Amara has never seen Simo before, but she knows it must be him from the way Paris and the other man take a step forward. He is coughing, almost bent double from the smoke. Paris grabs him, as if to help, but shortly afterward, Simo collapses in his arms. Paris lays him gently on the ground. Others rush forward. Paris edges back, until he’s at the fringes of the crowd. Then he turns and walks quickly in the direction of the well.

“We have to leave now,” Amara says. “He must have stabbed him. It’s going to get worse.”

They don’t run but walk as fast as they dare. By now, people from the neighboring buildings have spilled out onto the street, trying to stop the spread of the fire. A woman is screaming from an upstairs room. Sparks swirl in the heat, Amara is afraid their cloaks might catch fire. Then there’s a noise like thunder, a terrible crack as the roof of the bar collapses, the upward rush of the flames. She looks back at the inferno in horror. Anybody still inside will not have survived.

Victoria tugs her arm, and they keep walking, leaving the light and the noise, slipping back into the darkness.

41

“The pair of us were here, dear friends forever”

—Pompeii graffiti

Felix keeps Victoria upstairs with him after the fire, moving her into his room. A reward for helping him kill Simo. He barely acknowledges Amara’s role. She tells herself it doesn’t matter, that his coldness cannot hurt her if she hates him. It’s harder to watch Victoria, to see the way she opens up like a flower that has finally found the sun. In the mornings, Amara can hear her singing for Felix, imagines how she must be lying in his arms, gazing at him, pouring out all the love in her heart. The thought makes her furious.

Amara finds it easier than she imagined to say nothing to the other women about what happened. When they go to the baths together, she makes up a lie about her and Victoria being used to entertain clients at a bar, surprised at how quickly the tale trips from her tongue. Even if she didn’t find lying so easy, the bar story is soon forgotten, buried by the far more interesting gossip that Felix seems to have chosen Victoria as some sort of wife.

When news of Simo’s death finally reaches them through Gallus, Amara still gives nothing away, feigning shock to match the rest. But although she can bury her feelings in the daytime, at night she struggles to sleep, her heart racing, every fibre taut with fear. Her body relives the terror her mind cannot. She knows that Paris is suffering too, hears him weeping in the dark. But in the morning, he always refuses to speak to her. Whatever guilt he might be feeling, he is clearly determined to bury it.