Dead Season by Christobel Kent

said he left on Friday.’ Giuli thought she saw a shadow pass over his face as he said it.
    ‘You think?’
    ‘The name’s right,’ said Sandro. He eyed the cheese on his plate, and gingerly cut off a corner. ‘I’m not a hundred per cent sure about the face. Maybe we can get the staff mugshot online, and Anna can take a look.’
    ‘You sickening for something?’ said Giuli. Her own plate seemed to be empty, suddenly. She pulled the cake towards her. ‘Or maybe we could go up to Monterosso and ambush the guy? It’s only a couple of hours on the train.’
    The piece of cheese still on his fork, Sandro appeared depressed. ‘So it’s just the old story,’ he said. ‘Married man, with a bit on the side. A whole family on the side.’
    ‘Is that worse?’ Giuli found herself saying. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s worse. He might have forced her into having an abortion, I think that would have been worse. I think he loves her, even if he is an arsehole.’ And she stopped short at the expression on Sandro’s face. ‘What?’ she said defiantly.
    ‘Since when did you believe in love, Giuli?’
    She laid down her fork, mouth full of chocolate cake. It was hard to fight back under the circumstances and, besides, he was right. Since when did she believe in love and family?
    ‘All your fault,’ she said, swallowing. She wiped her mouth. ‘You and your old-fashioned values. Eat your cheese. What would Luisa say, wasting good food?’
    ‘Are you seeing someone, Giuli?’ he asked abruptly.
    She sighed: that was Sandro. Nowhere to hide. She held up her hands in surrender.
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Satisfied? Yes, I’m seeing someone.’
    Sandro pushed the plate aside. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s great, Giuli.’
    ‘Yeah?’ Giuli could not have sounded more sceptical. ‘No way, Sandro, no way are you going to leave it at that.’
    He shrugged. ‘It’s none of my business,’ he said, but he was smiling. Even if it was a funny, twisted, anxious sort of smile.
    Giuli relented. ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘It’s serious. I’m not being stupid. I know a bad guy when I see one, these days. Let’s face it, if I don’t, who does?’
    ‘Well,’ said Sandro, ‘he’s certainly given you your appetite back.’
    She eyed him narrowly, and he looked down to examine one of the hard little pears on his plate more closely than was necessary.
    ‘Which is a good thing, right?’
    He sighed. ‘Yes,’ he said.
    ‘So?’
    ‘Where did you meet him?’ Sandro’s voice was lowered almost to a whisper. And when she didn’t answer he said, awkwardly, ‘It is a him, right? Not that – I mean,’ and she saw something like crafty hope dawn in his eyes and burst out laughing.
    ‘That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?’ she said. ‘Oh, Sandro, I love it, how you’re trying to be cool with it. That’d be so easy, you’re thinking, actually, wouldn’t it? Giuli hooks up with a nice girl, a girl to look after her, make her eat, cosy up in the evenings together. Nice and safe.’ Giuli paused, thinking about it. ‘Actually, yes. It would be nice, I might even have wondered about it myself – even if I’m not sure girls are as safe as you think they are. After a year at the Women’s Centre.’ She leaned across the table, right up close, and whispered, ‘Only trouble is, I’m not gay.’
    Sandro was now looking so sheepish she could have kissed him. ‘So where did you meet him?’ he mumbled.
    He’d asked Anna Niescu that, too. Like a kindly father: it was a key question, Giuli understood now. You wouldn’t want your girl hanging out in the wrong places, for a start – I met him in an S & M bar, Dad . Or her boyfriend either, one of those men who comes up to girls in the street and tells them they’ve got beautiful eyes. What had Anna said? She’d looked up at them from her uncomfortable plastic chair, eyes gleaming at the memory, and said, ‘He was buying oranges, at the market in Santo Spirito, I