tredici
Calle del Leone was filled to the brim with trouble the following morning: nosy locals, journalists, photographers and social media influencers. It seemed that most of Venice had turned out for the occasion. Phones and cameras were held high over the sea of bobbing heads, awaiting the first glimpse of her. A few people had even taken to climbing the ledges and windowsills of the neighbouring buildings for a better view. Apparently, according to the mob’s understanding, L’Orfana was finally looking for love in Venice.
The trouble was, she didn’t know it yet.
This all spelled one thing – disaster.
Lucia eventually awoke and padded to the kitchen where she filled the moka and put it on the hob. ‘ Che c’è, amore ?’ she asked, noticing that Foscari, perched by the window overlooking the street, was whining incessantly.
Wearing only a worn, almost translucent white cotton singlet and grey underwear, Lucia peered through the sheer curtain covering the window.
Her heart stopped.
It took a moment for her to process the mass of chaos, confusion and jostling bodies below. Her stomach lurched, and a cold sweat broke out along her spine. Her legs started to shake, and she felt an instinctive need to run. Escape. But she was trapped within her four walls.
It was her building that was of such interest. The faces and bodies, and devices – all the phones and cameras – were pointed up at her apartment window.
The night of the accident came flooding back, as did the headlines from the tenth-anniversary surveillance scandal. Her space, Calle del Leone, had been invaded once again.
Lucia retreated with trembling hands, and Foscari, his fur standing on end, now took to barking.
She reached for her phone and called Francesco. It rang out. Voicemail. She tried again, but to no avail. Over and over she called, and the same voicemail greeting met her ears. She even tried to call Mariella. But again, nothing but a voicemail.
Then something suddenly overtook Lucia. An invisible force, an energy of sorts. It filled her with a fury so hot that it felt like the veins down her neck, across her chest, and down to the tips of her fingers dilated and rose to the surface of her clammy skin.
She whipped her silken dressing-gown from her wardrobe, tossed it over her shoulders, and threaded her arms through the sleeves as quickly as she could.
‘Stay here!’ she called to Foscari, who cowered when he saw the warning hand she raised in his direction.
Lucia ran from her apartment, down the stairs, through the second floor, and eventually into the school below. Throwing open the front door, she was met with a barrage of piercing white lights. Blinding. Paralysing.
Click. Click.
Flash .
L’Orfana!
The whirring sirens that had become the eternal soundtrack to her memories returned, growing louder and more torturous. They filled the space in her mind, in her heart, and forced her to grab the doorframe for support.
Lucia! Lucia!
Vuoi trovare l’amore?
The way the rain had pelted down on them all on the fondamenta . Soaking them to the skin, slashing at her future, removing the two most important people from her life.
San Valentino . . .
Mamma, Papà . . .
Click.
Flash.
And suddenly, black began to close in on Lucia’s vision while the sounds faded to silence, and her body crumpled to the floorboards.
Francesco hadn’t checked his phone when he woke up. On Sundays, he tended to leave all notifications until after he had consumed his first coffee of the day; and today, of all days, was no exception: he had left it on silent on his nightstand.
At around eleven, when he finally picked it up, he had to look twice.
Notifications. Literally thousands of them.
His eyes scanned the list. The vast majority were from Instagram. Likes. Comments. DMs. Follows. Shares. Tags.
His stomach suddenly felt like a hollow cavern, a pit of dread that plunged away to nothing.
Surely I didn’t . . .
Flicking through the list he found half-a-dozen missed calls from Lucia, and also Mariella. The most recent had only been a few minutes ago.
With a feeling of impending doom, he opened the Instagram app. His mouth dropped open when it defaulted to La Scuola Rosa’s profile, and not his own. The profile info was dotted with red notifications markers and he clicked the heart button to find a viral mess. And there, he saw that the first post on the school’s feed was Lucia’s mask and costume photo.
‘No. No . . . no!’ he said over and over again, as if doing so might relieve him of the burden of mayhem he was about to confront. ‘ Cazzo ! CAZZO !’
Suddenly, his phone rang.
‘ Pronto ? Mariella?’ His harried voice cracked into the receiver.
‘Francesco, where the hell have you been?’
‘My phone was on silent. I’ve only just—’
‘Do you have ANY idea what you have done?’ Her tone snarled and twisted.
‘I . . . I . . .’
‘Come now to Santi Giovanni e Paolo.’
‘The hospital?’
‘Yes. Lucia’s in trouble.’
Nothing could have prepared Francesco for what awaited him in that small, featureless room. But the look on the exiting nurse’s face said it all. He steeled himself with a breath, ready to enter, but Mariella caught him before he could do so. She mimed a whisper with a finger across her lips, and directed him further down the corridor and out through double automatic doors to a small courtyard. The breeze was bitingly cold.
Francesco made to speak, but Mariella cut him off. ‘Stop. It’s my time to talk.’ He waited as she got her temper under control. ‘You have no idea what Lucia has been through,’ she began. ‘ No idea. You can sympathise and try to understand, but you will never know, truly know, the pain, the torment . . . the humiliation and heartbreak she has known. So, consider yourself very lucky that this is all that happened.’ She took a breath to compose herself, as the welling tears were fast rising to the surface. ‘Lucia is a pillar of strength, in spite of everything. She is stronger than you and I put together. But today, Francesco, you have brought her to the brink of shatter.’
While Francesco understood that somehow the Instagram post and Lucia’s current state were linked, he needed more information.
‘What happened to her? Why is she here?’ He was itching to push past Mariella and rush to Lucia’s side.
‘This morning she awoke to a sea of paparazzi, journalists, TV crews, all camped out on Calle del Leone waiting for her. The street was full of them. No one could move. They were even climbing the palazzi to get a shot of her.’
Wide-eyed with concern, he asked, ‘A shot?’
‘Cameras, phones. Everywhere, Francesco.’
Suddenly, he knew how triggering this would have been for her. ‘Oh no. Did someone hurt her?’
‘No. She came down the stairs to send them away, but when she opened the door she was so overcome by flashbacks to her past traumas that she passed out. She hit her head on the corner of the window display’s ledge – that damn sharp, metal-edged kickboard – and landed awkwardly on her left shoulder. No breaks. No dislocations. Just very badly sprained. A few days in a sling. And a minor concussion for her troubles.’
‘I have to go in there. I need to talk to her.’
But Mariella pressed a firm hand to his chest. ‘She told me that she explicitly asked you not to use social media in her search for this masked man. Explicitly! But you did it anyway.’
Lowering his voice, Francesco said, ‘I know. And I am not proud of it. I meant to post it to my private account. Just our friends. My family. Not our ten thousand followers from across the globe!’ He shook his head and released a defeated sigh. ‘You know I would never do anything to hurt Lucia.’
Mariella held her breath a moment, then gave a conceding nod. ‘Go. Tell her that.’