The Faces of Angels (23 page)

Billy's standing a little behind me so I can't see her. But I feel her shrug. Sense her shoulders moving in the huge tent of her old tweed coat. ‘A few days,' she says. ‘A week or so. I guess.'

I take this in without any real sense of shock. The manila envelope floats in front of me, and I imagine the contents, tipped out on my bed, or hers, see her long pale-fingered hands with their black nails picking through the articles and the pictures I've amassed and stolen.

‘I knew there had to be something,' she says. She's too nice to accuse me outright of lying.

When I don't reply, she goes on. ‘After that day in the gardens, when you were behaving so strangely, and then, when you finally told me you'd had an accident…I'm sorry,' her voice falters, ‘I ran a Google search on you. After that priest came. I used “Mary Warren” and “Florence.” Then I looked up the articles in the library.'

It might be true. She might not have gone through my drawers.

‘Look, Mary, I shouldn't have, I guess, but—' Billy's voice runs out, and I feel her take a step towards me. ‘Please don't be mad,' she says. ‘I haven't told anyone. I never would. I promise.'

I stand up slowly, so I'm not crouching like a supplicant in the mud at her feet. ‘Why didn't you say something?'

Billy moves closer and drapes her arm around my shoulder. She's so much taller than me that it lands there naturally. ‘Because I wanted you to tell me. I hoped you would.' She squeezes the top of my arm, her fingers firm and strong through the fabric of my jacket. ‘Please,' she says again. ‘Don't be mad.'

‘I'm not mad.' It's true. I don't care. It doesn't bother me that Billy knows. In fact, it's almost a relief. It's as if a heavy bird, a vulture or a crow that has been perched on my chest has suddenly lifted up and flapped away.

‘Honestly, Mary, I can't imagine—' Billy's voice fades. Then she adds, almost sadly, ‘I want to be—I'm your friend.'

I reach up and take her hand, which is cold in the drizzle. ‘I know,' I say. ‘I know you are.'

The dogs have stopped barking and our breath makes little clouds in the damp air.

‘Really?' she asks.

‘Really.' I squeeze her hand.

‘I can see why you don't want to talk about it,' she says after a second. ‘It must be scary. And incredibly painful—' I shake my head, cutting her off.

‘It's not that. I don't care about that. It's that I don't want to be a freak show.'

I look at Billy. The rain has matted her hair down. Tendrils cling to her forehead, leaving her face strangely naked. ‘They caught the guy who did it. Karel Indrizzio. He's dead. It's over,' I explain. ‘I don't talk about it because it's over.'

‘Is that why you came back? To prove that?'

I consider this for less than a second. ‘No. I came back for Pierangelo. And because Florence is the most beautiful place I've ever seen and I dreamed of living here. What happened with Indrizzio doesn't matter, it's done. He doesn't make decisions for me.'

Billy nods. She opens her mouth and closes it, and I wonder again if she did go through my room and, if so, if she saw the pictures of Benedetta Lucchese and Caterina Fusarno and Ginevra, and that was what she was about to mention. But whatever it was, she thinks better of it, and instead lets out a little huff of breath, unspoken words that hang between us.

We stand there for a minute or two, looking down at the place where Eleanora Darnelli died, then Billy lets go of my shoulder and looks around, at the bell tower we can see through the empty arches, at the monastery of San Francesco on the hill above, and the dark damp screen of the trees. She rubs her hands as if she's cold, and shoves them deep into her pockets.

‘What the hell was she doing here?' she asks. ‘In January? Is it even open?'

‘Yeah.' I am still looking at the stone, trying to find the dots. ‘It's open all year, but it closes earlier then. Three or four o'clock, probably. She went to an afternoon Mass in the cathedral,' I add. ‘Nobody saw her again after that.'

‘What's-his-name did.'

‘Indrizzio.'

‘Right.' Billy glances at the high chain-link fence behind us and the tall crumbling wall that runs along the road. ‘No matter what time it was,' she says, ‘I bet there are plenty of ways into a place like this. I bet the locals never buy tickets.'

‘No, probably not.'

‘I don't know. She was going to leave, right? I mean, the article in the paper I read said she had a guy and everything.' She steps away, her shoulders hunched. ‘To be that close, and then just get cut off.'

A thin slick of rain pools on the stones around us and slithers through the dark spongy patches of moss. Even Billy is cowed by the atmosphere of this place, by all the centuries piled up and ruined here.

‘I'm going back,' she says. She looks at me for a second. ‘Don't stay too long.'

‘I won't.'

She half smiles, as if this satisfies her, then I watch as she walks away, as she climbs over the stones, drops down and disappears for a second into the Roman baths, and rises again, the crown of her head golden in the dull afternoon.

No one talks on the bus ride back. Henry and Kirk stare out of the window and the Japanese girls huddle together on the back seat looking cold. We part with muffled goodbyes at the bus stop, and when Billy and I get to our building, I still reach for my keys. My hand gropes in the bottom of my shoulder bag, pushing aside the folds of my old pashmina, and my date book and wallet. Billy gets hers out instead and opens the security gate.

‘If we cleaned up,' she says, ‘you'd probably find them.' And both of us nod, as if this is something we might actually do.

As I trail behind her across the courtyard, I realize things have changed. Billy has finally pried away the shell I have built so carefully, and I have let her. I didn't even struggle. A light is on under the portico, and from Sophie-Sophia's apartment we can hear someone playing the piano. I don't recognize the piece, but whoever it is stops and starts and stops again, sounding like a record that's stuck. Our shadows stretch across the wet stones, and when we get inside we leave dark footprints in the vestibule.

Above us, the gate of the elevator clangs shut and we hear it creaking downwards, passing as we climb the stairs. Billy opens our door and flicks on the hall light. She takes her coat off as I go into my room and switch on the lamps. A second later, when I turn round, she's standing in the doorway.

Even in her stockinged feet, Billy is so much taller than I am that when she walks towards me she makes me feel like a child. Her figure throws a shadow across the bare marble floor and the lamps light the side of her face and catch the tips of her curls. A soft fuzz of rain still glows on her cheeks.

‘You're not a freak show.'

Billy takes my shoulders and turns me around. Her eyes watch mine in the blotchy silver mirror, and before I am even aware of it, her hands are moving. She pulls my wet jacket off my shoulders. It falls with a sigh at my feet, and her fingers brush the buttons on my blouse. They are small, mother of pearl, and as translucent as fish eggs against her black nails. She unbuttons one. Then a second. And a third.

Billy parts the damp material, peeling it from my skin, and gasps. It's nothing but a faint intake of breath, a tiny whooshing noise in the stillness of the room. The stones of her heart ring wink in the light and her fingers are cold as she traces them down the road map of my scars.

I
COULD HAVE
asked her. At any minute, I could have said: ‘Did you go through my drawers? Dig out my secrets?' But I didn't. And now I'll never know, because last night I told Billy everything.

I told her about Ty and me, and Pierangelo, and Father Rinaldo, and the heat that Sunday afternoon in the Boboli, and the stone in my shoe, and how Karel Indrizzio died, and how I came back and found out about Caterina Fusarno and Ginevra Montelleone. I told her all that, and everything I know about the other women. But I didn't show her the pictures. I didn't even get the envelope out.

Telling was one thing. That was letting a whole flock of birds rise up and fly off my chest. But to show her, to display the dead women's faces and hands, the cuts on their bodies, and dribbles and patches of their drying blood, that would have been betrayal. We're members of a club, initiated and bonded by Karel Indrizzio's knife. We have received his private kiss, and I can't put them up for public display, even to Billy. I can't show her that sacred glimpse of what I might have been.

A minute ago, my door locked, body shielding the drawer as if Billy might slip through the keyhole like Nosferatu and look over my shoulder, I pulled the envelope out and tested the flap. I tried to remember if the gum felt less sticky, or if the corner crimped differently from the way it is now. But I couldn't. So I put it away again, and chose to believe Billy's version of her story, that she relied on Google and the library.

In the kitchen, she sits at the table, smoking and picking at a pastry, reducing it to an unrecognizable pile of flakes. Finally she pushes the plate aside, gets up and opens the French windows. A gust of morning air blows in and stirs her fug of smoke into a cloud.

‘I don't think you should go,' she says, her back turned to me. ‘I just don't.'

I am standing in the doorway holding a laundry bag, on my way to Pierangelo's to use his washing machine, but that's not what she's talking about. She doesn't object to my having clean socks. What she objects to is that I plan to go to tonight's candlelight vigil for Ginevra Montelleone. ‘I'm serious,' Billy says again. ‘I really don't think it's a good idea.'

‘Oh come on. I'm not Laura in
The Glass Menagerie
.'

Billy refuses to look at me. It's not news that she doesn't like being crossed, and her forehead is creased, her mouth dangerously close to a pout. I can imagine her in scrubs behaving like a temperamental Amazon when a patient refused to have their temperature taken or eat what was put in front of them, and I can't resist a prod. ‘What do you think's going to happen?' I ask. ‘That I'll fall down in a heap and faint? Treat you to a psychotic episode?'

Billy shrugs, turns round and sits down again. ‘Why upset yourself?' she asks. ‘Won't it just make you remember?'

‘You think I forget?'

We stare at each other for a second, then she looks away. ‘I'm sorry,' she says. ‘That was stupid.'

‘It's a vigil, Bill. We're supposed to remember. That's the point. Besides,' I add, feeling stubbornness building up inside me, ‘I'd like to pay my respects. I mean, if this guy is copying Indrizzio, then this girl and I have something in common. It seems like the least I can do.'

‘He might be there, you know.'

‘Who?'

‘Whoever did it.' Exasperation creeps into her voice and she waves a hand in the air. ‘Whoever killed that girl. They do that sometimes,' she adds. ‘Turn up at, like, funerals and stuff. They get a buzz out of it.'

‘Only in the movies.'

‘Mary, from what you told me about what he did to those women—'

‘Billy,' I say, ‘I know what he did. Believe me. And I know I'm lucky to be alive. But I told you, Karel Indrizzio is dead. He doesn't make decisions for me from beyond the grave. And neither does whoever this creep is. If I start letting him, I'll turn into a basket case. I won't be able to walk down the street. I might as well leave Florence. And every other major city on the face of the earth and live in a cabin surrounded by barbed wire. Besides,' I add, ‘there's no reason to think this guy even knows who I am, or that he's any more interested in me than in any other woman in this city.'

This doesn't cut much ice with her, I can tell. ‘Come on,' I flick my hair, trying to get her to smile. ‘I'm Sally Skunk Stripe now. I don't even look like me any more.'

This does finally make her smile, sort of. She sighs theatrically and pulls off another piece of pastry. ‘OK,' she says. ‘I give up. Oh, by the way, here.' She pushes something across the table towards me, but I can't see what it is because of the clutter, a pile of books, the vase of dead flowers, a couple of glasses. ‘Your keys, madam. I found them behind the sugar canister. So, now you can let yourself in and out.'

Billy stands up and stretches like a cat. ‘I guess this thing is at eight,' she says, ‘right? So, we'll be there or be square.'