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.’
    Otherwise what would he have done to her if she weren’t a woman?
    Mum closed her eyes and I felt the giant squeezing me in his stone arms, taking away my breath, and then he jumped through the roof of our car and he and I flew over the people, over the Lazio
supporter, over my mother sprawled on the cobbles, over the traffic, over the roofs lined with crows, past the church steeples.
    And I fainted.

 
    5
    At nine o’clock the sun pierced the dirty windows with rays of gold. Maybe it was because of the heat the hot water pipes gave off, but it was hard to stay awake down
here.
    I yawned and in my pants and T-shirt went into the bathroom to brush my teeth.
    My armpits were holding up for now. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of washing myself with cold water and, besides, it didn’t matter if I stank. Who was going to get a whiff of me
anyway? I sprayed myself with the fake tan and made myself a Nutella sandwich.
    I decided to spend a couple of hours exploring the cellar. All this stuff belonged to the previous owner of our flat, Countess Nunziante, who had died without relatives. My father had bought the
house with all her furniture and stuff in it and stacked everything up down here.
    Inside the drawers of an old mahogany chest I found brightly-coloured clothes, notebooks full of accounting, solved crossword puzzles, and boxes full of staples, paperclips, fountain pens,
transparent stones, packets of Muratti cigarettes, empty perfume bottles and dried-up lipsticks. There were also packs of postcards. Cannes, Viareggio, Ischia, Madrid. Tarnished silver cutlery.
Spectacles. I even found a blonde wig, which I popped on my head, and then I slipped into an orange silk dressing gown. I began moving through the cellar as if it were the reception hall of a
castle. ‘Good evening, Duke, I am the Countess Nunziante. Ah, Countess Sinibaldi is here too. Yes, this party is a little dull. And I still haven’t seen the Marquis de Monkey. He
hasn’t ended up in the crocodile pit, has he?’
    Beneath a pile of furniture was a long chest painted with red and green flowers. It looked like a coffin.
    ‘Here lies poor Goffredo. He ate a poisoned veal cutlet.’
    My mobile began ringing.
    I snorted. ‘No way! Fucking hell! Mum, please. Leave me alone.’
    I tried to ignore it but I couldn’t. At last I couldn’t take it any more and I climbed up to the window. The display showed a number I didn’t know. Who was it? Apart from Mum,
Nihal, Grandma and, on occasion, Dad, nobody called me. I stood there staring at the phone, not sure what to do. In the end, I was too curious not to answer. ‘Hello?’
    ‘Hello, Lorenzo. It’s Olivia.’
    It took me a couple of seconds to work out it was that Olivia . . . Olivia, my half-sister. ‘Oh. Hi . . .’
    ‘How are you?’
    ‘Well, thanks, and you?’
    ‘Well. Sorry if I’m interrupting you. I got your number from Aunt Roberta. Listen, I wanted to ask you something. Do you know if your mother and Dad are at home?’
    It’s a trap!
    I had to be careful. Maybe Mum had suspected something and was using Olivia to work out where I really was. But Olivia and Mum, as far as I knew, didn’t talk to each other. ‘I
don’t know . . . I’m away for ski week.’
    ‘Oh . . .’ Her voice was disappointed. ‘Well, you must be having fun.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Tell me something, Lorenzo. Are your parents normally in at this time?’
    What sort of a question was that? ‘Dad’s at work. And Mum sometimes goes to the gym or to the gallery. It depends.’
    Silence. ‘Okay. And if they’re not there, is anyone else in?’
    ‘Nihal will be.’
    ‘Who’s Nihal?’
    ‘The housekeeper.’
    ‘Ah. Well. Listen, can you do me a favour?’
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘Don’t tell anyone I called.’
    ‘Okay.’
    ‘Promise me you won’t.’
    ‘I promise I won’t.’
    ‘Good boy. Have fun skiing. Is there much snow?’
    ‘A bit.’
    ‘Well, bye then. And don’t forget, not a word.’
    ‘Yeah.