She heard the intake of breath. ‘I do not think so, Tess,’ she said.
‘But wouldn’t you like to see it all again, Muma?’ She looked around the dilapidated terrace. ‘The villa, the
baglio
,
the village …?’ It was hard to comprehend. Whatever her mother felt about the place, Cetaria was still where her family had lived, where she had grown up. And the longer Tess stayed here, the more she could sense the fabric of her mother’s life, the more she was beginning to understand her. She had been made tough by her experiences, Tess understood that now. It was a matter of survival, and of love.
‘I am not sure that I could,’ her mother said at last. ‘It may be too much of a journey.’
Tess thought of the pile of rubble on the other side of the garden wall. That might be hard. ‘Will you at least think about it?’
There was a long pause.
‘There are days,’ her mother said, ‘when I hardly stop.’
Flavia thought she had come to the end. Not the end of their story – but that was part two and Tess had been around for much of that, so what was the need to write it down? Did she really need to know the rest?
But there was something unsatisfactory about the story – she’d realised that even before Lenny’s fall. It was unfinished, it left too much unsaid, it wasn’t the whole truth. If she died tomorrow, Tess wouldn’t know – just as it turned out Lenny hadn’t known.
It had been a shock. They never had much trouble in Pridehaven. It was an area with a low crime rate and most of the young people were nice enough, though some were a bit noisy. Most looked far fiercer than they really were. It wasn’t a bad place.
When Lenny first heard the shouting and Edna’s voice raised, he should have called Flavia, or the police, instead of resorting to DIY.
In Edna’s garden, their neighbour told Flavia later, were two youths. One was trampling her flower beds at the bottom of the garden; the other was halfway across the lawn.
‘Kindly remove yourself from my property, young man,’ Edna told him. ‘Or I’ll call the police.’
‘Aw, I’m so scared,’ said the boy, just as Lenny launched himself heroically on to the lawn.
‘Come here, you little toe-rag,’ yelled Lenny. (‘He was very masterful,’ Edna added). ‘Let me at you.’
Boy One now had a muddy foothold on the back fence and was scaling it like a rat up a drainpipe. And despite the fact that he was being threatened by a red-faced elderly man wearing sunflower-yellow gardening gloves, Boy Two was legging it down the garden.
‘Run away, would you?’ snarled Lenny and gave chase.
‘He didn’t see Tabitha,’ said Edna, when recounting the story to Flavia. ‘She was in her favourite spot by the nasturtiums. But she’s such a nervy cat. She streaked in front of Lenny, and he tripped right over her. Fell face down on the path.’
Fortunately, by then, Boy Two was already disappearing over the fence, unaware that his adversary had fallen.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Edna said to Flavia. ‘Tabitha was terrified, you see.’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Flavia reassured her. ‘Or Tabitha’s.’ Flavia couldn’t even blame Lenny. How could you blame someone for being who he was?
Edna got to Lenny as soon as she could. She thought at first he’d had a heart attack – so she performed artificial respiration and put Lenny in the recovery position before phoning for an ambulance. She’d watched
Casualty
enough times and the temptation was just too much. ‘Anyone,’ she said, ‘would have done the same.’
By the time Flavia arrived by the more conventional route of the pavement, the garden path and the front door, Lenny was sitting up with a cut lip, gingerly examining his wrist.
Flavia had been shocked at the state of him. His face was cut too and there was a big lump on his temple. His arms and legs were badly grazed and his hand was limp and twisted. She went with him in the ambulance, held his hand and prayed to the Madonna she had last prayed to in Sicily when she was a girl.
‘It’s just a fall, love,’ he kept saying to her.
But to Flavia it felt like a warning.
‘We’ve been happy, haven’t we, Flavia my darling?’ he said as they arrived at A & E.
Flavia stared at him. ‘You said it was just a fall. Why are you talking as if you’re at death’s window, for the love of God?’
‘Door,’ he said. ‘Death’s door.’
‘Door, window, wherever … ’ Flavia clicked her tongue.
‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Tell me we’ve been happy.’
‘Yes, Lenny,’ she said. ‘We have been happy.’ Yes, it was only a fall. But sometimes a fall could shake everything up.
And that’s when Flavia knew.
Ginny had a lot of stuff to tell Becca when they met up for pizza and a long-overdue girlie chat.
They started with Pops’s fall.
‘Until it happened,’ Ginny told her, ‘everything was going tickety tigers.’ The Ball had been keeping a low profile. Ginny guessed It was only sulking and that pretty soon it would show Its face again, but for now, she was enjoying the reprieve.
‘That’s life,’ said Becca in a philosophical un-Becca-like way. ‘It’s all swings and bloody roundabouts.’
Ginny had been working in the Bull and Bear early Saturday evening when the call came through. Magic Fingers had just started their set; lots of rhythm, lots of juice and Albie was looking dark and sexy and as bemused as ever. Not for long, she decided.
Ginny could serve drinks in her sleep now. She was so fast she almost knew what they would order before they asked for it. She could do shots while a pint was pouring, crack open a beer while she ladled out ice. She knew who’d been waiting longest and while they were waiting she could keep them in line.
She’d met up with Albie a couple of times so far. He was
nice. She reckoned that he’d be easy to fall in love with or run away with or give up anything for. So she was holding back. She didn’t want to start what she couldn’t finish. Not yet anyway. And she had places to go. Someone to find. While Albie – who had his music and his song writing and the band – seemed OK with that. For now.
‘I’ll have a pint of best, please, Ginny, my darling.’ That was her father who had come to hear the music – and probably to check out Albie, who she’d mentioned at dinner the other night.
The phone in the pub rang and rang, and at last Brian answered it. Ginny could see that he could hardly hear; he covered his other ear and yelled into the receiver, then he lasered a look straight at her and Ginny flinched.
‘What?’ she mouthed at him, continuing to serve a customer.
He came up to her, put an arm round her shoulder. ‘Better get your coat, love,’ he said.
‘What? What’s happened?’ In the busy, noisy pub, Ginny’s eyes looked for her father’s. He was some way from where she stood but he saw her immediately.
‘Dad,’ she said.
‘Wow,’ said Becca. ‘So you had a sort of Dad moment?’
‘Yeah.’ Ginny sipped her Coke. Her first.
‘And your Granddad’s OK?’
Their pizzas with garlic bread on the side and large fries to share arrived. Ginny’s was Margherita with extra
pepperoni and Becca’s was a four-cheese special.
‘He’s fine.’ Ginny bit into the garlic bread. It was crisp, deep and pungently perfect. His wrist was splinted up and his arm was in a sling. But apart from the blue-yellow bruises creeping around his mouth and jaw, he was fine.
Becca loaded chips on to her pizza and cut a slice. ‘What does your mum say about your dad turning up then?’ she asked, before wrapping her mouth around it.
‘She’s been pretty cool,’ Ginny admitted. Lately, she’d had a chance to see things from a different point of view. And she’d come to the conclusion that her mother was a bit special.
She knew that her dad had written to Mum too, and she had an inkling what it might be about.
‘Now,’ said Becca. ‘Tell me about Ben.’
Ginny obliged.
‘What a dick,’ said Becca, when she’d finished. ‘It’s not you who should have been doing something else in bed, Gins, it’s him. Come here.’
And as Ginny leaned closer, she instructed her in some of the finer details of sexual artistry and expectation, both of them punctuating the lesson with mouthfuls of Coke and pizza. ‘For next time,’ she said with a wink.
Ginny thought of Dark and Bemused. ‘For next time,’ she agreed.
‘So what’s on the agenda now?’ Becca sat back at last, her plate empty.
‘I’m going travelling,’ Ginny said. ‘To Australia.’
‘Blimey, Gins,’ said Becca, ‘I was talking about pudding.’
Over chocolate brownies and whipped cream, Ginny told her what her father had said.
‘I’ve got a place in Sydney you can use as a base.’ Bought presumably since the windfall, Ginny thought. ‘Just say the word and I’ll hand over the keys.’
‘Would you be there in Sydney?’ she’d asked him, not knowing if she would want him to be or not.
He shrugged. ‘I was thinking of doing some travelling of my own,’ he said. ‘In the van. Europe maybe. I kind of missed it out before.’
‘Cool,’ said Becca. ‘Is it easy to get work in Australia? Is it easy to travel around?’
Ginny was savouring the taste of melted chocolate and cream. There was nothing like it. ‘Simple Simon, my dad says. The hostels give you all the info you need about jobs and stuff and where to head for next. Some of the backpackers do bar work, some do telesales, some do fruit-picking.’
Becca didn’t comment on the ‘my dad’ stuff. And that was good because sometimes Ginny couldn’t get her head round it either. Like one minute she was fatherless, and the next he was there, being, well, being what she seemed to need. Ginny kind of understood now that he hadn’t turned his back on her; he had turned his back on fatherhood. Which was bad, but maybe not as bad. She wouldn’t forget the lost years though. How could she?
‘Amazing,’ Becca said, spooning the last of the dessert into her mouth.
‘The brownies?’
‘Your dad.’
‘Yeah, well … ’ He had made a lot of mistakes. He wasn’t perfect or even near perfect. He was different, that was all. Becca’s father wore suits and worked in a bank and her mother was a dinner lady. They were never going to compete.
‘Do you need a travelling buddy?’ Becca asked, finishing her Coke.
‘You are joking?’ Ginny stared at her. She hadn’t wanted to admit to anyone that this was the aspect of the trip that worried her the most. It was all very well to go off to find yourself, but who would count to ten and then help you look?
‘I’m deadly serious.’ Becca wiped her mouth with a napkin. ‘I’d love it. Seriously, Gins, we’d have such a good time.’
Well they would, but, ‘What about Harry?’ she asked.
Becca pouted. ‘Who’s Harry?’
‘You haven’t—?’
‘No.’ Becca shook her head. ‘But he’s not the whole world, Gins. He’s buggering off to uni soon. And then what?’
‘We’ll have to do some serious saving,’ Ginny said. Her father might help her out, but she wanted to do some of it for herself.
‘I’ve got some dosh coming my way on my eighteenth next month,’ Becca said. ‘Courtesy of rich Auntie Margaret. She doesn’t have any kids of her own.’
‘Result.’ So that was it, Ginny thought, joining Becca in
a high five. She had a plan, she had a base, she had a buddy. And she had a rich father too. Just think – not so long ago, the only remarkable thing about her life was that she might be pregnant.
The letter arrived a few days later. Even after all this time, Tess recognised David’s writing immediately – thin and slopey, just like him.
She resisted the urge to rip it open at once. Instead, she made coffee, took it out on to the terrace, admired the view down into the bay (the sea was like a millpond today, the sky that deep dark Mediterranean blue that she loved) allowing the envelope to sit unopened on the table for a while. Let him wait.
Down in the
baglio
, the day was taking shape. Beneath the silver spread of the eucalyptus tree, she could see a group of men sitting on the bench by the stone fountain, playing dominoes or cards probably, and a few people wandering out of the cafe and across the cobbles. She could see Tonino’s studio and Tonino himself. Moving back and forth, shifting bits and pieces from one place to another. Restless, she thought. And stubborn. Why did she have to meet a man who was so damned stubborn?
Yesterday, she had gone diving again, but it was like running the gauntlet, getting past him and his dark, angry face. Was he angry because she was still diving alone or because she was the sole representative of her mother’s
family, who had once dishonoured a member of his family? God … Whatever – it was a criminal waste of time and good chemistry.
She almost stamped her foot, she was so cross; then laughed out loud at herself. It was all so ridiculous. She took a last look at the turquoise bay,
il faraglione
, the tall pinnacles jutting from the sea, and returned to The Letter.
What was happening back home? She had spoken to Ginny and Muma and Dad in the past couple of days and everyone seemed calm.
We’re fine
, they all reassured her.
Everything’s fine
… No wonder she was worried.
And now David. She slit the letter open with her thumbnail, and unfolded the top section, as if it might be dangerous to look at it all at once.
‘Dear Tess,’ he had written. ‘It’s been a while.’
Typical understatement. She unfolded the single sheet properly and something dropped out. A cheque. She picked it up, stared at it, turned it over in her hands. A cheque for £50,000. God in heaven …
Putting it aside, she turned back to the letter. Now it had her complete attention.
‘I hope you don’t mind me turning up like this,’ he wrote, ‘hoping to see our daughter.’
Our daughter
… That rankled. In the list of absentee fathers, he’d be top.
‘But something happened to change my life. I came into some money, Tess.’
In spite of herself, she smiled. His voice, emerging in the words he’d written, hadn’t changed one bit. He was still the
David she’d first met walking barefoot on the beach in Pride Bay. The David who sang songs to her and strummed on his guitar. Who talked of far off places and how he was going to take her there. The David she’d fallen head-over-heels in love with, knowing that he was nothing but a dreamer. She’d known he wanted her. But she’d also known – from the start – that he didn’t want responsibility, he didn’t want commitment and he certainly didn’t want a baby.