‘That is nonsense,’ he said calmly. ‘If you want to leave you have only to contact the British Consul and ask for their help. You’ll be provided with an identity card that will get you back to England. Here’s the address.’

He scribbled on a sheet of paper and handed it to her.

‘If you wish I can call them now and use all my influence to ensure that things are made smooth for you.’

It was all true, Holly realised. She could do exactly what he had described. But all this reasonableness didn’t dispel her suspicions. The reference to his influence sounded helpful but was actually a subtle reminder that he was in control here, even when it didn’t look like it.

The time had come to stand up for herself.

‘Well, maybe I’ll go to the consulate today,’ she said firmly.

‘I’ll order the car for you.’

‘No, thank you, I’ll make my own way there.’

‘Then I’ll call a taxi.’ With a touch of exasperation he added, ‘Or would you prefer to walk several miles?’

‘If necessary,’ she retorted, in a fury.

He groaned. ‘Enough of this. Must we have these trials of strength?’

‘Maybe your strength alarms me.’

‘Have the honesty to admit that I’ve exercised it in your defence.’

‘Because I’m useful to you.’

‘Certainly you are, just as I am useful to you. The best bargains are those where both sides gain.’

Everything he said made perfect sense, and she would have liked to thump him for it.

‘But I wouldn’t dream of detaining you against your will,’ he added. ‘Go if you want to.’

She was saved from having to answer by the door opening and a small head peering round.

‘Can I come in, Poppa?’

‘Of course.’ He rose and went to the door, giving his arm to help Liza walk.

‘I was looking for Holly.’

‘Well, here she is.’

Liza pulled herself free from her father to limp forward at a run.

‘You vanished,’ she said in a tense voice. ‘I thought you’d gone away for ever and ever.’

And that was her nightmare, Holly realised, conscience-stricken.

‘No, darling,’ she said, dropping to her knees so that she could meet Liza’s eyes on a level. ‘I just came to talk to your father. I’m sorry, I should have told you first, so that you didn’t worry. I haven’t gone away.’

She pulled Liza towards her in a bear hug, and found herself almost suffocated in the returning embrace.

‘And you won’t, will you?’ Liza begged.

The decision was already made. Liza was the one who had first championed her, and now she owed the little girl a debt. Going to the consulate would have to wait.

She looked up at the judge, expecting to see an expression of cool triumph, or even indifference at a victory he would have taken for granted.

But there was something else there. Instead of assurance, there was apprehension. Instead of authority, she saw pleading.

That must be a mistake. Not pleading. Not this man who had her in his power.

But it was in his eyes and the taut lines of his whole body. Her decision mattered to him desperately, and he was full of terrible tension waiting for it.

‘No, I won’t go away,’ she said. ‘I’ll stay as long as you want me.’

‘For ever and ever?’ Liza asked.

‘For ever and ever.’

‘I think it’s time I was leaving for work,’ he said in a voice that sounded strained.

‘Come on,’ Holly said, laying a hand on Liza’s shoulder and shepherding her out of the room.

There were still battles to be fought, but this wasn’t the time or place.

CHAPTER FOUR

DESPITE her troubles, Holly found it easy to settle into the life of the villa, which seemed to open its arms to welcome her. Everything was done for her comfort. The maid cleaned her room and made her bed, leaving her free to spend her time with Liza.

Nothing mattered but the little girl who had clung to her so desperately on the train, weeping as though her heart would break. As she had guessed, Liza’s spirits were volatile. She could be happy one minute and tearful the next. Even worse were the fits of screaming that would overtake her without warning.

‘I nursed her in hospital,’ Berta explained. ‘When she was ready to leave she still needed care at home, and they thought I’d be best because she was used to me. She’s a sweet child, but I can’t cope with her outbursts. They’re alarming because they seem to come out of nowhere.’

‘But really they come out of her tragedy,’ Holly suggested. ‘To lose her mother like that-the train crash, her injury…She must still be suffering a lot.’

‘To be sure. I understand it well enough,’ Berta agreed. ‘I just don’t seem to be any help to her. I put my arms round her and try to console her, but it doesn’t make any difference. I’m not the one she wants.’

‘It’s her mother that she wants, poor little soul,’ Holly sighed.

‘Yes, but, failing that, someone like her. Someone English, like her mamma. You.’

This seemed to be the answer. Only that morning Liza had become violently upset about some trivial matter that had arisen over breakfast. But then the mood had passed so quickly that Holly had barely understood what had brought it on. She’d asked no more questions, unwilling to prolong what was best forgotten.

Holly studied the child constantly to discern more about her needs, but almost equally useful were the talks she had with Berta and Anna during the afternoons, when Liza took her nap.

Since the judge often left early and came home late it was almost as though he wasn’t there at all, so they talked freely.

‘When he is here he shuts himself away,’ Anna observed one day in the kitchen as she poured coffee for the three of them. ‘He didn’t used to be like that, before his wife died. But now it’s like living with a ghost.’

‘What was she like?’ Holly asked.

‘Beautiful,’ Anna said enviously. ‘Like a model. It was easy to see why he was mad about her.’

‘Mad about her?’ Holly queried. Such a picture didn’t sort with the harsh, unyielding man she knew.

‘Mad, insane, crazy,’ Anna said firmly. ‘I know it’s hard to believe if you’ve only seen him now, but in those days he was all smiles, all happiness. I came to work here soon after they married and I tell you, you never saw a man so much in love. He would have died for her. Instead…’ she sighed.

‘I was on duty in the hospital the day of the accident,’ Berta recalled. ‘I saw him walk in, and he showed nothing. No emotion, nothing at all. His face was blank.’

‘Did he know his wife was already dead?’ Holly asked.

‘Yes. The first thing he said to the doctor was, “Even if she’s dead, I want to see her”, and the doctor didn’t like that because she looked very bad, all smashed up. He tried to make him wait a while, and I saw his face become even colder and harder as he said, “I want to see her, do you understand?”’

‘He can be scary when he’s enraged,’ Anna mused. ‘Did the doctor give way?’

‘Not at once. He said that the little girl was still alive and perhaps he’d like to see his daughter first. And Signor Fallucci said, ‘I demand to see my wife, and if you don’t get out of my way you’ll be sorry.’

‘So the doctor showed him into the room. The judge ordered everyone out so that he’d be alone with her, but when we were outside the doctor told me to stay close, and fetch him when Signor Fallucci came out, or if “anything happened” as he put it.’

‘So you went and listened at the door,’ Anna said wryly.

‘Well-yes, all right, I did.’

‘And what did you hear?’

‘Nothing. There wasn’t a sound from inside that room. I’ve seen people visiting the dead. They cry, or call out the person’s name, but all I heard was silence. When he came out-his face-I’ll never forget it. You’d have thought he was the dead one.’

‘Did he go to see Liza then?’ Holly asked curiously.

‘Yes, I took him in. She looked terrible, attached to all those machines. I was going to tell him not to touch her, but I didn’t have to. He never moved, just stood staring at her as though he didn’t know who she was. Then he turned and walked out.’

‘I don’t understand that,’ Anna said. ‘He’s always adored her, almost as much as his wife. I heard someone make a joke with him once, about how he’d feel differently when he had a son. And he said, “Who needs a son? No child could mean more to me than my Liza.” I’ll never forget the way he said that, or his face as he looked at her.’

‘Well, he wasn’t like that in the hospital,’ Berta said. ‘Mind you, men can’t cope with that sort of thing as we do. Even the strongest of them get scared and freeze up.’

It might be true, yet somehow Holly wasn’t satisfied with this facile explanation. There was a mystery here, the same mystery as the one that made Signor Matteo Fallucci, a judge with a career and a reputation at stake, harbour a suspicious character for the sake of a child he seldom saw.

On the one hand, there was the love so vast that it would take any risk. On the other hand, there was the frozen withdrawal. If she could understand that, then perhaps she would begin to understand him.

But she did not think he was a man who could be easily understood. She was even more sure of it a moment later when Anna said,

‘He never speaks of her. The only one who’s allowed to mention her name is Liza, and even then he steers her off the subject as soon as he can.’

‘But that’s terrible,’ Holly said, disturbed. ‘He’s the person who knew his wife best, and Liza needs to discuss her mother with him.’

‘I know,’ Anna said sympathetically. ‘But he can’t make himself do it. And he doesn’t even have the signora’s picture on his desk. He doesn’t act like a grieving widower at all, and yet he must be, because he built that fancy monument, and he keeps going to it, as though he couldn’t keep away.’

‘Night after night,’ Berta confirmed.

‘One night I was out there,’ Anna remembered, ‘and I saw him close enough to tell that he was talking to her. It was really scary.’

‘You’d better not let him know you spy on him,’ Berta said darkly. ‘That would be the end of you.’

‘I know. I dashed off before he spotted me.’

Berta was so delighted with Holly’s coming that she asked no awkward questions, almost as though she had a superstitious fear that to query her good luck would make it vanish.

She gladly showed Holly the mechanical part of caring for Liza. A physiotherapist attended twice a week, and from her Holly learned some simple exercises to be repeated every day. She mastered them without trouble, and Liza was more relaxed with her.

To show her preference she insisted on talking English with Holly, even when Berta was there.

‘That’s not very polite to Berta,’ Holly protested. ‘Her English isn’t too good.’

‘Non e importante,’ Berta said with a grin. ‘Tonight I see my Alfio, and we don’t talk English.’

Holly went regularly to the library to study the newspapers that were put there every day, to see if there was any mention of herself. But there was nothing.

Like every other room in the house this one was luxurious, furnished with ornate oak bookshelves that came from another age. The volumes were mostly history, philosophy and science. Some of them were very old, suggesting a family that had collected books for centuries.

She had the answer in a portrait of two ladies, dressed in the style of a hundred years ago, both of whose faces so strongly resembled the judge’s that it was clear he was their descendant. A small plaque at the bottom announced that this was the Contessa d’ Arelio, and her daughter, Isabella.

‘That’s his grandmother,’ Anna said, coming in with a duster. ‘The younger lady, I mean. She married Alfonso Fallucci. They say there was a terrible row because her family wanted her to marry a title.’

‘Alfonso wasn’t good enough for them?’ Holly asked.

‘They thought he was a nobody, but she insisted on marrying him. She was right, too, because he made a fortune in shipping.’

So that explained how he came to be living in this extravagant place, far beyond what most judges could afford. Much of it was shut off, the rooms surplus to such a small family, but what she could see was still sumptuous, both inside and out.

A small army of gardeners worked in the grounds. There was one whose first duty was to care for the memorial to Carol Fallucci, keeping the fountain clean and flowing freely, and the flower beds perfect. Taking a stroll that afternoon, Holly saw him busily weeding, and exchanged a smile and a wave.

Walking on further, she came to a sight that checked her. Here was a small swimming pool, surrounded by trees and invisible from the house. It would have been perfect for a summer afternoon, except that it was empty and neglected.