Chapter 9
CHAPTER 9
CASALTA, 15 APRIL 1985
LUCREZIA
‘Lulu…’
I opened my eyes and in the half-light – is it dawn already? – I made out Bianca’s silhouette, bending over me and shaking me gently. She sat on the edge of my bed.
I sat up. ‘What happened? What’s the time?’
‘Early. I just wanted to speak to you in peace. Everyone is asleep. Come outside with me?’
I slipped on my short satin dressing gown and we tiptoed to her room. I followed her outside by sitting on the windowsill and turning around until my feet touched the stone. The world spun a little when, as I settled on a step, I looked down to the ground below. I didn’t remember the stairs being so steep, and with such a low banister, carved in the stone – Mum was a brave woman to come out here with toddler twins.
The sky was limpid and full of stars, and the air was drenched in the scents of the night. But over in the east a thin pink-orange line was rising on the hills – dawn was not quite breaking yet, but preparing its arrival. We sat side by side, shoulder to shoulder and cotton against silk, our bare feet lined up, mine with painted red nails and hers mother of pearl.
Only then I did I realise that Bianca had perilously carried a cup of coffee and, by some miracle, she’d managed not to spill it. ‘For you.’
‘Heavenly,’ I said, and took a long sip. Caffeine coursed through my veins, and everything became a little sharper.
‘I think there has been too much silence and too many secrets already, so I’m not going to wait any longer,’ Bianca began in her soft voice. Her words, though, were bold in a way I never thought she’d muster. I still wasn’t used to the grown-up version of my timid, mild twin, timid and mild no more.
I held my breath.
‘You’re right. I did want you away from here. Not at the beginning, I tried desperately to stop Father from sending you away and then get him to let you come back. But then I started doing the opposite, doing everything I could for you not to return to Casalta.’
My stomach knotted up. Suddenly I was cold, and the coffee tasted bitter. There was a pause where I felt utterly lost, in free fall, as if those stairs might give way and crumble under me. Because you wanted Vanni for yourself?
‘Father did terrible things. Worse than any of us could ever imagine. We knew he was a tyrant, of course. We all could see it. Maybe Nora refused to, but, deep down, she knew.’
‘Yes.’
‘But there’s more than that. When I wrote you that last letter, when I told you not to come home, and I stopped writing to you… I was trying to protect you. I was afraid for your safety. I’ve been so afraid all these years, until the night he died. I was afraid he’d do to you what… what he did to Mum.’
My hands tingled in panic and the sound of my heavy breathing filled my ears. I was cold. So cold. ‘What did he do to Mum?’
But I knew the answer. Had I always known, in a way? Had I deluded myself, like Nora, that Father couldn’t have done it?
‘Mum’s accident wasn’t an accident .’ She was whispering, even though we were alone, even though the whole house was asleep. She spoke as if the hills themselves were listening. ‘Do you understand?’
‘I don’t know.’ The icy feeling spread from my heart to all my limbs, numbing my head.
Our noses were almost touching, and our eyes were searching the other’s gaze, with me trying to swallow what she’d just said, and her trying to gauge if I’d grasped it: I could only stare at her. Her skin had a slight blue tinge, in the eerie light of dawn.
‘That day on the hills, Mum didn’t fall. She was murdered , Lulu. By our father.’