Katherine Carlyle Read Free Page A

cigarette between her fingers, her nails a cool chalk-blue. I would tell her what the man said.
My little witch
. We’d look at each other, wide-eyed, expressionless, then burst out laughing. But Dani’s in Puglia with hardly any coverage and she won’t be back for days.
    I shower, then stand in front of the bathroom mirror, brown all over except for a single blinding strip of white. Tilting my head one way then the other, I run a brush through my wet hair. The ends come to level with my hip bones. I really ought to have it cutbut I can’t be bothered to make an appointment, let alone sit in a chair for hours and listen to all the gossip. I remember the time I wound my hair round Adefemi’s wrists.
You’re my prisoner
, I said. He always liked me to keep it long.
    My phone rings in the living room. I put the brush down and lean close to the mirror. My face stares at me, unblinking. I look like someone who’s about to meet her fate.
Are you superstitious?
I smile, then lower my eyes. The good thing about September is you still have a tan. Lipstick and perfume: that’s all you need.
    Once dressed — short skirt, leather jacket, sandals — I check my phone. Four missed calls, three of them from Massimo.
Kit? Kit! Where are you? Call me!
By midnight my arms are round his waist as we race through the warm brown streets, the throaty roar of his Ducati bouncing off the facades of buildings. I rest my chin on his left shoulder and watch the city rush towards me. Massimo’s a prince. Rome’s full of princes. We cut through the Jewish quarter. A man in a white vest sits on a wooden chair. A cigarette in the corner of his mouth, he’s peeling an orange. The smoke unwinds into the air. The opal glitter of a fountain.
    Massimo pulls up outside a club in Testaccio. Two revs of the engine, then he switches it off. Deep bass notes take over. I can already see the dance floor, a crush of sweat-soaked bodies, jittery strobe lighting. Massimo watches me remove my helmet and shake out my hair. “You seem different.”
    A cigarette arcs down from the terrace and lands on the cobbles in a shower of red sparks.
    Later, in the club, we run into people we know, or half-know — Maurizio, Livia, Salvatore. None of us can quite believe the summer’s over; there’s a sense of nostalgia, an undercurrent of despair.Livia thinks we should spend a few days at her mother’s house on Stromboli. Salvatore says Morocco would be warmer. Massimo is already complaining about Milan, where he will soon be studying.
Imagine what the weather will be like up there
. I tell him he won’t even notice. He’ll be too busy going out with models.
    “It’s you I want,” he mutters.
    “I’ve only just split up with Adefemi,” I say. “And anyway, we’re supposed to be friends, aren’t we?”
    “Adefemi.”
Massimo treads on a transparent plastic cup, which cracks loudly beneath his boot.
    “I’ll be off as well before too long,” I say.
    He nods. “Oxford.”
    I’ve won a scholarship to Worcester College, to study Italian and French, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
    “No,” I say, “not Oxford.”
    “Where, then?”
    I don’t answer.
    “You’re impossible.” He lights a cigarette and blows out a thin blade of smoke that blunts itself against the night.
    I move to the railing at the far end of the terrace. The air smells of spinach and wet fur. In June a group of us went dancing not far from here. I remember stone steps vanishing into the river, and a boat moored against the bank, and the water, green and milky. Nineties techno, dry ice. Ketamine. Then I remember a place Adefemi showed me, on a bridge that links Testaccio and Trastevere. If you stop halfway across and lean over the parapet, a draft reaches up to cool your face, even on a stifling August day. I think about all the people in bars and clubs and restaurants, and how I will soon be gone, and how none of it will change. That’sthe thing about Rome. Nothing changes.