Free The Villa Triste by Lucretia Grindle

and hung up. There was no sign of potatoes.
    Issa was waiting for me that night when I left the hospital. There was a thin mist, the beginning of rain, and it was cold. She was on foot, and had a scarf wrapped around her head and her hands dug deep in her pockets. We walked in silence for the first few minutes, my bicycle between us. As we reached the Duomo, the bells began to ring. We stopped for a moment, looking up at the striped marble and the great red hat of the dome that seemed to drift above it. A squadron of pigeons clucked at our feet, then lifted and flapped away, their wings fluttering into the grey evening light.
    We had moved on, following a crocodile of schoolgirls, all with long braids and holding hands, and had reached the Baptistry – which looked derelict without its bronze doors, like the hovel of a hermit – when I asked the question.
    I asked it without looking at her, concentrating instead on the spokes of my bicycle which were shiny with damp and glinting in the light of the lamp on the corner of Via Roma.
    ‘How many are there?’
    I felt rather than saw her glance at me, then felt the sharp jump of her shoulders as she shrugged.
    It had been a long day. One of our patients had died. There was a rumour that Spanish influenza had broken out near Siena. I was tired and cold and had not yet had time to try to buy a new coat.
    ‘How many what?’
    The casual ring in her voice made my temper snap.
    ‘For God’s sake, Issa!’ I jerked the bike to a halt. ‘Are you going to tell me,’ I hissed, leaning over the basket, putting my face as close to hers as I could. ‘Are you honestly going to tell me that you had nothing at all to do with that train? That at this moment there is no one in our cellar? Eating our food? Wearing Rico’s clothes? Because if you are going to tell me that, I don’t believe you. In fact,’ I added for good measure, ‘if you are going to lie to me, I don’t even want to talk to you.’
    ‘Keep your voice down!’
    She grabbed the handlebars of the bike and kept walking. I stood for a moment, feeling my heart thump in my chest, feeling the colour rise in my cheeks, then scurried after her. Ahead of us, a pair of German soldiers stood on the pavement, smoking, their greatcoats spangled with damp. We skirted them, stepping into the street.
    ‘Three,’ Issa said a moment later.
    I had thought as much. The pot of potatoes on the stove last night had been enough for at least six people.
    ‘Which one of them is the cook?’
    Issa glanced at me and almost smiled.
    ‘One of the Americans. There are two Americans and one English. How did you know?’
    ‘That they could cook?’
    ‘That they were there.’
    ‘No matter what you may think, Issa, I am not stupid.’
    Ahead, in the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, the carousel was going around and around, the music high and tinny in the chilly air. There was a smell of chestnuts coming from a brazier tended by an old man whose dog lay at his feet. His wife twisted cones out of newspaper, used her fingers to fill them, and dropped coins into a can. Café Paskowski was already crowded, the tables by the window bright smears of colour behind the glass.
    ‘Does Rico know?’
    Issa smiled. ‘Of course.’
    ‘And Mama and Papa?’
    She did not bother to answer. She knew that I knew in any case, that I had seen it in my mother’s eyes the night before – the knowledge that what was below our very feet as we stood in the kitchen, that what was behind the cellar door, that the very food that she had placed on the stove and slid into the oven, were all reason enough for us to be dead.
    I stopped and looked at my sister. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I asked.
    Issa looked back at me. She waited for a moment. Then she shrugged.
    ‘Because we couldn’t trust you.’
    There it was again, that thing inside of her. The words were not said with any venom, not laced with any particular malice. Just stated as fact.
    I felt them like a blow.