Wearing only a worn, almost translucent white cotton singlet and grey underwear, Lucia peered through the sheer curtain covering the window.
Her heart stopped.
It took a moment for her to process the mass of chaos, confusion and jostling bodies below. Her stomach lurched, and a cold sweat broke out along her spine. Her legs started to shake, and she felt an instinctive need to run. Escape. But she was trapped within her four walls.
It washerbuilding that was of such interest. The faces and bodies, and devices – all the phones and cameras – were pointed up at her apartment window.
The night of the accident came flooding back, as did the headlines from the tenth-anniversary surveillance scandal. Her space, Calle del Leone, had been invaded once again.
Lucia retreated with trembling hands, and Foscari, his fur standing on end, now took to barking.
She reached for her phone and called Francesco. It rang out. Voicemail. She tried again, but to no avail. Over and over she called, and the same voicemail greeting met her ears. She even tried to call Mariella. But again, nothing but a voicemail.
Then something suddenly overtook Lucia. An invisible force, an energy of sorts. It filled her with a fury so hot that it felt like the veins down her neck, across her chest, and down to the tips of her fingers dilated and rose to the surface of her clammy skin.
She whipped her silken dressing-gown from her wardrobe, tossed it over her shoulders, and threaded her arms through the sleeves as quickly as she could.
‘Stay here!’ she called to Foscari, who cowered when he saw the warning hand she raised in his direction.
Lucia ran from her apartment, down the stairs, through the second floor, and eventually into the school below. Throwing open the front door, she was met with a barrage of piercing white lights. Blinding. Paralysing.
Click. Click.
Flash.
L’Orfana!
The whirring sirens that had become the eternal soundtrack to her memories returned, growing louder and more torturous. They filled the space in her mind, in her heart, and forced her to grab the doorframe for support.
Lucia! Lucia!
Vuoi trovare l’amore?
The way the rain had pelted down on them all on thefondamenta. Soaking them to the skin, slashing at her future, removing the two most important people from her life.
San Valentino . . .
Mamma, Papà . . .
Click.
Flash.
And suddenly, black began to close in on Lucia’s vision while the sounds faded to silence, and her body crumpled to the floorboards.
Francesco hadn’t checked his phone when he woke up. On Sundays, he tended to leave all notifications until after he had consumed his first coffee of the day; and today, of all days, was no exception: he had left it on silent on his nightstand.
At around eleven, when he finally picked it up, he had to look twice.
Notifications. Literally thousands of them.
His eyes scanned the list. The vast majority were from Instagram. Likes. Comments. DMs. Follows. Shares. Tags.
His stomach suddenly felt like a hollow cavern, a pit of dread that plunged away to nothing.
Surely I didn’t . . .
Flicking through the list he found half-a-dozen missed calls from Lucia, and also Mariella. The most recent had only been a few minutes ago.
