Chapter 11: Nobody Now

The room was at the end of the upstairs hall.

Gemma opened the door and stepped back, hands clasped, shining.

"Do you like it?"

The room had a white bed, a desk by the window and a shelf of sketchbooks, all of them new.

On the wall hung a framed drawing of a girl on a swing.

It was her own line work, and she had drawn it at nineteen.

She felt her heart move once, hard, and made her face do nothing.

"It's lovely," she said. "Thank you."

"I framed that one myself. You gave it to me for my fifteenth birthday." Gemma touched the glass. "You said it looked like me."

"Did it?"

"A little."

Gemma shut the door.

The latch clicked.

She said, brightly, "Isn't it nice to have a little privacy?"

"Yes."

"Sit."

Chiara sat on the edge of the bed with her bag on her knee.

Gemma did not sit.

She walked to the window, turned and leaned back against the desk.

Her shoulders came down, and her mouth went flat, and the soft face she had worn at the table slid off.

She looked, for the first time, like a woman of twenty-one with a very tidy mind.

"I want to ask you something," she said. "And I want you to tell me the truth."

"I'll try."

"Does it hurt? Not remembering."

"Not really," Chiara said. "It feels like being very tired."

"But you know about me. You know what everyone says."

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