Secrecy - By Rupert Thomson Page 0,81

lucky to have someone to turn to, someone to take her in.’

‘I’ll do my best for her.’

‘Apparently,’ Stufa said, his eyes still lowered, ‘she’s a bit unhinged.’

I faced him. ‘I would like to apologize for what happened in the gardens.’

Though Bassetti was still eating, the angle of his head had altered.

‘I shouldn’t have threatened you,’ I said.

‘You were upset by the news of the earthquake.’ Stufa’s delivery was unconvincing, flat; he might appear to be making allowances for my behaviour, but he was keeping his true feelings hidden.

‘All the same,’ I said.

Stufa studied me. ‘I don’t think you’re being entirely honest with me.’

‘No?’

‘You haven’t forgiven me for what I did.’

‘What did he do?’ Bassetti’s voice was mild, almost uninterested.

I looked at the red silk curtains that hung against the windows. When I told Signora de la Mar what had happened, the blood had rushed to her usually pallid face. You should have slit the bastard’s throat right there and then. Fiore’s father hit her when she was little, she said later. Fiore was never quite the same after that. I had promised her that Stufa would answer for his actions. As yet, I had no idea how to keep that promise.

But Stufa was talking again. ‘You haven’t forgiven me, and you’re not going to. It’s not in your nature. I know what you’re like, you people from the south.’

‘In my opinion,’ I said, ‘it’s usually a mistake to generalize.’

A smile registered on Bassetti’s lips.

‘It means you have an overly simplistic view of the world,’ I went on. ‘It can affect your judgement. Lead to mistakes.’

Stufa adjusted the position of his fork. ‘But you’re not denying it.’

‘I’ve said what I wanted to say.’ I stepped back from the table. ‘Enjoy your meal.’

When we were seated, Towne gave me a look of mingled admiration and surprise. ‘There aren’t many who would speak to Stufa like that.’

‘I’m sorry. Was I rude?’

‘You don’t need to apologize to me.’

‘Aren’t you a friend of his?’

Towne’s laugh was no louder than a sniff. ‘Friend? I doubt the word’s in his vocabulary.’ He reached for the wine. ‘What was that all about, anyway?’

We drank heavily that night, and were the last to leave the place. By the time I turned off Via de’ Serragli into the side street where I lived it was after midnight and a steady rain was coming down. I was so tired that I decided not to look in on my mother. Instead, I climbed the stairs, thinking I would fall straight into bed. As I reached the first-floor landing, though, I sensed that something wasn’t right. In my drawing room the candles had burned down, but not so low that I couldn’t see the chair that was lying on its side. I stepped warily through the half-open door. The locked drawers in my writing desk had been forced, and my notebooks lay scattered across the floor. At first glance, it didn’t seem as though anything had been taken. My most precious possession – a terracotta statue of Artemis from the Hellenistic period – still stood by the fireplace, and there was money on the mantlepiece. I realized it was my personal papers that had interested the intruder. In one of my notebooks there was a ragged edge where a page had been torn out. I looked at the preceding page, and the page before that. It was my portrait of Faustina that was missing.

Sober suddenly, I crossed the room and stared at the palazzo opposite, its shutters fastened, rain tipping off its eaves. What would somebody want with a drawing of Faustina? Of everything I owned, why that? As I stood at the window, it dawned on me that my mother might be responsible. Gripped by anxiety, perhaps, or terror, she might have been looking for something that belonged to her, something she had lost in the earthquake. She might have rifled through my possessions, not knowing whose they were, or where she was … I hurried back downstairs. In her room, there were lighted candles on every surface. Though it was stifling, she was lying in bed with the covers pulled up so high that only her face was visible. Eight fingers showed beneath her chin, as if she were clinging to a precipice.

‘Jacopo?’ she said.

‘It’s me,’ I said. ‘Gaetano.’

Her eyes darted about, and the tip of her tongue kept flickering over her top lip.

‘Are you all right?’ I said. ‘Where’s Lapa?’

She looked at me, her gaze unfocused, vague. ‘I thought it