But I am afraid. Of what? Nothing. Everything.
After my walk I go to a little café that I have discovered. It is one of my secrets. I suppose it sounds ridiculous: to have a secret as benign as a place serving coffee and cake. I know he would not like the thought of me coming here. The crockery is a little worn, and not of the best sort; the cakes are served in large, inelegant slabs. They serve doughnuts, too, fat hoops crusted with thick rinds of sugar. It is all, in short, not in the best taste.
I order my doughnut and eat it quickly, furtively, licking the sugar from my fingers. I reach for the book I have brought with me, open it to read, begin to relax.
‘Excuse me, Mrs Truss?’
I look up, and know that it is him, the man who came for me at the apartment. He must have been following me. For how long? Did he wait for me until I left the building, tail me in the park?
‘It’s about your husband,’ he says, in a rush. He is quite young, I realize, and he doesn’t look unkind. But that doesn’t mean anything.
‘Please,’ I say, ‘leave me alone.’ I stand, and try to get past him. He doesn’t move at first so I have to push my way out.
‘Please, Mrs Truss. I want you to hear it from me first. It’s about your husband,’ he repeats. ‘What he was doing in Spain.’
When I hear that, I begin to run. I know that whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it.
When my husband returns, I tell him about it. ‘A man tried to speak to me, twice. He said it was about you.’
‘Oh?’
‘About Spain.’
‘He came after you?’
‘Yes. He followed me in … in the park.’
His face is frightening, though I know his anger is on my behalf. ‘Did you find out where he worked? What newspaper?’
‘No— I just tried to get away from him.’
This is the last time we speak of it. A few days later, my husband asks if I want to go with him this time, back to Italy.
‘Why do you need to go back so soon?’
‘Everything is being set up – it’s a delicate time. But I thought it would be pleasant to get away together, anyway. We can go to Rome.’
‘I haven’t been to Europe since I left.’
‘Even more of a reason, then. It’s time you did.’
We spend two days together in Rome, being driven around the city’s sights by a chauffeur: the Pantheon, the Colosseum. The roads are frenetic, screeching chaos, and it feels sometimes that we are being assaulted on all sides by traffic. Our driver swears, gesticulates. I feel queasy in the back seat, seeing the city slide by behind glass. I suggest to my husband that perhaps we might walk for a day instead, but he tells me that it is a dirty place – I would ruin my shoes – and full of pickpockets and worse.
On the third day, in the Bulgari showroom, he has the shop girl fasten various necklaces around my neck. The one he chooses for me – emerald – is beautiful. It is also the heaviest, and I have to make an effort to keep my head lifted.
‘You know what people will understand,’ he says, ‘when they see you wearing this?’
‘What?’
‘They will know you are loved.’
‘Thank you.’
We are invited to drinks at the American ambassador’s house. My husband suggests that I might wear my new necklace.
I dread the thought of having its weight about my neck for the whole evening. ‘Oh,’ I say, ‘I wanted to save that for something truly special.’
‘I’d like to see you wearing it. You don’t like it? It was the best piece in the shop.’
‘I love it.’
He smiles. ‘Then wear it. For me.’
I expected the drinks to be a turgid affair. Tired from the change in time zones, I have been dreading it. But I meet an interesting woman there.
‘I’ve been admiring your emeralds,’ she says, when we are introduced.
‘Thank you.’
‘Though, I couldn’t help wondering – are they a pain to wear?’
‘It’s not so bad.’
She nods, smiles. She introduces herself: she is Italian, quite elderly. An air of energy, of slight eccentricity.
She begins to tell me about her new project: a small film studio that she had saved from bankruptcy. ‘We are looking to produce the first picture,’ she says. ‘But we need funding for it.’
The director she has attached to it is a good friend. I ask her his name.
‘Giacomo Gaspari.’
‘I saw his film, Elegy.’ There is a European picture house I go to sometimes, to pass the slow hours in the middle of the day. ‘I loved it.’ I did. What I don’t mention is that I had to leave halfway, because the bombed city had suddenly become Madrid, and the grief had become my own.