The Danger

'How much ransom? I don't know. My father says it wasn't too much.'

'What was the worst thing about being kidnapped?' She repeated the question as if herself wondering, and then, after a pause, said, 'Missing the English Derby, I guess. Missing the ride on Brunelleschi.'

It was the climax. To the next question she smiled and said she had a lot of things to catch up with, and she was a bit tired, and would they please excuse her?

They clapped her. I listened in amazement to the tribute from the most cynical bunch in the world, and she came into the library with a real laugh in her eyes. I saw in a flash what her fame was all about: not just talent, not just courage, but style.

ENGLAND SIX

I spent two more days at the Villa Francese and then flew back to London; and Alessia came with me.

Cenci, crestfallen, wanted her to stay. He hadn't yet returned to his office, and her deliverance had not restored him to the man-of-the-world in the picture. He still wore a look of ingrained anxiety and was still making his way to the brandy at unusual hours. The front he had raised for the media had evaporated before their cars were out through the gate, and he seemed on the following day incapably lethargic.

'I can't understand him,' Ilaria said impatiently. 'You'd think he'd be striding about, booming away, taking charge. You'd think he'd be his bossy self again. Why isn't he?'

'He's had six terrible weeks.'

'So what? They're over. Time for dancing, you'd think.' She sketched a graceful ballet gesture with her arm, gold bracelets jangling. 'Tell you the truth, I was goddam glad she's back, but the way Papa goes on, she might just as well not be.'

'Give him time,' I said mildly.

'I want him the way he was,' she said. 'To be a man.'

When Alessia said at dinner that she was going to England in a day or two, everyone, including myself, was astonished.

'Why?' Ilaria said forthrightly.

'To stay with Popsy.'

Everyone except myself knew who Popsy was, and why Alessia should stay with her, and I too learned afterwards. Popsy was a woman racehorse trainer, widowed, with whom Alessia usually lodged when in England.

'I'm unfit,' Alessia said. 'Muscles like jelly.'

"There are horses here,' Cenci protested.

'Yes, but… Papa, I want to go away. It's fantastic to be home, but… I tried to drive my car out of the gate today and I was shaking… It was stupid. I meant to go to the hairdressers. My hair needs cutting so badly. But I just couldn't. I came back to the house, and look at me, still curling onto my shoulders.' She tried to laugh, but no one found it funny.

'If that's what you want,' her father said worriedly.

'Yes… I'll go with Andrew, if he doesn't mind.'

I minded very little. She seemed relieved by her decisions, and the next day Ilaria drove her in the Fiat to the hairdresser, and bought things for her because she couldn't face shops, and brought her cheerfully home. Alessia returned with short casual curls and a slight case of the trembles, and Ilaria helped her pack.

On that evening I tried to persuade Cenci that his family should still take precautions.

'The first ransom is still physically in one suitcase, and until the carabinieri or the courts, or whatever, free it and allow you to use it to replace some of the money you borrowed from Milan, I reckon it's still at risk. What if the kidnappers took you… or Ilaria? They don't often hit the same family twice, but this time… they might.'

The horror was too much. He had crumbled almost too far.

'Just get Ilaria to be careful,' I said hastily, having failed to do that myself. 'Tell her to vary her life a bit. Get her to stay with friends, invite friends here. You yourself are much safer because of your chauffeur, but it wouldn't hurt to take the gardener along too for a while, he has the shoulders of an ox and he'd make a splendid bodyguard.'

After a long pause, and in a low voice, he said, 'I can't face things, you know.'

'Yes, I do know,' I agreed gently. 'Best to start, though, as soon as you can.'

A faint smile. 'Professional advice?'

'Absolutely.'

He sighed. 'I can't bear to sell the house on Mikonos. My wife loved it.'

'She loved Alessia too. She'd think it a fair swap.'

He looked at me for a while. 'You're a strange young man,' he said. 'You make things so clear.' He paused. 'Don't you ever get muddled by emotion?'

'Yes, sometimes,' I said. 'But when it happens… I try to sort myself out. To see some logic'

'And once you see some logic, you act on it?'

'Try to.' I paused. 'Yes.'

'It sounds… cold.'

I shook my head. 'Logic doesn't stop you feeling. You can behave logically, and it can hurt like hell. Or it can comfort you. Or release you. Or all at the same time.'

After a while, he said, stating a fact, 'Most people don't behave logically.'

'No,' I said.

'You seem to think everyone could, if they wanted to?'

I shook my head. 'No.' He waited, so I went on diffidently, 'There's genetic memory against it, for one thing. And to be logical you have to dig up and face your own hidden motives and emotions, and of course they're hidden principally because you don't want to face them. So… um… it's easier to let your basement feelings run the upper storeys, so to speak, and the result is rage, quarrels, love, jobs, opinions, anorexia, philanthropy… almost anything you can think of. I just like to know what's going on down there, to pick out why I truly want to do things, that's all. Then I can do them or not. Whichever.'

He looked at me consideringly. 'Self-analysis… did you study it?'

'No. Lived it. Like everyone does.'

He smiled faintly. 'At what age?'

'Well… from the beginning. I mean, I can't remember not doing it. Digging into my own true motives. Knowing in one's heart of hearts. Facing the shameful things… the discreditable impulses… Awful, really.'

He picked up his glass and drank some brandy. 'Did it result in sainthood?' he said, smiling.

'Er… no. In sin, of course, from doing what I knew I shouldn't.'

The smile grew on his lips and stayed there. He began to describe to me the house on the Greek island that his wife had loved so, and for the first time since I'd met him I saw the uncertain beginnings of peace.

On the aeroplane Alessia said, 'Where do you live?'

'In Kensington. Near the office.'

'Popsy trains in Lambourn.' She imparted it as if it were a casual piece of information. I waited, though, and after a while she said, 'I want to keep on seeing you.'

I nodded. 'Any time.' I gave her one of my business cards, which had both office and home telephone numbers, scribbling my home address on the back.

'You don't mind?'

'Of course not. Delighted.'

'I need… just for now… I need a crutch.'

'De luxe model at your service.'

Her lips curved. She was pretty, I thought, under all the strain, her face a mingling of small delicate bones and firm positive muscles, smooth on the surface, taut below, finely shaped under all. I had always been attracted by taller, softer, curvier girls, and there was nothing about Alessia to trigger the usual easy urge to the chase. All the same I liked her increasingly, and would have sought her out if she hadn't asked me first.

In bits and pieces over the past two days she had told me many more details of her captivity, gradually unburdening herself of what she'd suffered and felt and worried over; and I'd encouraged her, not only because sometimes in such accounts one got a helpful lead towards catching the kidnappers, but also very much for her own sake. Victim therapy, paragraph one: let her talk it all out and get rid of it.

At Heathrow we went through immigration, baggage claims and customs in close proximity, Alessia keeping near to me nervously and trying to make it look natural.