Saving Francesca Read Free Page B

looking at us both. “But my mother went for Anna Carina.”
    I don’t know how to react to this piece of trivia, so I smile politely.
    “Were your parents Trotsky fans?” William Trombal asks, not at all perturbed by her rambling.
    I wait for her to correct him but she doesn’t. He might think he’s the king of Latin translation, but he knows nothing about Russian literary history.
    “Do you want some advice, Francis Francesca?” he asks me.
    It’s kind of one of those rhetorical things, because I can already tell he’s going to give it to me.
    He sighs and sits on the corner of the desk in an attempt to be as accessible as possible.
    “Try to keep low-key. If you make a fuss, the guys aren’t going to like it. There’s going to be a shitload of stuff around here—sorry, Ms. Quinn—that you’re not going to like, and being vocal about it will give you a rep you don’t want.”
    I nod as if it’s the best advice I’ve ever received. “I’ll pass that on to the—”
    Before I can finish, he turns away and sits down, his back to me, as if I was never there. I stare at the back of his head. There’s something about it that makes me want to commit a violent act with a blunt instrument.
    “It’s Tolstoy, by the way,” I say as I open the door.
    He turns around. “What?”
    Shut up, I tell myself . Shut up.
    “The writer of Anna Karenina . Not Trotsky. Trotsky was a revolutionary who was stabbed with a pickax in Mexico in 1940. But I can understand how the T thing could confuse you.”
    He looks at me, his eyes narrowing. William Trombal doesn’t like to be put in his place. Bad move.
    I look at Ms. Quinn. She’s smiling.
    “Thank you, Ms. Quinn,” I say politely, and walk out.
    My father makes us an omelette for dinner. The three of us sit eating in silence. There has never, ever been silence at our dinner table, and tonight it’s like torture.
    “Should I take some in to Mummy?” Luca asks.
    At home, at our most vulnerable, she’s Mummy . When we’re talking to other people she’s Mum, but in my head she’s just Mia because I’ve been angry at her so many times that I’ve wanted to distance myself from her. Everything Mia does has to be so out there and noticeable. She’s the loudest of the daughters-in-law, was the most opinionated mother at St. Stella’s, and more than once I saw my Stella friends roll their eyes at something she’d suggest we should do. We just wanted to have fun. Mia wanted us to change the world.
    There’s always a story to be told to show how weak I am and how great she is. “Remember the time you almost drowned?” she’d ask me. I don’t want to remember. Because it’s probably a reminder of how I needed saving.
    “Mummy’s eaten,” my dad says.
    “When?” I ask.
    “Before you got home.”
    “That would have been lunch.”
    “Frankie, eat your food and be quiet!”
    Luca and I exchange glances and look at my dad. Somehow he’s becoming someone we don’t know, as well.
    I try to swallow the omelette, but it gets stuck in my throat. I want to go and throw it up, like my mum has for the past two mornings. I want to puke my guts out and I want her to come up behind me and hold back my hair and I want to take in her scent and I want to cry like I always do when I’m sick and my mum is there.
    But I manage to swallow it, and the knowledge that it’s sitting there in my stomach, like some kind of poison, makes me feel weak.
    The place is beginning to look like a pigsty. My dad isn’t the tidiest cook, and there are plates and frying pans all over the place. We clean up, but it doesn’t look the same as when my mum gets us to do it.
    Later, as I make my way to my room, I see Luca at her door. She calls him in and I can tell he feels uneasy about it. Their bedroom has always been our sanctuary. Sometimes at night we’ll end up on their bed just talking. My dad will be snoring and Mia will say, “Turn around, Bobby, you’re snoring,” and he’ll