There was danger in feeling for someone what he’d made her feel. There was an inherent risk in befriending anyone. It was the reason she’d steadfastly avoided gettingclose to anyone, male or female.
It was why she moved around. Why until meeting Melania she had refused to even take a proper job.
And it was why she knew she had made the right decision.
And why she realized she’d lost complete sight of her sanity for a moment. She’d actually wanted him to tell her that she mattered more to him than sex.
She’d wanted him to say that he thought she was special and that she mattered to him.
Kate sipped her tea and focused her eyes on the white linen that fluttered in the pre-dawn breeze.
Benedetto might have thought her apartment wanting, but Kate was comforted by its familiarity.
When she’d dreamed of moving to Italy, this is what she’d seen. Rustic, down-at-heel, charming terracotta buildings with clothes strung from window to window, neighbours who cooked one another meals, elderly women who still dressed to the nines for their evening promenade and young men who returned toNonnaevery Sunday for family lunch.
This was the Italia she’d craved.
When had she first decided she would live here?
Her lips lifted into a wistful smile. She’d been young. Not even ten. Augustine (even then, that had been how she’d thought of him) had needed to work late, and unable to find a babysitter on short notice, he’d brought her with him to the intimidating chambers at the courthouse. His business was private. She remembered the procession of well-dressed men moving into his office, each one with a different coloured bow tie or a particularly impressively brushed comb over. But her eyes had drifted to a magazine left curled up and wedged in the seat opposite. When she’d finally dared to cross the tiled floors and wrap her fingers around it, the meeting had finished. Her heart had begun to race for the illicit discovery and she’d crushed it beneath her clothes, tucking it into her underpants. It was only a flimsy thing, so she was easily able to disguise it beneath the jumper she’d worn that night.
She kept it hidden as she’d brushed her teeth, but she’d known it was there and that fact alone had brought the ghost of a smile to her face.
Augustine wouldn’t have approved.
She was only allowed to have books, and even then, only books that he’d selected.
No daughter of mine is going to have her head filled with the dross and idiocy of popular culture.
Katherine had curled up in bed like a conch shell, her slender body almost doubled in two, as she slowly turned the pages.
It was a travel brochure, and not a magazine, but it was from a proper agency so it was thick and glossy and loaded with pictures. She’d studied them all. Photographs of little terracotta pots stuffed with vibrant geraniums, tables set with white linen and lavender, heavy with pizza and wine; artful shots of Vespas parked against a dilapidated brick wall; the sun cresting over Brunelleschi’s Duomo, bathing the sentinel of Florence in gold.
She had traced the outlines of famous statues and fantasised about a time when she could inject herself into the pictures. When she could climb the steps of the Duomo herself, tour the Vatican and stroll the galleries of the Ufizzi. When she could take her first tentative step into agondolaand marvel at Venice from its best angle.
That travel magazine became a beacon to a young Katherine.
Three years later, when Augustine laid his first blow against her flesh, she still had the magazine hidden in the bottom of her drawer. It was the magazine that she stared at while she waited for the pain to subside.
It was the magazine she thought of now, when she looked outside of her window and saw the tumbling geraniums, drying laundry and Italians going about their days.
She had walked out of her life – her foul, painful life – and into this one! It was serendipity indeed that she had found the magazine. It had offered her an escape before she’d even known she would need one.
Her tea was hot; she sipped it gratefully and continued to stare at the pre-dawn sky. Had there ever been a time when she’d felt safe?
Augustine had been a strict father. Some of her earliest memories involved Punishments, though usually that had come in the form of a blistering rage that had seen spittle-laden invectives rain down upon her head; or in the alienation of any attention, praise and affection, until she’d proven herself sufficiently apologetic and remorseful.
When he’d become violent, she hadn’t really been surprised. She’d felt the same flinches of fear for a long time beforehand, as if she’d been bracing for something that sheinstinctively knew was coming.
But something had changed around the time she turned twelve. He had lost control completely. She had become an expert at reading his moods, and at remaining as silent and submissive as possible to escape his rages.
Often times though it was out of her control. Even the slightest perceived wrong could end in Punishment. Kate remembered the time he’d accused her of forgetting to pass on an important phone message. She’d written it on a note, and placed it in the middle of his desk, but he insisted she should have told him herself. He’d thrown her against the railing until she was doubled over and then he’d kicked her legs – high up enough that any bruising would be hidden by her school uniform – but he’d kicked her until she’d almost passed out from the pain.
How he’d never done worse than sprain one of her bones was almost a miracle, surely.
Kate set her tea aside and stood up. The memories had brought pain to her. She ran her hands over her stomach, as if to assure herself that she was fine now. She had escaped. She had disappeared into thin air and he could never hurt her again.
She just had to be careful. And getting involved with someone like Benedetto was foolish and impulsive and most definitelynotcareful.
