the people whose houses she and her mother had cleaned. She and Angelo had used to make up stories about all the different places they’d travel to one day, the amazing things they would do. A single letter Angelo had written her from New York, when he’d left at eighteen years old. She’d practically memorised its few lines. A lock of hair.
She took the last out now, fingering its silky softness, a tiny curl tied with a bit of thread. She closed her eyes and a single tear tracked down her cheek. It hurt so much to remember, to access that hidden grief she knew she would always carry with her, a leaden weight inside her that never lightened; she had simply learned to limp along under its heaviness.
A sudden, hard rapping on the front door made her still, tense. The only person who ever knocked on her door was the owner of the bar downstairs, an oily man with a sagging paunch who was always making veiled—and not-so-veiled—references to what he thought he knew of her past. She really didn’t feel like dealing with him now.
Another knock sounded, this one even more sharp and insistent.
Drawing a deep breath, Lucia put the box and its contents aside. She wiped the tear from her face and looked through the fogged eyehole in the door, shock slicing straight through her when she saw who it was. No oily landlord, and definitely no paunch.
Angelo raised his hand to knock again and, her own hands shaking, she unlocked the door and opened it.
‘What are you doing here, Angelo?’
His hair was rumpled like he’d driven his fingers carelessly through it, his expression as grim as ever. ‘May I come in?’
She shrugged and moved aside. Angelo stepped across the threshold, his narrowed gaze quickly taking in the small, shabby apartment with her mother’s old three-piece suite and a few framed posters for decoration. It wasn’t much, Lucia certainly knew that, but it was hers and she’d earned it. She didn’t like the way Angelo seemed to sum it up and dismiss it in one judgemental second.
‘What do you want?’ she asked, and heard how ragged her voice sounded. ‘Or do you not even know? Because you keep trying to find me, but God only knows why.’
He turned slowly to face her. ‘God only knows,’ he agreed quietly. ‘Because I don’t.’
‘Then maybe you should just stop.’
‘I can’t.’
She shook her head helplessly, every emotion far too close to the surface, to his scrutiny. ‘Why not?’
‘I…’ He stared at her, his eyes glittering, wild. His lips parted, but no sound came out. Lucia folded her arms, conscious now that she was wearing a thin T-shirt and no bra.
‘Well?’ she managed.
‘Back in my hotel suite,’ Angelo said slowly. ‘At the lift.’ His gaze roved over her, searching. ‘Why did you look at me like that?’
‘Like what?’
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