The concourse and forecourt were now full and people moved slowly through the muggy air. Among them a young girl, slack and dead-eyed, hand feebly held out for money. Lila recognized her. The women who were out of favour, untrustworthy, or most likely sick were sent to the station to beg and steal. Lila watched the girl and felt again an extreme urgency that she should leave. Police waited by the barriers checking tickets. Above her, with infinite slowness, the clock ticked up to the hour.
* * *
Forty minutes after the train should have departed it was still at the station, delayed without announcement or explanation. The air-conditioning struggled against open windows and open doors. Lila sat beside the window with Rafí’s silver phone tucked under her leg and the panda safely stowed on the rack within view. Three other women sat in the same compartment, one with her feet curled onto the seat, a large suitcase wedged between them so that Lila was obliged to sit upright. She wore sunglasses with a small diamante cut into the frame.
‘I’m going to miss my flight,’ she complained to the other two women in the compartment. She made the calculation, totting hours on her fingers. If it took two hours to get to Rome, one hour to get to the airport, plus, because you never know, another forty-five minutes waiting for the bus outside Termini station, then she was already running late, and you were supposed to be there two hours ahead of time. She would be in trouble if she missed the flight.
The other two women, students, sat with heavy textbooks open on their laps. One of the students’ arms was bound in a sling and her friend tended to her, opened a drink, and asked if she was hungry. They stretched out side by side, shoes slipped off, bare feet on the seats, blocking the exit.
Lila sat on her hands to stop them shaking. It occurred to her to switch to another train, but none were leaving the station.
The longer they waited the more likely it would be that Rafí would return to the Stromboli, in which case he would find the dog loose, his room destroyed, and he would know to check for his money. Lila looked up at the toy, she couldn’t remember if she had set the pole back in its slot.
Indifferent to the delay the two students tried to sleep, and the woman opposite Lila stared out of the window, arms folded, clearly angry. Passengers loitered on the platform, resigned. Some talked on their mobiles and others leaned out of the windows, smoking and watching the station, buying iced water from the vendors, everyone loose in the heat. Lila kept her eye on the panda and began to believe that she would never leave the city.
When the first announcement came the passengers on the platform applauded. The next train to leave was bound for Messina. The trains were running again and surely the train for Milan would be next?
Rafí’s phone gave a sharp trill and vibrated against her thigh. Lila jolted.
The woman opposite pushed back her sunglasses and pretended not to watch.
Lila listened for an announcement, a sign that they would soon be gone. If the train started now she swore she would never return, this was a final warning to underscore how urgently she needed to leave. Once they were out of the city she would talk with the women and ask what they knew about Milan.
The phone rang a second time.
There was no need to answer, no need to know who was calling. She was on a train and would soon be gone.
Looking at the small screen Lila saw the two calls from Cecco’s mobile. She pressed her forehead against the cool window. The train on the opposite platform began to move, starting with a slow and smooth tug. Messina, she could have been heading to Sicily.
An announcement came with the small singsong of the station’s call. The next train to depart was the Eurostar to Rome. Caserta would be next. No mention of Milan. The station stops were read out and she listened to the list and decided that she would take the very next train that was leaving.
She recognized him immediately. Rafí. Running headlong up the platform beside the grey Caserta train. Unmistakable in his loose white shirt, his scruffy black hair, that sloppy mouth, open, fish-like. Lila tried to draw the curtain but found it fixed in place. Throughout the night with the two brothers, through all of the brutality, it had never occurred to her that she would die, but she understood as a cold and clear fact that if Rafí found her and the money she would die. Rafí would have sent Cecco along one platform to check one set of trains while he checked another. The two of them would be here. Rafí hurried along the carriages pushing through people, passing parallel to Lila but searching, for the moment, the wrong train.
The woman flying from Rome sat upright, alert, and passed a glance to the students.
The announcement came, the next train to leave would be the Eurostar to Milan from platform eleven.
Lila sat down and looked up at the toy. The women also looked up. Passengers on the platform gathered at the doors.
If she held her nerve she would soon be gone. She was unlucky, she knew this, but how unlucky?
Rafí returned down the platform looking, as he ran, toward her train. He was much too far down the platform to see her. The announcement came a second time. They would soon depart. He would not make it.
And there he was, suddenly, as swift as a devil, hands up to the glass, looking hard, staring into the compartment, his face red and tight. Lila fled the compartment. She stumbled over cases, she made her way down the narrow corridor busy and blocked with people finding their seats. At the door she stopped and thought to ask for help, but Rafí already stood before her. For four hours Lila had been lucky.
* * *
Rafí walked Lila off the platform with his arm locked about her shoulder. She looked down as she walked and watched herself return, the toy tucked under her arm. The train began to slide out of the station.
‘Where is Cecco?’ Rafí’s grip tightened, fingers digging. ‘Was he with you? Where — is — he?’
Two carabinieri loitered at the entrance and Rafí steered Lila through clustered groups of travellers and past the news kiosk to the food hall. Walking through the food hall they came out of the terminus to the corner of piazza Garibaldi, to banks of white taxis, loitering passengers, men smoking, and he pushed her along the side of the station. Seeing two more policemen, a van marked ‘carabinieri’, he tugged her back and they returned to the food hall. Lila cringed as she walked, the toy tight under her arm. The station tannoy echoed through the concourse. More departures, a second train to Roma Termini.
He made her sit then slid beside her to keep her at the table. What was she doing? Why was she leaving? Did she think she wasn’t being watched, that there weren’t people who would tell him what his women were doing? Did she think after Arianna’s little trick that she could slip away, just disappear, and do whatever she fancied? And where was Cecco? What did she know about Cecco? What had Cecco told her? Did she know where Cecco had gone?
Lila could not speak, and Rafí looked at her expecting information, his face red and his eyes small. What had Cecco told her? ‘Was he on the train? Did you meet him here? Was Cecco with you? Was this his idea?’
She knew nothing and shook her head. Cecco was not with her, she said, and she didn’t know anything. The men had frightened her this morning and she didn’t want to stay on her own. That was all she knew. Lila forced the panda into her lap, fists on its belly.
Rafí shook his head and scoffed. ‘You’re lying. Who found the money? Did you see anyone on the roof? Did Cecco take the money?’
‘What money?’ Lila looked up and met his eyes, surprised that her voice could be so small and so convincing. ‘You said Arianna took everything.’
Rafí rolled his fist across his forehead. A station guard hovered close to their table and they both became silent until he moved on.