by Tess Stimson
I still can’t believe he put the phone down without letting me speak to the children. I’ve left dozens of messages on their mobiles since Saturday, but neither of them has called me back. I just want a chance to try to explain that it’s not them I’ve left. But why should they listen? I’m the one who’s behaved unforgivably, after all.
Forcing the dark thoughts away, I dress quickly in a thin cotton skirt patterned with vivid blue irises and a skimpy white vest while Sawyer 2 watches impatiently from the top of the dresser. Last week I went into the village and bought some cheap basics to last me in case I stayed beyond the weekend. I told myself I could always use them at home. Buying a six-pack of knickers didn’t mean I was staying. Now, I realize, I never had any intention of going back on Friday.
Perching on the end of the high bed, I lace up the pair of knock-off high-tops. Not very me at all, these pink sneakers; which is precisely the point, of course. If I could climb out of my own skin, I would.
I open the bedroom door and go down the outside staircase to the kitchen, trying not to trip as Sawyer 2 twists in and out of my legs. It’s still early. A shallow mist lingers in the garden like dry ice, cloaking the blueberry bushes and mint and cladding the pine trees in sweeping grey skirts. The air smells cool and crisp and fresh, even though we’re just a couple of miles from the shrill clamour of the clogged, polluted city streets.
I feed the kitten and make myself a quick mug of instant coffee, thankful Julia isn’t yet up to witness my heresy. Bolting down a slice of toast and sweet plum jam, I grab an old-fashioned string shopping bag from behind the back door and scribble a quick list. We need fresh milk from the latteria, bread from the bakery, and some salad and fruit from the grocer’s. As far as I can make out, Julia seems to live on a diet of coffee and cigarettes.
Her bone-shaking Fiat is parked in the courtyard outside, but I prefer to walk. I like using the time and the cool morning air to clear my head.
In the village, I linger over my errands, taking time to pick and choose the ripest tomatoes, the crustiest loaf, instead of flinging everything into a supermarket trolley as fast as possible, the way I’d normally shop. So much of my life has been spent on fast-forward, rushing to save time. Now, all I want to do is spend it.
I end up at the latteria. Inside the dairy shop it’s cool and dark. Smiling at the aproned woman behind the old-fashioned till, I take a pint of milk out of the chilled cabinet. She wraps the carton in a brown paper bag and hands it to me as I fumble for some euros. ‘Lie è turista?’
My Italian is a little rusty, but I recognize the word. ‘Turista, sì.’
‘Tedesca?’
‘German? No, English. Inglese.’
She smiles and hands me my change. ‘Quanto tempo rimane?’
I shrug incomprehension and smile back. I understand the question; I just can’t give her an answer. I can’t tell anyone how long I’m staying until I work that out for myself.
Weighed down by my shopping, I stroll slowly through the centre of the village to the bar-gelateria on the corner and order a cappuccino, a habit I’ve developed over the last few days. The skinny old man behind the counter smiles and nods wordlessly in greeting, as he does each morning now. It’s only a little after nine, but the café is already busy: the aluminium tables on the pavement outside are filling up with old men playing dominoes and middle-aged women in flower-print dresses. The men are silent; the women talk loudly over each other, pausing only to cluck at a baby passing by in a pushchair, or glare at a girl daring to show an inch too much skin.
Gently blowing the foam off my cappuccino, I sip it and watch the world go by. I’m sure that concealed beneath the pastoral village charm are the same marital strains and financial worries you find in homes across the world. But for now I let myself be lulled by the illusion that life is gentler, kinder here. I can almost imagine living here for ever.
With a small sigh, I finish my coffee and go inside to pay. A teenage boy is the only waiter on duty. As I approach the bar, he backs out of the kitchen with a heavy tray of espressos and full glasses of water. With the intuition of mothers the world over, I see the accident coming before it even happens. Dropping my shopping on the floor, I dive forward and catch the tray, twisting up and sideways so it doesn’t hit the bar or the wall, then deposit it promptly on the counter. It’s not the boy’s fault; he’s just trying to do too much too fast. They need more waiters when it’s this busy.
The old man rushes out from the kitchen and starts yelling in voluble Italian at the boy, who flushes and ducks his head, the tips of his ears – which is all I can see of him beneath his thatch of schoolboy curls – scarlet with embarrassment.
‘Good catch, cara.’
I turn, trying to quell the sudden flutter of butterflies in my stomach. I knew I’d run into Alessio sooner or later, but I’m still thrown. He hasn’t changed. He’s still ridiculously good-looking, but, unlike so many Italian lizards, carries it off with a quiet confidence that doesn’t tip over into smug. He wears his expensive khaki linen suit with ease, his open-necked pale blue shirt a perfect contrast to his amber eyes and the caramel of his skin. In London, he’d stand out like a peacock in a yard full of sparrows.
I wipe my palms surreptitiously on my cotton skirt. Alessio has always had a dizzying effect on me, from the moment I first saw him. It was one thing to react like this when I was twenty-one, but I’m forty next month. I have two children now. I’m married, for heaven’s sake!
He kisses my cheeks, his smile telling me he knows the effect he’s having on me. The last time we met, he was gently wiping the tears from beneath my eyes after having politely, charmingly and firmly dumped me. I seem to remember my last words to him were a pathetic plea for one more chance and the declaration that without it, my life was over.
I position myself firmly as a confident woman of the world. ‘Julia said you’d moved to the village,’ I say. ‘Do you like living here?’
‘It seemed easier to be with the family when the children were born.’ He nods towards the old man behind the bar. ‘This place belongs to Uncle Maurizio. His wife helps Cinzia with the children.’
‘I heard you’d got married. Congratulations.’
He waves his hand. ‘It was a long time ago.’
‘Me too. Fifteen years last week, in fact.’
Alessio reaches into his inside pocket and pulls out a packet of Italian cigarettes. ‘Rome is not a place to experience alone,’ he observes, tapping the box against the back of his hand. ‘Where is your husband?’
I hesitate, wondering how much Julia has told him. ‘Working. He’s very busy.’
He cups a tanned hand around the cigarette and lights it. I follow the movement with my eyes. I know smoking is bad for you, of course, and bad for those around you, but he makes it look so damn sexy.
‘Too busy to take his lovely wife to the Eternal City?’
‘Someone had to stay with the children.’
‘Of course.’ He exhales a stream of smoke. ‘So, cara, what do you do, all alone in Rome?’
Cara. Beloved.
I give myself a brisk shake. ‘As I’m on my own I can spend as long as I like looking at the Sistine Chapel, and no one laughs at me for throwing coins in the Trevi Fountain.’
‘Your husband is not a lover of art and history?’
I bristle at the mocking tone in his voice when he talks about Ned.
‘Perhaps,’ he adds casually, ‘you’d care to have lunch with me later?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I say primly.
He laughs. ‘Kate, I’m asking you to have lunch with me, not to run away together. My uncle tells me that every morning you sit and drink your cappuccino alone, with such a sad look in your eyes. And you have such a beautiful smile.’ His tawny gaze holds mine. ‘I remember it.’
My skin tingles. I know flirting is practically reflexive with Italian men, but there’s no denying it feels good to be on the receiving end of such attention; particularly f
rom a man as handsome as this.
I’m startled by a small boy suddenly careening into the back of my knees. Alessio catches him and holds out a hand to steady me as a pretty woman in pink kitten-heels follows her son into the cool interior of the bar.
‘Kate,’ he says, quickly dropping his hand from my waist, his expression a study in schoolboy guilt, ‘this is Cinzia, my wife. Cinzia, this is Kate, a friend of Julia’s from England.’
Cinzia smiles tightly at me, dark eyes flashing with barely suppressed irritation. I’d put her in her late twenties. Wasp-waisted and voluptuous, she looks like a young Sophia Loren. On my best day, I couldn’t hope to compete.
‘Fabio, di’ ciao a Kate,’ Alessio prompts his son.
‘It’s OK,’ I smile. The little boy is the most gorgeous child I’ve ever seen, with skin the colour of caramel and a rumpled halo of dark brown curls. If we’d had a son, I wonder if he’d have been as handsome as this. ‘Ciao, Fabio.’
‘Perhaps you’d like to join us for a cappuccino?’ Alessio says as I pick up my shopping bags.
‘I can’t. I have to be somewhere. Another time?’
We both know I’m lying on both counts.
‘Of course. If there is anything I can do for you while you’re here, please let me know. Ci vediamo, Kate.’
He carries the little boy outofthebar, and his wife slips her arm possessivelythroughhisastheyleave. Wistfully, I watch him go. It’s not that I still have any feelings for him: I can see already how little we actually have to say to each other, and I don’t envy Cinzia her task keeping him in line. But how different my life might have been if I’d married Alessio. No high-powered job, no stressful commute and complicated juggling act to keep work, marriage and family satisfied. Just a handsome man to love and a beautiful child to care for.
Not that that kind of marriage would ever suit me, of course. I could never live Eleanor’s life. Helpless, passive.
Suddenly I make up my mind. I run outside and catch up with Alessio as he stops to unlock a car parked halfway down the street, Fabio’s arms still wrapped tightly around his neck.
‘Alessio,’ I pant, ignoring Cinzia’s glare. ‘Actually, there is something you can do for me after all.’
Agness
‘Dad is starting to really piss me off,’ I tell Harry crossly. ‘I mean, I’m totally on his side and everything. But all he’s done since he spoke to Mum a week ago is sit on the stupid sofa watching Survivorman on the Discovery Channel. Which is, like, totally ironic, since he’s basically camping out in the living room.’ I drop my backpack on the floor and fling myself onto the bed beside him. ‘If this carries on much longer, we’ll have to move the piano and put in a portaloo. Seriously, he hasn’t shaved or showered or anything. He looks like a tramp. If Liesl saw him, she’d totally want to marry him again.’
Harry backs up against the headboard to give me room, and wraps his skinny white arms tighter round his knees. I lie back beside him and stare up at the black painted ceiling. Everything in Harry’s room is black: the walls, the blinds, the carpet. It’s kind of cosy, really.
‘My life is beyond embarrassing,’ I sigh. ‘I mean, my own mother running off and leaving me. How sad is that? If she’d gone somewhere cool, it wouldn’t be so bad, but Italy’s not exactly original. How come no one ever goes to find themselves in, like, Bangladesh or Haiti?’
‘Eat, Pray, Love,’ Harry mumbles.
‘Whatevs. You got any ciggies?’
‘Menthol.’
‘Give me one.’
Harry reaches under the bed and hands me a packet of cigarettes. I pull one out and light it. ‘Mum keeps leaving all these messages on my phone. I haven’t called her back. I’m not mad at her or anything,’ I add quickly. ‘I, like, don’t blame her for going, really, though I wish she’d taken me with her. I’m just not ready to talk to her yet, you know?’
Harry picks at the scab on his elbow and looks up at me through his heavy black fringe. I recognize this for the enthusiastic sign of encouragement it is.
I grope around on the floor for an empty Coke can and tap my ash into it. ‘You’d think my father would be there for me in a crisis,’ I say crossly. ‘I’ve been abandoned! I need support. I need attention. I need extra pocket money so I can be kind to myself. But all Dad does is sit on the sofa and look pathetic. He can’t even cook dinner. I’ve had pizza for the last three nights running. Does he want me to end up with scurvy?’
Harry scratches his nose. ‘Maybe he’s, like, upset?’
‘If he’s that bothered about Mum leaving, why doesn’t he go and get her back? He knows where she is.’ I roll onto my side, propping myself on my elbow. ‘Gran’s totally useless, too. She doesn’t even know how to work the microwave, never mind the dishwasher. It’s like, I’m the only one doing anything around the place since Mum and Dad split up.’
‘Your mum and dad have split up?’
‘How do I know?’ I say tartly. ‘No one tells me anything. Dad says she’ll only be gone a week or two, but who knows? They treat me like a total moron. It’s like that whole thing with the baby.’ I roll my eyes. ‘Suddenly Mum can’t stand the smell of eggs and she’s got this weird craving for pickles and Marmite for breakfast every morning. Like, hello? You don’t have to be a genius to know what that means. But no one says a word to me. I’m always the last to find out. For all I know, they could both be axe-murderers. Nothing would surprise me.’
Harry takes a puff of my cigarette then hands it back, and I draw in another lungful of smoke. It freaked me out, Mum getting pregnant. If they have to do it at their age, that’s bad enough, but they don’t have to flaunt it. She might as well take out an ad in the freaking paper. What would my friends say if she turned up at school with this huge great pregnant stomach? Beyond embarrassing.
I wasn’t that thrilled at the thought of a new brother or sister, either. I don’t want to be a bitch or anything, but where was I supposed to figure in all this? Bad enough Guy being her favourite, but how can I compete with a cute and cuddly baby? I’m not a big fan of things that puke and dribble and shit from every orifice, but grown-ups seem to think differently. Mum only has to spot a pram in the supermarket and she turns into a gibbering mass of hormones.
So, OK, I might not have wanted it, exactly, but I was actually quite sad when she lost it; though of course, since nobody told me about it, the first I knew was when she came back from the hospital all white and tragic after they did whatever it is doctors do when a baby dies inside you. Scrape it out, I suppose. Gross. It’s always sad when something dies. I’m totally against the death penalty, except when someone really deserves it for, like, blowing up a whole plane of people or starving horses to death or something.
Didn’t take a genius to figure Dad was way more upset than he let on. A few days after Mum came home from the hospital, I saw him sitting in the study and he was holding this tiny Babygro in his lap and just staring at it with this totally weird look on his face, like he was going to start bawling. It nearly set me off, just watching him.
But he wouldn’t tell Mum he cared, of course. He just acted like it was no biggie, as if she’d had her wisdom teeth out or something. No wonder she left. Honestly, men.
‘No one talks to anyone in your family,’ Harry says unexpectedly.
It’s not like Harry to volunteer his opinion, never mind toss off meaningful psychological insights like he’s Jeremy Kyle or something. But he’s right. Mum and Dad have got so many secrets, it’s like living with MI5. Then there’s Guy, with all that stuff going on at his school. When you come down to it, the only one with nothing to hide is me.
‘I’ve got to go in a minute,’ I say, dropping the cigarette butt into the Coke can. ‘Dad’ll freak if I’m late. See you tomorrow?’
Harry nods. As I unfold myself from the bed, my sweatshirt snags on the underside of his bookshelf. I twist round, trying to free myself, but can’t quite reach where I’m caught. ‘Harry, d’you mind?’
; His hands hover inches away from my body, like there’s a force field or something around me. ‘Get a move on, Harry,’ I say crossly. ‘I’m not bent over like Quasimodo for my health, you know.’
He reaches tentatively behind me. His wrist accidentally brushes my nipple, and instantly it leaps to attention, standing out like a big pink cherry on top of an ice-cream sundae. The feeling is warm and tingly, like when you get a swig of wine and it burns down your throat. Clearly Harry feels something too, because he’s breathing like he’s just run a marathon and his face looks redder than I’ve ever seen it.
My heart hammers in my chest as we stare at each other, frozen into position like some weird cartoon. Neither of us breathes. And then, very slowly, I reach towards his jeans.
It’s harder than I expected. It feels like there’s an actual bone in there, not just, you know, blood and stuff.
I don’t mean to squeeze it.
Harry moans and falls back against the bedhead. For a moment, I think I’ve actually killed him.
‘Oh God, I’m sorry,’ I say, panicked. ‘Are you OK?’
Weakly he nods.
‘I didn’t mean to—’
‘It’s OK.’
In the excitement, my sweatshirt has somehow come free. I get off the bed and stare at my Converses, fiddling with the strings of my hoodie.
‘Harry,’ I say, looking up after a long pause. ‘Harry, have you ever . . . you know. With anyone?’
Red to the tips of his ears, he shakes his head.
‘Me neither.’
We both ponder this.
‘I think I might be less nervous if I do it with you the first time,’ I say finally. ‘I don’t think it’d feel so weird with you.’
He nods energetically.
I pull up my hood. ‘I really have got to go now. I don’t want Dad calling the police on me too.’
‘I like your mum,’ Harry says. ‘She’s all right.’
