Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
CASALTA, TUSCANY, 12 APRIL 1973 – TWELVE YEARS EARLIER
LUCREZIA
Matilde, our housekeeper, was at the stove stirring a sauce, her apron tied in a bow at the small of her back, her wavy dark hair in a low ponytail. Beside her was my twin sister, Bianca, dutiful and sweet as ever, holding a bowl of parmesan she’d just grated. The air was full of the aroma of tomato and basil, and the golden rays of sunset came through the door that opened on the courtyard.
I sat at the table, barefoot and dirty from spending the afternoon in the hills around our home, my hair a tangled nest. My father had sent one of his men, Diego, to find me and take me inside; now I was waiting to be summoned to my father’s study, most likely about my behaviour since Mum died. I skipped school, I refused to wear shoes, brush my hair, go to church with the family or step inside the house at all until night fell. Also, I was almost sure someone had grassed about me spending time with the son of my father’s enemy, Vanni Orafi.
I didn’t care about my father’s stupid feud. The Orafi family had been our allies for two generations, until my father fell out with Gherardo Orafi over something that was never spoken aloud. Us daughters didn’t know the details, of course – we were told only that they were after our lands, they wanted to destroy our family and business, and we were forbidden to have anything to do with them.
Bianca kept throwing glances at me, her bottom lip quivering in that way she had, irritating me and breaking my heart at the same time. She hated it when I was in trouble and doubled her efforts to be docile and dutiful, as if she could cover me in her good behaviour to make up for my rebellion. Since our mother’s accident I’d grown uncontrollable, and she’d grown even sweeter, more pliant.
We’d always been different, but the last few months had carved a chasm between us: we both tried our best to cope with what had befallen us, but we’d chosen opposite ways to do this. Bianca tried to appease circumstances in any way she could, as if life was a wild beast you could endear not to devour you. I baited the beast, waiting for the consequences to rain on me and shake this cage we all lived in, shake my father’s pockets so the keys to the cage would fall out. I reasoned that the worst thing in the world had happened already, after all. I was wrong, of course.
The irony was that our father didn’t like Bianca more, for all her meekness and acquiescence. She was almost invisible, to him. Looking back, maybe that was exactly what she wanted, so she wouldn’t get hurt. And she wanted me to follow the same strategy, so that I wouldn’t be hurt either.
‘Can you not just behave ?’ she’d asked me in every possible tone, from exasperated to pleading, from indignant to despairing.
I couldn’t. My mother had always called me fierce , Matilde called me wilful , my father didn’t call me anything at all, but swelled with resentment a little more every day.
I’d been lost in grief for three months now, since my lovely, beautiful mum had died of a fall on rugged ground, not far from the house. I was a tightly wound ball of loss and loneliness, and nobody could reach me in this barbed, droughty place I’d found myself in. I couldn’t have done what Bianca asked of me – my own will had been replaced by bereavement and fury, and they growled and paced inside my mind, giving me no rest.
There was a cloud of wrath over the villa that day; and the origin point was a slight, skinny girl of twelve who perched on a chair with her arms around her knees and her eyebrows knitted together. Me, the bad twin, the one who defied her father’s authority and stalked around like a wolf child.
It seemed that Fosco Falconeri, my father and the head of our family, whose authority had always been undisputed, had finally grown weary of the rebel child. Since my mother’s death, he’d called me to his study twice already. Twice I’d stood on the rug in front of the heavy wooden desk, head bowed to hide my contempt, listening to his calm, poised words of warning. I could feel the fury behind that calm, that poise, like the low growl of a beast that any second would erupt in a roar.
It was the third time I’d been summoned: I knew in my bones that this time would be different. Worse .
‘Signor Fosco is ready for you.’ Laura, our maid, came into the kitchen and offered me her hand as if I were a little girl. I refused to take it and walked out by myself, the stone stairs cool under my feet, step after step down the corridor lined by wide wooden beams. The faint image of me and Laura reflected in the glass of the floor-to-ceiling windows walked alongside us, and beyond it, the rose bushes that my mother had planted.
My father didn’t usually give out punishments. Nor praise, really. Just orders. We hardly ever saw him, except for Bianca, who occasionally received a word or a pat on the head, like a well-behaved dog. All matters of discipline regarding us girls were delegated to my mother and to Matilde: there was hardly ever any need for Father to intervene, because we all knew that his word was law, and nobody dared contradict him.
Except me.
We were almost at my father’s door when out of the corner of my eye, through the glass, I saw a figure behind a rose bush. For a moment I thought it was my reflection, or Laura’s – then I realised it was neither.
Roses encompassed her with a crown of petals and thorns, the golden light of sunset at her back and her eyes on me. Her chest was rising and falling, like she was panting, like she was afraid. It was my mother. I was too shocked to throw open the French doors at the end of the corridor – I screamed and launched myself at the windows, hitting the glass with my fists. I wasn’t strong, but one of the glass panels was loose and freed itself from its metal encasing. My hands and arms went right through it, and I fell face first onto the gravel, in a shower of shards of glass and blood. There was a cacophony of screams and shouts and the sound of running feet, with my father’s powerful voice above all others, barking to Laura to call the doctor.
I found myself lying on my back in my father’s arms, looking up at his face. There was a black aura around him, and it frightened me more than I could say.
‘I saw Mum…’ I whispered.
His eyes widened, and without a word he let go of me. In a seamless gesture, Matilde took my head on her lap and Bianca’s hand was on my forehead.
My father disappeared into his study and stayed there throughout whatever happened next – I don’t have any memories of the aftermath, of the ambulance coming and being taken to the hospital.
I never saw him again.
When I came to, I was in a strange bed, pleasantly fresh under my body. A woman dressed in green was bending over me, and the white light of the sun seeped through half-closed blinds.
The first thing I whispered was: ‘My mum is alive.’
A small gasp came from the other side of my bed, and I turned to see that Bianca and Matilde were there. Bianca looked stricken and Matilde was clasping a hand to her mouth.
‘ Piccola , she’s not,’ Matilde said. ‘I’m so sorry, but she died on the hills above Casalta, and you need to accept it, we all need to accept it.’ She lightly touched my bandaged arm.
‘I saw her. She’s alive,’ I insisted. ‘Bianca, I swear, I saw her!’
The nurse made her discreet way out.
Bianca sat there, clean and tidy in her short-sleeved shirt with the little bows on the shoulders, her hair, strawberry blonde, cut in a neat bob to her chin. ‘Don’t say that. Please, Lulu, don’t say that . Father will be so cross.’ There were tears in her eyes.
‘All you can do is cry!’ I shouted. ‘You pretend to be good, but you really are just a wimp!’
‘Lucrezia!’ Matilde reproached me. ‘Your sister doesn’t deserve?—’
‘I’m not a wimp,’ Bianca said in a way that made me suck my breath in. She sounded so much older than her years. ‘I’m trying to keep you home with us.’
What? Where else would I be?
‘What do you mean?’ My voice came out small, and I was mad at myself for showing weakness.
‘Just stop saying you saw Mum. And start behaving,’ Bianca pleaded. ‘ Please! ’
I turned my back to them, my face against the wall. ‘I saw her.’
‘You didn’t!’ Bianca jumped up and began shaking me by the shoulder. I yelped with the pain from the cuts in my arms. Matilde held Bianca back – she looked shocked. My sister never behaved this way.
‘Let’s go, Bianca. Lulu needs to rest. Sleep now, piccola …’ I heard Matilde say, but the medicine coursing through my system was taking over anyway, and I felt sleepier and sleepier. The door had barely closed when Bianca ran back in and kneeled beside me.
‘Maybe it was… you know, the way we are. The way I hear voices and I see people, maybe you saw Mum because it’s part of your gift,’ she whispered urgently, and turned towards the door.
‘No,’ I managed to say, slurring my words and feeling my eyes close.
‘Maybe that’s what it was! And maybe I’ll see her too…’ Matilde didn’t let Bianca finish, because she took her by the arm.
‘Bianca! We need to let her rest!’
‘No… She was there…’ was the last thing I said before sleep took me.
Next time I awoke was when the nurse came to check on me; I was alone. I thought it must be not long later, because there was still light coming through the window – but I must have slept all night, because she was holding a breakfast tray and bid me good morning. I was starving, and devoured the bread and jam with the mug of warm chocolate milk.
‘Am I going home today?’
‘We’ll see what the doctor says,’ the nurse replied with a reassuring smile. ‘You seem to be doing well. You have an appetite, that’s for sure!’
I nodded, my mouth full of bread and jam. I was sore from all the cuts, but I didn’t want her to know, in case they kept me there longer.
I’d just finished my breakfast when the doctor came to see me. He wasn’t as reassuring as the nurse – his smile was tight. They refreshed my bandages while I bit my lip not to cry. The cuts were healing nicely, he said. Then why did he look at me in that strange way? As if he felt desperately sorry for me.
‘May I sit?’ he said and patted my sheets. I nodded, and he took his place beside me. ‘Well, signorina. You gave us all a big fright.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You don’t need to apologise. You and your family have been through a lot, recently. When something so awful happens we all react in different ways. We wish for everything to be all right again, don’t we?’
I nodded.
‘Sometimes we wish so hard we might even see things that aren’t there… Do you understand what I mean?’
I nodded again, even if no, I didn’t really understand what he meant, because I didn’t see something that wasn’t there. My mother was there. It hadn’t been a dream, it hadn’t been part of my gift.
‘Your father is concerned. He wants you to recognise that your eyes played a trick on you, and that’s how you got so hurt. There was nobody there. You threw yourself against the glass… through the glass… for nothing.’
‘But my mum was there.’
The doctor’s face fell. ‘Oh, Lucrezia.’
I knew that I’d disappointed him, that I’d said the wrong thing. But it was the truth.
‘Well. Not to worry. Your dad will sort this whole thing out, yes?’ He lifted his fingers to my chin and looked at me. ‘You’re a brave little soul.’
‘I’m not little. I’m twelve. Is my father coming today to take me home?’
The doctor gave me another tight smile. ‘Not to worry,’ he repeated.
I took it as a yes .
It was clear to me that I had to stop acting up, stop skipping school and not coming in for meals. I would try so hard to be better. I had to unravel the thoughts in my mind like Matilde did with yarn before knitting, sort it all in a tidy ball and be a good girl. If I showed Father that I was willing to behave, then I could tell him that I was sure, completely sure about seeing Mum behind the red rose bush. He’d believe me and look for her. If I endeavoured to be as perfect as I could be, he would listen to me, they all would. There had been a terrible mistake, and I had to right it. Our mum wasn’t dead, and it was my responsibility to make sure everyone knew.
I wanted to be dressed nicely for when my father came to get me. I asked the nurse to please brush my hair, because I couldn’t lift my arms properly yet, and to help me get dressed. The clothes I’d worn when I came in were ruined, but the nurse gave me a little bag that Matilde had sent. Inside I found a pink top, denim shorts and white sandals, together with a headband. It was a little girl’s outfit, and I rolled my eyes. Matilde didn’t understand that I wasn’t a child any more.
I stood on the hospital steps with the doctor and the nurse who’d been taking care of me. When I saw Father’s car approaching, my heart jolted. I was half apprehensive, half elated to be going home.
I smoothed my hair down with a bandaged hand.
Martino, our driver, appeared out of the car. I expected him to open the other doors and let Father and Bianca out, and maybe Matilde too, but he didn’t. He avoided my eyes as he greeted me and took my little bag. I followed him down the steps, a bit unsteady on my feet – and when he opened the boot to put my bag in I saw that there were two big suitcases there, and a wicker basket all tied up with string. My winter coat was there too, folded in two and encased in a plastic covering. A red and white blanket was rolled on the side, and on top of it rested Bernardo, the stuffed dog I’d slept with since I was a baby.
At that moment I realised that wherever I was going, it wasn’t home.