Chapter 7 — How Old Is He?

(Laura)

For a second the name doesn’t mean anything. It’s only a sound, a surname in an accent I haven’t heard spoken out loud in eight years. Then it lands properly, and I’m gripping the edge of the door so hard the old paint flakes under my fingernails.

Vianello. A brass rail in a stairwell. Gold cufflinks on a kitchen bench beside an envelope with that name typed across the front.

“No,” I say.

His brows lift a fraction. “No?”

“Whatever this is, no. You’ve got the wrong house.” I start to push the door closed.

“I don’t have the wrong house, Ms Bailey.” He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t step towards the screen either, which I register, because a man that size wouldn’t need to try very hard. I spend my working life judging how much force a body can produce, and his could take this security door off its hinges without breaking a sweat. “I’d like five minutes to explain why I’m here.”

“I don’t care why you’re here.”

“I understand.”

“I don’t think you do.” The door is half shut now, and I hold it there with my body filling the gap. “I want you to leave.”

He studies me through the mesh. Up close he’s older than I first thought, late thirties maybe, with fine lines at the corners of his eyes and a five o’clock shadow that’s well past five o’clock. His suit probably costs more than my car. It probably costs more than my car and Mrs Henderson’s car put together. It also sits across his shoulders like it was poured on, which is a deeply unhelpful thing to notice about a man you’re trying to get rid of.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” he says.

“That’s what someone who was here to hurt me would say.”

“Yes.” A flicker of something that might be humour crosses his face and is gone before I can be sure of it. “It’s a difficult sentence to make convincing through a screen door.”

I don’t laugh. His voice is low and unhurried, with a rough edge on the consonants, and it does something to the skin on my arms I resent immediately. My phone is on the kitchen bench, next to where I left the tea towel, a good ten steps behind me. Mrs Henderson is seventy-three and goes to bed at eight with the telly turned up loud enough to hear from the street. The nearest police station is twenty minutes up the highway. I’ve lived in Port Merrin for six years, and until this minute I’ve never once thought about how far it is from anywhere.

“How did you find me?” I ask, and I hate myself for asking, because asking is a conversation and I don’t want to have one.

“That’s part of what I’d like to explain.”

“Then write me a letter.”

“I’d rather you heard it from me.” He pauses, and adds more quietly, “We’ve met once before, though I doubt you’d remember. At my cousin’s wedding. In Palermo.”

The snag in my memory pulls loose. A balustrade, lemon trees strung with fairy lights, a giant with a glass of water counting the room. Giulia rolling her eyes. My cousin Matteo. Don’t bother. He doesn’t dance and he doesn’t smile.

He was there. He watched me laugh at Giulia’s table. He watched his brother walk over and take my hand. I have no idea what else he watched that night, or what he knew, or what he’s told himself about it since, and I’m so angry my hands start shaking on the door.

“I remember,” I say. “You were the one who didn’t dance.”

His eyes narrow, more in surprise than anything. “You have a good memory.”

“Don’t be flattered. I remember everything from that night until about ten o’clock.” My voice goes flat and hard. “After that it gets a bit patchy. But I expect you know that.”

He goes very still. Before he can answer, a small voice pipes up behind me.

“Mum? Who is it?”

I go rigid.

Chris is standing halfway up the hall in his shark pyjamas, with amaretti crumbs on his chin and his hair sticking up where he’s rubbed it with the towel. He’s clutching the paper bag of biscuits to his chest like treasure, and he’s curious, his head tilted to try and see around me.

I watch Matteo Vianello’s attention leave my face.

It isn’t a stranger glancing at a kid. His eyes drop to Chris and stay there, moving over him slowly: the dark tousled hair, the brown eyes, the shape of his chin, the line of his nose. He looks at my son the way I look at an X-ray when I’m searching for one particular thing and checking it twice. His expression barely changes, but his stillness does. It gets heavier, more deliberate. He’s laying Chris’s face over another face in his head and checking where they match.

I know which face. I’ve spent seven years watching my son grow into it.

He’s worked it out. I don’t know how, but I can see it happening in front of me, and I have to lock my knees to stay upright.

I step sideways into the doorway so my whole body is between them. “Hey, mate,” I say, and my voice comes out light and normal, which surprises me. “Teeth, please. Then pick a book and hop into bed. I’ll be in soon.”

Chris doesn’t move. “Who’s he?”

“Someone looking for a different house.”

“He’s really tall.” He leans sideways to see past my hip. “Are you a giant?”

“No,” Matteo says. His voice is quieter than it was a minute ago.

“Are you a basketballer?”

“No.”

Chris looks deeply disappointed in him. “Then why are you so tall?”

“Christian Bailey.” I only use his full name when I mean business, and he knows it. “Teeth. Now. Put the biscuits in the kitchen first, please, or you’ll have crumbs in your bed again.”

He heaves the long, put-upon sigh of a seven-year-old asked to do something wildly unreasonable and pads off towards the kitchen. At the doorway he stops to peek around the frame at us. I point at the bathroom without a word, and he goes.

I listen for the tap. When it starts running, I turn to face Matteo again.

He’s still looking down the hallway where Chris disappeared. When his gaze comes to me, his face gives me nothing at all, and his hands have gone into his pockets.

“You need to go,” I say, low enough that it won’t carry. “Right now. Whatever you’ve come here for, whatever you think you’ve got to say, I don’t want to hear it, and I don’t want him hearing it either.”

He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t leave, either. He takes his hands out of his pockets and looks at me through the mesh with the same heavy, careful attention he gave my son, and when he speaks, his voice is low and measured.

“How old is he?”