Page 19

Seb

Maybe I really was a bad luck charm, because I screwed up again at the San Domenico Basilica.

We arrived before closing time, which felt like a miracle, given how much my legs screamed in pain as I hobbled up, squelching with every step.

When we reached the top of the hill, the last of the day’s sunlight brushed the rooftops gold and a few lights had flickered on in the clustered houses of the city.

She wanted to stop and look at the view, but I tugged her up to the old brass portal of the church, swallowing an idiotic comment about how the door looked like Han Solo frozen in carbonite – even though it totally did. We’d never made it to episode five.

Once inside the cavernous nave, I located our destination quickly from the clutch of tourists ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the railing in front of a grand marble side-chapel.

‘Do I have to pray for an explanation?’ Lori asked. I glanced at her and that pang returned, the pleasant ache that had throbbed to life in my room when I’d been privileged enough to see her cry.

I suspected it might never go away again.

She wasn’t happy to have had a witness and I wouldn’t bring up the subject to save my life, knowing she could push me away just as easily as she could come along on this harebrained pilgrimage to the relics of a saint.

Perhaps this had been a crappy idea. How would lighting a candle in front of a sliver of a discoloured fingernail actually help?

I hoped the relic wasn’t actually a fingernail.

My stomach was still a little sensitive.

But we were here now and she’d asked for an explanation. We had to try something – other than sleeping together again, which I was pretty sure would only make things worse. ‘This church holds the relics of Saint Catherine.’

Lori didn’t immediately react, despite my dramatic tone. ‘I know I’m Irish and Italian, but I’m mostly Australian and… saints aren’t really my special subject.’

‘Saint Catherine is the patron saint of wheels . It’s a great coincidence. You can light a candle here, make a gesture and reset your thinking.’

‘Isn’t the patron saint of cycling the Madonna del Ghisallo, that chapel in northern Italy? Dad took us there a few years ago.’

‘I know the one, but that’s too far away, so I figured wheels might do.’

‘I suppose it can’t hurt,’ she said glumly.

I didn’t really believe the saint would grant Lori good luck for her next race.

Although I wasn’t very religious, I did understand that saints weren’t genies.

But there could be meaning for her in the gesture, even if I couldn’t describe what – at least not sufficiently for Lori to unfold her sceptical frown.

As we waited our turn to peer at the relics, she rummaged in the front pocket of my hoodie, which only reminded me how good she looked in it, how watching her pull on my clothing made me feel like the possessive jock who got the cheerleader – except for the fact that Lori was a more famous athlete than I was and not a cheerleader.

I just wished I had something with my name on it for her to slip into.

‘Damn it, I left my phone in your room,’ she muttered. ‘Can I have yours?’

I handed it over without questioning her. ‘The code is 6920. It’s the postcode of my family’s place.’

She eyed me as though I’d given her my PIN number, although to be honest, I probably would have done that if she’d asked to borrow my card.

‘What? You’re not going to turn up and murder us all in our sleep,’ I said defensively.

‘I thought you’d be more worried about me going through your camera roll and posting everything on Instagram, but if you’re concerned you’re hanging out with a murderer, you don’t need to be.’

‘Ehhhh, maybe don’t look at my—’

‘Don’t worry!’ she said, giving me a pat on the cheek that should have felt teasing but still shivered through me. ‘I’m just looking up Saint Catherine. I know every cyclist has photos of their shaved, muscly legs on their phones. I won’t even risk seeing that.’

I had a few weird selfies I’d sent to my sister and her kids in my gallery, but what really worried me was Lori finding the couple of photos of her I’d saved off the internet.

‘And nobody wants to see me on Instagram, least of all me! I haven’t posted on there in years and I haven’t missed anything.’

‘Just put up your team portrait and you’ll get a few followers,’ she said without looking at me, which was helpful because heat spread right up my throat to my cheeks.

She tapped at the phone screen, then scrolled slowly, reading and humphing every few moments. It seemed she really was just reading about Saint Catherine.

‘It’s pretty awful that she’s the patron saint of wheels and wheelwrights because they tried to kill her with one,’ she commented eventually.

‘They did? Ouch.’ Further suspicions that this had been a bad idea rippled through me as we shuffled forward in the queue.

‘Wait a second,’ she said, her frown deepening. ‘It said she was born in Egypt. What’s the connection with Siena?’

‘To be honest? No idea. I’m not a very good Catholic either, but don’t tell my grandma.’

‘I won’t tell her if you agree to ask her to knit me a pair of leg warmers,’ she said with a twitching smile as she peered at the screen.

‘They’re really not that fash—’

‘Ah!’ she said with a grimace, glancing at the marble embellishments on the chapel we were shuffling towards. ‘Seb, this is the wrong Catherine.’

‘The wrong…’ I couldn’t finish my sentence because she clutched my arm and squeezed as she continued reading and my brain froze, wondering if the casual touch was affectionate.

Of course it wasn’t. I was the idiot who’d stolen her luck, fallen into a fountain and brought her to see the wrong saint.

An orgasm and a pair of my grandma’s leg warmers wouldn’t make up for that.

‘These are the relics of Catherine of Siena, not Catherine of Alexandria! There’s no connection to wheels at all, although I’m personally relieved this Catherine wasn’t tortured, to be honest. Did you ever realise how much violence against women is internalised into western culture?’

‘No, I—’

‘I like this story much better. She refused to marry and then became a powerful political adviser. Except she got sick and died at 33 and then—’ Her eyes widened and she looked up at the chapel in alarm. Only four tourists separated us from the railing. ‘Do you know what this relic is?’

‘No. What?’ I asked urgently. I’d only seen the name ‘Saint Catherine’ before dragging her on this wild goose chase and when would I learn my lesson about leaping before I looked? It was probably a whole pile of fingernails and a pair of underwear.

I stepped up to the railing with dread and slowly lifted my gaze. Lori’s hand on my forearm clutched more tightly and I needed that painful squeeze when I saw the object enshrined in a little reliquary of gold and brass and gemstones. My stomach protested and I swayed on my feet.

It was a severed head, withered and leathery, with a toothy gap for a mouth, a grizzly, noseless, partly-mummified capitulum that had – rather violently, I assumed – been separated from the corpus.

Okay, Lori’s hand wasn’t enough for me to hold it together. I made an unattractive choke and grappled for the railing as my knees gave out. ‘I think I’m going to be sick – again.’

Deep breaths. In… Out…

With Lori tugging my jacket as we dodged the pews, I made it outside and plonked my bottom onto the concrete steps, dropping my head between my knees. My face was hot and I almost wished Lori hadn’t been there to witness this – except I couldn’t imagine wishing Lori wasn’t there, ever.

She wasn’t the touchy-feely type and I didn’t expect a back rub, but she sat next to me – almost touching! – and I peered at her out of the corner of my eye as the nausea passed. Her expression was pensive and the image of her swiping away tears came back to me.

‘Did you eat?’ she asked. ‘After the race?’

‘Yeah… something? I think.’

‘Do you chuck up a lot after races?’

I shook my head. ‘I just went too hard today.’ She would know what I meant.

Cycling was called an endurance sport for a reason.

We trained to operate beyond the sustainable capacity of our metabolisms on race day – and ignore the physical warnings telling us to stop.

Although I wasn’t usually so good at ignoring those.

‘Are you going to try to tell me your result was also down to luck?’

‘Partly,’ I insisted. ‘I’ve rarely had better legs. I didn’t even fall for Gaetano’s mind games.’ I stifled a sneer, which probably looked like an impression of Sylvester Stallone, given the doubtful glance Lori gave me.

‘What mind games?’

Oops, perhaps I shouldn’t have given that away. Now my cheeks were radiating heat into the dusk air.

‘The usual, talking shit. I should have retired last year; I’m the 110th best Belgian cyclist; does my girlfriend even remember my name? He was more creative than most. I think he wanted me to drop back just so I didn’t have to hear the insults. It’s a cheap trick.’

Lori was silent for longer than I would have expected, but when she did speak, the words exploded from between her clenched teeth. ‘He’s a fucking wanker.’

The heat spread from my face to my chest as she vibrated with indignation, her knees bumping mine. I nudged her back. ‘That’s a mental image I didn’t need. I’m just glad I had it in me to beat him where it counts.’

‘I wish I could hit him where it counts. I couldn’t even gallop over the finish line today.’ The look she gave me was tinged with hurt and I hated that my good performance went hand-in-hand with bad luck for her.

‘I know you’re good, Lori, but surely you’ve had difficult finishes before. What happened today wasn’t your fault. You haven’t let anyone down.’

She flashed me a stubborn look. ‘I’ve let everyone down – for months. I bet you can still remember your worst losses.’

All I could do in reply was wince at exactly how well she’d hit the nail on the head.