English Rose for the Sicilian Doc

‘You have it?’

‘Yes. It’s on my tablet. Inside.’

‘So are we going inside, or will you bring it out here?’

‘It’s... It isn’t that it’s no good, because it is. Very good. Just not quite the way I saw her.’

He leaned back in his seat, the wood and canvas creaking slightly under his weight. ‘Are you going to show it to me before or after I beg?’

After might be interesting... Rose gave herself a mental slap for thinking such a thing, and jumped to her feet.

She fetched the tablet, switched it on and pulled up the reconstruction. Maybe he wouldn’t see what she saw. Maybe she was just being stupid about it all.

He was silent for a long time, just looking.

‘Can I turn this image?’

She nodded. ‘Just swipe your finger to the right or the left. It goes round three hundred and sixty degrees.’

When he finally spoke, his voice was thoughtful. ‘This is very well executed. The shape of her face looks right to me... I don’t want to question the skills of whoever’s done this...’

He looked up at her, doubt and dismay on his face. It occurred to Rose that maybe this was what she really wanted to see. Her own emotions, mirrored in Matteo’s face.

‘It’s not a matter of questioning skills. Remo’s done a very good job of reconstructing her facial features and I’ve told him so. Modelling is always subjective because there’s only so much information you can get from a skull, and any model is what the person might have looked like.’

Matteo shook his head. ‘It’s not right, is it? This isn’t the face of someone who’s been loved.’

‘I don’t think so.’ As usual, he’d broken the problem down immediately. The eyes of the girl in the image were blank and staring, and the face devoid of any emotion. Her hair was scraped back and messy, a young girl who’d hidden in a cave all her life and had never known anything beautiful.

His gaze caught hers, and the shared silence between them was everything she could have wanted. An acknowledgement of how she felt, a defence of Aemilia’s right to have been happy. Even though this was quite literally ancient history that somehow mattered.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose there’s a possibility that she really did look like that.’

‘You don’t believe that any more than I do. The people around her went out of their way to bury Aemilia with much love and care. They sent a message to us, saying what she was like, and it’s up to us...you, actually...to respond to that.’

‘I guess...when I document everything I could make that point.’ It seemed like a paltry response to a message that would have taken time and thought to prepare, and which had somehow survived through the ages, only to be disregarded now.

‘Do you do this kind of work?’ Matteo switched the tablet off, giving it back to her.

‘Not computer graphics. I prefer clay, it’s more tactile, but I haven’t done this sort of thing for years.’ The idea had occurred to Rose, but she’d dismissed it. It was out of the question.

‘Don’t you want to think about trying it again?’ There was a subtle challenge in his voice.

‘I used to do modelling as part of my work with the police.’ Her mouth suddenly went dry. ‘As I said, it’s not something I do any more.’

‘Because it’s too difficult?’

‘Yes, if you must know. The last model I made was for a police case. There was a lot of pressure to get the woman identified, and my ex-husband and I had a weekend away planned. I did an all-nighter and finished the model, but when I got home on the Saturday morning...’ Rose shrugged. Alec had said some things that she couldn’t forget. ‘I was pregnant. I couldn’t work all night without crashing out the following day.’

‘Of course you couldn’t. So...what? The model broke your marriage up.’

‘No, I broke my marriage up. We needed the money, and I took on too much and couldn’t cope with it.’

‘I’m sorry that happened to you, Rose. But surely this is different.’

‘No, it’s not!’ She realised she’d raised her voice and softened her tone. ‘When I had William, I promised him that I’d be there for him. That I wouldn’t take on too much work and that the work I did wouldn’t be so stressful that I couldn’t let it go at the end of the day.’