25. Rome, December #5
“Before you came to Rome?” I ventured quietly. She looked sullen. “Earlier than that?”
“The summer before sixth form.”
The club noise fell away. The seriousness of what she was saying made my body weak.
“But—why are you here? Why did you still come here to study?” I asked, hating as I uttered the question that it sounded as though I didn’t believe her.
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“What?”
Mary cast her eyes downward and began to cry. “It was my mother’s decision.”
“Mary…” I breathed, wiping her tears and feeling my own forming. “I’m so sorry, this is just so unbelievably dark.”
“I know.” She gulped. “I’m so sorry to burden you with it. I’ve been so stupid. And so confused.”
“Not stupid, Mary. Never stupid, okay? Confused over what?”
“About him. Things were better with him, once I started here. I don’t know how to describe it, but it felt more equal.
More on my own terms. I honestly think I started to like his attention.
” She looked up at me. Tears filled her eyes again.
“At least, I thought I liked it. I liked it when I thought I had control.”
She collapsed into me then, folding straight into my arms. As we embraced, that picture of Lawrence in the background of Mary’s holiday photo reappeared in my mind.
Jean’s question: I wonder when it all started?
My stomach lurched at its pertinence. But as I considered her words, there was a growing sense of relief.
Mary never actually wanted to be with Lawrence.
They weren’t a romantic thing at all. The sick man had only groomed her, taken advantage.
Guilt struck me then for my elation, my shameful condescension at the banality of the situation.
Only. But I would not dwell on this now.
No, the main thing was to get him out of her head.
I released Mary, but held her by the shoulders. “Listen, he’s the older guy. A trusted family friend. You were, what?”
“Sixteen.”
“So, you were never in control. He’s been grooming you. Completely fucking with your mind, your self-worth. Your entire practice. You can’t stay here for next term. Will you promise me that?”
Mary’s face turned blank. I sensed she couldn’t really conceive of leaving the school. I worried that, deep down, she didn’t want to.
“I can’t leave. Mum will kill me.”
“Then we’ll tell your mum,” I said, grasping her hands. I noticed she was gripping me back in a strange way, curling her fingertips around my fingertips like an anxious child. Then she let go.
“We’re not telling my mum, Gussie.”
“Why?”
“It won’t do anything.”
“Why?” I said again. She hesitated. “Tell me?”
“It just wouldn’t help.”
“Meaning?”
Mary stared up at me, her gaze rigid. “I’ve told her other things like this before. She never takes it seriously. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if she already knew about us. You should hear the way she talks about rape. Like half the time it’s just rough sex .”
A bunch of rugby players spilled out noisily into the smoking area, and Mary, despite her emotional state, still straightened a little in her seat so they’d notice her.
Was it her mother who had encouraged this endless pursuit of male attention?
I remembered the way Anna had basked in Lawrence’s praise at the party, their pressed-up dancing.
What if Lawrence was just using Mary to try to get to Anna?
And what if that were true, that Anna turned a blind eye, that she didn’t really care about her daughter at all?
Mary gradually shifted her attention away from the boys. “You didn’t tell anyone about us, did you?”
“Don’t talk about you and Lawrence in that way, Mary,” I said, bringing her toward me again. “Please don’t say us .”
Half-desperate, I kissed her. A kiss she didn’t return. There was the mesh of Mary’s teeth. Her hands pulling against my jacket. The sweet blast of alcohol as her mouth reluctantly yielded to mine. A few of the rugby players cheered.
“You’re sure no one else at the party saw?” she gasped, pulling quickly away.
I reassured her, just as an idea was gradually taking shape in my mind.
If Mary was going to escape the school, she’d need somewhere to go.
Somewhere that wasn’t home. My mind seized upon Jean’s place in Primrose Hill.
It was perfect. The two of us could make a base there while she collected herself together; then we could plan our next moves.
Maybe the American design school was actually a good idea.
My chest gave a slight kick when I imagined it.
Maybe we could move to New York together?
“But if you don’t want to go home…” I trailed off as I opened my phone, which had a pocket for cards. I pulled out one of Jean’s, which I had now started carrying with me. “There’s this woman I’ve been talking to.”
I see us from the view of a bird, or imagine we are like those starlings who once soared high above the river, before swerving, disastrously, in the wrong direction.
Two girls, drunk and shivering, stepped out of the taxi I had hurriedly booked from the nightclub.
Mary’s fingertips curled around mine as we crossed the quiet courtyard and mounted the stairs to Jean’s apartment.
Lingering there at the threshold, we already felt relief, a homecoming calm.
You always smelled the floral scent of Jean’s home before you entered it.
Once, twice, the door was unbolted, then opened.
Jean rushed us inside, dressed in an elegant paisley robe, smiling first at Mary, then at me. I had done well.
Not well enough, apparently, to be allowed to stay the night.
That privilege fell to Mary, who was given a sedative.
I was much better off, Jean assured, sleeping in my own bed.
By the door, she hugged me, but woodenly.
I reminded her about my trip to Venice the following day and she promised to see me when I was back.
My stomach knotted as I counted the number of days that would be.
Then she bent down and opened her wallet.
“A holiday contribution,” she said, and smiled.
“But don’t I owe you?” I protested weakly, holding the spray of notes.
“Forget about that for now, Gus,” she said, her finger beneath my chin, the other on the door handle. “Go and have a good rest. Enjoy Venice. And merry Christmas.”
The following day, I caught the train north, unsettled because I hadn’t received my usual morning message from Jean.
I called her twice. It went straight to voicemail.
There was also no response out of Mary, but that was less unusual.
She was traveling back to London today, and I guessed she felt afraid and awkward about her confession in the nightclub, now that she was sober.
Then, as my train was nearing Bologna, she texted, thanking me for introducing her to Jean.
I love her energy! Staying in Rome a bit longer and doing a few sessions to help me manage Christmas!
I pressed my forehead against the train window, my insides squeezing with envy.
Well done! I eventually replied. She’s magic.
Mary read the message but didn’t respond.
Over the next few days, I sent pictures, in the hope of engaging her: the bold red font of a restaurant sign, a traghetto gliding through the mint-green waters of the lagoon, Marino Marini’s horseman and all the Man Rays in the Guggenheim.
I got nothing from either Mary or Jean. Venice was bone cold and beautiful, but it felt too remote without Jean’s presence at the end of my phone.
By the midafternoon, the city was surrounded by ribbons of disorientating fog.
I kept getting lost, pursuing dead ends or walking in circles.
The days passed. My mind also started to spiral.
Mary must be angry for how moralistic I’d been about Lawrence in the nightclub, or upset because I’d publicly kissed her, or both.
Jean probably agreed with Mary—they were probably discussing it—and now she was disappointed in me.
As I wandered the city, I tried to break the day down into three-hour chunks.
If I didn’t hear from Jean by the end of each period, I would allow myself to send a text message.
Before bed, always, a call. My chest would grow tighter and tighter as the tenth, twentieth ring went unanswered.
There were six strangers in my hostel dormitory, and I was anxious not to disturb them.
When I gave up the calls, I turned into my pillow, crying as quietly as I could.
Before long, my mind started to summon Jean instead.
First, it was the peal of her laughter, ringing from an open window above me.
Then it was a brief vision of her with Mary, walking along the Zattere: The pair of them were in beautiful green woolen coats, Mary gripping on to Jean’s arm like an invalid, like she was taking her first steps outside after a fortnight of flu.
Had they come here to surprise me? Did that explain the cruelty of their sudden silence?
A day later, I saw them again, a couple of rows in front as I sat in St. Mark’s Basilica on Christmas Day.
One head with long blond hair, the other jaw-length and brown.
My heart leapt with recognition, but when the choir processed in and they turned around, I recoiled at the unfamiliarity of their faces.
Tears raced out of me as the choir sang “O Come, All Ye Faithful” in Latin.
I was frightened at how frightened I was—ashamed, too, for the freakish hallucinations, for letting the city send me mad.
My mind kept looping with Mary’s words: I thought I liked it…
when I thought I had control. Resenting her bitterly, I now felt the same about Jean.
Yet she was also the only one in the world who could make sense of how I was feeling.
By New Year’s Eve, I was on my way back to Rome.
Arriving at Termini, I took a bus straight to Jean’s, amazed when I buzzed and was let straight in.
I took the stairs two at a time, desperate to apologize if that was necessary, for things to feel normal again.
I bashed the door with my fist. It quicky swung open.
My chest lifted, then fell, at the sight of the person standing in front of me: a young woman wearing a cleaning tunic.
She removed an earphone. “ Salve? ” The apartment reeked of pine cleaner.
“ Dove Signora Guest? ” I asked breathlessly.
The cleaner shrugged. “ Non lo so .”
My heart plummeted. Behind her, I could see that the apartment had been emptied: the fridge door was wide open, and all the vases that had once held those massive bouquets of lilies were washed up and drying by the sink. Somewhere further inside, a radio was playing pop music.
In my bad Italian, I told her that she must have it wrong, that I was certain this was an apartment Signora Guest owned, not rented. The cleaner shook her head. She’d cleaned it for five years, she said. The apartment did not belong to Signora Guest, but to a young man.
“ Questo è Airbnb ,” she pronounced loudly, like I was stupid.
She closed the door on me and I stood there, too stunned to move.
Surely there’d been some kind of mix-up?
Or did the sanctuary I’d grown to depend on belong to someone else?
I tried yet another call to Jean’s Italian number, but, this time, the phone didn’t connect at all.
The awful realization slowly dawned: I had been deserted.
Jean had left the city without telling me. They both had.
The hallway sensor clicked off and the lights went out.
I remained standing there, letting the darkness envelop me, as I tried to make sense of how or why Jean had vanished.
My rage reared up. Humiliated, I kicked furiously at her front door, beating it with my elbows and fists.
I screamed her name over and over. Then, seized with shame and afraid Jean could somehow see me, I fled down the stairs and out through the courtyard.
I spent that evening booking flights to London and packing up my room. When the countdown came, I was surprised to hear the blaring of horns and the parties in the streets below. The date had barely registered. The New Year had crept up on me, but my resolutions were made: Find her. Find them both.