The Love of My Life (20 page)

‘Shannon.’

‘It’s beautiful. You’ll like it. They know how to enjoy themselves in Ireland. They’re not dour like the miserable buggers over here.’

I sipped coffee froth from the spoon.

‘My husband was a chef too,’ I said.

‘All the most alpha males are.’

‘He was going to open his own restaurant in London.’

‘What sort of place?’

‘Well, like this really. Only more Italian. He wasn’t going to do cooked breakfasts.’

‘Try the tart.’

I forked off the tiniest sliver of the tart and tasted it. It was heavenly, butter and caramelized breadcumbs with the sweetest toffee aftertaste.

‘You like it?’

‘It’s lovely.’

‘Good. It’s nice to . . .’

‘What?’

‘Oh, nothing.’ He stabbed out the centimetre of cigarette he had left between his yellowed fingertips on the glass ashtray.

‘I was going to say it was nice to see you smile and then I thought that sounded like some kind of sad-act chat-up line.’

I couldn’t help myself. I smiled again and took another, larger mouthful of the tart. The chef stood up and wiped his hands on his apron.

‘Make sure he takes you to the Cliffs of Moher. If you’re staying in County Clare, that is. They’re amazing. You’d like them.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Thank you for the tart, and, you know, everything.’

He shrugged. ‘No worries.’

And then the taxi arrived and I went to the airport for the secret assignation that would launch my first and only weekend with my beloved brother-in-law, Marc.

thirty-four

It was early summer. I had just turned eighteen. It should have been the best time of my life, only unfortunately no new scandal had broken and I was still the town pariah. I went to Marinella’s to see if Angela would give me a job, naïvely assuming that, because I’d done a good job for the Felicones in the past, she might be prepared to overlook my indiscretion. The bell tinged as I opened the door, and the first person I saw was Luca, who was standing behind the bar wiping glasses.

He was twenty years old, still lanky, with big hands and shoulders and a slender throat, and a shadow of acne around his jawline. His hair was shoulder-length, black and silky, and his smile, oh God, was a smile a girl would die for.

‘Liv!’ he cried, and my heart flipped and then danced because he was so clearly pleased to see me. I had entered the restaurant hopefully, but still with the downcast air of the penitent which I assumed was appropriate for somebody in my position. Now I perked up a bit.

Luca vaulted the bar – if Angela had seen him she’d have been furious – and in two strides I was in his arms and my feet had left the floor.

‘Boy, you have been one naughty girl!’ he said, paraphrasing one of our favourite Beatles songs.

I was so relieved by his reaction, and it was so good to see a genuinely friendly face, that I hung on to Luca’s neck and put my face on his shoulder, breathing in his hot young-man smell, and stayed there for as long as I could, which was only about a second because Nathalie came into the restaurant and coughed pointedly.

I let go of Luca and he let go of me, but he was still grinning slightly wolfishly.

‘It’s our local celebrity,’ he said to Nathalie, somewhat unnecessarily. Nathalie looked at me. There was no kindness in her eyes. They were cold and her face was expressionless.

‘What can we get you?’ she asked, producing a notepad and a pencil. I glanced to Luca for help. He bit a little piece of his lower lip between two canine teeth.

‘Um, actually, I came in to see Angela,’ I said. ‘I wanted to ask about my job.’

Nathalie’s expression didn’t soften. ‘We don’t have any vacancies at present,’ she said.

I tried to adopt a friendly but humble expression. I still wanted to be an actress and had practised.

‘I don’t mind what I do, Nathalie. I’d be willing to—’

‘There are no vacancies,’ she said.

‘Oh come on, Nat,’ said Luca, ‘there must be something we can give Liv. She’s an old friend of the family. She’s worked here lots of summers.’

Nathalie gave Luca one of her looks. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Well, we should at least ask Pop if he needs a hand with anything.’

Nathalie rolled her eyes, very quickly, so that you couldn’t be sure if she’d done it or not, but I didn’t like her patronizing Luca in this way, and little hackles of anger began to strain at my shoulderblades.

‘Don’t worry, Luca,’ I said sweetly. ‘I wouldn’t want to put Nathalie to any trouble.’

‘Hold on a minute, I’ll go and ask him myself,’ said Luca, and he disappeared into the back of the restaurant.

Being alone with Nathalie was uncomfortable. She had a way of imparting her mood to the whole room, and the atmosphere was so chilly I was practically shivering.

‘So, how are things with you?’ I asked.

‘Very good,’ replied Nathalie, straightening the cutlery in the trays by the counter. ‘You know that Luca has asked me to marry him?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I didn’t know that.’ I swallowed. I felt dizzy. ‘Congratulations,’ I said.

‘Thank you.’

‘Have you set a date yet?’

Nathalie smoothed her skirt. ‘Christmas,’ she said. ‘It won’t interfere with the business, and we’ll have snow on the hills for the photographs.’

‘Lovely,’ I said. ‘Just perfect.’

Nathalie looked at me without smiling. As always, she was neatly turned out, but in a suit that probably came from Country Casuals. Her hair was cut in a bob which didn’t flatter her heavy jaw. Her skirt stopped just below the knee. She was wearing tan tights and flat shoes.

There was a hole in my black tights, and I hitched down my skirt to try to cover it. My T-shirt was dark green, with a black Blondie print on the front. I could see the outline of my nipples through the fabric. Standing this close to Nathalie, I felt naked. I sat down at one of the little circular two-person tables by the window, crossed my legs and rested my chin on my hands. I swung my foot and gazed at the door, waiting for Luca to come back.

It only took a couple of minutes, and he emerged from the office with Maurizio in tow. Nathalie melted away, a satisfied, Cheshire-cat smile on face. She knew what was going to happen because she and Angela had already guessed that I would come looking for a job, and had prepared themselves for this eventuality.

‘Olivia,
carina
, you’re looking as beautiful as ever.’ Maurizio came over to me, put his hands on my arms, just below my shoulders, and leaned down to kiss me on both cheeks in a waft of garlic and wine. ‘But I have bad news,’ he continued, pulling a comic-tragic face and holding his hands to his heart. ‘There is no work here; we have too many sons to do the jobs that need doing, we don’t need any extra help.’

Luca said, ‘Pop, you’re always saying we’re understaffed at weekends . . .’

Maurizio held up his hand. ‘But your mother interviewed this week for the position.’

Luca opened his mouth but before he could say anything I stood up and pulled down my skirt. ‘Well, thanks for letting me know, Maurizio. I assume you won’t be needing me in the summer either.’

Maurizio did his Italian, palms-open gesture of helplessness.

Luca was doing an exaggerated, open-mouthed mime of incredulity. ‘Liv is one of us, Pop. You can’t do this!’

‘It’s OK, Luca,’ I said. ‘I completely understand.’

My pride was in tatters. I turned and went out of Marinella’s, wondering if I would ever go back. I was halfway along the seafront, seagulls keening above me, waves commiserating at my feet, wiping my nose with my forearm, when Luca caught up with me.

thirty-five

The bed was wide and low with a pale green candlewick spread and the room smelled of air freshener. There was no TV or kettle but the landlord brought us a tray of tea and biscuits. We sat on opposite sides of the bed, our feet on the practical carpet, and drank our tea like strangers thrown together by circumstance.

We had driven out of Shannon Airport in a hired Ford Focus and I had watched the countryside of Ireland go by while Marc drove. We’d stopped at several bed-and-breakfast establishments, but all had been full until this one, a large, modern bungalow, painted what Marc had dubbed ‘Clare yellow’ because so many of the buildings favoured this particular colour. The bungalow was so new that there were still piles of bricks and other construction detritus stacked up on the tarmacked drive, which had space for several cars.

The landlord was a young man with a nice face and a kind manner who practically tripped over himself trying to make us feel welcome. I wondered if we were his first customers. Later, we heard a baby crying in the bowels of the bungalow, and then the sound of singing as its parents tried to quiet it, obviously anxious it didn’t disturb us. I wanted to go and tell them to let the baby cry, we didn’t mind, but Marc said that would only draw attention to the fact that we had heard it. So I stayed by the mirror, applying my make-up, warm with anticipation because Marc and I were going out for a meal together and I hadn’t been out for a meal since Luca died, and I loved the whole drama of going out to eat.

Marc was in the shower, and warm steam heavy with the apple fragrance of my shampoo billowed into the bedroom through the open door. I opened my eyes wide to comb mascara on to my lashes, and smiled at the result. So many times lately I’d looked in the mirror, or caught sight of myself in shop windows, and I hadn’t recognized myself. But that evening, I looked like Olivia Felicone, green-eyed, brown-haired, wide-mouthed Olivia, wife of Luca Felicone, top chef and self-confessed sex god; he who never tired of telling me how lucky I was to have him. So when Marc came out of the bathroom, naked, rubbing his hair with a blue towel, I said, ‘Luca, you’re right, I am lucky,’ and didn’t even notice that the man I was with was not my husband.

He came over to me and kissed my neck.

‘It’s me,’ he whispered, ‘Marc. Sorry.’

I swallowed.

‘Oh Marc, I’m sorry. I just forgot . . .’

‘What did you forget?’

‘That I wasn’t happy.’

‘Maybe that’s the same as actually being happy.’

‘Yeah,’ I grinned. ‘Yes, you’re right. Maybe it is.’

I was wearing a blue shirt and black jeans with a gold necklace that Luca had given me for Christmas. Marc put on his normal, scruffy clothes, his jeans and his baggy sweatshirt, and rumpled his damp hair with his fingers and pronounced himself ready. He had lost weight too, and that made him look more like his twin. Together we fitted. In the mirror we looked like a proper couple.

Marc wanted to drink, so we left the car on the drive and walked back along the lane to a pub that we’d passed half a mile or so back. There was a river in the valley below us, and lights twinkled in houses and bungalows and pubs as far as the eye could see. Marc hooked his arm over my shoulders and kept me warm against him. From time to time he kissed my head. Distantly, imprecisely, it occurred to me that perhaps his feelings for me had nothing to do with Luca, but I batted the thought away like a moth. We were partners in grief, that was all. We were helping one another through the worst time in our lives.

There was music in the pub. A couple of handsome, middle-aged men were playing guitar and a young boy tapped a drum between his knees. One of the men was singing and the other was harmonizing and some of the clientele were joining in.

It was late but we were starving hungry so we ate hot sardines on toast, and I, not liking the taste of Guinness, drank whisky and lemonade until my head was full of music and laughter and I did pretend Irish dancing with a man with a huge belly and a straggly grey beard while people clapped and I laughed so much I almost collapsed. Marc was watching me, like Luca used to, with his pint in his hand and an amused, slightly indulgent expression. Then the music ended and the man, whose teeth were bad and whose breath was sour, made a toast to us. He asked our names and I said Olivia Felicone and Marc said Marc Felicone so he made the toast to Mr and Mrs Felicone, and of course, that was right, that was who we were.

With one arm around each of us, his right arm looped around my neck so that he could still drink our health, he said, ‘May the most you wish for be the least you get.’ And while I tried to work that out in my head, everyone was smiling and we bought a lot more drinks and honestly I have no recollection at all of how we got back to the bed-and-breakfast that night.

thirty-six

Luca and I walked up the cliff path into the woods, and we stopped at the point where Emily Campbell is supposed to have thrown herself to her death and we gazed out to sea.

By the time we reached the top of the hill, I was out of breath and warm. I told Luca exactly what had happened. How it started when Mr Parker put his hand on my thigh. How I had, in the diary, embellished the truth to make it sound more romantic and more meaningful. I told him about coming home to find Mum and Mrs Parker with the diary and what they had said. I told him about being expelled. Apart from Lynnette, he was the only person I told who believed my version of events instantly and absolutely and without question. Lynnette had been sympathetic and appalled. Luca was neither. Quite the opposite. When he’d heard the whole story he laughed and laughed like it was the funniest thing ever.

‘Oh that’s terrible, Liv! Confessing every detail of a crime and then getting done for it because they uncovered the confession, not the crime!’

‘Shut up,’ I said.

‘It’s a classic!’

‘Shut up, Luca. It’s not funny.’

‘It is! It’s so funny I’m going to piss myself.’

‘You are pathetic and disgusting,’ I said, and I turned my back on him, but only because his laughter was infectious and I didn’t want him to see me smile. I wiped my eyes with the hem of my sleeve and tried to suppress a little bud of laughter that was opening up inside me.

‘Jesus Christ, it’s fantastic. So was Mr Parker any good in bed, Liv?’