Nancy strode over. “Oh no, it’s my turn,” she said.
Patricia pouted. “But she’s been away for so long. I need to talk to her about something.”
I stared at the table, not wanting to seem like I was gloating over the luxury of friends. And strategically, it was a good thing. Isabella would come in to find me in conversation with the others. In demand. I thought about trying to say something funny, but I searched for a joke and came up empty.
Nancy lifted her long legs and folded them under the table. “Yes, well, you had her all afternoon. Slide up, will you, Bridge?”
I shot Patricia an apologetic look.
“Later, then,” Patricia said. “I’ll come by your room?”
I blew her a kiss. It was breezy, fun. Isabella wasn’t there to see it.
“So. How’s your folks?” Nancy said, filling our glasses with cider.
“Everyone’s fine. But I’m glad to be back. I’m so behind.”
Nancy took a gulp of cider and I watched the liquid travel down her throat. I felt dislocated from everything, the benches lurching and the girls’ faces moving in the dim light with stuttering trails.
“I can talk you through what you’ve missed, if you want?”
I snapped back to attention. “Would you really? I could use the help.”
“Sure.” Nancy shrugged. “Tomorrow, before breakfast?”
“Before breakfast?”
Nancy nodded.
“You’re worse than the nuns,” I said, although her enthusiasm was reassuring. At least I’d get caught up quickly.
Then Isabella came through the door, and my heart snagged. She was wearing her hair loose—I’d forgotten how long it had grown. She had rolled the cuffs of her shirt, and something about her air of scruffy sophistication made her look like a sculptor or an experimental painter. I felt suddenly fussy and prim in my sweater and silk scarf.
She came behind me and hugged me. I leaned my head back under her chin. My chest pulsed.
“Briddie,” she said, her hair falling on my shoulders. She planted a kiss on the top of my head. “So glad you’re home!”
“Bella,” Sylvia called from across the table, gesturing to a place next to her.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Isabella said, keeping hold of my hand, bowing over it and kissing the back.
Dinner that night was buttered pasta with sage and thin shavings of white truffle. Nancy took her offer of tutoring quite seriously and launched into a detailed presentation of the lectures Signor Patrizi had given in my absence. I twirled the slippery noodles and said, “Uh-huh” and “OK” and “Yes,” as she talked. But I didn’t hear any of it. Down the table, I watched the candlelight shine on Isabella’s profile. The way she ran her fingers through her hair, tossing it behind her shoulder, leaning in to Sylvia. She licked her finger, stuck it to a shard of truffle on Katherine’s plate, and ate it. She glanced over her shoulder and caught me looking at her. And in the same moment, I realized I had been staring. I lifted my gormless, fixed stare into a grin, and her eyes lit up. She raised her glass of cider to me in a salute, breaking into a bright smile.
She adores me, I thought.
19.
November
Nancy was true to her word and arrived at my door the next morning with two cups of Nescafé she’d made with a heating coil in her bedroom. She sat on the bed and talked again about the syllabus they had covered. I made hasty notes in my notebook and was dismayed to learn I’d already missed a large section on the Baroque, which I hoped was going to be the subject of my special essay in the spring.
“Do you think Patrizi will give me a catch-up session?” I said, a headache beginning at the corner of my right eye.
“Maybe,” Nancy said. She raised her eyebrows. “But when would you do it?”
“Jeez,” I said. “I don’t know. Weekends?”
Nancy looked solemn. “That’s probably a good idea.”
I threw myself back on the coverlet. “This is awful,” I whined. “I’m going to be the stupidest alumni in the history of the academy.”
Nancy touched my leg. “Well, there’s always Bunny.”
I laughed, although I didn’t feel any better.
I went early to the Italian classroom to find Elena before our lesson. She had a smudge of lipstick on her teeth I couldn’t stop looking at. I made vague allusions to my family emergency, but I think she already knew and was pretending ignorance for the sake of discretion. She said she’d be available to me for extra tutoring on Saturdays if I wanted. Which sounded horribly depressing, but I was grateful anyway.
As usual, Isabella was late to class. She came in rubbing a pink line on her face where the contour of her pillowcase was imprinted.
“Hello.” She slipped in next to me.
I smiled, but I was annoyed at her. She hadn’t been in her room the night before. Or in the common room. I’d stayed up, waiting, while Ruth insisted on showing me photos of her niece’s christening. After Ruth left, Mary Babbage came in with a pair of tap shoes she’d had sent in the mail from Milan. And then she put them on and tapped about until Nancy came by and begged her to stop. I ended up falling asleep upright in the armchair, groggily starting every time the corridor floorboards creaked. And then she hadn’t been at breakfast either. Neither had I, but that wasn’t the point. Isabella should have been at breakfast looking for me. Waiting for me.
She wrote a note on the margin of her book and slid it over. Miss me? it said.
I stared at the note. Was it a test? Should I say yes or pretend I hadn’t missed her? Which would she find more interesting? Course! I wrote. I examined it again before I slid the book back over. That was the right tone. Cheery but not needy. Then I wrote next to it, Miss me??
She scribbled for ages on the paper, and my pulse raced. Why was she taking so long? Could she have missed me all that much? When she passed back the book, I pinned it under my elbow. I was desperate to read the note straightaway, but Elena was looking at me.
“Don’t worry, Bridget,” she said in English. “You won’t understand this yet, but try to follow along and I’ll talk to you about it on the weekend.”
I nodded. The paper was burning under my elbow. Patricia began to read aloud from the textbook.
When I looked down at Isabella’s note, it was a paragraph of tight writing. I scanned it for important words. “Missed you,” “thinking of you,” “adore you.” But there weren’t any words like that. I had to read it twice to squeeze any sense out of it.