Lying in Wait(65)

The museums and galleries were thankfully cool. Outdoors, the sun was merciless. I thanked God that I had not made this trip before I’d lost weight. I would not have been able to cope with the heat or the walking around. Sitting on the Spanish Steps, we snacked on street food, washed down with ice-cold beer in the afternoon, and stopped in all of the beautiful churches on the Via del Corso with their incredibly ornate side-chapels. At the end of that street a large structure rose in front of us. It was only as we got close that I realized its monumental scale. ‘What is that?’ I said.

Consulting the guidebook, Karen explained it was the Victor Emmanuel II Monument at the foot of the Capitoline Hill. ‘Isn’t it crazy?’ she said. ‘The Romans are mortified by it. They think it’s too big and gaudy. All that white marble! Isn’t it fabulous?’

By seven o’clock, we were both exhausted. We went back to her hotel, and I waited in the heavily ornate rococo lobby while she went to freshen up. The beer I had while I waited cost several thousand more lira than I’d expected.

When she stepped out of the elevator, everyone stopped to look. Her hair was piled high on her head, like Minerva in the frescoes at the Villa Medici we had seen earlier. She wore a long simple straight dress made of dark blue silk, cinched at the waist with a rope-style belt. She looked like she had just stepped down from a plinth and become flesh. Rome, I had noted, was full of beautiful and shapely women, but Karen stood out with her freckles and red glossy hair and piercing green eyes. No wonder they wanted her in their magazines. Nobody here looked like Karen.

‘You look beautiful,’ I said, but she brushed the compliment aside easily. She was used to it. She looked at me curiously, and then took a small compact out of her purse and delicately dabbed a pink sponge under my eye.

‘I’m not hurting you, am I?’

Far from it. She turned the mirror towards me and the redness of the bruise had all but disappeared under the make-up.

We stepped outside into the bustle of a Rome evening, just slightly cooler now, passing groups of American tourists following a green umbrella; ice-cream salesmen; hawkers of mostly religious souvenirs; and small gatherings of Italians, all well groomed and speaking with their hands and their mouths at the same time.

We wandered down the street towards the Piazza Navona and passed several restaurants packed with tourists, but Karen led me further away from the main drag, down a side alley to an anonymous door in the wall.

‘The concierge in the hotel told me to come here!’ she said, as I looked unconvinced at the door that displayed no restaurant name but just a painted ceramic tile with a number on it. Through the door, we found ourselves in a large leafy atrium. Tall umbrella pines surrounded three circular fountains, every one as ornate as a miniature Trevi, which we had been rushed past amidst a throng earlier in the day. Water poured from the mouths of dead-eyed stone gargoyles. Bougainvillea leaves glistened with the spray of water from the fountains.

A small man with badly dyed hair came from nowhere and greeted us.

‘Prego.’ He pointed us in the direction of one corner, and as we followed him a vaulted colonnade appeared behind the trees, open to the courtyard on one side and open to a busy kitchen on the other. Simple wooden tables dressed in paper tablecloths lined this colonnade, mostly occupied by older people, all Italian. We were the only tourists, but while they could have resented me, they were clearly taken by Karen and acknowledged us kindly with a nod. Beauty is an international passport to acceptance. I used my phrase book to decipher the menu, which included pizza and pasta, as one might expect, but also aubergine, mozzarella and artichokes, exotic to me.

I had an overwhelming urge to devour everything on the menu but fought to eat delicately in front of Karen. She, of course, ate like you might expect a model to eat, picking at her food like a bird, but bemoaning the fact. She would love to eat more, she admitted, but didn’t dare put on an ounce as she was on a diet. I groaned inside as her half-full plates were removed. I resolved to find more street food later when I was on my own.

I couldn’t remember a better day in my entire life. We talked easily to each other. It didn’t matter that we had few shared interests. She listened to my opinions on current affairs and books, and I learned more about pop stars and actors and fashion than I had ever known, but we were able to engage each other. Inevitably, though, the conversation turned to Annie.

‘I’m not going to give up until I find her. Even if I have to go to the press, even if it upsets whatever new life she has now. She owes it to us to make proper contact. One lousy letter after six years of trauma isn’t good enough. She nearly destroyed us.’

I was tentative. ‘What would happen if you just let it go? Stopped looking, forgot about her?’

Karen’s eyes glistened ‘I can’t. I loved her. I know that she loved me. There’s something not right about it. I can’t help feeling she is being kept against her will. It doesn’t make sense.’

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.

‘I’m sorry, I’ve ruined our day. It’s been perfect, hasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

I paid the bill and tried not to panic about how I would survive for the rest of the week.

At ten o’clock, she stifled a yawn and I offered to walk her back to her hotel.

As we meandered slowly through the streets, I wondered if I should take her hand. She held her hand loosely beside mine as we walked, just centimetres away. Was it an invitation? Emboldened by the wine at dinner, I thought maybe there was a chance, but just as I was about to make a move, she turned suddenly.