Lying in Wait(64)

‘Laurence?’

‘Hi.’

‘What happened to your face?’

‘A silly accident in work. A shelf of ledgers fell on top of me. You look great.’ Understatement of the century. I could actually feel the jealousy radiating from the other men sitting nearby. The women too were watching.

‘Did you tell Bridget you were coming to Rome with me?’ she said.

‘No.’

‘Me neither.’

She looked at me and I wanted to reach out and touch her face, but I stopped myself. I needed her to feel safe around me. More than anything, I wanted her to feel safe.

‘Karen, you’ve been through so much, and I need a holiday. Let’s just put everything behind us and enjoy Rome.’

She smiled. ‘Let’s not mention Annie, or Dessie.’

‘Or Bridget.’

Her face clouded ‘She’s my friend. I feel like I’m betraying her.’

I feigned innocent motives. ‘We’re not doing anything. I’ve never been to Rome. I’ve always wanted to go. It just seems like a good opportunity.’

She was embarrassed. ‘You’re right. We’re not doing anything wrong.’

My horrors fizzled away and Karen was beside me, chatting, laughing, touching my arm, as if we had always been very dear friends. When we boarded the flight, she dazzled the air hostess into agreeing to let me change seats so that we could sit together in first class. Karen was on an all-expenses-paid trip and was being accommodated in a five-star hotel. I was on a very tight budget. My hotel was starless. She ordered us gin and tonics, even though it was 10 a.m.

Karen was going to be in Rome for three days for a shoot for an Italian fashion magazine. She clearly loved her work, if you could call it that – it sounded like one long holiday to me.

‘But you’ve no idea!’ she said, laughing. ‘All the hanging around, and the posing in really uncomfortable positions, in clothes that you are sewn into, in the heat, or in freezing temperatures. Try doing a summer collection shoot on an Irish beach in January, and then tell me how glamorous it is.’

When she asked about my work and my living circumstances, I avoided talking much about living at home and instead talked up my management job.

‘Pretty boring really,’ I said apologetically.

‘But things are going well for you? You must be fairly senior if you can afford foreign holidays.’

I had taken out a bank loan.

It turns out that Karen did not have to work until the next day, so she was free for the whole day in Rome when we landed. It was as if some long-held fantasy was coming true.

‘I hate travelling on my own. The crew I’m working with are Italian, and I don’t know them at all. Will we spend the day together? I’ve never been to Rome either, so let’s go sightseeing.’ She put her hand on my arm to encourage my agreement. As if I needed encouragement.

When we had retrieved our suitcases from the carousel and stepped outside, a wall of heat hit me that I had never experienced before. Karen hailed a taxi. ‘I’ll put it on my expense account,’ she said, to my relief, as I’d planned to get a bus. We agreed to go straight to my hotel to drop off my bags and then to hers, which was more central. The taxi journey was a revelation. Around every corner there was a monument or a building or a statue straight out of my history books. It was almost alarming to see them still standing among the flocks of tourists.

We stopped at my ‘hotel’, in a semi-derelict area behind Termini station. It was a doorway in a run-down street, which had two flights of steep stairs up to a tiny reception area. I quickly dumped my suitcase in my nondescript room, ran into the bathroom at the end of a sloping corridor, swabbed my armpits, applied four long blasts of aerosol deodorant and changed into my best shirt, short-sleeved and linen.

I checked myself in the mirror and for a shocking moment I saw my father looking back at me. There was a photo of him at home on the sideboard, with his rugby team at a dinner dance, slicked-back hair and chiselled jaw. He too had a bruise under his left eye, acquired through the rough and tumble of contact sport. I was as good-looking as he had been. Visually, at least, Karen and I were not such an odd-looking couple. For a split second I was sorry that my father hadn’t lived to see me like this, but I refused to ruin this moment by thinking about him and put the notion out of my head. Karen was waiting in the taxi. I practically threw the key at the receptionist, Mario, on my way out. Mario halted me. ‘Your mamma telephoned,’ he said, sounding like a character in a pizza ad.

‘My mamma?’ I said, embarrassed.

‘Yes, you must call her now, yes?’

‘Thank you. Later, I will later.’

‘Not now?’ He was disappointed in me.

‘Later,’ I said, backing away towards the staircase.

He shook his head, disapprovingly. I worried. It was just Mum being Mum. Damn her, couldn’t she let me go for one day? Was she going to ring me every day? Long-distance calls would cost a fortune. I would ring her tomorrow. Right now, I was going to enjoy a day sightseeing in Rome with my friend Karen the model.

She surprised me. I guess I had just assumed that a working-class girl would have no interest in culture. She knew a lot about art history and we set off to see a couple of Caravaggio paintings in the Augustinian church of Santa Maria off the Piazza del Popolo. I had not taken art as a subject in school and knew nothing of art history or artists, but she was able to talk with enthusiasm and insight, pointing out his use of light and shade. I tried to see these things through her prism, and even though these works were undeniably beautiful even to my uneducated eye, her passion gave them added excitement and importance. I bought postcard images of the work I had seen, and regretted that I had not brought a camera. Bridget had put me off the idea of photography permanently. Karen was surprised I hadn’t brought a camera but spent so much time in front of one that she was glad to be free of it. Later, I regretted that I had no photograph of Karen and I together in Rome.