Alligator, Crocodile

Suki Hollywood

The receptionist was a nun, a real nun, with a shiny, grateful face and a crucifix and everything. When I told Ciara I was staying in a monastery, she’d let out a low, anxious whistle and asked really? Maybe it’s the Catholic School talking, but that sounds horrible.

I was Catholic, too, on my ma’s side, but she hadn’t baptised me or sent me to Our Lady of Flagellation or whatever, so I guess the PTSD gene skipped a generation and instead I was just kind of morbidly curious. Besides, I was on a serious budget, and a nun hotel was cheaper than a hostel.

Even so, Ciara’s reaction had made me a little nervous. But as Sister Prudence checked me in, handing me the room key in a little wicker confession basket, I definitely felt calmer. Meditative, even. Maybe it was her light blue habit. It was cool enough for the Florentine sunshine, and vastly different from the sour faced bitches in black my mum used to describe from her teenage years in Belfast.

What brings you to Florence? Holiday?

As Sister Prudence was tapping away on her nun computer, I rehearsed my answer to the question I knew would come. But when her administration was complete, she simply said that the room was ready and pointed me to the lift, and then the stairs. I felt both relief and robbery at not being able to say, Actually, no, I’m here to find my mother.

I grabbed a shower and met Agostino at a café across the river, near the bridge (the famous one). He was there already, tapping cigarette ash into his empty espresso cup.

I’d wanted to hire a female detective–a butch-adjacent, whiskey drinking Jessica Jones type, not Miss Marple. Fuck, I’d even have taken an overbearingly American Veronica Mars, but international Private Investigation turned out to be yet another male dominated field, and my gig was neither glamorous, easy or well-funded. This is how I ended up with Agostino. 

‘Ciao, bella,’ he said, kissing me on the cheek, reassuringly 4d and fleshy after so much Zooming. ‘Your flight is okay? And the hotel?’

I had been vague about the whole monastery thing. ‘Both great, thank you. Any more sign of her?’

Agostino nodded and waved his hand, as if to say, we’ll get to it, relax. First coffee. Another espresso for him, a cappuccino for me. The waiter wrinkled his nose, but Agostino simply cracked a joke in smooth Italian and insisted.

Most PIs are former cops or have a background in security. Agostino told me cheerfully on our first call that his last job before opening his business was PE Teacher. Not so good with kung fu or James Bond, he joked, but very good at chasing people down.  

As the coffee arrived, Agostino put on his reading glasses, which he had been wearing backwards on his broad neck. My first stepfather had done the same thing when he was driving. I wondered if Agostino was a father, and found his empty ring finger as he spread out the photographs.

A woman getting off a train in Firenze Centrale. Despite the interrailing backpack, she was older, middle-aged at least. Her hair was different–rust-coloured, not blonde–pulled through the gap in her black baseball cap.

The next shot. She looked up. Facemask on her chin. Eyes dark green smudges. Her eyes. My eyes. Our eyes, our face. If it wasn’t for the age difference, we could be twins. I’ve heard this all my life.

I sipped my hot, frothy milk. I’d already seen the pictures virtually, but it was nice to see them in real life; it showed a sense of dedication on Agostino’s part, that he had printed the images, that he wanted to impress on me the gravity of the situation.

‘That was two days ago. No sight of her in the train station and the bus station. So, we know she is still in the city,’ Agostino continued, pushing a print of credit card payments into my line of vision. Intimissimi. DUOMA TOURS. Gelateria dei Neri. ‘And look. She’s using her credit card again.’

That worried me. Mum hadn’t touched her bank cards once since she’d disappeared. At least, the ones I knew about–and if the past year had taught me anything, it was that there was a lot I didn’t know about my Mum.

‘Do you think she got robbed?’ I asked.

‘Maybe,’ Agostino said. ‘Or maybe she’s ready to be found.’

When I left him, Agostino was confident, and it was infectious.

‘Give me two, three days,’ he said, glasses back where they were: eyes on the back of his head. ‘It’s not like Paris. Firenze is small. I have friends here. By this weekend, you and mama will be home, I promise.’

‘What should I do until then?’ I asked.

See the Duoma, the Uffitzi. He recommended a Trattoria for dinner, another for lunch. Go shopping. Don’t worry. Though I was his employer, he insisted on paying for our coffee. Very masculine. Definitely somebody’s Dad.      

*

The police got to me before Bill, though it did give context to the text he’d sent me a few days before. Has Mummy been in touch with you this week? I’d replied, No, why and then forgot about it, the way I forgot his birthday every year.

Obviously, he’d been in shock, Bill said afterwards. He was probably worried that I would think he had killed Mum. It didn’t look like she’d ran away at first. Her phone was still charging by her bed, her keys on the hook by the door.

I mean, I thought he might have killed her–but I definitely thought she was dead.

Everybody did! Even if they didn’t say it, I mean come on. No one had seen her for five days, the police had no leads. We’ve all seen CSI. I didn’t tell anyone that, obviously. I just know she’s out there. Please share this image. Find my mum.

But when alone and unperceived I opened her wardrobe to look for something black to borrow. Her clothes were all still hanging there. I just thought, my mummy’s dead, my mummy’s dead, my wee mummy’s dead somewhere.

Because I was back home, I didn’t know about the letter until I was a week deep into my family emergency. Ciara opened it for me back in London, losing her grip on the phone when she realised who it was from.

‘“I’ve gone away, left you some money in the account,”’ she read. ‘“See you later, alligator.”’

She was obviously suffering.

They tracked the letter to a Post Box in France, the stamp to a corner shop, the CCTV of the area confirmed it was her, and the police kind of tapped out after that. Mid-life crisis isn’t a crime, love. Bill tapped out six months later.

The photo from Firenze Centrale was the first good picture I’d seen of her in a year. I didn’t recognise the clothes, or the backpack. Any time my Mum had travelled, it had always been with a lightweight little wheelie thing. She’d never worn something as casual as a baseball cap.

It made me wonder if she’d bought things in advance. Hidden them somewhere in the house from Bill, like she’d done with my Christmas presents.

*

I did as Agostino said. I saw the Duoma, ate pasta, pretended I was on holiday, stared at every English-speaking blonde lady, looking at their eyes. Blue, blue, brown, hazel. No green. It sounds crazy, but I was afraid I wouldn’t recognise her, so I had to look into her eyes to be sure.

I tried to concentrate on truly appreciating the Statue of David, but it was harder than you would imagine because of all the people taking fucking photos.

Selfies are annoying, that’s well-trodden ground, obviously. But what I really can’t stand is the people taking photos of each other.

A boyfriend taking pictures of a girlfriend dreamily contemplating Michelangelo’s masterpiece. Photo done, she drops the face and marches over to see if the result is satisfactory for the grid.

Two guys near the bum, one gesturing at it as if to say niccceee, the other taking pictures, snap, snap, snap, until the first guy stops looking silly and starts looking nice, and then walks over to put his hand over the camera lens, laughing, stop, stop.

A tiny boy in a tiny Barca strip stands still, thumbs up, smile toothy, as Daddy takes photo after photo, grinning inanely. Like look, here’s my son standing beside David. Can you believe it?

Everyone looking away from the art, unlike me, who was really communing with Da Vinci. I flapped the museum guide in my face–it was 2pm and too hot. Fuck this.

At the nun hotel, I went to my room and turned up the air-con. There was a single, scratchy bed with a wooden crucifix over it, some ye olde type shutters and a little square sachet of shower gel.

I flicked through the photos of my day–art, yellow ice cream–and felt so guilty. I imagined finding Mum somewhere in an alley way, gravely injured. Shaking her, Mum. How frantically I will accompany her to hospital, begging the doctors, Please, God, save my mother! She’ll pull through, but be affected for the rest of her life by her injuries. The Italian doctor will tell me this and I’ll nod, stoically, hair in a business-like pony. I’ll nurse her through recovery, señor…

*

She had told me she was going to do it. I was back home for the weekend. The park we were walking in had once been the sprawling grounds of a manor house belonging to an 18th Century British Aristocrat. I had never seen a photograph of him, but I imagined him as a milk-mild man, pinning exotic butterflies in glass cases. His influence remained in the thick rainforest plants that grew around the artificial lake, the bamboo brushing our shoulders.

‘Sometimes I want to disappear.’

I laughed. I was twenty-eight, she was in her sixties–we’d all agreed it was best to stop specifying which exact sixty–surely if anyone was going to run away, it would be me.

‘He’s not that bad, is he?’ I said.

She’d been complaining recently about Papa 3’s obsession with golf (I only started calling him Bill post-disappearance).

‘No, no, he’s a good spud,’ Mum said, looking forward. ‘But sometimes, I think about getting into the car and driving somewhere where no one knows me.’

My mum’s car is a two-seater and her pride and joy; if there isn’t too much baggage, there’s room for another passenger under her handbag. I said something like, don’t run away before my birthday, or if you wanted him to notice, you need to take the golf clubs with you.

I still don’t know what I should have said instead, but I’ve thought about it a lot.

*

Sister Prudence woke me at 12pm the next morning, when housekeeping couldn’t get in.

‘So sorry!’ she said. ‘Are you sick?’

I was stiff and shivering: I’d left the air-con on all night. ‘No, no,’ I said, ‘Just tired.’

Breakfast was finished, but Sister Prudence made me a cup of tea because she heard British people liked it and it was too early in the morning to start talking about the colonisation of the North of Ireland and I drank it with a piece of soft cake and a little packet of peach jam. Sister. It’s nice that they’re called sisters, I thought. I was an only child.

She sat across from me at a little table in the garden, in the shade, but still so hot I felt my skin crackle and the light cut into my eyes. She finally asked me what brought me to Florence. The perfect opportunity to say, I’m here to find my mother, but I didn’t feel like it for whatever reason. I wasn’t sure how to act around a nun. I showed her my photos from the day before.

‘Lovely,’ she said, studying each one with care like archival material. And then, ‘There are none of you.’

‘Oh,’ I said, ‘Because I’m alone, I guess.’

‘You could ask someone to take your picture,’ she suggested.

If it had been Mum, she’d say, Why didn’t you ask someone to take your picture?

Actually, no, my mum wasn’t really like that. We didn’t talk about my life much. She didn’t ask about it, I mean. Ciara said her mum was the same. So much for unhappy in their own unique way or whatever.

‘I guess,’ I said, as if I was considering it. I wasn’t. It felt like admitting defeat.

At the Uffizi, I watched people stand in front of the Botticelli paintings and take photos of each other. It’s because they’re with someone they love, I realised.

The beige flavour of the tea coated my tongue for the rest of the day. I called Agostino to ask if he wanted to have lunch, but he had already left a voicemail. Great news. I have her location by tonight, tomorrow morning at the latest. Time to see if you can find a double room!

I went back to the nun hotel to wait. Sister Prudence gave me a smile in reception. I tried to look a little like I needed help, but she just turned back to the person checking in.

I imagined what my mum would say when we found her. If her mind had really broken down in a way that couldn’t be fixed. What if she didn’t know who I was. How can you love me, I thought, when you don’t know who I am?

Even though it was still hot, I couldn’t wait at the hotel. I took a handful of the missing person posters I brought, just in case, crinkling in their poly-pocket, walked in the direction of the Merry Go Round, the famous one in the famous square.

In the crowd, I turned to glance down an alleyway between two shops. There was a woman. The woman was alone, like me. Dressed all in black, pleather trousers shining in the light of Louis Vuitton. In her hands was a large analogue camera, pressed to her eye, pointing my direction.

 It was my mum. It couldn’t have been–too slim, too young, too striking. And yet, as I waited for her to lower the camera from her face, I was so sure.  

Originally published in Issue #29

Suki Hollywood is a writer and poet. Her debut novel, Jesus Freaks, is out now.