I leaned against the door, whispered urgently through it—
‘Anya? Are you ready?’
—and the words I needed to hear floated back.
‘Da. Anya ready.’
I braced myself, opened the door. She stood there before me in all her humongous glory. And it was as bad as I’d feared. No, scrub that. It was worse.
To say a bikini looked wrong on her would be an understatement. It would be like saying a moustache would look wrong on the Mona Lisa. It just doesn’t cut it. There was too little bikini, too much her—it was a simple as that. I won’t even try to describe it except maybe to say it looked like two band-aids stretched round a pumpkin.
But she seemed pleased with it, even seemed pleased with herself. There was a full-length mirror in her room, I knew, and I figured she must have checked herself out before allowing the outside world to see her and, yeah, somehow or other, liked what she saw.
‘It look good, no?’ she beamed.
I swallowed hard, gulped down the words I wanted to say before they could escape and ruin my master plan. ‘Er…yeah, looking really good,’ I lied.
‘Your father like it, maybe?’
‘Very maybe,’ I lied again. ‘He’s downstairs in his study. Why don’t you go and try it out on him?’
‘Okay. You come with me?’
‘No, no! This is your moment, Anya. I wouldn’t dream of intruding. No, I’ll stay here and watch things as they unfold.’
‘Is good idea. I go only.’
She squeezed past me and waddled down the stairs. As she reached his door, she paused to look up at me again—for encouragement, probably. I responded with a good-luck smile and a thumbs-up. She would need both.
She knocked on the door. The tapping on the keyboard stopped, my father calling out irritably.
‘Who is it?’
‘It Anya, professor. I have something showing you.’
‘I’m rather busy right now, Anya. Can’t this wait?’
‘It very important, professor.’
‘All right but make it quick.’
She clicked the door open and stepped in.
You ever had one of those moments when you don’t have to see someone to know what they’re thinking? Yeah, I had one of those then. I guess it started with the stunned silence that roared up the stairs and hit my ears with the force of an explosion. There was nothing. I mean, I’m not just talking about a lack of sound here, I’m talking about an un-sound, a total vacuum of credulity that makes you wonder if there really is any order in the universe. It didn’t last long.
‘Anya!’ —My father.
‘You like?’ —Anya.
‘But—what are you doing?’
‘Anya dress for professor see real me,’ she said innocently. ‘It not enough professor like my apple cake.’
‘But—but—’
‘Maybe professor marriage Anya?’
‘I…that is to say…You…Out of the question, out of the question!’
‘But professor not like Anya, then?’
‘No!—I mean, yes!—I mean—’
‘Then why no marriage Anya? I cook good, I clean good, I wear bikini for professor—what wrong with marriage Anya?’
‘There are hundreds of reasons. My work! My reputation! I’m not divorced yet—that’s it, I’m not divorced yet. I can’t marry anyone until I’m divorced!’
Yeah, that’s how it happened. But as it happened, I noticed something. As my father was speaking, so his voice seemed to be getting louder, and that could mean only one thing: he was edging towards the door, making his escape.
‘But Anya wait for professor get divorced!’ she was saying now. ‘Anya wait years! Anya know you like her.’
‘Madam!’ my father blustered. ‘If I have ever given the impression that I was in any way interested in you, be assured it was entirely unintentional!’
I could see him now, his own portly frame backing out of his study, retreating like an army on the run from a ruthless enemy.
‘But my apple cake! My pasta! You say only Anya cook pasta way you like!’
And she was following him out, a huge bulk of determination that he couldn’t hope to defeat.
‘There’s more to marriage than apple cake and pasta, Anya! There’s love!’
‘Love! Ah, now professor speak Anya’s language. Come let Anya show professor love!’
She lunged for him, I swear she lunged for him. And my father did the only thing he could: he turned and ran. He yanked the front door open with such force, he almost tore it off its hinges. Then he was gone. I slipped off the landing and into my room. The last I saw of him, it was through my bedroom window, him running as fast as his short legs would carry him.
I wanted to laugh but I couldn’t. I mean, the whole plan had worked out even better than I’d expected but I knew what was going to happen next. I just went back out onto the landing to find Anya standing down below and looking bewildered.
‘He not like my bikini,’ she almost wailed. ‘How he not like my bikini?’
‘Men are like that,’ I shrugged as I dropped down the stairs to her. ‘Unpredictable, mostly. Look, you get dressed again and we’ll wait for my father to cool down a little. I’m sure he’ll think differently when he comes back.’
She nodded and heaved herself back upstairs. I watched her go. Yeah, she’d need to be dressed for what was going to happen next. And it did. Like I thought it would. Like I’d planned.
I was standing right beside it when the phone rang. I picked it up after the first ring. It was my father.
‘Elisa? Is that you?’
‘You were expecting Batman?’
‘Elisa, listen! You must tell Anya she has to leave.’
‘Leave!’ I said, affecting all innocence. ‘Why, what has she done?’
‘She…It is of no consequence. Just tell her to leave.’
‘What’s happened? Where are you? I thought you were working in your study.’
‘I am calling from a neighbour’s house. I had to leave in a hurry and did not have time to pick up my mobile. Please, tell her to leave. Tell her to leave NOW!’
‘Well, I will if you like but—Oh, hang on. She’s coming down the stairs. Do you want to tell her yourself?’
‘NO! No, better you tell her.’
I looked up as Anya dropped down off the last stair, didn’t attempt to cover the mouthpiece. ‘It’s my father. He says you have to leave.’
‘You father say I leave?’ she snorted. ‘I already decide I leave. I not stay where I not good for be marriaged.’
‘Marriage!’ I said. ‘My father asked you to marry him!’
‘I did no such thing!’ he shouted down the phone. ‘It was her! SHE wanted to marry ME!’
‘So take her up on it,’ I said. ‘She’s the best you can hope for.’
‘Just tell her to go! Now!’
‘But why? What’s she done?’
‘He not like my bikini,’ Anya interrupted. ‘It look good but he not like it.’
‘Why not? Didn’t it fit him? Why was my father trying on your bikini, anyway?’
‘I WAS NOT!’ he screamed down the phone line. ‘IT WAS HER!’
‘Hey, what you do in your spare time is no business of mine,’ I said. ‘So you want her to leave—right?’
‘IMMEDIATELY!’
‘I think she is, actually,’ I said, and I was probably right. Anya was going back upstairs to her room, probably to pack her few belongings prior to a return to the street. ‘What about severance pay? You can’t just throw her out with nothing.’
‘Anything as long as she leaves!’
‘Okay, you got any cash lying around?’
‘In my study. Look in my desk, second drawer down. You will find a cash box. Give her 200 euros and TELL HER TO LEAVE!’
‘Okay, okay! You want to hang on there or will you call back?’
‘I will call back in ten minutes. Make sure she is gone by then.’
; I hung up and went to his study. The cash was there, just as he’d said, and quite a lot of it. I took 300 for Anya, not the 200 he’d said. I didn’t feel guilty about it: she’d need every cent in the days to come, and I still felt bad about having set her up like this.
I got back to the hall just as she was coming down the stairs again.
‘Anya, this is for you,’ I said, holding it out. She took it without a moment’s hesitation.
‘I go now,’ was all she said, and she left. Just like that. Without a backward glance.
In a way, I was sorry to see her go. She’d been kind enough in her own way, and a good enough cook, but I needed her out of the way, I needed my father’s cosy plans for playing happy families scotched at every corner. And so she walked out of my life. Last I heard, she’d got a job, a proper job at the holding centre in Lampedusa, where desperate immigrants land after the boat crossing from Africa, so I kind of did her a favour, really.
But all that lay in the future. Just then, I had my father to face. And I knew that, in the short ten minutes since his last call, he’d have had the time to do a little thinking and maybe put two and two together. Yeah, I knew what was waiting for me.
Right on cue, the phone started ringing.
TWENTY FOUR
So I was minus a watchdog—sorry, governess. Yeah, I got the third degree: where did Anya get the idea, where did she get the bikini, who went with her to buy it—everything I expected and everything I had an answer for. By the time he’d finished, my father was none the wiser but still no less suspicious. That suited me fine: off balance was how I wanted him, off balance was how I had him.
He should have got someone in to take Anya’s place but he didn’t get the chance to try. I’d timed the attack perfectly, knew he would be too busy preparing stuff to find the time to go out on the streets and find someone new. Preparing what stuff, I hear you ask? I knew the date of the court case where he was hoping to snatch custody away from mum, and I then knew it was on the very Monday following that same Saturday. So yes, he was occupied. And so was I.
I didn’t know what effect I’d had on Judge Giordano but I hoped I’d achieved something. At least he’d listened and seemed concerned, if only less by what I’d said and more by the fact that anyone should be desperate enough to do what I’d done. It was encouraging but I wasn’t leaving it to chance. I’d tucked a few things up my sleeve, a few nasty surprises for my dear father whose only concern was “for my welfare and my future in the country from where I had been so cruelly abducted and where my heart truly belonged.” Yeah, he’d written that in his testimony to the court. Only a fool would believe it, you’d think, and you’d be right. But as Aunt Eliana had warned me, there’s someone else who might: a bribed judge. So no, I wasn’t taking any chances.
So it was that, on the day, we were sitting in the court building, in the very corridor where I’d cornered the judge, and waiting for our case to be called. All the while, my father fidgeted nervously beside me, his sweaty hands clutching hard at a bundle of papers as though they were a life preserver. I thought he should have been more confident than that, and I figured maybe the bikini incident had unnerved him more than he’d let on. I sure as hell hoped so, anyway. I would need all the help I could get with this one.
‘This is just a formality,’ he was saying. ‘You will be required to say nothing and you will say nothing. Understood?’
‘And if I want to say something?’ I asked reasonably.
‘There is nothing of worth you can add to this case, Elisa, so the question is academic.’
‘And if the judge asks me a question?’
‘He will not. Everything he needs to know is all in here.’ He patted his wad of papers, copies of what he’d sent to the court.
‘You seem pretty certain of that,’ I said. ‘What’s in there?’
‘Facts! I am certain they will be enough to persuade the Excellent Judge to grant my request for sole custody over you and eliminate the pernicious influence of your mother once and for all!’
I said nothing. I’d already shot to pieces half his “facts”, and given even the ghost of a chance, I’d do the same with the other half. You might say I was even looking forward to it. Surprises, don’t you just love ’em?
Eventually, we were called in. The courtroom was pretty bare. It had all the court furniture, sure, but there were precious few people. I figured that this was because this wasn’t a high profile case like a bank robbery or a murder, so there wouldn’t exactly be any high drama unfolding for people and Press to drool over. No, there was just me and my father, his lawyer, the judge (who did a double take on me as I entered) and a couple of court officials sitting at a desk in front of and below him. Apart from the usual bored policeman standing guard at the back, there was no one else.
‘So!’ said the judge when we were all seated. ‘An application for custody, made by the father, Dr. Vittorio Pellegrino, over the child, Elisa Cecilia Consuella Pellegrino, aged fourteen years. Does the representing lawyer have anything to add to the documentation already supplied?’
My father’s lawyer, a bespectacled stick insect of a man, stood up.
‘None, my lord,’ he said gravely. ‘All you have before you is all that we consider necessary.’
‘Indeed,’ said the judge, casting a critical glance over it. ‘And a most extraordinary piece of work it is, too. I see the application is made Inaudita altera parte. There is some reason for this?’
‘Expedience, my lord. The danger presented to the child by the mother.’
‘Ah, yes. The mother.’ Judge Giordano shuffled the papers a little, pulled out one sheet in particular. ‘This letter provided by your client—Allegato 4 in his deposition—has its veracity been established?’
‘My lord?’
‘In layman’s terms, Mister Scaleno, is it genuine? I find it hard to believe that any mother would set such intentions down on paper when she must be fully aware that they might be used against her in a court of law. Sexual licence, communes, drug use—a certain recipe for loss of custody in cases such as the very kind your client has brought before me today, do you not think?’
‘I…er…that is, my lord, I…’
‘Perhaps it would be better if your client were to answer for you since you seem entirely at a loss to explain his evidence for him. Dr. Pellegrino, do you have anything to say on this matter?’
Father and lawyer exchanged glances, then the one was sitting down and the other rising.
‘The letter is genuine, my lord,’ my father said forcefully. ‘You have my word of honour as a scientist of international standing.’
‘Your standing I do not doubt. What I doubt is the content of this letter. Tell me, how did it arrive?’
‘My lord?’
‘How did it arrive? Was it posted? Delivered by hand? What?’
‘I apologise, my lord, I begin to understand. It arrived by post, a few days after the date shown on the letter.’
‘Indeed. Do you have the envelope it arrived in?’
‘The—the envelope, my lord?’
‘Yes, Dr. Pellegrino, the envelope. Surely it arrived in one. Such a confidential communication between two parties involved in such a personal dispute must have done so.’
‘I—I did not think to keep it. I did not think it important.’
‘I see. Then describe it to me.’
‘My lord?’
‘The envelope, describe to me the envelope!’
For moment, my father was lost for words, seemed to be groping less for an explanation and more for a way out of this.
‘It was of the normal kind,’ he began uncertainly, ‘little wider than the sheet of paper it contained… in height measuring perhaps a third of the length of the sheet…white in colour…in general nature, the kind one might use in formal business correspondence, I would say…Just that, no more…’
‘Indeed. Then you will be at a loss to explain,’ said the judge, holding up the letter, ‘the com
plete lack of fold marks in the paper, since folded it must have been in order for it to have been conveyed in an envelope such as you describe.’
I snapped round to look at my father. He was rocking back on his heels, thunderstruck. He’d been caught out! He’d been caught out! Methodical to a fault, Aunt Eliana had said of him, but it seemed even he could miss something, something minor but maybe important. In that moment, I knew he could be beaten. In that moment, I knew I had a chance.
‘Do you have an explanation?’ the judge went on.
‘I…that is to say…I must have sent the copy rather than the original—yes, that must be it. I sent the copy rather than the original, for which I indeed apologise. That is the only explanation.’
‘Really?’ The judge turned the letter over and held it up to the light. Theatrically. Like he was making a point. ‘Then you must have a most singular copy machine, Dr. Pellegrino, since it seems to have copied not only the text but also the indentations in the paper of the ballpoint pen used to sign it.’
I glanced up at my father again, enjoying every moment of this. He was standing there rigid, his face scarlet with embarrassment. And he seemed to have nothing to say.
‘Do you have another, perhaps more plausible explanation?’ the judge went on. My father shook his head. ‘Then I have no choice but to declare this letter to be inadmissible in these proceedings. You may sit down.’
My father sat down. Beside him, his lawyer glared furiously at him: what just happened did not reflect too well on him, either. As Eliana had said, it was his job to ensure that every last bit of his client’s testimony was above board, and this letter didn’t even come close to cutting it.
‘Elisa Pellegrino, please stand.’
I snapped round to the voice. ‘Uh…do you mean me?’ I said.