Globusz^® Publishing 

Some fresh air would do him good. He opened the window overlooking Kensington Gardens. It was nice here—he’d never been able to make out why Marion didn’t like the flat. A tiny living room, two tiny bedrooms, and a garret, but full of character. And Orme Court was a prestigious address, too, even though the day he’d rented the place the garret gave him the impression that one would either write a bestseller inside it or go bankrupt. Well, he hadn’t even tried to write a bestseller, nor had he gone bankrupt, but was left tragically alone. Sure—alone. Better a chat with a spaniel than with Papà.

It was half past six and a bit nippy. Yesterday seemed a week ago: it happened every time after a sleepless night. If he wasn’t such a wet, if he didn’t cling stubbornly to the idea that he couldn’t live alone, he might even admit he wasn’t at bottom so fond of Marion. After all, meeting that Italian girl Paola bore him up in spite of the divorce petition, didn’t it? God almighty, cut the crap—he’d hoped he could date her, and what did she do?

He shut the window, and threw himself onto the couch. An espresso would be nice, but not if after that he couldn’t have a cigarette...Was it really necessary for him to go through this ordeal? Why? To live a little longer? As if he cared. Bullshit, he’d already had five if not six instant black coffees—so, he could make himself an espresso, then enjoy a cigarette, then another one, until the heartburn would be unbearable.

He checked the time again—at least two hours before he must make a move for the office. The work wasn’t so bad: it might take his mind off all his nasty thoughts. What had Papà told him? Maybe he was dead right: this constant moaning was a pointless exercise. Uncle Ugo, too, kept saying, Rudy, buck up: life is not so miserable. Oh no. Not Uncle Ugo again, not Geremia, not now...

***

So Geremia passes by the Town Hall every day, doesn’t he? Yes. D’you think he’ll be on horseback? Geremia is always on horseback. Are they friendly with him here? No. Don’t they like him? It isn’t a question of liking him or not. What is it, then? He doesn’t mix with anybody. Why? Ask him: maybe he’ll tell you. D’you know why he came here? No. Any idea? Only idle gossip. Tell me, please. They say he was a quack who killed more people than he saved. But is he a kind bloke? He greets everybody. What do they think of him? Can’t say anything about the others: I think he’s an educated man. How can you say? From his voice. How many horses has he got? About twenty. How does he earn his living? He does no paid work. He doesn’t beg, surely? That’s right. But how can he keep twenty horses? Rumour has it he’s stinking rich—has got a lot of money hidden in the loft of the factory. What do they feel about having twenty horses around? Rignano is not a horsey town. Don’t they ever feel a pang of nostalgia for a world that doesn’t exist any more? D’you mean a world populated with horses? Yes. Apart from myself, nobody feels any nostalgia here. D’you know why? It reminds them of when they could barely afford a donkey ride. And the children—I imagine they like horses, don’t they? The children are afraid of Geremia. Is he rude to them? Nope. Why then? Haven’t got a clue.

***

Except for Pasquale, the retired blacksmith, nobody in Rignano would answer his questions about Geremia, nobody else was prepared to speak or listen to him that bloody morning of September 1989. And when he’d ventured to suggest that Geremia’s real name might be Ugo Sammarco, they looked at him as if he were talking heresy.

He’d gone there on his twenty-ninth birthday to see him, hoping to find out what had happened fourteen years earlier. Mamma would never have said anything after that day, and he asked nothing although he sensed there should be some serious reason behind Uncle Ugo’s sudden disappearance from their lives. Then he overheard Mamma speaking to a friend on the telephone, and learning that Uncle Ugo had given up his practice and his name was no longer on the Rome medical register, assumed he’d settled somewhere in Africa. It was a feeling, no more than that, but not an unfounded one. Uncle Ugo ached for the poor, and had already worked in Africa—used to say how happy he’d be if he could work in a have-not country again.

But Papà had always known better, and fourteen years later showed him the photograph in La Domenica del Corriere of a bearded man whose smile, forehead and steady gaze bore a vague resemblance to Uncle Ugo’s. The caption mentioned Geremia, the weird herdsman in the Alto Lazio, who lived like a tramp and kept a haras of horses in the park of a dismantled factory off Rignano Flaminio, twenty-four miles north of Rome.

***

You recognize him, Rudy, don’t you? I don’t think it’s him, Papà. Of course it’s him. How can you be so sure? He’s my brother. I still don’t think it’s him. He hated me. Mamma never told me anything like that. Of course she did not tell you: they were lovers. I never had any evidence they were. Don’t be silly, son: he was her lover, and left her in a mess. What are you talking about? He went round the bend and your mother remained penniless: that was why she sent you back to me, knowing I’d be happy to have you, although in those years I was down on my luck. I thought she remained penniless because Grandpa died. No, sonny boy, because my well-off brother decided to become a herdsman.

***

It had never crossed his mind that Uncle Ugo could ever choose to be a buttero, even less a tramp. He remembered him speaking about the lives of cowboys in America, about the maremma cowboy too, without ever hinting at horse-breeding as a nice activity to contemplate for himself. It had been his idea, though, to send him to the Farnesina, and he also footed the bill for its riding tuition fees. So, it should have been easy to imagine he might enjoy a life with animals in the countryside. Didn’t he once say that he’d read veterinary if his father hadn’t forced him to go to med school?

***

Tell me, Sor Pasquale, does Geremia treat his horses himself when they fall ill? I should think so. So you don’t know that for sure? No. And why d’you think he does? I believe he’s a quack. Would the pharmacist tell me if Geremia gets the medicine for his horses from him? Doubt it. Why? Geremia never goes to the pharmacist: it’s the one who started the quack rumour. Tell me, why d’you believe Geremia is a quack? Once—he’d just come here—he examined for wounds on a boy who’d been run down by a motorbike: he did it like a master doctor. So might not Geremia be a doctor rather than a quack? Sometimes even a quack happens to be good.

***

Like a master doctor, were the cobbler’s words. So Geremia and Uncle Ugo were the same person. The long white beard in the photograph could have been deceptive: the face belonged to a much older man than the one he’d known so well. But indirectly, Pasquale the old cobbler had given him the proof that Geremia was a physician. A bloody good physician, not a bloody good quack.

The passers-by stared at him, indiscreetly. He couldn’t stand their stares, he couldn’t stand the wait in front of the Town Hall. He could only hope Uncle Ugo would turn up and recognize him—and let him talk. There were many questions he longed to ask.

Why didn’t you attend Mamma’s funeral if you were twenty-four miles away from Rome? Didn’t you know Mamma had killed herself? Hadn’t you read the news of her suicide in one of the Rome dailies? Only you can tell if you loved Mamma, and if Mamma loved you. And if you loved each other, why did you leave her, why didn’t you offer to share your simple life with her? Mamma was a good painter, you knew that, didn’t you? Her paintings didn’t sell, naturalism was out of fashion, but as a naturalist painter she’d have enjoyed the countryside. And the horses. And their impatient pawing and neighing.

He too would enjoy a horsey life in the countryside, even though Rignano didn’t look the right place for that. How could Uncle Ugo, or Mamma for that matter if she were alive and with him, reconcile the quest for rural genuineness with living so close to this place? There was neither a library nor a bookshop in town, the newsagents stocked none of the quality magazines, but the shops sold off-the-peg designer clothes and the dearest shoes. The young smelled of expensive but synthetic perfumes and drove Alfa Romeos, Mercedes, and Land-Rovers. Yet they spoke neither standard Italian nor their local dialect—just a unique, ungrammatical mixture of the two. And the old...what about the old who looked like nineteenth-century shepherds of the sort the steward used to catch in the act of sheep buggery? They drove the same cars as the young, and sported golden rings and wristwatches, and talked loudly about their last holiday in the United States, saying: The Americans are stupid but America is beautiful.

A penetrating recorded sound from the church tolled the hour—five o’clock. At the last stroke, he heard the hard hoofs of more than one horse hitting the pavé. He turned round...here he was, Geremia on horseback, leading a colt on his right, coming down the High Street towards him. Sure, it was him. White-hair, an unkempt long beard, a tattered sweatshirt, shabby jodhpurs, muddy boots. Changed out of all recognition but he could still tell it was Uncle Ugo. The straight, high brow, the permanent smile on his face, the slight stoop with the right shoulder lower than the left.

Uncle Ugo, too, should recognize him. He was not even fifteen when they last met, but wasn’t his face very much like Mamma’s? Didn’t everybody say he looked like her in man’s clothes? Didn’t he look a Somali? And wasn’t he as tall at fifteen as he was now? Wouldn’t he be the first Somali-looking guy to say ciao to him in Rignano? Wouldn’t he be the first to call him Uncle Ugo?

He’d talk to him—to tell him that no matter what happened between him and Mamma, he’d always be fond of him. He’d never forget. He wouldn’t have learned to write Italian, wouldn’t be able to study in an Italian middle school if his Uncle Ugo hadn’t stiffened his resolve to do it. Only to him he’d found the courage to confess his fears—fears of the Italian boys who’d abuse him for the colour of his skin, dubbing him the son of a Somali rescued from prostitution by an Italian cuckold, challenging him to one fist-fight after another.

The two horses were a few yards away from him. He looked at them, a big bay and a chestnut. He looked at Uncle Ugo. Their eyes met. No, he wouldn’t call him Uncle Ugo—nobody knew him as Ugo here, did they?

Geremiaaa...

Geremia reined the horses back, and seemed to be peering into his face, then smiled at him—a joyful smile. But he didn’t return his uncle’s smile, he turned and walked off. All of a sudden, his thoughts had gone back to Mamma’s miserable life, and to her dead body found in the bathroom twenty-four hours after she’d slashed her wrists.

***

As he reached the bottom of the stairs he wondered how many men in frock coats had in the past looked at themselves in the large mirror above the gilded console table in the hall. Quite a few, certainly. The house used to belong to a very rich Jewish family. At the time it was considered to be on the ‘wrong side of the park’, but they were gentlemen and ladies of leisure all the same, and precisely because neither of them had done a day’s work all their lives, they finished up stony broke and had to sell it to the grandfather of the present owners.

He stopped and glanced around. Not bad at all. The house had been converted into a block of flats, but decently—to be sure, the entrance had not been extensively refurbished. He took a long view of himself in the mirror. Not too bad. Of course his three-button single-breasted grey suit couldn’t compete with a frock coat and wing collars. Even so, he might at least compare favourably with Gordon, whose clothes seemed ill-fitting and his ties always strangely coloured. Yep, if it weren’t for his black or almost black skin.

The time had come for him to avoid the same sad reflection on his skin every morning. It wasn’t so simple, though, was it? The fact that Grandpa had been a patrician colonial administrator seemed to count much less that Nana had been his indigenous concubine. At least in Marion’s eyes. At least now. She seemed attracted to him. Then life taught her that the City was at odds with multi-ethnic Britain, and that a mulatto husband did not help. Pity she was cheap and second-rate, a would-be upstart.

The postman hadn’t come yet—it was only ten past eight. Well, it’d be nice to get to the office earlier than usual. He opened the front door. His Morris Minor was the only car parked in the private yard. He walked to it, and found all four tyres flat. He looked more closely. Fuck, they’d been slashed...somebody must have done it overnight.

***

So the girl was Paola. He’d got it right from the visitor-form his assistant had put on his desk. The same name, the same age. At Gordon’s he’d thought her a bit younger, but it was always tricky to tell whether a glamour girl was twenty-three or twenty-eight. Had she come for advice knowing he was the Centre’s chief adviser? Well, she might first have turned to Gordon: it wouldn’t be the first time Gordon had told a bird with a legal problem and no money for a solicitor: Go and see Rudy at his Earls Court office.

***

“You’re beautifully clad.”

“I must apologize for the other day.”

“It’s quite all right. What can I do for you?”

She looked away, blushing. “I’m in a mess—have been harassed by a man for seven months. Somehow he got Gordon’s number and rang me up there saying he’d gatecrash the party to make a scene if I didn’t come down straightaway. As soon as I did, he slapped me across the face. Yesterday I met him by chance off Earls Court Station—I live around here. He slapped me again.”

“Oh dear. I’m sorry. You know who he is, surely?”

“The passers-by were astonished but didn’t intervene. Is there anything we could do to prevent him doing it again? He’s a psychopath.”

“A psychopath...yes, but we’d be better off if we knew who he is.”

“My former partner. He’s a psychopath.”

She seemed rather agitated. He noticed once more that although she wore no make-up, she was immaculately dressed in a velour black top and skirt, with stylish striped stockings and ankle boots.

“You see, Rudy, he lives in Cambridge, but comes to London regularly to stalk me—and sends me daily messages either to abuse and threaten me or to pester me with his persistent requests for a reconciliation.”

“Has he been violent on other occasions?”

She looked embarrassed. “Oh yes, when we lived together.”

“And you’d never sought legal advice before, had you?”

“When I was with him I had to call the police twice. Once he’d given me a black eye.”

“Oh my God...And what did the police do?”

“Nothing. I decided against prosecuting him.”

“Didn’t they even give him a warning?”

“I doubt it. He can be very charming. Can also make an argument appear very rational—a sort of logic resting on false premises. What could I do to stop him short of sending him to prison?”

“Even now you don’t want to prosecute him, do you?”

She kept silent for a few seconds. “Only as a last resort. All in all, I’d rather not.”

“What’s the matter, d’you still love him?”

“Good Lord, no. I despise him—a despicable man capable of the most despicable behaviour.”

“Then why don’t you want to prosecute him?”

“It’s a long story.”

“You’d better tell me.”

She stood up. “Another time. It’s too long.”

He, too, got up. “As you like: I am here.”

She looked him in the eyes. “And as well as that, I take it that you couldn’t do much unless I were prepared to prosecute.”

“It’s not like that. It’s that I cannot help if you first don’t give me the details.”

“I’ve told you—it’s a long story.”

“Doesn’t matter. I am a good listener.”

She sat down. “I’m dying for a cigarette: would you mind terribly if I had one?”

***

Harry Calnan, his name is. He’s thirty-five. Calls himself a computer artist: software consultant would be a better description. Mind you, he’s very good at his work, or so I think, judging from his success with the colleges. You see, he freelances for a few of them—program writing and consultancy, that kind of thing. That’s why he lives in Cambridge. Heron Villa, Carlyle Road...No, he isn’t English. He’s an Australian, born in Adelaide. And I was immediately keen on him because I’d just started an MA in Australian studies at King’s.

I met him outside Holborn Station in November 2002. I asked him if he could tell me the way to Cambridge Circus. He said he was going there, too—I could walk with him. I found him very kind, but in retrospect can now say he was rather inquisitive, shooting one question after the other. Where I came from, what I did in London, why was I doing Australian studies. Whether I liked England and planned to settle here or go back to Italy. Whether I’d like to go to Australia. Which job I’d do once my course was over.

When we reached Cambridge Circus, he gave me his card, saying: Now that you’ve seen Cambridge Circus, you must see the city—here’s my address, come and see me in Cambridge and I’ll show you around. I said I didn’t know if I could make it. He replied: I’ll be waiting for you by the entrance to St John’s College next Saturday from twelve to half past.

As I said, at the time he struck me as a very kind man, also found him quite handsome. Six foot tall or so, slender, grey-green eyes, mousy hair—you know, the colour we in Italy call biondo inglese. In sum I liked him. So, before we said goodbye to each other, I’d already decided I’d go on Saturday.

But let me put you in the picture, tell you something about myself. I am from Arezzo. My father, the son of a Revenue Guard warrant officer who made some money when a small piece of land he’d inherited was declared a building area, is a pharmacist running his own store. My mother, a Neapolitan of the petite bourgeoisie, the daughter of two local government employees, works with him, taking care of perfumes and cosmetics and giving skin treatment advice as if she were an expert. They’ve become a pretty prosperous couple, of the newly enriched Italian type—that is, down-to-earth but unspeakably insipid and prosaic. Both of them have fuddy-duddy ideas about everything, and true to form are great admirers of Berlusconi and his media empire. If everybody were like them, no theatre, auditorium, exhibition hall, art gallery or museum would exist anywhere. Both of them are extremely self-conscious about their appearance, but fall into the sixty-three per cent of Italians who haven’t read a book in years. You know, the sort of people who spend their Sundays driving out of town for a huge meal in a trattoria di campagna and their evenings watching TV shows and soap operas.

Haven’t I told you? I read modern languages in Florence, specializing in English literature. My parents would rather I did pharmacy, but although the idea that the young should do a subject they enjoy is alien to them, they maintained me at university all the same, and even bought me a Punto and gave me plenty of money for my clothes. At the end, when I got my degree cum laude, they seemed quite happy. Their attitude changed, though, when I told them I intended to do an MA in Australian studies at King’s College London.

I was very keen on Australia. And on Australian movies and fiction. I was fascinated by this beautiful country that I’d only seen on the screen. I was fascinated by its history, by the way the children of men brought to a penal colony as convicts developed a large economy and created an outstanding art and culture. And I wanted to find out through what exploitation processes they’d achieved that goal. These things, however, meant nothing to my parents—they would have never supported me as a student in Australia. So I chose King’s College London as a second best. My parents gave in, but reluctantly, and since in their view a specialization in Australian studies was useless, they thought I was inconsiderately wasting my time and the family money.

I did go to the appointment with Harry in Cambridge, and stayed. When my parents learned I’d dropped out of King’s to live with an Australian, my mother caught the first flight to Heathrow and turned up at Heron Villa, unexpectedly. She tried to talk me into leaving him. As I wouldn’t budge an inch, we had a horrible, disgusting row. She called me a degenerate daughter—the mistress of a corrupt, unscrupulous, uncivilized nobody. Eventually, I asked her to leave.

Before long, however, my life with Harry turned into a nightmare. He began to tap the telephone, and in no time was also forever monitoring the emails I received and sent, hiding the letters I had from Italy, shadowing me wherever I went. He seized my Italian address book because it contained the phone numbers of my male friends. He abused me every time I spoke Italian on the telephone. He would even wake me in the dead of night to question me about the men I’d done it with. No answer would satisfy his morbid curiosity—he wanted every detail of my past, often enough slapping my face hard or twisting my wrist if I fell into some contradictions. Twice, as I told you, I called the police, but all the other times I did nothing. I just took the blows and swallowed the insults.

You’ll be wondering why I didn’t leave him. OK, I wanted him desperately: it was an obsession I could not control. But there were other reasons as well. To start with, he gave me something I’d had with my family and once I’d become estranged from them I had lost: financial security. You see, Rudy, I’d never had any financial worries about my future. In Italy families keep their children even until they’re in their mid-thirties. I knew that with a degree in the humanities it would be difficult to get a job, and therefore was also prepared to work for free or do research as long as I enjoyed it, for my parents would have supported me anyway. But now that I could no longer rely on them I had nobody except Harry to turn to for help. True, I worked in Cambridge, but as a freelancer earning very little from Italian translations paid with a delay of three if not four or five months. So, I feared that without Harry I wouldn’t be able to make a living.

Also, I felt—wrongly—that he did love me, that in his heart of hearts he cared for me dearly. No doubt his abusive, violent behaviour stemmed from the jealousy of a deranged mind, but I reckoned it was his only way of living his passion for me, and as a result felt unwilling to make things worst for him by depriving him of my presence. In other words, I realized he was insane: what I did not realize was that I, too, had started retreating into a world of delusion and fear.

Then on a Saturday afternoon, while we were strolling on the lawn of St John’s, he made me suddenly conscious by one of his blows that I’d been losing all sense of perspective. I’d stumbled over a wounded bird, and as I bent over to see if I could do anything for it, I felt a sharp kick on the backside. We’d been talking about his work. We hadn’t quarrelled. We’d made love just after lunch. And now he kicked me on the backside. I turned around, with tears in my eyes. And spotted an expression of hatred on his face.

He apologized: he loved me, he couldn’t tell why he’d done that. I forced myself to smile, saying don’t worry. Called him darling, too. But enough was enough, I had made a decision. I waited for the payment in respect of a large translation project I’d filed months before, and on a Friday morning, knowing he’d be working at the university computer all day, packed up and left for London. I checked in at a cheap hotel. On Sunday I’d already found a small apartment in Earls Court. It was September 2004. I had only eighteen hundred pounds.

It was nice to be alone, not to see him, not to be humiliated. I loved London all the more as my idea of Australian bliss, thanks to that psychopath, had come to an abrupt end. Unfortunately, getting translation assignments proved so hard that after eight months of baked beans on toast I had to claim Income Support under the rule allowing an applicant to work less than sixteen hours per week. Nonetheless, the last thing I considered was making up with my parents, which would mean to throw myself on the mercy of two affectionate but insensitive critics.

My peaceful days lasted until August last year. One morning, unpredictably, I heard a voice calling me amore. It was him standing by the entrance to Holborn Tube Station. He must have thought that sooner or later I’d go back to the place where we’d first met. I turned to face him, then ran away. He shouted: Is it your mum who advised you not to speak to me?

Since then he’s been stalking me two to four days per week. I’ve found him before me everywhere. By the front door of the place where I have lodgings. In the tube and at the tube stations I stepped into. At the cafés where I had a bite to eat. At bookshops and libraries. By the houses of the friends I visited. The two times I told you about were two isolated incidents, otherwise he’s never touched me. But as well as shadowing me repeatedly, he leaves messages on my answering machine and writes me either a letter or an email every day. Sometimes he begs me to forgive him. At others he abuses me, calling me a prize bitch, a whore or a nymphomaniac, and often also sends me pornographic stuff as file attachments.

***

“Don’t’ despair,” he said, “the law is on your side: there are a number of routes to getting its protection. We only have to choose the one tailored to your needs.”

She smiled. “I knew I wasn’t the first victim. It was Seneca, wasn’t it, who said there is no crime without a precedent.”

“Good, very good...By the way, have you ever thought of changing your phone number and email address?”

“Wouldn’t solve anything. To stop him calling and emailing me I’d also have to stop working.”

“Right, I got it.” That shit must have hacked into at least one of her clients’ computers—and so she couldn’t notify any of them of her new number and email address, for he’d sure hack their database again. Rudy studied her. Why didn’t she feel like getting the police involved? Had she been completely sincere in her account? “There is something you haven’t told me. You’ve agreed to talk to him on the telephone, haven’t you?”

Her cheeks flushed red. “On some occasions he rang me up when I was at other people’s places. I still haven’t the faintest idea how he got their numbers—certainly not from me. But you see, if I’d refused to take the call, you could bet he’d come up to humiliate me in front of everybody.”

He meant at her place—she’d talked to that shit from there, hadn’t she? Perhaps just a few words to tell him not to bother her. Well, apparently she at least hadn’t replied to his letters or emails. “What evidence d’you have? For example, have you kept a log of his calls?”

“Yes, I have. And I’ve got the tapes of his messages and copies of all his letters and emails, although the emails were sent from several addresses.”

There’d be no point in asking her whether she knew where the calls came from. The last caller withheld their number was the 1471 message she must have got each time, surely. “Which one’s your telephone company?”

“BT.”

“They’ll trace all future calls, but the police must authorize the trace.”

She shook her head.

“All right.” Rudy smiled again. That shit had committed quite a few offences. Harassing and pestering. Making malicious calls— another nasty form of harassment. Causing actual bodily harm—that was what the slaps he’d given her amounted to in law. And yet it looked as though she believed she could wrestle the tiger to the ground with her bare hands. “All his offences are covered by several statutes,” he went on. “Since you’ve lived with him in the same house for a while, you enjoy the same protection as a wife under the Family Law Act. So we can apply to the court for a non-molestation order.”

“But should I first report him to the police in this case?”

“Hang on. The quick answer is no, but let me finish.” Rudy paused. The order would prohibit the using or threatening of violence as well as harassment and pestering. It was a pretty neat injunction by itself, but it would be all the more effective with a power of arrest attached to it. Would she be agreeable to that? “It’d be up to you to bring in the police in the event he breached the order. Would that suit you? I don’t think I’ve got to remind you of the old proverb: ‘Law cannot persuade where it cannot punish.’”

She seemed puzzled.

“Look,” he continued, “everybody’s got a right not to be abused. You’ve been physically attacked twice as well as harassed for months. That’s why the court will be inclined to grant an emergency injunction with a power of arrest. You’ll be given a police phone number to call in case he still harasses, intimidates, threatens or attacks you. Only if he does any of those things, and you report the incidents to them, will they arrest him.”

Paola stared at him with a confused expression. “In this event they’ll deport him to Australia,” she said sotto voce.

“No, they won’t.” How could he trust her if he wasn’t sure of her intentions? Ninety per cent she’d masked her feelings: was her story a fabrication? “Bear in mind, though, that the court will first make a short-term order and set a date for a hearing at which the guy has the chance of giving his own version of the story.”

“How long, if arrested, would he stay in prison?”

“No longer than twenty-four hours.” He wondered if he’d made the procedure quite clear: power of arrest wasn’t a jail sentence. “He’d be taken before a magistrate the same or the following day. Then it’s for the court to give him a jail sentence or a fine or both. In my experience very few men breach these injunctions, and I am reasonably confident that if he did he wouldn’t stalk and harass you after either receiving a suspended sentence, or worse, serving a prison term. But of course that cannot be ruled out—you know, everything is possible, and I must warn you that round-the-clock police protection isn’t available.”

“I still have reservations, don’t know what to say. Incidentally, would you be my lawyer?”

“Yes, I can represent you all along, but we must prepare ourselves well for the proper hearing if you decide to go ahead.”

She was silent.

“Think it over,” he said, “ and let me know your decision when you’re ready.”

“Can I give you a ring tomorrow?”

“Of course.” Tomorrow, however, he wouldn’t be here all day. He wrote his home number and email address on his business card, and handed it to her. “If you make up your mind to take action, please ring me at my home number tomorrow evening from seven to half past.”

“Sure. I’ll make a point of calling you whatever I decide.” She stood up.

He, too, stood up, looking her in the eyes. What would it be like to kiss her? She grinned, tossing back her head as she’d done at Gordon’s when he told her: Sei molto bella, as if she’d read his thoughts.

As he was showing her outside, he said, “Just a friendly piece of advice, Paola. Never talk to him from now on. Never reply to his calls. Never look at him if you see him in the street. If you do, he’ll think that perseverance pays.” Compulsively, he took her hand with both his own and kissed it.

After she was gone, it came to him he’d behaved the way Papà did with all women, whether married or unmarried.