Authors: Kate Eberlen
Would Ross and I ever have been friends? The idea’s never occurred to me.
‘Everyone who’s left behind feels guilty,’ says Tess. ‘I loved my mum to bits, but I still tortured myself with all the stuff I could have done to change things. If only
I’d recognized the signs, if only I hadn’t been away, if only I hadn’t been so wrapped up in going to bloody university as if that was the most important thing in the world. But
you can’t live your life thinking
if only
, can you? That’s easy to say.’
I stare down at the table and Tess leans towards me, her face tilted slightly sideways, as if she’s trying to get under my line of sight and make me look up, like you do if you want to get
a smile out of a grumpy child.
‘Two words?’ she says.
‘Another
gelato
?’
TESS
One minute, we’re chatting away as if we’ve known each other all our lives, the next, silent as if we’ve just met. Both of those are true, I suppose. As we
retrace our route, I feel very aware of his physical presence beside me, our hands almost, but not quite, touching.
‘So where did you go to medical school?’ I ask him.
‘University College.’
‘But that’s where I was going!’ I yell, as if he’s snatched something that was mine. ‘Where did you live?’ I ask, more politely.
He tells me about arriving in hall with his parents, wanting to create a new identity for himself and about meeting his friend Nash, who got the room next door due to a last-minute
cancellation.
‘Do you think that was my room?’ I ask, as we step onto the Ponte Vecchio again.
‘That would be weird, wouldn’t it?’
The shops are boarded up now, the buskers have gone home. We lean against the wall beneath the arches that support the Vasari corridor where powerful people used to stroll along above and unseen
by the common folk.
‘Do you think we’d have got on then?’ Gus stares down at the Arno.
It looks better at night, more romantic. During the day it’s muddy brown, but now it’s oily black with shimmering reflections of the lamps along the riverbank.
My instinct is probably not, if I’m honest. He was a public-school boy with middle-class parents. He’d have seen me as a chav, and I’d have been chippy, thinking I wasn’t
good enough for him, which maybe I’m not. All we had in common then was a love of art and ice cream. Would that have been enough?
‘Mum used to say that you can’t step in the same river twice,’ I tell him. ‘And I was never sure what that meant, but maybe it’s that if we’d met then, we
wouldn’t have been here together now. You wouldn’t even have been “Gus” without Nash!’
‘Like chaos theory.’ He turns to look at me. ‘If a single butterfly flaps its wings on the other side of the planet, it sets in motion a chain of events that could lead to a
thunderstorm . . .’
‘Or a rainbow,’ I say, because it doesn’t have to be something bad.
There’s a moment of silence, then we straighten up, our bodies so close and trembly it’s like there’s an electric current zinging between us. He stares into my eyes, then his
hands cup my face as if it’s a precious and delicate vase and his lips touch mine for a fraction of a second before drawing away. He looks at me for what feels like forever, and then he
kisses me deeply, eyes closed, as if he’s giving himself to me in prayer, and his lips are so gentle and expert that my body is warm candlewax melting onto him.
He takes my hand as we walk from the bridge, both of us grinning all over our faces.
The streets are surprisingly empty, the restaurants closed. We arrive at the Gelateria dei Neri just as the proprietor is winding down the shutters for the night. Gus chooses
nocciola
and
lemon, and it’s
fior di latte
and pear for me. We wend our way back to the Duomo square. The floodlights make the facade of the cathedral look flat, like a giant stage set with nothing
behind. There is no one else around and it feels as if the lights are on just for us, as if we’ve been granted a private VIP visit.
When I say this, Gus kisses me again. I keep my eyes open, because I want to fix an image in my memory of his face with the pastel stripes of the Campanile behind.
A couple of teenagers on skateboards appear from nowhere, circling us and jeering what I assume is the Italian for ‘Get a room!’ Then they’re gone.
‘The hotel where we stayed,’ Gus points. ‘It’s just down there.’
‘Nice.’
There’s a moment when I know we’re both thinking the same thing.
‘We should probably go back to Vinci . . . ?’ he says, like it’s a question.
‘We probably should,’ I say.
It’s the same taxi journey that I took up to Piazzale Michelangelo six hours ago, but the axis of my life has shifted, my quiet hymn of nostalgia replaced by a crescendo
of anticipation that thrills and scares me, in case l accidentally jinx what might be happening by believing it.
In the car park, as we stand looking at the floodlit Duomo, now distant against the black sky, I suddenly shiver with a kind of presentiment that I must capture every precise detail in my mind
because I’ll never see this view again.
‘I don’t want to leave!’ My voice wobbles.
Gus throws a protective arm around me, pulling me close. I love the way my head rests against his shoulder because he’s so tall.
‘We can always come back,’ he says.
‘Can we?’
‘Every day, if you like. Or we can visit other places. We’ve got the car. We can use the Villa Vinciana as our base.’
‘A bit like camping,’ I say. ‘Without the stones in your back and the walk to the loo, obviously . . .’
I can almost hear Doll shouting, ‘What are you like?’
‘I want to know more about Hope,’ Gus says, as he starts the car.
So I tell him about what a funny, obstinate little girl she was, and how I never knew if I was doing right by her, and how living with her made me aware of all the lies everyone tells all the
time just to make the world go round, and how difficult she could be, and how musical she was, and that leads me on to Dave.
So then Gus tells me about Lucy, and how she made him feel more secure and helped him stay the course, and how he didn’t tell her about his brother, and that leads him on to Charlotte.
Gus is concentrating on the motorway, which is two lanes only, with a concrete wall instead of a central reservation, but sometimes it’s easier to talk when you’re not looking at the
other person’s face. He takes the slip road off at Empoli Est, and we drive around a deserted town for a while, before he admits that he thinks he’s taken the wrong exit, and now
we’re lost. He stops the car in a side street, and tries to switch on the satnav, managing to change it from Italian to some other language, we think maybe Russian, but instead of finding it
funny, he is agitated and grabs my hand, staring at me with such intensity, I’m almost frightened.
‘Do you hate me now?’ he demands.
‘Why would I hate you?’
‘Because you’re such an honest person, and I behaved so badly!’
‘I don’t hate you,’ I say. Then, ‘I’m not always honest.’
I tell him about Leo, as we drive around the one-way system again and again, until, eventually, Gus spots the sign to Vinci and we climb up out of the town into hills with no light, on a road
with steep, unexpected bends.
When the headlights catch the hand-painted sign to the Villa Vinciana, a part of me is relieved that we’ve found our way back, but mostly I wish he would drive on past, because the inside
of the car feels almost like a confessional, where we can say anything to each other and there is no escape from the truth. But we haven’t quite reached the end of our stories.
The car bounces down the unmade track, and we swerve into the car park with a spattering of gravel. Gus pulls up the handbrake and switches off the headlights, leaving us in total darkness. The
silence seems charged with all the questions we might have asked while driving along but now feel too personal.
‘So you became a writer?’ he says.
‘Only in my spare time. For years everyone kept saying, when Hope settles, but nobody ever thought it would happen, so when it did, I felt I hadn’t done anything, and that’s
when I started writing this book. To give my life a kind of validity. And I suppose part of me thinks that it will be nice for Hope to have a record, if she ever wants to know about her past,
although, to be honest, it would be so unlike her . . .’
There’s a long silence, and I’m wondering whether he has understood the subtext.
‘So you became a doctor, after all?’ I ask.
‘Yes. I have to keep up payments on our house, so it can be the girls’ home for as long as they want. Although, this last visit, I wasn’t sure they did any more. Which is
probably a good thing, like you say. You have to find it in yourself to let people you love be independent of you.’ He laughs ruefully. ‘I just wish it hadn’t happened so
soon.’
‘Where is your house?’ I ask.
‘Portobello Road.’
‘Portobello Road?’
‘At the top, near the Sun in Splendour.’
‘One of those little houses all painted different colours?’
‘Yes!’ he says. ‘Do you know Portobello Road?’
GUS
My girls had tattoo transfers applied in the shop she manages; she slows down each time she runs past my house; we have had coffee in the same cafe almost every morning for two
years, but somehow she has never bumped into me, spilling her latte.
‘I had to pass out to get you to notice me, for heaven’s sake!’
In London there’s so much light you can never see the stars, but here it is so dark, the sky is a black-velvet canopy studded with myriad diamonds.
‘Do you think,’ Tess asks, as we stand gazing up at it, ‘that if we all had a kind of tracker device, a tiny light that you could see from space, then everyone’s paths
would loop and intertwine as ours have?’
‘No. I think this is m . . . mysterious.’
I was going to say that it is meant to be, but I heard Charlotte’s supercilious voice saying, ‘Are things really meant to be?’ and she has no place here.
‘Mysterious?’
‘Miraculous?’ I offer instead.
‘“Miraculous” is a lovely word,’ says Tess.
We are both trembling as we kiss because it feels like there is so much more at stake now we know all of each other’s hopes and transgressions.
Tess tastes of pears and cream and when I close my eyes, her smile stays in my vision like the moment when a rainbow fades, but you still think it is there.
Not far away, an owl hoots.
‘Can I hold your hand?’ Tess asks, as we pick our way across the uneven ground.
‘Those bloody flip-flops!’
‘I forgot to pack shoes, which is unlike me, but I was in such a rush not to miss my plane.’
If she had missed it, would we be here now? Would she have taken the next flight? Would we have arrived at San Miniato al Monte at the same moment? The connection between us feels inevitable,
and yet so fragile.
We kiss again on the stone staircase up to her room, and as we break for breath and I tug her up the steps, she loses a flip-flop. We watch it bouncing down, and then we hear footsteps
approaching, so we dash along the landing, spilling Tess’s keys, then rattling them incompetently in the old iron lock before finally bursting in, just in time to shut the door decisively
behind us before we are discovered. With our backs against the door, we hold our breath like escaped prisoners on the run, until the footsteps pass by.
In the darkness, my hands find Tess’s hands; my mouth her mouth, my skin her skin. Our desire is so frenzied, it feels as if we are trying to climb inside each other’s bodies, as if
we are surrendering ourselves completely to one another, as if it is the last thing we will ever do.
When I wake up, the room is dimly lit by splinters of sunshine piercing the slats of the shutters. Tess is asleep beside me, dark curls against the white pillow. It is strange
to see her features so still and peaceful; almost more intimate to watch her sleeping than to kiss her awake.
Carefully, I slide out from under the sheet, and pulling on my shorts, tiptoe to the door, letting myself out without a sound.
The terrace is still silent and deserted, but the breakfast buffet is laid out. I fill my pockets with pastries and fruit. Chef collars me at the coffee machine.
‘Mi dispiace,’
I say
. ‘Non posso lavorare . . . una cosa molto importante . . .’
I’m sorry, I can’t work . . . a very important thing.
It would probably have been better to say it in English.
Chef looks at the two tiny cups I am filling, then winks at me.
‘Amore!’
He is Italian. He understands about important things.
On my way back to the room, I pick up Tess’s flip-flop at the bottom of the stairs.
I realize I should have taken the key, because I’m going to have to wake her anyway.
I tap softly on the door.
‘Who is it?’
She sounds anxious. Surely she didn’t think I would sneak out and leave her?
‘It’s me!’
‘Password!’ she demands, with a nervous giggle in her voice.
‘Breakfast.’
She unlocks the ancient wooden door, then dashes back to bed, pulling the sheet right up to cover her naked body.
With the espresso cups balanced on the sole of the flip-flop like a miniature breakfast tray, I place one on each side of the bed, then feed Tess a strawberry, and bend to kiss her
strawberry-wet mouth. As she smiles up at me, words that have been fizzing like champagne bubbles in my body ever since I stood beside her in the sunshine outside San Miniato al Monte suddenly
whoosh to my lips.
‘I think I love you!’
Her response is beautiful, innocent disbelief, like a child on Christmas morning.
‘I don’t just think I love you! I do love you! I love you!’ It makes me madly happy to say it. ‘You have the most amazing mind, the most gorgeous body . . .’
‘No!’ Suddenly, she holds up her hand and turns away, staring beyond the shuttered window, as if looking at a distant view.
‘Tess?’
‘My breasts aren’t real!’