Her Sugar Mask

Chapter Six — Parcel Seven

He opened the door on the second knock.

He had not shaved. There were two creases down one side of his face, from a pillow on a train, and he was holding the door with one hand and rubbing his eye with the other.

"You're early."

"It's nine o'clock."

"I know what time it is." He stepped back. "That's not the same as being on time."

She went past him into the hall. The house smelled of coffee and wet wool. There was a canvas bag on the floor by the stairs with a train ticket stuck to the outside of it, and on the table in the hall there was a stack of printouts as thick as a brick, held together with a bulldog clip.

"Rome," he said, following her look. "Then Palermo."

"Which do you like more."

"Rome has better coffee. Palermo has better arguments."

She took the cloth and the bucket from the cupboard under the stairs.

"Did you win yours."

He smiled. "I lost it. I lose it every Tuesday." He went out to the terrace. "Water's in the fridge. The rule still applies."

"What rule."

"People who work have to drink."

"Guests pour their own water."

"There we are," he said. "You've been listening."

"How is the co-operative," she said.

He looked up. "You've been talking to Peppe."

"I've been talking to everybody. It's a small village."

"It's a rejected application," he said. "Twice."

"What was wrong with it the second time."

He stopped with his hand on the bulldog clip.

"Why do you want to know."

"If it goes in a third time, the village will need somebody who can fill in a form. I can fill in a form."

"Can you."

"I can add up."

He laughed. "Everybody can add up."

"No," Giulia said. "Everybody can count."

· · ·

She cleaned the kitchen, the bathroom, the two bedrooms, and the stairs, and she did it at exactly the speed that would put her on the terrace at twenty to eleven.

He was at the table with the brick of printouts open in front of him and the laptop beside it. The sun came over the valley and hit the white wall behind him and came back up under the table.

At ten to eleven the phone on the table rang.

He looked at the screen and stood up.

"I have to take this."

He went inside with it. She heard the study door close.

The window was four minutes. It might have been six.

She picked up the empty water jug, walked out onto the terrace, and set the jug down on the table beside the printouts.

The top page was a table.

ALLEGATO B — BENI SOTTOPOSTI A SEQUESTRO PREVENTIVO

Annex B — Assets under preventive seizure

Tribunale di Palermo · Direzione Distrettuale Antimafia

Proceeding no. 4471/24 · Order dated 11 March

Rows. Addresses. Columns for cadastral parcel, class, holder.

Halfway down the first page, one line:

San Vitale (PA) — fabbricato rurale, ex frantoio — particella catastale 7 — intestatario: non risultante

Rustic building. Former olive mill. Cadastral parcel 7. Holder: none recorded.

Giulia put her hand flat on the table.

The key in her pocket had SAN VITALE cut into the bow. Under it, the number 7.

She read three more lines.

The order was dated the eleventh of March. Two years and six months before the m******e. Her father had been alive, and the state had already been taking his buildings apart on paper.

She went down to the bottom of the page with one finger, not touching the paper.

Eleven entries on the page. She recognised three of them.

Number nine was the warehouse at Termini Imerese. She had put six people on the payroll there in 2022 and taken four of them off again in January, because the accountant had said the ratio looked wrong. She had thought about that for a fortnight at the time, and she had been proud of it, and she had been twenty-five.

Number nine had been seized in March by a court in Palermo, on paper, and nobody had told her.

The next row down was a flat in Palermo. The one after that, a boat.

She took six pictures of the page, three of the header and three of the rows, flash off for all of them. She put the page back, squared the stack, and set the water jug down on the corner of it, exactly where it had been.

Then she went into the bathroom and turned on the tap and stood with both hands under the water.

The face in the mirror was smiling.

She had not told it to.

· · ·

When she came out he was off the telephone, standing in the doorway of the study with the phone in his hand.

"You're very quiet today."

"I'm working."

"You're always working." He came out onto the terrace. "Do you know anything about olive oil?"

"A little."

"Olives or money?"

She picked up the cloth. "Which do you need."

He laughed. "Both, probably." He sat down. "There's an old mill at the bottom of the valley. Abandoned. I have to survey it for the region. It's on the list."

Giulia wrung out the cloth over the bucket.

"When."

"Thursday. I've been trying to get a key out of the comune for six weeks. They keep telling me next week." He looked at her. "Come with me. Bring boots."

"Why me."

"Because I have to write down what's in it, and I'd like someone who can tell me what used to be in it."

"I'm a cleaner."

"You're a cleaner who looked at my bookshelves before she looked at my floor."

She put the cloth on the table.

"Thursday," she said.

"Nine o'clock."

She picked up the bucket.

· · ·

On the steps outside she stopped.

The window above her was open. The fan was going round.

He was speaking English.

She heard one sentence. She caught only the end of it.

"— I'll have something for you by Friday."

A pause. Then, in Italian, sharper:

"No. I'll write to him myself."

Another pause.

"Because if I ring him he'll ask me what I've got, and I'd rather not lie to a senator until I have to."

Giulia stood quite still on the steps with the bucket in her right hand.

A senator. There was one name written in biro on the notice pinned to the church door, and it was the only name on that notice that nobody had crossed out.

She did not wait for the rest. She went down the steps at her own pace and along the olive road, and when she was out of sight of the house she stopped and wrote four words in the notes app of the stolen telephone.

take it. thursday. no — wednesday night.

Thursday, he had said. Which meant she had tonight.