Page 49 of The Italian Obsession

“Cosa? Come lo sai?” Rico snaps. Translation: What? How do you know?

“Rico!” I cry. “Help me. Tell them I didn’t do this.”

“La sua borsa era piena, ovviamente colpevole,” the policeman tells him. Translation: Her bag was full, guilty as.

I’m bustled away quickly.

“Rico!” I cry as I try to crane my neck to see him. “Please, help me.”

I am pushed into an office and the door is slammed shut behind us.

________

Six hours is an eternity when you’re locked in a room.

Eeriness is lurking in the air. I stare at the wall through my tears, battling the silence, trying to quieten the sheer terror of what I’m facing.

Drug trafficking in another country.

I’ve been strip-searched, interrogated, humiliated, and then… deserted.

Enrico left.

Well, I’m assuming he left.

He hasn’t come to see me. There’s been no mention of him or the fact that we know each other from the policemen I’ve been dealing with. Did he even tell them that he knew me? I stupidly thought he cared. If not enough to carry on our relationship or whatever it was, at least enough to help me as a friend when I’m in need… and I’m in dire fucking straits here.

They allowed me to make one call and I chose to call the Australian Embassy.

They will know what to do; they have to. I’m assuming by now they would have called my parents back home, and I feel sick knowing what they must be going through. This is every parent’s worst nightmare. Natalie is in the air, on her way home to London, and she won’t have any idea of what has happened yet.

Maybe I’m going to wake up any moment and find that this is all a bad nightmare. Please, please, please let me wake up soon.

The door opens and clicks quietly closed. I close my eyes in dread. Here we go again.

“Olivia.”

I turn suddenly to see Enrico standing over me, and my emotions bubble over at seeing a familiar face and my eyes instantly fill with tears. “Rico.”

“What’s happened?” he whispers.

“I don’t know.” I shrug sadly. My hope of this being a big mistake is dissipating by the second. “I’ve no idea. I got on the plane as normal, and then when I arrived, they said I had drugs in my bag.”

His cold eyes hold mine. “How did they get there?”

“I don’t know.” I throw my hands up in the air. “I have no fucking idea who put them there, but it wasn’t me.”

He rolls his eyes and drops into the chair opposite me. His body language tells me he knows it’s as bad as I think it is.

“What do I do?” I whisper.

“Just sit tight,” he says with a clench of his jaw. He seems angry.

“For how long?”

“Until I get you a lawyer,” he snaps.

“This isn’t my fault.”