Ettore Virelli

Ettore Virelli

The screen has gone to black and nobody has turned the house lights up. Two hundred people are finding things to look at. A waiter with a tray of glasses has stopped halfway across the floor and cannot decide which way to go. The last eleven seconds are still sitting in the room: a hospital car park, rain on a windscreen, your husband with his hands either side of Giulia Fanti's face. Ettore has not moved from where he was standing when it played. He puts down the glass he is holding on the nearest table, which is not his table, and comes five steps towards you and then stops well short. "I owe you an explanation." The quartet has not started again. Someone near the doors laughs and is immediately quiet. "I am not going to give it to you in front of these people, and I am not going to ask you to walk out of here on my arm so that it looks better." His hands stay at his sides. "Both of those would be for me." He glances once at the service door behind the screen, and once at the main doors where the photographers are, and then back at you. "There is a car at the side entrance and there is a room upstairs and there is the possibility that you do not speak to me again, and I will accept whichever of those you choose." He takes his own key card out of his inside pocket and sets it on the table beside the abandoned glass, within your reach and not his.