The Love of My Life (27 page)

After what felt like a long time taking things out and putting other things into the case, I suddenly felt very hot and shivery and had to sit down on the bed. At that point, the enormity of what we were about to do came crashing down on me like a wave and I thought it was a stupid idea, that we were mad for even considering it. I realized that Luca was probably thinking exactly the same thing. Or maybe he never had any intention of leaving at all? Maybe it was just his idea of a joke? Running away was the sort of desperate plan anyone would come up with a week before they were due to promise complete and unending fidelity to somebody who wasn’t much fun. Talking about it was one thing. Doing it was another.

I lay down on the bed. When Mum came back I’d tell her I was too ill to go to work. No, I’d say I’d gone in and they’d sent me home so it wasn’t my fault. I closed my eyes and snowflakes danced in front of me and then I was aware of the pleasant sensation of drifting into dark oblivion. I was disturbed by somebody shaking my arm. I opened my eyes and there was Luca, looking pale and urgent.

‘Come on, Liv, we need to be quick,’ he said.

I sat up. Luca was buckling the straps on my suitcase. I swung my legs off the bed.

‘I haven’t done a letter.’

‘Well do one, quick.’

I had my pad and a pen ready.

Dear Mum
, I wrote. ‘What did
you
say?’

‘Huh?’

‘In your letter.’

‘Fuck’s sake, Liv. We haven’t time for this.’

I exhaled. He relented and sat on the bed beside me and put his arm round me.

‘I did three letters. I wrote them last night when I got back.’

‘Three?’

‘One for Nat, one for Mama and Pop and one for Marc. I told Nat I would only make her unhappy and that she deserved better, and to the parents I told the truth, that I was going away with you and that I was sorry for everything but it was what I had to do.’

‘And Marc?’

‘That was the hardest. I just said I hoped he’d forgive me and that one day he would understand. I said I’d call as soon as we found somewhere to live and that he could come and join us if he wanted.’

‘That’s a good idea.’

‘He’s going to bear the brunt of the fall-out, poor sod.’

Luca was chewing the side of his thumbnail.

‘He’ll be OK,’ I said.

‘I hope so,’ said Luca. ‘Please hurry up, Liv, we need to get out of here.’

I wrote a few more words to Mum, I don’t remember what exactly. I didn’t bother trying to explain, I just apologized and reiterated that no harm or hurt had ever been intended. I put the note in an envelope and licked the seal.

‘OK.’

‘OK.’

Luca carried my suitcase out of the room. I glanced round quickly, scooped up the china ponies from the windowsill and put them in my pockets. They would get broken, I knew, but I couldn’t bear to leave them.

That was it. Leaving my whole life behind was as easy as that.

I propped the envelope between the salt and pepper pots in the middle of the kitchen table where Mum couldn’t fail to see it. I hoped that she’d come home with Mr Hensley after she’d finished her business at the church. I didn’t like the thought of her finding it on her own. Luca was going through the cupboards, looking for provisions.

‘I couldn’t take anything from Marinella’s, I’m supposed to be going to the wholesaler,’ he said.

‘Does that mean that as well as losing you they’re going to be short of supplies tonight?’

‘They won’t open the restaurant tonight,’ said Luca. ‘They’ll be too busy looking for us. That’s why we need to go now.’

One last sweep of the kitchen where I’d eaten my meals for eighteen years, and then we left. I shut the door behind me and heard it click on the latch. Luca had my suitcase in one hand, and took my gloved hand in his other.

‘It’s going to be OK,’ he said, squeezing my fingers. ‘We are going to be happy. Really, really happy. We are going to be the happiest runaways on the planet.’ He was right.

fifty-one

The week before the birthday he used to share with Luca, Marc came to see me. I hadn’t seen him for a few weeks, and was stupidly happy when he called. I ran down the stairs of the flat to open the door, and embraced him. He held me very close and stroked my back and breathed into my hair. The stud of his earring dug into my scalp.

‘Liv,’ he whispered, ‘Liv.’ As if he were saying a spell or a prayer.

He asked if I’d like to go to the café, but I said I’d rather we had a drink in the pub. So we went to the Horse and Plume, which had its doors and windows open and contained the usual mix of regulars and tourists. We took our beers out into the yard at the back. It was walled on all four sides, a complete suntrap with thirsty-looking roses struggling to grow up a wooden trellis tacked to the yellow rendering.

All the tables and seats were taken, so we sat down on the browning, stub-littered grass in the far corner and leaned against the wall, our shoulders touching.

‘I don’t want to be with Nathalie,’ Marc said, without preamble. ‘I want to be with you. I won’t ever ask again, but if you give me the word, I will leave her.’

I balanced my bottle between my knees and pulled at a daisy. I let my hair hang over my face.

‘I can’t make your decisions for you,’ I said. ‘But I don’t want you to leave Nathalie. Please don’t do that. You and me, what we had, was about Luca. It wasn’t about you and me.’

Marc took a swallow of beer. I made a slot in the daisy stalk with my thumbnail.

‘That’s where we’re different,’ he said. ‘From my perspective, what we had wasn’t just about Luca. It was about you. You mean the world to me.’

I glanced up at him through my hair. He was staring into the middle distance, not looking at me.

‘I am not your world,’ I said quietly. ‘There will always be Nathalie and the children. And Marinella’s. And this thing between us, it was never straightforward. It’s all mixed up with Luca, no matter what you say. It would never have happened if Luca hadn’t . . .’

He nodded, his face expressionless. I watched his throat swell as he swallowed.

‘I’ve always wanted to be with you, Liv.’

‘No you haven’t.’

‘I have. Think about it. I was the one who held a torch for you always.’

I swallowed some beer and tipped my head back and closed my eyes.

‘Don’t tell me your secrets, Marc, I don’t want to know.’

‘Luca knew.’

‘What did he know?’

‘How I felt about you.’

I sat upright. ‘Oh, Marc, surely not . . .’

‘He did. That’s why it took so long for us to get back to normal, him and me, after you left together.’

‘Why didn’t you ever ask me out then, or say anything?’

‘You engineered it so that I was going out with Anneli, remember, and you were seeing that skinny lad who worked the ferry. And then when I finally thought I had my chance, the very night that we were supposed to have a date, you ran away with my brother.’

‘Oh, Marc! I’m so sorry. I never meant to . . .’

‘I know you didn’t.’

‘We only decided we were leaving the night before. It wasn’t something we’d been planning for ages.’

‘Luca had been planning it.’

‘He hadn’t. Why do you say that?’

‘Things he’d done. Preparations. He filched some money out of Pop’s account.’

I shook my head. ‘He can’t have.’

‘He did. And he had the car fixed. He told the garage to send the bill to Marinella’s. That was a good few days before you two buggered off.’

Marc sighed. He took out his tobacco tin and laid a paper on his knee.

‘Don’t tell me any more,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to know.’

We were silent for a few moments. Marc made his cigarette and went through the ritual of flicking it repeatedly with a blue disposable lighter before it caught. Meanwhile I trawled through my memories for signs that Luca had been planning to leave, and couldn’t find any. He’d never spoken to me of making preparations; certainly I had no idea he’d stolen any money. They would have blamed me for that, Angela and Nathalie. They’d have thought it was me putting ideas into his head. I threaded the stalk of a daisy through the slot in its sister’s stalk, and repeated the process.

‘Why did you marry Nathalie, Marc?’

Marc shrugged. He waved a fly away from the rim of his glass.

‘We were both in the same boat. Both pretty devastated. Pretty pissed off.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘I guess we both understood how the other was feeling.’

‘Bit like you and me, after Luca,’ I said.

‘A bit,’ said Marc. ‘She loved Luca, you know. Never me, not really.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true.’

‘And after Luca went, when we realized he wasn’t going to come back, it just seemed natural for me to step into his shoes and take over the restaurant with Nat. I think I was Mama’s Plan B.’

I couldn’t help smiling. ‘You make Angela sound like a complete control freak.’

‘No,’ said Marc, shaking his head. ‘She’s just a mother who loves her family, who would do anything to protect them, and who wants the best for them. And she loves Nathalie as much as any of her sons.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘But Nathalie and me, we were just going through the motions. We still are.’

We drank some more beer in the pub garden, we talked some more. It was pretty sad but it was good. I thought it was a dignified and adult end to the affair. We both knew it was over, we tied up some emotional loose ends, we were considerate of the other’s emotions.

Later, we walked back to the flat. The daisy chain was strung around my neck. We stood outside the door. I didn’t invite him in.

‘Will you be all right?’ He smoothed my cheek with his knuckle.

I nodded. ‘Will you?’

‘I’ve survived worse.’

‘It’s not like we’ll never see each other.’

Marc kissed my forehead.

‘I’ll never forget anything, Liv. None of it. You got me through this last six months, nobody else, and I’ll always be grateful for that.’

‘Me too.’

‘God, I hate goodbyes,’ said Marc.

‘Just go then.’

‘OK, but Liv . . .’

‘What?’

‘Thank you.’

I thought that was the end of it, we both did. Still no real harm had been done.

fifty-two

So Luca and I ran away together. We ran away to London, but
en route
I became really ill so we stopped at Leeds and found a cheap hotel and holed up for what was supposed to be a couple of nights. Our room was cold and damp and dirty and my cold turned into bronchitis but we were afraid of going to a doctor because we knew that would mean retrieving my medical records from old Dr Clayton at Portiston and he would be bound to reveal our whereabouts to Mum and Angela. He had never believed in the sanctity of the patient–GP relationship and had outed many an embarrassing condition disclosed in assumed confidentiality.

In the end, it became so difficult for me to breathe that Luca took me to Casualty and I was admitted into Leeds General Infirmary with what turned out to be pneumonia. On the day he was supposed to be marrying Nathalie, Luca phoned my mother to tell her that I hadn’t been in touch because I was in hospital. Mum told him she didn’t care if I died; in fact, she said, it would be a blessing. Luca only told me about this conversation many years later when I’d tried, and failed for the thousandth time, to build bridges back to Mum. He said she was a cold, hard, unloving woman. Lynnette said Mum had just had an unhappy life.

After he’d phoned Mum, Luca called Marinella’s. Angela answered the phone so quickly that Luca suspected she had been sleeping beside it. She had let loose a stream of invective in Italian, much of it directed against me. Luca didn’t tell me about this either, but Angela, naturally, blamed me for leading her beloved son astray. Angela thought I’d used my sexuality to lure Luca away from the virginal and almost holy Nathalie. She called me a sexual terrorist. She told him my speciality was blowing apart decent relationships with no regard for the wounds that would be inflicted on innocent victims. Nathalie, poor girl, had been destroyed, she told Luca. She then tried to persuade him to return. He would, she said, be completely exonerated if he were to return home immediately. Nobody blamed him. They knew it was all my fault. They were even prepared to compromise on the wedding. They could talk about it if he didn’t feel ready to commit, if that was what the problem was. Nobody would force him to marry Nathalie if he didn’t feel ready for it. All he had to do was come back to Marinella’s and this whole episode would be forgotten and never mentioned again. No harm done. No bottles broken.

The money in the phone ran out before the discussion could go any further. Luca had been calling from a booth in the waiting area of the hospital. It was full of people who had slipped over in the ice and had suspected fractures. The phone was normally used to communicate very happy or very sad news. Births and deaths. Luca, in his exhausted, hungry, scared and lonely condition, thought his situation consisted of a bit of both. He bought a newspaper and ate a hot lunch in the hospital cafeteria. The room was strung with tinsel and faded paper chains which had clearly been recycled from the year before. A few large, collapsible silver- and gold-foil snowflakes spun in a melancholy fashion from the ceiling. The windows were steamed up. The serving ladies were wearing cracker crowns and a couple had mistletoe pinned behind their ears. Mournful cathedral carols were being piped into the room. Some of the tables were occupied by loud, laughing nurses and auxiliaries. Stooped, anxious people sat around others, picking at their food and stirring their drinks endlessly. Children whined and fretted in pushchairs.

There was a special turkey dinner available. It was cheap. So on the day when Luca should have been feasting on pasta Alfredo and marinated beef in Marinella’s, when he should have been guest of honour at the party to end all parties, when his ears should have been ringing to the sound of members of an extended Italian family standing up and shouting, ‘
Evviva gli sposi
,’ instead Luca, my beloved, sat alone in the cafeteria in the Leeds General Infirmary and ate processed turkey and rock-hard roast potatoes in reconstituted gravy.