and the house is freezing.’
‘I suspect it’s even colder in the south of France, Mamma,’ Isabella argued, throwing a pair of shoes into her suitcase. ‘Besides, the film budget is very tight. I’ve already had a terrible battle over my contract, and they’re not paying me very much. They’re putting me up in a hotel and they’d never agree to pay for you as well. And much as I’d like to, I can’t afford to pay your hotel bill myself.’
‘So I have to stay here,’ her mother replied petulantly.
‘Mamma!’ Isabella, exhausted by the argument, sat down on the bed. ‘Please don’t be like that. I’m sorry it has to be this way, but I have to work to earn us a living. Now,’ she said, ‘I still have a few things to pack, and then we’d better get Giuseppe to take the trunk downstairs. I’m leaving first thing tomorrow.’
Isabella intended to break her journey in Genoa. An old school friend had recently moved to the city with her husband. Mimi was a teacher, her husband Daniele, a doctor. It had been years since the two women had seen each other. They had been close at school; both had been academic, good at maths and languages, but their lives had diverged the day a film director in Villa Borghese had catapulted Isabella into the rarefied world of the film industry.
‘I wondered if I could stay with you,’ Isabella suggested, when she rang to tell Mimi about her trip. ‘It’s such a long way from Rome to Nice, I’ll never do it in one day. I’ve got to break the