The gasp was like a scream, a bullet, a punch – shocking and violent, wresting her from her sleep like a soul being ripped from its body. She was sitting up in bed, the sheet twisted around her hips, her muscles trembling from the sudden shock of oblivion to consciousness, her heartbeat as panicky as a trapped bird.
She stared at the stubby shadows without seeing them, trying not to see instead the images that were burnt in her mind, tattoos that would never fade no matter how she clawed or rubbed or scratched at them. They had become a part of her now, another shadow stitched to her heels and trailing her through the sunlight and the snow, coming alive every night when the moon rose and her eyes closed.
She rolled back down to the mattress, pulling the sheet up over her shoulders, her body curled into a comma – but there would never be a pause from this. She closed her eyes and tried to fall back to sleep, knowing it would come again, knowing it was only right that it should.
This was her just deserts for what she had done.
She deserved everything she got.
The sound of the steps being swept, of the toppled geraniums being righted again, was more effective than any alarm clock and Cesca sat up in bed with a sudden gasp. She didn’t need to check her phone to know the time would be seven-forty, but she did it anyway, giving a little scream as she saw that the ‘alarm ignore’ icon was on the screen.
‘Oh no! No, no, no,’ she whimpered, throwing back the sheet and clambering into the clothes she’d discarded last night – Edwardian camisole, check; long daisy-print skirt, check; destroyed yellow Converse, check. There wasn’t time to brush her teeth or her hair. Grabbing her panama from the pine table as she sped past, she was out of the apartment in under ninety seconds from when she’d first opened her eyes.
‘Buongiorno!’ she cried to Signora Dutti as she scrambled down the steps awkwardly, trying to avoid the sweeping brush.
Signora Dutti straightened up with an expectant look and Cesca could tell at a glance that she wanted to have a conversation about her meeting with the Viscontessa last night. ‘I’m so sorry, can’t stop. I’m really late. Really, badly late,’ she cried over her shoulder.
She flew across the tiny, slumbering Piazzetta Palombella, the steel shutters to the pizzeria still down, the tables and chairs still stacked in the osteria opposite, although delicious smells were already wafting from the vents of the bakery. With one hand holding her hat onto her head, she sprinted across the Piazza Angelica without even a glance at the imposing pale-blue palace she had visited last night. A few beer bottles on the rim of the fountain were all that remained of the carousing partygoers, but unlike in her tiny pocket of Rome a few hundred metres away, where the piazzetta remained quiet at this time, here the day had already well and truly begun. A bin man was pushing his cart over the cobbles, while two carabinieri were walking slowly around the cordons which pedestrianized the central section of the square. Busiest of all, in the centre of it, were the stall-holders setting up their stalls, arranging buckets of flowers in dense tiers, displaying stripy coloured ribbon and bow pastas in open boxes, and hanging clusters of chillies and smoked sausages from the gazebo struts.
When she had first moved here, she had fallen in love with this market. It had become a normal sight to her now, but in those early days its colours and shouts and smells (some good, some not) had been all the proof she’d needed that she had been right to do the unthinkable and leave her old life – for here, everything was bold and chaotic, fresh and unformed, too big to press into a box. It gave her exactly the freedom she’d needed, the chance to escape and start afresh as someone new. Someone better.
She ran through the intermittent shadows – already hard-edged and black even at this early hour – jumping over low-slung chain railings, weaving between scooters, her long pale limbs flashing like switchblades. She passed from square to narrow street, short alley to narrow street again, the rumble of traffic on the Via del Corso like thunder as she emerged, panting, into the swarm of commuters. Dodging and ducking, she weaved her way to the front of the crowds, sprinting through the stationary cars when the lights turned red before diving into the back streets again. She outpaced a Mercedes airport limo trying to navigate a road with no more than thirty centimetres’ clearance and ran through the middle of a group of Chinese tourists, all wearing red caps as they followed their guide. She was running up the middle of the street, legs pumping, when a scooter suddenly rounded the corner at terrifying speed.
Cesca gasped as it headed straight for her. With a parked car to her right, she was forced to jump left, but she hadn’t seen the low-slung spiked chains looped between bollards and they tripped her. As she fell in a tangle of limbs towards the shiny cobbles, she got a good look at the driver – mid-thirties; athletic; dressed in navy cargo shorts and a once-white polo shirt, with his biceps bulging at the tight sleeves; and straight, brown, longish hair that peeked out past his helmet. Most striking of all were his arrogant eyes – as though he expected nothing less than for her to fall onto spikes to let him pass.
‘Hey! You bloody hooligan!’ she shouted after him in furious, native English – her Italian wasn’t strong enough yet to be truly effective at hurling insults – as he continued on without stopping. ‘Seriously?’ she asked aloud as he turned out of sight without so much as a backwards glance.
For a moment, she sat there on the ground, the cobbles chilling her skin through the cotton of her skirt, before she suddenly remembered what she’d been doing before the fall and why she’d been running. Her knee was bleeding but there was no time to worry about it, clean it or even feel it, for she had to pick herself up and carry on.
She sprinted again, trying to ignore the throb in her knee as well as the stitch in her side, but she knew it didn’t matter how fast she ran – she was two hours late. She would be getting there just as she was supposed to be finishing the tour. A few seconds, a minute wasn’t going to make any difference at this point; they’d have called someone else in ages ago.
She rounded the corner into Piazza di Trevi, the torrents from the magnificent, justly famous fountain as loud as a waterfall but, for once, the square itself was quiet. That was the point of the Sunrise Tour, after all – grabbing the opportunity to see the great Roman landmarks free from the hordes, hawkers and street-sellers that blighted the daytime trips. She sprinted past the steps, past the great statue of Neptune, and on to the tiny building around the corner, which thousands passed every day without noticing. There was no time for beauty right now, though, no time for culture, for—
Sonia, the girl in the ticket office, was sitting in a small kiosk by the door and jerked her head towards the inside of the building as Cesca careered through the doorway. ‘He is in the office,’ she said, with a sympathetic look.
‘Thanks, Sonia,’ Cesca gasped, still keeping up a jog past the little cinema – whose construction had been the reason this wonder had been discovered in the first place – and down the metal staircase into the Città dell’Acqua, as the subterranean space was known. It was well lit, the smooth foundations of the modern buildings sitting within metres of the rough stone of earlier dwellings – dwellings which existed, even now, under Rome’s streets. Most Romans, much less tourists, had no idea that so much of the ancient architecture that had shaped this city still stood partially intact below its streets. Trickling through the cavern was an ancient aqueduct, too: the Acqua Vergine, first built by the Roman statesman Marcus Agrippa in 19 bc, had been delivering pure drinking water to the city for over 2,000 years, and scarcely any of the millions of visitors to the impressive Trevi Fountain round the corner knew that it was fed by this very water source. But she did. She loved this city and knew it inside out and underground.
Cesca ran lightly past the narrow stepped alleys – ancient roads that now led to nowhere – for once not looking at the thin, hand-made bricks that had once formed basilicas and stadia but now stood as half-formed arches. Instead, she had her eyes fixed only on her boss’s office. The door was open, as though he’d been waiting for her to arrive.
‘Giovanni, I’m so sorry,’ she panted as soon as she reached it, hanging onto the doorframe and taking off her hat so he could see her eyes, which were wild with apology.
He glanced up at her with the hangdog look of the long-suffering, the expression in his round eyes even sorrier than hers. ‘Francesca. Look at the time. Look,’ he said, stretching out the last word to at least four syllables as he tapped his watch.
‘I know. And I’m so sorry, but it wasn’t my fault. Honestly,’ she said, the words mere disembodied breath as she struggled into the tiny room, wounded and exhausted. ‘Let me pick up the next tour. Who covered for me? I’ll do their shift.’
He shook his head. ‘Fran—’
‘No, scrap that,’ she panted, almost collapsing onto a folding chair. ‘I’ll do two of their shifts to make up for it. It’s only fair.’
‘Is too late, Francesca.’
‘I know and I’m so sorry. But I’m here now. I’ll make it up to you. Tell me how I can help.’
‘You were supposed to be here two hours ago.’
Cesca felt a tremor of anxiety. Giovanni wasn’t usually difficult to placate. Although he’d been married since he was eighteen and loved (and was also quite scared of) his wife, Cesca knew he had a crush on her. It was the hair. She was as rare as an arctic fox around these parts. ‘I know, but you see, my landlady . . . she tripped,’ she said, flipping her hair over her shoulder.
‘For two hours?’ he asked, watching it arc through the air as though in slow motion.
‘Yes, I . . . I had to take her to hospital.’
He looked back at her again. ‘And in all that time, you couldn’t call?’
Cesca smacked her hand to her chest. ‘I couldn’t speak, Giovanni. It was terrible. There was . . . so much blood.’
Giovanni raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘But I suppose she make a fantastic recovery? Just like after the fire?’
Cesca swallowed. ‘Well, that was only a little fire . . .’
‘You said the whole building could have been destroyed.’
‘Could being the operative word. Luckily, I . . . I saw the candle smoking and was able to smother it before it went out of control.’
Poor Signora Dutti: if only she knew how colourfully her life was portrayed on this side of the Via del Corso. The truth was, she was as sturdy as the Pantheon, rarely ever left the square except to go to the market, and the high point of her day was sitting on her chair in the late afternoon with Signora Accardo and watching the tourists go by.
Giovanni sighed. ‘Cesca—’
‘Giovanni, please,’ Cesca cried, panicking now that she appeared to be making no headway. Yes, she’d been pushing her luck for the past few weeks – forgetting to charge her phone or not saying no to that last limoncello were hardly helpful when her nights were already so sabotaged. And yes, perhaps the blog’s growing success meant her mind had been less on her day job than it should have been, but she still needed it. The equation was simple: no tours meant no rent meant no blog. No more Rome Affair. No more Rome.
‘Cesca, it is the third time this month.’
‘I know, but it really wasn’t my fault.’
‘It never is. Your poor landlady has almost died three times in three weeks: the landlady and the scented candle; the landlady and the almost fatal collision with the pizza van; and now the landlady and the . . .’ He arched an eyebrow. ‘How did she trip?’
‘On a geranium.’
‘The landlady and the geranium,’ he repeated in a mono-syllabic tone. ‘I cannot decide if she is the luckiest woman in Roma or the most unlucky.’ He tutted, looking sad. ‘You are one of my best guides. Your history, knowledge? Amazing! And the tourists, they love you. But if you are not here when they are here, it does not matter how good you are. I need someone I can depend on.’
She slapped a hand over her heart. ‘And from now on, I promise, you can depend on me,’ she said, as earnestly as if she was about to launch into ‘God Save the Queen’.
‘Today, Astrid had to do the tour for you.’
‘Astrid?’ Cesca’s hand dropped, indignantly. ‘But she barely even speaks Italian!’
Giovanni arched his eyebrows. ‘I know.’
‘And she always confuses Augustus with Nero.’
‘Exactly. A disaster. But I had no choice. She was the only person available.’
Cesca felt her chest tighten as she realized she’d backed herself into a corner. ‘Okay, look, I’ll be straight with you – I slept through the alarm,’ she said quickly. ‘I don’t sleep that well and—’
‘Cesca, I am sorry. It is the third strike. You know our company policy.’
She swallowed, hardly able to believe this was happening. Third strike? What was this – Borstal? ‘You mean, I’m out?’ she whispered, feeling the blood drain from her flushed face. She had precisely two hundred and eighty-six euros in her bank account. Her rent – due next week – was nine hundred and ninety euros but she’d had eleven tours booked in between now and then. Earning eighty euros per tour, she would have just made it. Dinner, last night – to celebrate Guido’s twenty-fifth birthday – had been factored in to her weekly outgoings for weeks. Oh God, why hadn’t she taken that reward last night? Five thousand euros for returning a bag! She could have been here, sitting pretty. How could she afford to be principled when she couldn’t afford to eat?
‘I don’t suppose it would make any difference if I told you I was almost run over on the way over here?’ she tried.
Giovanni arched an eyebrow that indicated he was done with her stories.
‘Look at my knee!’ she said, rucking up her long skirt and showing him.
‘Cesca, please,’ he pleaded, his eyes drooping like a blood-hound’s. ‘There is nothing more I can do for you.’
‘But you’re the boss!’
‘I know. I am sorry it must end this way.’
He was adamant. She sat there for a moment, trying to think of another way to change things, but she had tried it all: outrageous stories, a frank confession, honesty, pleading, begging . . . What else was there? She had overslept one time too many.
‘Ciao, Francesca,’ Giovanni said, as solemnly as a judge in a black cap. ‘Sonia will settle up with you on the way out.’
Cesca sighed, pulling herself to standing and walking out slowly, her knee beginning to throb. She added in a limp, hoping he’d take pity and call her back, but her rubber soles on the metal walkways were the only sound as she walked out, back towards the light.
Sonia had the envelope all ready as she approached. ‘Sorry, Cesca,’ she grimaced, handing it over.
‘No, it’s my fault. I’ve only got myself to blame,’ Cesca sighed, feeling last night’s exhaustion creep upon her as the adrenaline ebbed away. And she stepped back out into the light to where the shadows were still hard-edged and black, to where the crowds were beginning to gather and the day was already pulling away without her.