The Sweet Life (21 page)

She resisted the urge to log on again to find out whether Fellini had caused new mischief on her page overnight, deciding instead to head out for a strong coffee and a little breakfast before boarding the bus that would take her down to the archaeological ruins of Pompeii. Ever since she’d learnt in history class about the city that had been lost for almost two thousand years after Mount Vesuvius had erupted and buried it in layers of ash and rubble, she’d wanted to see it. So when she’d been invited to go to Rome, it had been pretty easy for Janey to jump on the web and work out that Pompeii was only three and a half hours away. She’d organised a day tour from the comfort of Gabs’s place and now all she had to do was show up at Rome’s Termini Station and board a bus. The same place Luca had suggested she meet him, his sister and their friends for a trip to Ostia in a couple of days’ time.

Just thinking about Luca, and about Brandon, made her head hurt. She didn’t know what to believe about either of them, and was determined to put them out of her mind for the day and just enjoy the tour. The bus was scheduled to head south from Rome along the delightfully named Highway of the Sun, with a stop in Naples for lunch, then a two-hour tour of Pompeii.

Janey worked out that she’d get back to Rome by about eight that evening. Plenty of time for Fellini to wreak more havoc on her MySpace page, she thought, as she stopped at an espresso bar near Termini station and ordered a macchiato and a sweet Italian doughnut, or zeppola, to go with it.

Soon after, she boarded the tour bus with a nice Spanish couple, three elderly Canadians, a New Zealand guy, and a Hungarian couple with a toddler son. Taking her seat, she suddenly broke into a sunny smile; Fellini could text his heart out today, but unless he’d booked a ten-hour tour to Pompeii at exactly the same time as she had, he’d have to cool his toxic little backside back in Rome without her!

Janey reclined back in her seat and pulled out an apple. ‘Here’s to a Fellini-free day!’ she told herself as the bus pulled away from the terminal with a roar. Janey bit into the apple with relish and looked out the window with sparkling eyes.

It was after nine in the evening by the time they re-entered the outskirts of Rome, and all Janey wanted was a cool shower and a session of uploading photos to her MySpace to share with her friends.

First, she’d strolled the seaside boardwalks surrounding the serenely blue Bay of Naples, then eaten a huge three-course lunch at a hillside taverna overlooking the modern town of Pompeii. A guide had taken her tour group through the high points of the first-century ruins of ancient Pompeii before leaving each of them to wander the eerily well-preserved city under blazing blue skies.

Here and there among the ruined homes, shops, public baths, temples, amphitheatres, public squares and villas, Janey had chanced upon the scarily lifelike plaster casts of Pompeii’s people, lying exactly as they’d fallen. Some parts of the city were still so intact – the cobbled streets and laneways in such perfect condition – that she almost expected to see the ancient Pompeiani emerge from shadowy doorways and go about their business. She wished her friends could have seen the place for themselves. Astonishingly, parts of the original multicoloured frescos and mosaics that had adorned the walls of Pompeii’s homes and public buildings were still visible. It was hard to believe that it was a ghost town, and had been for centuries.

The only hitch to an otherwise ideal day was when the tour bus broke down with a transmission problem just outside a rest stop in the middle of nowhere. As tour bus after tour bus had rolled past, disgorging its hot and tired passengers, then rolled out again after everyone had had their obligatory toilet stop and overpriced snack, Janey and her tour group were still there, waiting for the replacement bus to come and get them.

As the bus finally lumbered back to the drop-off point near the Termini Station, Janey swapped email addresses with the friends of all ages that she’d made on her tour, promising to write. Apart from the delay in getting home, she decided, as she started walking slowly back in the direction of Celia’s apartment, the trip had been a real highlight of her holiday so far. She’d felt so incredibly free and anonymous. Her mobile hadn’t even rung once.

As if to remind her that it was there, however, it buzzed now and Janey tensed, taking a quick look around her at the small groups of people moving languidly by. It was dinnertime for many Romans, and the sidewalk cafés were packed. Perhaps it was Celia asking her out to dinner.

With her radar finetuned for trouble, though, she didn’t think so.

Janey stopped and rummaged through her daypack, thumbed the mobile warily, and read:

What kept u?

She dropped the phone back inside her bag as though it was made of molten lava and picked up her pace.

Immediately, it buzzed again.

Don’t look at it!
Janey told herself.
It’s what
he
wants.

But halfway up Via Volturno her curiosity got the better of her, and she snatched it up again.

U look like something the

cat dragged in. Orange is

SO not ur colour.

Janey began to run.

Città Universitaria

Going by memory alone, Janey ducked and wove her way through the warren of streets to the north of Termini Station, which looked a lot seedier at nightfall than she remembered from only that morning.

Those stores that weren’t open at this hour had steel shutters pulled tight across their windows, many of which were covered in dense graffiti, and the streets and lanes were crowded with dingy two or three star hotels. Touts stood outside many of the less popular restaurants and cafés she passed, and they reached out and tried to catch Janey by the arm as she raced by, which only made her more jumpy.

Part of her hoped that if she kept on the move, she would somehow lose the spiteful presence that was intent on making her waking hours a nightmare.

But her phone buzzed again in her daypack, demanding her attention:

Look around! If you dare.

Janey took shelter on the front step of a busy, well-lit pharmacy. Scanning the street, at first she saw nothing out of the ordinary. But apprehension made her look harder and she glimpsed, lounging in the shadowy doorway of an apartment block across the street, a tall figure with curly black hair wearing what looked like a golden
mask
.

It was a carnival mask, the sort Venetians wore in the annual Carnevale. It hid the wearer’s face from jaw to hairline, and looked grotesque! The eyes were blank ovals, through which the watcher peered at Janey, and the nose and mouth were taut and emotionless lines.

Janey shrieked and retreated into the shop, asking the first customer she stumbled across where she was. The elderly woman shrugged and rattled off several phrases in Italian with a vigorous waving of hands. The next middle-aged woman Janey tried to approach just shook her head and moved away.

‘Does anyone speak English?’ Janey called out. ‘Please, where
am
I?’

Several people looked up curiously, then went back to what they were doing.

Half-angry, half-terrified, Janey launched herself out of the pharmacy and headed back up the road in a northerly direction, not stopping to see if the shadowy watcher was following.

She knew she’d be in a lot of trouble if she didn’t beat Fellini back to Celia’s place.

Janey wrapped her fist around her house keys, and started looking for a taxi she could flag down, all the while getting more and more lost.

Janey was running scared. It might have been her imagination playing tricks on her eyes but she seemed to see shadowy figures everywhere she turned. She’d taken refuge in one crowded bar after another as she made her way uptown, but each time she’d emerged after being hit on a thousand times by over-eager young men, some cute, some definitely not so cute, who all wanted to buy her drinks she couldn’t even understand the names of, she thought she saw it again. Just the faintest glint of a gold-masked watcher, waiting. Somewhere just out of sight.

It was late. And Janey was sick of hiding. She just wanted to get back to Celia’s and barricade herself inside and not leave again until it was time to go home.

Home
. A lump formed in her throat. It felt so far away. Celia had been right, Janey thought sadly, this trip
had
been a mistake. You couldn’t force someone to like you, even if they were supposed to be your family and you wanted them to like you so much that it hurt.

Janey wanted to believe that she wasn’t hopelessly lost. The threat of that masked watcher, lurking, had caused her to change direction a multitude of times and she was probably ages away from Celia’s by now. It was a shock when she emerged from the narrow, bar-filled street she’d been cautiously traversing to find a busy multi-lane road that ran hard up against a stretch of the old city walls.

She hurried towards the nearest pedestrian crossing and started thumbing frenetically through her guidebook, feeling certain no one would try anything in the presence of so many passing cars.

At that moment, instead of buzzing to indicate a text was coming through, her mobile rang.

Janey almost jumped out of her skin. She scanned the area around her, which was deserted of pedestrians, then scrambled through her backpack for her phone.

It was the first time she’d heard her phone actually
ring
all night. She’d spent so much time skulking around in bars that if it’d rung earlier, she wouldn’t have had a hope of hearing it.

As she withdrew it now, the name on the screen took her breath away.

Luca (mobile)

She was so jittery that seeing his name, after all that had already happened, just propelled her into panicky motion. She killed his call immediately, without thinking. She saw that he’d tried to call her at least a dozen times because Luca’s name filled the missed-calls screen!

Not waiting for the lights to change in her favour, she dashed across the road, dodging oncoming cars as if her only salvation lay on the other side.