by John Marrs
He stopped in his tracks and shot me the most wounded of glances. ‘Papa! Please,’ he begged.
I desperately wanted to explain that we couldn’t meet his hero because, against all odds, they shared the same blood. Watching James perform at arm’s length was one thing, but being in the same room when he met his half-brother wasn’t something I was prepared for.
I’d promised Luciana I’d make things right with my past, but it was not the right time. I cursed God for playing more of his cruel games with me.
‘Luca Marcanio,’ shouted my son to a balding hulk wielding a clipboard and a headset. ‘We’re on the list.’
The man eyed us suspiciously, checked his list, crossed our names off and directed us backstage with a grunt. My breathing was shallow as we stepped into a sterile, whitewashed corridor and followed the sound of distant music. Eventually, we turned a corner to find a bar and a group of young people drinking and eating exotic canapés from waitresses’ trays.
Luca grabbed two glass bottles of cola from an ice bucket and passed one to me. I clenched mine to my wrist, hoping it would cool down my growing fever. He pointed out the other band members one by one as he scanned the room, desperate to see James.
Eventually his hero entered, clad in black jeans, a belt with a silver ram’s head buckle, and a white shirt. Quick as lightning, Luca scampered towards him.
I watched intently as, out of earshot, they shook hands. They shared the same dark, wavy hair, dimpled chins and my green eyes. I wondered if I alone was struck by their similarities.
I assumed James would be polite but brief with him. Instead, he reacted like they were old friends. I attempted to blend into the background until both pairs of the same eyes reached mine.
‘Papa!’ I looked down, pretending not to hear as my stomach dropped. ‘Papa!’ Luca repeated, a little louder. There was nothing for it but to look up. He beckoned me over. My legs threatened to give way as I joined them.
‘This is James.’
He smiled and held out his hand to shake mine. His fingernails were painted black and they drew me towards his cufflinks. They were ruby-red with small black squares in the centre. Catherine had bought them for my thirtieth birthday, the day everything changed.
‘Nice to meet you, Mr Marcanio,’ he began. ‘You have a good kid here.’
‘Thanks for inviting us,’ was all I could think to say.
‘Hey, a fellow Brit!’ said James, engaging me in a conversation I didn’t know how to have. I just wanted to throw my arms around him without explanation and then leave. ‘Where are you from?’ he continued.
‘I travelled around a lot.’
‘He comes from the same place as you,’ Luca chipped in. I instantly regretted offering him scant details of his father’s origins.
‘Northampton? No way! Small world,’ replied James. ‘How long have you been in Italy?’
‘Eighteen years or so.’
‘Papa gave me my first guitar,’ Luca said proudly, smiling at me.
‘That’s how I got introduced to music – my dad did the same for me,’ said James. ‘I still have it, although it’s kind of battered now. He taught me how to play “Mull of Kintyre” on it, but I was pretty bad to start off.’
I swallowed hard. I hadn’t been in his life for so many years, but he had remembered that. I still had a place in his memories.
‘It’s at my mum’s house now. She keeps threatening to put it on eBay.’ He laughed. I fixated on the words ‘she keeps’. He’d used the present tense. It meant Catherine was still alive.
‘Does she still live in Northampton?’ I asked without thinking.
‘Yes, all her life. I don’t get the chance to go back much, but when I do I always stay at hers. Do you go home very often?’
‘No, not for a long time.’
Suddenly a young woman appeared behind James and passed him a deep-red Gibson Les Paul electric guitar.
‘This is for you, Luca.’ He handed it to his brother, who was too lost for words to respond. ‘If you keep practising hard, there’s no reason why you can’t be doing what I’m doing in a few years.’
‘Grazie, grazie,’ Luca replied breathlessly. ‘I . . . I promise I will look after it.’
‘Don’t look after it – use it. Play it until you wear it out!’
Luca accepted the gift like Jesus had offered him a blessing, and held it close to his chest. A hand tapped James on the shoulder and a man whispered in his ear.
‘Luca, it was great to meet you, but I’ve gotta shoot. Email me an MP3 when you’ve mastered the break in “Find Your Way Home”.’
‘I will, I will.’
James turned to me. ‘Nice to meet you too . . . Sorry, I didn’t catch your first name?’
‘It’s Simon,’ said Luca before I could reply.
Suddenly something happened. Something so infinitesimally small, that if you freeze-framed it on a television screen, nobody but James or I would have noticed it.
It was recognition.
As he shook my hand, for a fraction of a second James’s irises expanded and his handshake lost its brawn. I knew exactly what was he was thinking. At first he’d asked himself if we’d met before. Then my name and place of origin had made him think of his father. Now he was allowing himself to consider that maybe he wasn’t dead after all and was standing right there before him.
He’d be trying to recall from his youth his dad’s voice and appearance – the scent of his aftershave, the direction he parted his hair, his posture, the sound of his laugh and shape of his smile – and comparing them all to the stranger before him. Then his rational side took charge and he realised his imagination had got the better of him. Fate didn’t work that way, and he’d be feeling foolish for even considering it.
He regained his composure, his irises shrank and the strength reappeared in his grip.
‘See you guys again,’ he smiled, and followed his assistant.
An animated Luca jumped up and down, gabbling in his excitement, but I couldn’t hear him. Instead I watched my James walk away, turn around to give me a final glance, and then disappear from my life as quickly as he’d arrived.
Montefalco, Italy
19 December
My driver parked the Bentley in front of the villa and opened the rear door for me. I smiled at a housemaid whose name eluded me as she flirted with a handsome young handyman. I made my way to a patio that overlooked our valley of vineyards.
I searched the sky for an invisible crop duster, which was giving off a gentle buzz. The midday crickets chirped as they rubbed their wings together in the hope of finding a mate. The horizon I’d stared into so often with crystal clarity now mimicked a melted oil painting as the sun blended sky, field and lake into one.
‘This is your life, Simon. Not the one you walked away from,’ came a long-forgotten voice. ‘This is your reality.’ But my reality was vacant without Luciana.
Eight months had passed since James and I had breathed the same air, and he was still all I thought about. And no matter how many times I told myself his world was a worthier place while he was ignorant of my existence, I was beginning to crumple under the pressure of keeping myself a secret and a promise I’d made.
Everyone and everything I’d stored in secure boxes had escaped since that day. I was haunted by untethered memories that disorientated me. My darling had been right when she told me I had to find peace. Maybe then I’d feel more like my old self again.
I had to learn what had become of Catherine and our other two children. She deserved to know I was still alive and what she’d done to drive me away. And there were things I also needed her to understand.
Time was running out, as fate threatened to erase a life she had never known I’d lived. I was almost ready to face her.
CATHERINE
Northampton, one year earlier
3 February
I dreamed about Simon that night. I don’t know what prompted his reappearance, as he hadn’t visit
ed me for years. But suddenly, there he was, every bit as youthful and as handsome as I remembered, standing in my garden, deadheading my pink rosebushes. Oscar was still a puppy and bounced excitedly around his bare feet.
‘Why are you here?’ I asked, neither upset nor delighted to see him.
He didn’t reply.
‘Simon,’ I repeated, firmly. ‘Why are you here?’
Again, nothing, and I felt a sudden urge to slap him across the face and beat my fists against his chest like wronged women do in black-and-white films. But the moment soon passed, and instead I put my arms around his shoulders and kissed his cheek.
‘Goodbye, Simon.’ I smiled before turning my back on him and walking away.
Then I heard his voice for the first time since he’d left me twenty-four years ago.
‘Kitty, where are you going?’ he asked, but I didn’t respond or turn around. I walked towards the kitchen and quietly closed the door behind me, on him and on us.
I woke up, disorientated, and just to be sure it was a dream, pulled back the curtains and glanced across an empty garden. I smiled to myself, then climbed back under the duvet, turned on my side and slid my arm across Edward’s chest.
‘Is everything all right?’ he mumbled.
‘It’s perfect,’ I replied. ‘Go back to sleep, Doctor.’
15 April
I likened being in remission from cancer to a soldier returning home from war. You put your life on the line to fight an unseen enemy that wants to kill you. Then, if you’re lucky enough to return in one piece, it can be a struggle to find your place in the world you left behind.
While I’d been at battle, everyone else had simply gotten on with their lives. Selena ran my businesses more than competently; the kids returned to work and no longer worried about me on a daily basis. In short, nothing had changed, except for me. I was restless. I’d accomplished so much and was ready to share it with someone else. And Dr Edward Lewis was the someone who wanted to come along for the ride.
The day he told me my radiotherapy had been successful, I’d asked him to join me for dinner.
‘You must have received plenty of offers from single women,’ I asked over our meal at a posh fish restaurant in town.
‘I suppose so, and not all of them single.’ He blushed. ‘But I usually politely decline.’
‘Should I be flattered then?’
He smiled. ‘Actually, I’ve had no interest in meeting anyone, even platonically. I felt blessed to have had twenty-seven years married to a wonderful woman, and probably didn’t deserve a second chance.’
‘If I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that we’re all entitled to a second chance. Why did you change your mind?’
‘Not once during your treatment did I hear you feeling sorry for yourself. You showed strength and courage and I could see what a good person you were by how much your children adored you.’
‘Oh, I had my moments.’
‘We all have our moments. But you and I don’t give in to them for long.’
Hook, line and sinker, I fell for Edward. Our fledgling courtship went from back to front. He’d already seen me feeling my worst, looking my least attractive and knocking on death’s door. Yet it hadn’t put him off.
Gradually our dinner dates became more frequent, and any time we spent apart, I wanted to be near him. He was charming, attentive and had a sense of adventure and spontaneity. He made me feel like I carried no baggage and, like me, he discovered he enjoyed having a companion.
His late wife, Pamela, had died suddenly of a heart attack six years earlier, and he’d taken awkwardly to life as a widower. He was bitter they’d been robbed of an early retirement together, making up for the years they were separated by his work while she raised their sons Richard and Patrick. With one studying economics at Cambridge and the other working in finance in the Netherlands, he admitted his days were too long as an ‘only’. I knew how that felt. I’d lived it for twenty-four years.
I reintroduced him to my children, but this time as Edward and not as Dr Lewis. And slowly our families integrated, as he became a regular fixture around our dining table.
He’d brought me back to life not once, but twice.
19 December
A dark-grey car with tinted windows and a lot of doors pulled up outside the cottage six days before Christmas. A firm rap at the front door made the ivy wreath shudder. Before me, a young uniformed driver with a grey peaked cap clutched tightly under his arm handed me an envelope.
Your suitcase is under the bed, a note in Edward’s handwriting read. Pack enough warm clothes for a week. You only have thirty minutes. All my love, Edward.
‘Where am I going?’ I asked the driver, bemused.
‘I’m not at liberty to say, madam.’ He smiled. ‘But I’m under strict instructions to get you there on time.’
My work and family had made me an expert in timetable juggling and forward planning, so spontaneity wasn’t something I was entirely used to until Edward came along. Whether it was supper on a hired canal boat or golfing lessons at Gleneagles, he loved his little last-minute surprises. So as I scrambled around for suitable clothes, I texted Emily to warn her I was off on another of Edward’s jollies.
An hour and a half later, we pulled up outside Heathrow’s Terminal 4. Edward stood waiting for me with his suitcase by the revolving doors. He grinned.
‘Where are we going then?’ I asked.
‘To see Holly,’ he replied, and pointed to the destination board. When I realised where we were headed, I threw my arms around him like a child meeting Father Christmas for the first time.
I’d wanted to visit New York ever since I was a little girl. Breakfast at Tiffany’s was the only film Mum had ever taken me to and I’d watched it a dozen times since. I grew up wishing I could have Holly Golightly’s carefree life, instead of the glum one my parents had thrown at me.
My friends’ bedroom walls were plastered with posters of The Beatles and Elvis, but mine were decorated with black-and-white postcards of Audrey Hepburn. I’d pretend she was my long-lost big sister, and while I followed her every move in the newspapers, Mum found inspiration in her wardrobe.
Looking back on it, I’m sure people must have laughed behind my mum’s back as she sauntered through the village wearing her designer scarves and stylish hats even at the height of summer. But she didn’t care, and it was one of the few things about her I actually admired. Audrey offered us both an escape.
And whether it was because Breakfast at Tiffany’s was the only piece of herself Mum had ever given away, or the lure of a magical city across the pond that had more love to offer than my parents, New York was a place I’d fantasised about most of my life.
I’d never found the time to go, or maybe I was just scared it might not live up to my expectations as a little girl. But Edward never accepted a packed diary or the fear of disappointment as excuses for not following a dream.
After landing and checking into our hotel, we’d not even had time to unpack before Edward whisked me off to Fifth Avenue’s Tiffany & Co. It was every bit as timeless as I’d imagined it. I didn’t think my day could be any more perfect until I peered into glass counters and tried on sparkling bracelets and necklaces displayed in boxes as blue as a robin’s egg. I grinned at a framed photograph of Audrey hanging from the wall on the second floor. I was in my element, but typically, Edward found a way of making it even better.
He ushered me into the centre of the shop floor, held both my hands and cleared his throat as the room hushed.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked, feeling my face redden.
‘I never thought I’d ever ask this question again. But, Catherine, will you do me the honour of being my wife?’
My eyes opened so wide I thought they might pop. ‘Yes, of course,’ I sobbed as staff and customers began a ripple of applause around us.
‘We are ready for you, Dr Lewis,’ smiled a manager in a smart tailored suit, and he led us upstairs into a
private viewing room. Row after row of twinkling rings had been laid before us on dark cushions like stars across our own private universe.
‘I don’t believe in long engagements, so why don’t you choose your wedding ring instead?’ suggested Edward.
I wasn’t going to argue. And after much deliberation, I chose a gold cobblestone-band diamond ring that simply cried out for my finger. And once placed inside a box and Tiffany’s iconic bag, I skipped out of the shop and floated back to our hotel leaving a twenty-four-carat chunk missing from the Big Apple.
Holly was right. To anyone who ever gave you confidence – you owe them a lot.
Later, and too excited to give in to jet lag, Edward and I went out for a celebratory meal at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan that a friend of his had recommended. As he opened the frosted-glass door, I nearly fell backwards when a huge roar rang out. In front of me sat my family and friends, with champagne flutes raised high in the air like Gabriel’s trumpet.
Edward had paid for my children, their partners and my granddaughter to fly to New York earlier that morning. James had arrived from Mexico where he was touring, and Roger, Tom and Amanda and Selena had landed a day earlier with Edward’s sons. Steven and Baishali had travelled directly from their villa in the South of France, and even Simon’s stepmum Shirley had overcome her lifelong fear of aeroplanes for the first flight she’d ever taken in her eighty-seven years.
‘Edward called us all one by one to ask for our blessing,’ whispered Emily. ‘If you’d said no, Shirley was going to say yes!’
I didn’t think it was possible to love anyone as much as I loved Edward right at that moment. I would have done anything for Edward with one exception – tell him the truth about how Simon had left us. Shirley and I had kept that secret to ourselves.
‘I take it that’s the end of the surprises for one day?’ I asked later, tucking into a delicious amaretto cheesecake dessert. ‘Because I don’t know how much more my nerves can take.’
He smiled. ‘There’s just one more small thing we need to do. But you’ll have to wait till tomorrow for that.’
20 December
