Wednesday evening, 9 September 1942
Things are easier. They really are. I’ve interviewed a few people for work here, and I have Melina helping me with the paperwork. Ercole is at Mungo’s and I want to say I miss him but I don’t. I will always love him, but I’ve never been afraid of him before and I don’t love him the way I did twenty years ago. Maybe ten years ago, I didn’t love him that way either, but at least I could look at the children and wish I did. Not any more. It hurts. But it hurts like something dying, not like something that could heal.
I miss St John and Julian, but the way Julian was acting last night…I understand that it’s hard for him, that he had me only a little while, but he could have had me when I was fifteen. Will and I tried to include him, but if Will was with me, he shut himself out. And I don’t miss them that way. When Nico and I are together I don’t think about or want anyone else sexually, not since Spain. In Italy it was different, Ercole had St John and I had Nico and sometimes we were all together, but even that changed toward the end, when Ercole was drinking so heavily and refusing to listen to reason at all, refusing to accept that we were losing, so much so that we practically had to evacuate around him rather than under his command.
All the Zabini men drink too much. I even think Marco and Alessio drink more than they should. Nico is no exception, but he doesn’t do it when I’m around. I know Portia complains he’s a drunk, and I know he was practically pickled during the months he thought I was dead, but he’s not…he doesn’t do it when he’s not dying of grief. He can control himself.
Some people (not all of whom are named Delgardie, even) say he’s just like Ercole, that he can’t control himself when I’m not around, but…he can control himself when I am around, and Ercole couldn’t. He could control himself the two and a half years we were apart that he didn’t think I was dead, and Ercole couldn’t. I had to control Ercole. All the time, and because I had to control him in secret he had to rule over me in public. There was a time I didn’t mind that compromise. But now I can’t even remember why I didn’t mind it.
Julian would never have married me. And he wanted me to marry Will but it was never going to happen. It wasn’t there. Will and I were best friends, who were also lovers, but…there was something he always felt that I didn’t, and I never meant to be cruel to him over it, it…
I’m just not good at this. At being human. At being anything but a strange little girl who’s grown up to be a stranger woman.
I can’t wear Ercole’s pearls any more. As much sophistry as I like to engage in, saying that they belong to the Zabinis and not to Ercole personally, he was the one who gave them to me, and this morning I tried to put them on the way I always do, and I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
I gave them to Bella. Along with the rest of the jewellery he gave me. And then she cried. And I felt so awful, but what could I do?
I like Teresa. I think Ilan (how curious a name that is, but then I never really thought he was a Benny) is falling in love with her. I wonder if he would be good for her, if she would be good for him. She doesn’t seem very much like a Maria-Teresa, either. But I don’t know what she is. I hope we find her child. She thinks her child is dead, and I do not think so, but I took her blood, a drop, and put it into water, and I scryed for him, and I do not believe that he is on any land that is linked to me, anywhere. I am afraid to tell them this.
I don’t like Michael Charteris, but sometimes even he is not guilty of things, and it is particularly suspicious that he wishes to be thought so. I wish Nico were home. I knew he was going to be late, though.