An hour later, Finnegan and Freja were back at Trattoria Famiglia, sitting at the table by the kitchen door. Finnegan had already wolfed down two enormous servings of Nonna Rosa’s spaghetti Alfredo and was now licking the bowl as though he hoped to wear a hole in it.
Freja poked and prodded her pasta with a fork, but couldn’t eat a bite. She pushed her bowl towards Finnegan. He gobbled and guzzled, then slurped the final strand of spaghetti so quickly that the loose end flicked wildly from side to side. Creamy sauce splattered all over the tablecloth, the wall and Freja’s shirt.
‘Boof!’ said the dog, perhaps in apology, then licked the sauce off Freja’s sleeve, working his way from the cuff upward. When he reached the top, he swiped his tongue around her ear and dribbled on her shoulder, then trotted off to the bar for a glass of lemonade.
Freja looked down at the cherry-red beanie where it sat in her lap. She plucked at the pompom, frowning.
How did Padre Paolo get hold of her beanie? It had fallen off her head when she’d fled from the Church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli. She’d been so frightened that she hadn’t dared stop to pick it up.
‘Terrified,’ she whispered, ‘by the cat and the echo of my own footsteps.’ But even as the words came out, she realised they were false. For she now remembered another detail, one that had been pushed to the back of her mind by everything else that had happened over the last two days.
‘The door!’ gasped Freja. ‘I closed it when I left the church. I felt the latch click into place. But then . . . when I looked back, it closed again. Someone was inside the church. They must have been there the whole time!’ She shuddered. ‘It was a person that made the bump near the altar, not the cat! It was another set of footsteps, not the echo of mine. And it was that same person who opened the church door and spied on me as I walked down the stairs.’
She closed her eyes tightly. She squeezed the pompom on the beanie.
‘It was him!’ she cried, her eyes flying open, her chair clattering backward as she sprang to her feet.
A man at the next table got such a fright that he stuck a forkful of veal into his cheek, missing his mouth completely. His wife made a tut-tut sound with her tongue. Although whether this was aimed at Freja or her husband was not completely clear.
Freja righted her chair and sat down again. ‘It was him,’ she whispered to the painting of the Pope on the wall. It helped to have someone listening. It made her think more clearly. ‘Padre Paolo was in the church. He was already there when I went inside to pray for Clementine. And that’s how he got my beanie.’ Her stomach clenched. ‘Padre Paolo saw me in the church and he thinks I knew that he was there. He thinks I went there to spy on him!’ She leaned closer to the Pope and gasped. ‘He thinks Tobias sent me to spy on him . . . that Tobias was sending me to do his dirty work!’
Freja felt a spark of excitement. Surely this was another piece of the puzzle solved!
But what would the priest — who was not really a priest — be doing in the Church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli in the middle of the night? Not praying, that was for sure. If he was pretending to be a priest, he’d be glad to be caught in the middle of a prayer. Instead, he was furious! He must have been doing something wrong. Something illegal.
Something bad.
She must tell Tobias.
The Pope stared at her in disbelief.
Of course! The Pope was right. She couldn’t tell Tobias. For then he would know that she had been wandering around Rome alone at night. And she would have to tell him that she had left Nonna Rosa’s this morning too. Because how else could she explain her discovery?
Tobias would be disappointed in her. He might even be cross.
‘What a mess!’ she moaned.
She pulled the beanie onto her head, down over her eyes, and flopped forward. Her glass fell over. Water ran across the table and dribbled onto the floor.
‘I say, old chap, you’re looking a bit green around the gills.’
Freja lifted the beanie from one eye and peered up at Tobias. ‘I’d like to go home now, please,’ she whispered.
As they stepped out into the street, Freja froze. She glanced nervously from side to side, taking in every detail, until she was certain no-one was loitering in the shadows. She slipped her hand into Tobias’ and willed her jelly legs to walk.
Tobias frowned down at her. ‘Your fingers are like ice, old chap!’
Freja forced herself to smile up at him.
His frown deepened. ‘I don’t remember you wearing that hat when I walked you to Nonna Rosa’s this morning. How terribly odd! I know that I’m dreadfully absent-minded and sometimes forget my own name. But that hat is a jolly marvel — not the sort one fails to notice.’
‘I wasn’t wearing it,’ said Freja. ‘I left it at Trattoria Famiglia the other day and Nonna Rosa gave it back to me this morning.’
Tobias nodded.
Freja burned with shame. The lie had slipped so easily from her lips.
Of course, they had both told many lies over the last few days — that Tobias was Leonardo Stupido; that Freja was his niece; that tossing a lipstick into the Trevi Fountain would bring you true love. But they’d lied for good reason, to fool the nasty priests who were not really priests at all. Here, now, she was deceiving Tobias, the sweetest, kindest person she had ever known. It felt rotten.
Back in the apartment, she slipped into her room and closed the door. She sat at her dressing table and stared at her reflection in the mirror. The cherry-red beanie glared at her, accusing her of telling lies and keeping secrets that should be shared. She swiped it off.
Dropping her chin, her eyes fell upon the battered little treasure chest. She reached out and flicked the rusty metal lock with the tip of her finger. ‘More secrets,’ she snorted. ‘Secrets under lock and key.’
She frowned. She picked up the treasure chest and turned it over in her hands. The secrets inside rattled and clunked.
Freja shrugged and stuffed the little chest into her cherry-red beanie. She stood up, marched across the room, shoved the bulging beanie inside her satchel and buckled the flap. Dropping the satchel, she kicked it. Hard. It slid across the floor and disappeared beneath the bed.
‘There!’ She stepped back and dusted her hands together. ‘All of the secrets are out of sight!’
‘Ow-ow-ow-oooow!’ Finnegan hollered from the other side of the door.
Freja let the giant hound in. He leapt up, placing his front feet on her shoulders, and swept his broad tongue back and forth across her face, whimpering all the while. He was relieved, excited and delighted to see her, as though they’d been separated for five weeks rather than five minutes.
Freja laughed, despite her bad mood, and kissed his enormous, wet nose.
Satisfied, the dog released her. Trotting to the bed, he jumped up onto the quilt, stretched out and settled in for a good chew on the corner of the pillow. Freja flopped down beside him and lost herself once more in the pages of Rome’s Reward.