Our living arrangements grew to be the talk of the town’s gossips. We were impervious to it all and settled into a beautiful rhythm, which revolved around the education of Bianca and the creation of an artist’s studio for Maddalena on the top floor. Maddalena, a little surprised at my relationship with Henry at first, was then her usual breezy self. We watched Bianca lengthen into a child bristling with intelligence and affection, whilst Maddalena set up a stall alongside other street artists selling their work beneath the wisteria-canopied walkway to the sea.
That September was luminous. Bianca gardened beside us every evening. Maddalena transformed her rooms on the top floor into a magnificent celebration of her art. The chaos of Adeline was replaced by a transcendent atmosphere, delicate organization, watercolors in various stages of completion. When she was by the bay, selling, I would linger inside her sanctuary, letting the playful sketches of light and color uplift me. One afternoon Henry stepped in behind me.
‘It is beyond glorious,’ he murmured, planting his lips on the back of my neck.
I turned around to him. ‘Do we owe her the truth?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replied, in that beautiful way he now had of expressing his uncertainties without pride or fear. ‘For whose benefit would that be?’
‘Mostly ours, I suppose.’
‘We love her. She knows that. She feels that in the way her life is plaited with ours. With the unhurried hours we spend with Bianca. She is a light.’
‘She adores you.’
‘And good poetry.’
I laughed. He traced his fingers over my hair, lifted my chin and kissed me. For a fleeting moment, his skin looked ashen.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked, noticing his pallor and wondering if he was coming down with a fever from the subtle shift of seasons, though outside it was still very much late summer.
‘No need to fuss,’ he replied, kissing me again, then pressing me into him. His heartbeat was a steady thud against my ear. ‘Nothing good ever came from fussing,’ he added, his voice a murmur through my hair.
That night we made love with the doors open and the moonlit breeze dancing across the linen curtain. His soul eased into me, his fingers ran over my limbs. I’d never felt more beautiful in my life.
The next morning when I first opened my eyes I noticed I’d left the doors ajar, the sun casting a corridor of light across the foot of our bed. Henry lay beside me. It was unusual. He had a knack of waking with the dawn most days and enjoying a little solitude before we gardened or prepared breakfast. I sat up, holding the sheet over my bare body, reliving the night. Then I turned back to look at my lover. I shifted down into my nook at the top of his chest. That’s when I felt how cold his skin was next to mine. Choked with panic, I shifted my ear to his chest.
I never heard his heart beat again.
Signor Antonino, the lawyer, looked at me, expectant, from his side of the desk. I’m not sure if he’d prepared for an emotional outburst, to comfort a Neapolitan lady at the mercy of grief. Of course I offered him none of the above. He looked a little disappointed.
‘Santina, do you understand everything?’
‘Yes. Perfectly well,’ I replied.
‘You asked me about his daughter, Elizabeth. She is not mentioned in the will, no.’
‘I see.’
‘You’ll need time to adjust to your new situation. As executor I will, of course, oversee the financial and legal arrangements.’
I nodded, silent, his words a wave of punctuation and singsong vowels. I left his office, sun batting down with an unforgiving glare.
Three days later Henry was buried beside Adeline.
We returned to find Elizabeth at our door.
She looked up at me, in her eyes neither questions nor grief. ‘I found out he’s gone,’ she said, her voice a thin line.
I walked up the last few steps and hugged her. Maddalena eased in and wound her arms around her friend. I slipped my hand into Bianca’s, the only person who kept me grounded, forcing me to stay present, looking at his death with courage and honesty. There’s nothing like incessant energy of a young child to make one realize the absurdity of life and death, the incorrigible surrealism of our existence. And I was thankful for her, even more than I had been before.
The women and I entered the villa. Elizabeth sat at the table, taut.
‘Can I get you something?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘I’m here to pay my respects to you, Santina. You’re the person who held this family together for me. I suppose I should feel like I’m free now.’
I sat down opposite her. ‘He loved you very much, Elizabeth. He was a sick man. None of us knew that. The doctors told him his heart condition meant he would not likely live past fifty. He sent you away so that you might be spared your mother’s illness. And his.’
‘You always defended him.’
I could feel the prickle of my pride rise up my spine. I’d kept my emotions intact for Bianca and Maddie, but listening to Elizabeth now forced me too close to the edge. I wanted to blurt out that the depth of our feelings could not be couched in words, recriminations.
‘I wanted to be here to help you pack up the house. Sort things out.’ Her callous tone nailed me to my chair.
I paused. ‘There is nothing to sort out, Elizabeth.’
Her expression iced. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Your father left the house to me.’
I watched the statement land. With a breath, her anger fired. ‘I came all this way when they told me. I came to help, for God’s sake, and all I get is a kick in the teeth. Fucking typical.’
I stood now. ‘If you want to tarnish your father’s name, do it! But not here! Not now! There are other people grieving here.’
‘I’m sorry, Santina, I didn’t mean—’
‘You’re not sorry! Your hate for him consumes you, and in the end who does it harm the most? You!’
She sat looking at me, red-faced in my hot wind of honesty.
‘You have every right to feel hurt, Elizabeth,’ I continued, before she could respond, ‘no one can take that away from you. But do you honestly want to live in that shadow forever? Don’t you want to really be free?’
‘So now it’s my job to free myself? Never mind that the sorry excuse for a man never apologized.’
‘And he never will!’
We stared at each other across the table.
‘Elizabeth, I loved you as best I could. I held you when your dreams ripped through you. I revelled as you took your first steps. I watched you see things for the very first time. When you left you took a piece of me with you. Do you think there was ever a time when I wasn’t wondering how you were?’
‘I never doubted that.’
‘So don’t doubt my love now. Take it for what it is. Everyone has always wanted what was best, why don’t you choose to see that?’
‘Because the man who should have loved me the most, didn’t.’
‘You want to keep that hurt like a thorn inside?’
I heard Maddalena come out of the kitchen behind me. ‘Everything ok?’ she called to us. ‘I can bring you something maybe?’
‘We’re fine, Maddie. Perhaps take Elizabeth and show her your rooms upstairs?’
‘Rooms?’ Elizabeth asked, piqued.
‘Sure, I’ll be right back.’
Elizabeth turned to me for explanation.
‘We let her rent the upper floor. It was empty and she needed a place to stay. Maddie and Bianca have breathed life into this place. It’s become the home it should always have been.’
Elizabeth’s eyebrow raised.
‘How’s Eddie?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know.’
I held the silence.
‘Turns out he wasn’t the best choice for me after all.’
‘I’m sorry, Elizabeth.’
‘You don’t have to be. Just glad Daddy isn’t here to hear that.’
I reached for her hand. She withdrew.
‘Your father didn’t give you what you needed, no. We can agree on that. But he gave you what he thought would make your life free. Why don’t you let me love you now?’
Elizabeth’s eyes filled up. I watched the tears tip over the edge of her lashes.
‘I don’t think I could come back here, Santina, without dragging up all this pain. I don’t want to put myself there again. When I’m here, it just all flies in my face.’
That’s when her tears shuddered through her. I wrapped my arms around her. I let myself cry with her.
Our breaths quietened. I again heard the tide come in from below.
‘I understand how you feel, Elizabeth. And I want you to be free of this shadow you’ve cast yourself under. I’m able to take care of your father’s finances and you will be looked after.’
‘I don’t want his money.’
‘It’s mine to give you. And I do so because you’re the first infant who stole my heart. I don’t give out of guilt or to patch up a past that wasn’t mine to heal. No one can do that. I want to do this because I love you.’
A tired smile then. ‘The first?’
Maddalena stepped out to join us. ‘Elizabeth, I’m really so sorry. Santina has been so wonderful to me and Bianca. I know you don’t want to hear this, but your father too.’
‘You’re right, Maddie,’ Elizabeth replied with a sighed laugh. ‘I don’t want to hear how nice Daddy was to you. But I like you a great deal. And I do so want to stop crying, so be a darling and say something to change the subject? It’s what us Brits are usually so very gifted at.’
The sisters looked at each other. I watched them slip their hands into one another’s and head inside. I left the terrace for our room upstairs. I sank into the quiet, save for the rattle of the cicadas and a soft rumble of waves.
Two days later, Elizabeth left.
It wasn’t long before Paolino surfaced. I’d learnt about his divorce through twisted tales from neighbors, and that his life had taken him to Naples. One lazy Sunday morning he stood before me at our door. His skin looked like he was no stranger to wine and partying; I couldn’t shake that sense of an older man clinging on to a lost youth. He paid his respects, his features hard.
‘So, he made you queen at last, Santina.’
‘I’m not surprised you see it that way, Paolino. People usually say they’re sorry for someone’s loss.’
He smiled then. Somewhere inside I caught a glimpse of the young man, but it disappeared as soon as it surfaced.
‘How can you be sure Bianca is my granddaughter?’
‘Have you looked at the child, Paolino?’
He cracked a grin and nodded. ‘I’ll do the right thing,’ he began, all business. ‘For once. They stay with you? I’ll make sure you get something toward their keep, si? And maybe a little extra too, you know, when the fanciulla is grown.’
‘That’s kind, thank you,’ I replied, resisting the instinct to throw him a callous observation that his way of solving most things was through money. I was tired of fighting, and it struck me that he yearned in his way to do the right thing for the first time in his life.
He left that afternoon, and the final whispers of our past evaporated, inconsequential mist in the shadows of my mountains rising, immortal, around us.
POSITANO
2005
‘Do you want me to write what the doctors said?’ Svetlana asks me, shock creasing her brow.
‘Well of course. It won’t make any sense if I don’t.’
‘It’s a bit morbid, no?’
‘Oh, give it to me, I’m fine. Or I will be fine with some tea.’ I shoo her away. I know my bad temper is something the dying become accustomed to. I saw it in our neighbor when I nursed her after Henry passed away twenty-five years ago. Now I have become the crotchety old woman.
I don’t write any more from where I tapered off. Svetlana is right, I’m not up to very much this morning. I ease myself off the bed and shuffle to my dressing table. I comb my hair off my face, admiring the silver strands. I reach for my notebook and rub my thumb across the rose printed on the cover. I flick open to a page I’d been lingering on during the night when the morphine had begun to ease its grasp: ‘The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.’ Jean Cocteau’s words. Words Henry had me think about early on in our lessons. My finger traces the sentence. I breathe in the still, warm air of the villa, the palace I will gift to the girls, the home where my daughter has lived beside her mother, without knowing it, for the past thirty years.
Bianca creaks open the door. She pokes her head around the corner, asking for permission to enter.
I smile. Her smile in return is like the reflection I used to see in the glass. She sits on the bed beside my dressing table.
‘You want me to help you, Zia Santina?’
‘That would be nice, yes.’
She takes the comb from my hand and weaves the teeth through my strands with gentle unhurried strokes.
‘I love you, my Bianca. So very much.’
‘I love you too.’
She stops for a moment and we catch our faces in the mirror side by side. The resemblance, even in my weary state, is startling. People used to comment on it. The point of her chin, her high cheekbones, her unruly hair. And beyond all these physical markers, the mountain air about her, a fearless gait which draws people to her and which allows her to dive deep inside herself for reserves of determination and strength few can hope for.
‘I wrote you a story, my Bianca.’
‘Yes. You told me yesterday.’
I raise my hand to my shoulder. She places hers upon it. The touch ignites a stream of memories: how she became my shadow in the kitchen, the garden, anywhere I needed to be. How it ached to watch her move like her grandmother, love me as her grandmother without anyone knowing the truth; her laugh, which escaped like birdsong, staccato, bright, cutting through the trees.
I take in my paper skin, behind me the glory of those painted ceilings, golds, ochres, reds, azures; beautiful and meaningless now. My gaze shifts toward the terrace, to the never seen beyond, the horizon that once beckoned me so, urging escape only to lure me back on its inescapable current. I catch the metallic shimmer on that afternoon water, hopeful glints dancing in the suffused sun. I smell pine and hibiscus and thyme on the toasted air. My house creaks in the heat, like its owner. I feel Henry’s invisible hand upon me now, the warm murmur of his voice. I see his oblique grin that made me feel at once teased and loved and understood. I see that sparkle of intelligence in his eyes, full of unanswered questions, a passion and respect for life in all its expression. The man I loved with every part of myself, who embraced his frailties and helped me value my own so that I could share my heart and soul with abandon. A moment in time. That is all we ever have.
I turn away from my reflection.
READING GROUP GUIDE
1.How much do you think Santina’s early life shapes the decisions she takes further on in the story?
2.How much do you consider Santina’s journey to be about the outsider, both in the houses she lives and works at in Italy and London? What effect does this have? Does her personal journey parallel any of the other characters?
3.Was the blossoming attraction between Santina and the Major comfortable to witness? Did you wish they could have reined in their feelings or did you feel any internal conflict for wanting them to connect in the way they eventually do?
4.How truthful was Santina’s relationship with Paolino? How do you feel about how she decides to let it progress?
5.Does Santina let her plans for America evaporate too easily? Does her decision to remain in Positano render her courageous or fearful?
6.How do you feel about her relationship with her brother and her father? What lessons do her relationships with men eventually provide? Do they shape her story into adulthood? In what way?
7.How does the setting of Positano influence the story? What theme does
the setting underline within the story?
8.What role does the food and its preparation play in the story? Why is it such a prominent part of the narrative? Which scenes work particularly well for you in this light and why?
9.How deeply are the themes of bravery and vulnerability explored? Do these aspects affect the male and female characters in different ways? If so, why?
10.What do you think about how the Major and Santina manage their feelings? Are they exercising emotional intelligence or acting out of fear?
11.Why does Santina leave Positano after all those years? What does it say about her character?
12.Which scene particularly hones in on the main themes of the book for you and why?
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It truly takes a small army to produce a tale, and I’m so very grateful for the brilliant team supporting me. Thank you so much to John Scognamiglio and his wonderful team at Kensington for their continued encouragement and support.
Deep gratitude to my agent Jeff Ourvan at Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency for always asking the trickiest, juiciest creative questions without pressure for immediate answers.
Warmest thanks to the lovely Anna Baggaley and her brilliant team at HQ Stories and HarperCollins.
Thank you to Stefan for his insistence we visit him at his magical home. His feasts – mental and edible – fed my imagination. Grazie mille to Signora Rispoli and her family for sharing their photographs and stories of Angelina and filling this writer with pasta whilst offering me a comfortable bed with breathtaking views of their coast. Thank you to Zia Lilli for connecting me with her sister Teresa who cooked me spectacular linguini and offered an insight into her Positano life.
Thank you Adele & Carl for the gelato by the Kentish coast and time at your country idyll for editing. As our first born approaches tweendom I’m obliged to conjure an embarrassing motherly gush, both for him and his younger indefatigable brother.
Mum and Dad, please know you make this all possible.
Thank you Ma & Pa English for always being happy for me to hide away in their blue room to write.
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