Coming of Age (9 page)

“No, don't. I won't let you in. It could be contagious.”

“I'm not going to Paris without you.”

“Of
course
you are.” Amy's heart thuds with sudden alarm. “You'll only be away a week.”

“But I'll miss you so much . . . You'll be all on your own.”

“The way I feel at the moment, that's exactly what I
want
to be . . . Honestly, Ruth, I'll be perfectly OK. Dr Martin will give me something. I've got to rest and drink plenty of water.”

Ruth says doubtfully, “If you're sure . . .”

“Quite sure. I'll ring Mrs Baxter, let her know I won't be able to come.”

“She'll be so upset.”

It's too late now to change my mind. I've got to see it through.

“You'll have to tell me about it the minute you get back.”

“I'll buy you something wonderful from the Champs-Elysées . . . Get better soon.”

“I will,” says Amy. “Have a brilliant time.”

She clicks back the phone.

She stares blankly around the hall: at the sunlight filtering through the stained-glass windows, the vase of roses on the table, the raincoats hanging from their wooden rail.

Everything seems motionless, as if it is listening with incredulity to the web of lies she has so deftly spun and told.

She races upstairs to Mum's study, stands looking at her portrait. Her heart beats fast as the wings of a moth trapped in a circle of light.

“I'm doing this for you, Mum. You understand why, don't you? Why I've told everyone a different story. Why I must do this on my own.”

She swallows.

“I want to clear your name. I want to find Marcello. I need to know if he was on the Common that morning.”

She tilts her head to look Mum clearly in the eyes. Those extraordinary pale grey-green eyes that seem to flicker with love.

“I think someone killed you. And I can't rest until I've found out who it was.”

Ten

Gatwick bustles with nervous noise.

It is a shock, after the stillness of early-morning Surrey, where sheep graze, Sunday bells toll and most people still sleep. At the airport, every handrail throbs and hums.

Amy stares out of the window of her plane at the ones about to fly. They sprawl on the runway like giant fish on wheels, only their flashing heartbeat lights betraying the life within.

Her plane's vast engine churns. The plane thrums, roars, moves forward and, with a great song and dance, lifts into the sky: through purple banks of thunderclouds, away and above them, over southern England and the green and golden patchwork handkerchiefs of France. She is trapped in a world of sky and blotting-paper cloud, seat belts, orange juice and professional politeness.

She opens her bag, strokes the soft leather binding of
Shakespeare's Sonnets
for reassurance. Next to her, an Italian businessman consumes
Corriere della Sera
, rustling the pages, grunting impatiently. Amy looks out of the window. She can see nothing but a world of impenetrable cloud.

A meal is served: hot pasties with mushrooms smelling of seaweed, stale almond biscuits, a soft roll with cream cheese. Amy drinks some tea but she cannot eat. After a tactful half-hour, a stewardess removes the tray.

Amy closes her eyes. She is haunted by random memories of Mum: the soft frills of a pale-green silk dress Mum had worn for her first book launch; seeing her lying in a hammock on the terrace, crying over a novel she'd been reading; cooking a turkey in their steamy kitchen, the snow drifting on the lawn, neither of them ever dreaming it would be Mum's last Christmas.

Fitfully, Amy dozes into sleep. The pilot's instruction to
Please fasten your seat belts
jolts her awake. As the plane dips towards Amerigo Vespucci Airport, she forces her mind into the immediate moment, sets her watch forward by one hour.

The Sunday bells toll in Florence too. Amy collects her luggage, nervously searches for her driver. GRANT says the placard.
“Grazie,”
Amy squeaks. The Fiat's driver whisks her away at grumpy hair-raising speed on what feels unnervingly like the wrong side of the road.

Her small hotel on the Via Guiccardini is discreet and serviceable. In her featureless room on the first floor, Amy opens the window on to a small iron balcony. It overlooks a courtyard of crumbling stone. On a washing line, hanging beneath a row of brown shutters, white shirts, aprons and a chef's hat bake in the heat. The smells of olive oil, fish and garlic drift from the kitchen below. Hunger clutches at her stomach.

She flings off her clothes, steps into a cool shower. Wrapped in a towel, she spreads her map of Florence on the narrow bed and tries to get her bearings.

If she walks out of the hotel and turns left, she will reach the Ponte Vecchio. Crossing the bridge will lead her into the centre of the city. After she has eaten – a risotto, perhaps, or ravioli with cheese – she will begin . . . What? Her search? No, it is more important than that. Her quest. She will put on her sleuthing hat and become Detective Amy Grant.

Don't forget,
she tells herself firmly ten minutes later, as she stands at the hotel doorway.
You're here on a mission. Don't get sucked into the museums, the churches, the galleries. However beautiful, they won't help you find Marcello. That's what you're here to do.

For two days Amy walked.

Into and out of the centre of Florence. Up and down the narrow, bustling streets. To and from the station. Past a hundred
pizzeria
and small shops selling exquisite leather shoes and bags, into and out of the elegant squares.

She walked round the outside of the Duomo until she felt dizzy at its size. She walked over the bridges and along the River Arno. She walked until her mouth felt dry as a bone and her arms and cheeks flamed in the relentless sun.
Better keep out of the sun. Ruth will never believe I've stayed at home!

The early mornings were the best, before the heat began to bite and while the narrow streets were empty. Shopkeepers brushed their soft straw brooms
swish, swish
across their slabs of cobbled pavement. On the Ponte Vecchio, jewellers polished the wooden casings of their shops, opened and cleaned their windows, stretched long arms to place each glittering stone on its cushion with immaculate precision.

Beneath the bridges, the River Arno slept motionless, a mirror to the thick blocks of flats against its bank, echoing the pinks and yellows of their walls, the greens and browns of their shuttered windows, the summer blooms in their roof gardens.

By eleven o'clock the squares had filled with the crush and jabber of guides and groups, the click of cameras, the squeal of mobile phones; the streets with the honk of cars and the angry buzz of motorbikes.

Amy walked doggedly, persistently, looking for clues, listening to likely voices, opening guidebooks on Tuscan villas and closing them again, scanning the postcards at the stalls on each street corner. Photos of Michelangelo's
David
stared out at her from every angle, his flesh cool, grey, haughty, accusing.

“You can't find Marcello, can you?”
David
seemed to say as Amy stared up at a copy of the statue in the Palazzo Vecchio. “I know where he is, of course.” The closed mouth curled its lovely lips. “But it's my special secret and I'm not telling
you
.”

On Tuesday afternoon, she escaped the city's noise for two hours by climbing the steep pebbly paths of the Giardino de Boboli and sitting among its formal green lawns, staring into space. She read Chris's favourite sonnet for the umpteenth time. The petals of the faded yellow rose bleached beneath the sun.

Amy eats supper alone again that night.

A group of boys at a nearby table try to chat her up. She fends them off as politely as she can, but they persist. Blushing and furious, she stands up, pays her bill at the counter, pushes out of the café. The boys think it's hilarious.

She stands outside, trembling. Trying to still the beating of her heart, she fills her lungs with the night air. The whiff of drains catches the back of her throat.

She gasps. She remembers . . .

She is only nine.

She is mute.

She is standing in the hall, waiting for Dad. Tyler barks and flaps around her legs. They have to leave soon. They are having tea with Frances, their vicar, and they shouldn't be late because other people from the village will be there too.

Now that Dad hasn't got Mum to organise him, even though Aunt Charlotte does her best, things aren't the same, he gets into muddles, he is often late.

She sidles into the kitchen and looks round the door. Dad is hurling food from the freezer into a rubbish bag. All the meals Mum had cooked and put in there. Dad is flinging them away.

He sees her come into the kitchen.

He looks up at her.

His face is black with rage.

On Wednesday morning Amy woke with a resounding headache. Her temples throbbed, her body felt stiff and sore. In the shower, a blister on her heel cried with pain. She limped across to a café for a cappuccino and a crunchy sandwich. They gave her comfort. A
farmacia
sold her a packet of plasters. Once again she crossed the Ponte Vecchio and passed the long Uffizi galleries.

An artist sat at the bottom of the narrow flight of steps, sketching the head of a girl. The model gazed solemnly at him, her dark curls tumbling to her shoulders. She looked so like Ruth that for an instant Amy's heart leapt.

Of course, it wasn't Ruth. The girl's face was fuller, her body smaller. Amy bit the inside of her lip and walked on, shaking with homesickness. She missed Ruth and Julian; she imagined Dad and Hannah walking hand in hand in the Welsh mountains; she wanted to hear Tyler's welcoming bark. She longed for the sound of Chris's voice, for the thrill of his touch – and wondered bitterly whether she'd ever feel it again.

Despondently, feeling more alone than ever as the expectant queues for the Uffizi gathered like a swarm of bees, she walked towards the Duomo Santa Maria del Fiore. This time, she went in. Or rather, she felt sucked in, at last, to its gigantic heart.

Inside the cathedral, the air is warm and grey. The scale of the place is monumental. Beneath the soaring heights of the cupola Amy feels like an inconsequential beetle. The swirling echoes of a million prayers murmur in her ears.

A bell clangs through the quiet. Two priests in apple-green surplices begin a short service against one of the marble altars.

Amy crouches on a polished wooden bench beside a massive wall. She stares up at the light filtering through the glow of a miraculous stained-glass window.

She takes stock.

I'm getting nowhere. I'm walking the skin off my feet for nothing. There must be a thousand Marcellos in Florence and not one of them is mine. He's probably gone to some wonderful beach somewhere and even now he's swimming in the sea.

I wish I were in the sea. Or walking on Ludshott Common in the wind and rain. I wish I could feel
cool
again. I'm suffocating here, and it's only Wednesday.

Amy stands up. She moves restlessly round the cathedral, beneath the flicker of votive candles, into and out of the dimness, willing the sanctity of the place to give her inspiration. Instead, it makes her feel so insignificant that her courage seeps away.

I could go to Paris and meet up with Ruth. I wonder whether I could catch a train from Florence that would take me straight there? That's a brilliant idea. Mrs Baxter would welcome me with open arms, slot me straight back into her schedules.

I need never tell her I'd been to Florence. I could pretend I'd recovered from gastric flu and decided to join them. It'd be so good to talk to Ruth again.

Fighting against the knowledge that she is giving up the quest, that her plans have come to nothing, that she lacks grit and determination, despising herself, deflated, irritated, Amy pushes out, through the cathedral door and into the oven of heat.

That's what I'll do. You're safe, Marcello. You can rest in peace. Just like Mum.

Halfway along the Via Panzani, on her way to the station to find out about trains to Paris, Amy stopped at a café. She sat with a glass of iced grapefruit juice, gulping at the liquid as if she had survived a week in the desert.

At the next table, two Americans talked at the tops of their voices.

“Yesterday was the best,” the woman said. “It was so great to escape the heat of this city. Mom warned us about coming in August.”

“It sure was marvellous.” Her companion sipped his beer. “That Fiesole's so green. It's like it absorbs the sun.”

“And that Maurizio, wasn't he charming?”

“You mean Marco?”

“Do I? Marco doesn't sound right. Wait a minute. What
was
his name? Mauro? Got it! Marcello, that's his name.”

“Great guy. And the work he's done to that place!”

“Took him years and it's still not finished.”

“Sure, but with a villa like that, the work's never done. You just go on and on.”

Amy could bear it no longer. Clutching the icy glass, she bent towards them. “Excuse me, I hope you don't think I'm poking my nose in, but I couldn't help overhearing . . . You've been to a villa in Fiesole?”

“Sure we have, honey.” The woman's pudgy fingers scrabbled in her bag, dragged out a postcard. “Here's a photo. Take a look. Doesn't do it justice.”

Amy looked down at a dazzling hillside landscape. The back of the photo held the caption she'd been searching for:
The Italian Gardens of the Villa Galanti, copyright Marcello Galanti
.

“Well worth a visit.” The man drained his beer. “Worth every cent.”

“Keep the photo.” The woman hoisted herself out of her chair. “Phone number's on the back.”

Amy looked up at her. “Thank you so much.”

“You're more than welcome. You have to book in advance. Their minibus collects you at the station. Like my hubby says, it ain't cheap, but it's worth every cent. Good luck, honey. Hope you get to see it. They're rushed off their feet this time of year.”

Amy pushed against the crowds back to her hotel, the photograph of the Villa Galanti slippery hot in her hand.

In her room, panting, she picked up the phone.

“
Pronto?
I would like to visit your gardens today, now, this afternoon, as soon as I can,” she jabbered to the cool voice at the end of the line. She closed her eyes, trying to imagine where the voice came from: an elegant air-conditioned office overlooking the hills, a small polished desk, a neat pile of letters.

“I am sorry,
signorina
, but we are fully booked for the rest of August.” The voice crisply signed her off.

Panic gripped Amy. “You can't be.” She leaned against the wall. “I've come all the way from England to see you. It's most important. I have to leave Florence on Saturday . . . Please.”

“I am sorry to disappoint you. Perhaps you could return next year? Our minibus, it collects our guests and it holds only twelve people. Strictly only six times a day. We have been fully booked since the end of June–”

“There's only one of me,” Amy cut in desperately. “Can't you somehow squeeze me in? Please. I'll do anything, pay you anything you want.”

There was a short, rather hostile, pause. “One moment,
signorina
.”

The line went dead. Amy shook the phone as if she were trying to revive a dying snake. The phone buzzed into life. Italian voices rattled to each other.

“
Pronto?
Are you still there?”

Amy's knees gave way; she slumped on to the bed. “Yes, I'm still here.”

“We have had a cancellation,
signorina
.” The voice warmed by a fraction. “Two of our guests, they telephone us just now, they are delayed in New York. They were booked for the third minibus tomorrow morning, at eleven-thirty. Is that convenient?”