By the time the shoot was over, Podraig had to confess that he'd forgotten why it had happened at all.
Helplessly, he smiled at his wife. 'You'll have to remind me. I forgot to write it down.'
Seated at Adam's computer, downloading the pix into a fresh folder ready for Adam to select his submissions to the commissioning magazine, Judith wondered how often Podraig asked his wife to be his memory, and how often his wife patiently complied. How strong love had to be to withstand the constant drip of a frustration like that.
Adam concentrated silently on his own work. He'd been almost morose since Tom's visit.
From her pocket, Judith's mobile began to ring, vibrating disconcertingly against her hipbone. An unknown number flashed up on the screen.
But the voice that went with it was achingly familiar. 'Hey, Mum.'
She swallowed. A rush of love surged through her, making her hot and dizzy, and any resentment that he'd confided more in Wilma than in her, evaporated.
'Mum? It's me.'
'Hello darling,' she managed. Her voice cracked. She was aware of Adam looking up suddenly, a smile clearing his faint frown lines. She closed her eyes the better just to listen to the sound of Kieran's voice as he told her a little about the house they rented, 'Red bricks, black roof, white windows. Nowhere to park.' And his job, 'I left the one in Brinham without working my notice, so they wouldn't give me a reference. So I'm working in a shop, now, but it's cool. I'll be able to work my way up. They've already put me in charge of ordering stuff for the CD section.'
'That's wonderful.' She smiled. Her heart expanded in relief. He had a roof over his head and a way of keeping it there.
'So, I've rung to ask a favour.' Kieran cleared his throat awkwardly. 'You know... at the cemetery? We ordered this little - ' He cleared his throat again.
She said it for him. 'The stone tablet? For Aaron?'
She heard him take a couple of deep breaths. They whooshed down the line. 'Yeah. It's supposed to be in place by now. We were wondering... could you ask Adam to take a digital photo of it and e-mail it to us? Bethan's a bit stressy about whether it's been done right, so when we've seen it we'll be cool.' His voice became gruffer. 'Well, we might be upset, but we want to see it. We need to.'
Without waiting for the conversation to be over, she passed the request on to Adam.
'Tomorrow, as soon as the cemetery opens,' he promised. 'The light will be pretty decent, this rain's due to pass over tonight.'
The cemetery was silent apart from the breeze through the naked trees and cautious, end-of-winter birdsong. Adam's camera bag containing the black Nikon swung from his shoulder as he walked at Judith's side.
The stone was easy to locate; palest grey veined marble with gold lettering, set into the grass. Adam took overhead shots so that Kieran and Bethan would be able to read the inscription, Aaron McAllister Sutherland, and of Judith laying white roses beside it, her hair blowing back from her face.
Crouching, touching the engraved inscription, the bleak, single date that reflected the baby's failure to draw breath, Judith felt claws of pain around her heart. She glanced up at the weedy, watery English winter sun, and wondered how it could possibly be the same that beat on Malta.
Adam helped her to her feet. 'Let's go back and send the pictures straight away.' He kept her hand all the way back to the car. Adam knew exactly when she needed these little expressions of support. She might get a bit of silent disapproval from him where Tom was concerned, but he forgot that the instant she needed him.
Next day, it was Adam who found a message from Kieran in his inbox. Really cool. Thanx mate. Tell Mum we're really, really ok, don't think she believes me. Thx again. Means a lot. K&B
Reading the mail for the fourth time when she should be typing invoices, Judith mused, 'It sounds as if he's truly growing up. As if they both are.'
Adam nodded as he sucked out one of his equipment cases with the brush on the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner. He didn't like dust on his equipment. 'Tough breaks tend to chase away immaturity.'
She clicked to print out the invoice she was working on, and began a fresh one. 'I think they'll be OK. It's still hard to accept that Kieran's chosen not to confide where he's living, and I expect Tom's still livid. But if a twenty-two-year-old decides to resign from his job, pack his clothes and leave, there isn't very much you can do about it. There isn't much you can do about a seventeen-year-old girl doing the same thing, the Sutherlands have discovered.' She looked outside to where rain had begun to fall in a cold, heavy curtain. Again. 'It's time for me to go back to Malta.'
Adam fitted the crevice nozzle to clean out the smallest compartments where the brush wouldn't reach. When all was satisfactorily dust-free, he switched off the vacuum, wound up the flex, and stowed it in the cupboard under the stairs.
He came back into the room, and picked up the diary with the navy-blue cover.
'I can clear the last week of April and the first week of May,' he observed, after quickly flipping through. It wasn't a question or a hint, just a statement of a fact she could, or not, take advantage of. He shut the book with a snap.
She smiled to herself as her rapid fingers opened another invoice template. 'I'll ask Richard if we can stay with him.'
Chapter Twenty-six
Judith stood, motionless in the soft darkness, and listened.
The crickets, the werzieq, were making their endless background buzz. Sliema Creek lapped at the edge of the pavement, a gentle noise that was soothing and comforting, and the occasional car whooshed past between the silent shops and the broad pavement where she stood, headlight reflections wheeling over those of streetlights that lay across the black water like golden scribbles.
The smooth railings that edged the harbour were cool beneath her hands. She breathed in salt water and boat oil, pine trees and dust, listening to the pull and suck of the water, feeling the utter peace.
Quiet footsteps made her turn.
Hands stuffed in the pockets of his black canvas jacket, Adam had the creased appearance of someone who'd been woken from a nap. 'Are you safe out here at two in the morning?'
She smiled at his disgruntled air. 'Probably. There's not much crime here - not that I have any valuables on me - and any self-respecting Romeo would be looking for someone younger.'
'Good thinking,' he yawned. 'And maybe even Romeos are put off by madwomen who hang around alone in the dark.'
'I like the dark.' A long, slow, even breath, as she inhaled the essence of Malta.
He stifled another wrenching yawn.
'Go to bed,' she suggested. 'Erminia's given you a lovely room, and she's wonderfully hospitable. Your sheets will be scented with lavender, your pillows plump and inviting.'
Groaning longingly, he leant his forearms on the rail and studied a rowing boat that rocked beside a faded red buoy. 'Richard made me come out to look after you.'
'Don't say he's waiting up for me, too!'
He yawned again, saying sourly, 'Not now I'm out here.'
Her laugh was loud in the still air. As he didn't seem inclined to leave her to a private wallow in the Maltese atmosphere, she decided to illuminate his surroundings for him, nodding first to a bulk of land across the narrow ribbon of sea. 'This is Manoel Island, here in front of us. It is an island, but only just - it's joined to this road, The Strand, by a bridge. This part of The Strand's called Triq Marina or Marina Street on some maps, but everyone still calls it The Strand.'
She turned to their left. 'Those are the ferryboats; see the little one with Lowenbrau on the side? That shuttles all day to-and-from Valletta, there, look. We can go across in the morning. Or stay in Sliema. Whichever you prefer.'
He turned, resting his backside on the rail, regarding her curiously. 'Can we? I thought you had plans? Giorgio's family?'
Slowly, she nodded. She did have plans involving Giorgio's family, of course, wasn't that one of the reasons she'd come? But now she was here, a little rest and relaxation wouldn't hur
t. She wanted to show Adam her Malta. 'I'm going to take a couple of days first. I need thinking time.'
He didn't comment that she had had most of the winter to think in, but glanced around with weary interest, as if resigned to the fact that sleep wasn't immediately in the offing. 'So where's Richard's office?'
She pointed down The Strand the other way, towards Ta' Xbiex. 'Just about in sight - see the restaurant with the bright yellow sign? Immediately past that.'
'And your apartment?'
She swung back. 'Behind the ferryboats and the bus stops. Second floor.' The outside of her old home was so familiar, although someone else's home at the moment. She remembered the warmth on the soles of her bare feet when she stepped onto the balcony, the evening she waited for Giorgio but Charlie Galea showed up instead. She shut out the recollection. 'You were supposed to be seeing all this in the morning.'
'Yes, I remember the idea being to go straight to bed after our late flight. I missed the bit where it got changed to wandering about half the night.'
She let her exasperation show. 'Go back to Richard's without me!'
He adjusted his position on the railings and showed her a peeved scowl. 'You are a bloody woman, Jude. At one time if a man put himself out to protect a female she used to damned well let herself be protected! Now he has to be apologetic, in case he offends her. Go on, you carry on with your tour guide bit. I'm sure I can cope indefinitely without sleep.'
Tour guide.
Giorgio, standing at the front of the bus and making all the passengers smile with his easy charm.
She made herself relax. 'If you're going to pout about it, we'll wait till morning.' She took his arm and they crossed the road, turning up the tiny street further up The Strand that led to Richard's house with a courtyard behind. A typically Maltese house of limestone with tiled floors and staircase, a scroll of wrought iron swelling over each window like a belly. On older buildings it would have signified that the building had needed to be defended, the bulge at the bottom to allow a lookout to be kept down the street for enemies. On Richard's house it was an ornamentation Erminia liked to fill with potted red geraniums.
'Look, lizards!' Adam pointed up at the geometric shadows on the pale limestone, legs making right angles against still bodies that ended in long pointed tails.
'Geckos,' she corrected. 'Wall Geckos. You'll see plenty at night, they hang out near a light to eat the insects it attracts. Geckos have shorter, broader bodies than lizards and are dull, like speckled sand. Lizards like to bask in the sunshine and have shiny scales, sometimes a beautiful dark green.'
She let her explanations fade away. Adam was watching her mouth as she spoke.
Geckos aren't that interesting a subject when your onetime lover is looking at your lips with a particularly intent expression that starts the memory of desire uncoiling inside. She reached out. Her fingertips collided with his scarred palm and she let her hand close around his. 'Adam... why don't we sleep together any more?'
He betrayed by only a blink that her bluntness had caught him off guard. 'Self preservation,' he offered, with a quirk of his lips. And he inserted his left hand into the cradle of her fingers to extricate the right as they walked into the lofty, cool interior of Richard's house.
The next three days were a holiday.
With pride in her adopted country, she showed Adam up and down the steep streets of Sliema with the shops packed tightly from corner-to-corner. The following day they drove Richard's car to the beautiful beaches of Paradise Bay and Ghajn Tuffieha, where the sea had never looked so blue, and then the impressive silent city of Mdina in all it's medieval splendour. Despite the fact that it was far from silent as extensive cable laying works were going on, Adam shot so many photos of the carved buildings and narrow streets that he had to use a computer in Richard's office to download the pix and e-mail them home to himself in order to free up his memory cards.
On the third day she took him on the ferry to the lovely, unspoilt, ancient capital city, the citadel of Valletta, pointing out the landmarks as they approached: the steeple of St. Paul's Anglican Cathedral - known as the British Church - the dome of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and the turret of the Grand Master's Palace. The way up into the walled city that hung above them was cruelly steep, but Judith was merciless as she steered him onwards and upwards to one of her favourite spots, the heights of the Upper Barracca Gardens.
There they stared out over the glinting blue splendour of Grand Harbour, watching as far below ant-like passengers disembarked from a towering white cruise boat with it's own swimming pool. Adam gazed silently over the depths of incredible blue to the church domes and bell towers of the three crowded little cities of Vittoriosa, Cospicua and Senglea on the opposite shore, their fingers of land creating the creeks to shelter the clutter and clatter of the docks.
She took him into the city and showed him the central thoroughfare, Republic Street, a particularly pleasant place to shop as no traffic was allowed. The streets were beautifully decorated for the Feast of St Augustine, the bandalori or bunting showing the city at its best. They lunched on pasta and calamari at Caffe Cordina in Republic Square, and she told him how in the sixteenth century the Ottoman Turks had laid siege to the Knights of St. John in Valletta, floating dead Knights across the harbour waters in a savage attempt to destabilise the besieged order. And of La Valette, the grandmaster of the time, who gave the grisly order to fire back the heads of Turkish prisoners in brutal response.
They strolled between the golden Baroque buildings along dusty streets so narrow it seemed impossible that they'd survive the cars whipping past them, and others where they felt pretty safe from vehicles because the road was actually a giant flight of steps.
She showed him the city gate in the huge ramparts that had protected the city for so long. They bought cake and ice-cream from stalls standing around the circular bus terminus, and he took photos of her sitting on the coping of The Triton fountain in the middle, laughing, her face dusted with icing sugar and crushed almonds, her ice-cream melting over her fingers.
Judith enjoyed playing tourist with Adam, watching his face as he enjoyed the buildings and the views of the sea to be glimpsed down almost every street. Meanwhile, a family dinner was being prepared at Richard and Erminia's house so that upon their return, Judith's family - her cousins, their spouses and all the children they'd brought into the world - were waiting, surrounding the long table beneath the chandelier in the dining room.
The evening was full of laughter and finger-licking food, lampuki, peppers, sausages. Children clambering down from the table between courses to let off steam, Lino and Raymond competing to entertain Adam with unflattering stories about Judith.
It was late when the party broke up and it seemed very quiet once the various arms of the family had returned to their own homes and Richard and Erminia were in bed. Judith and Adam went out to sit in the courtyard among big dusty pot plants, the night air chilly enough that Judith needed her jacket. Adam entertained himself by spotting geckos on the house walls.
And then Judith said, 'Will you be able to look after yourself tomorrow? I have stuff to do.'
Adam placed his hands slowly behind his head and watched the moths battering themselves against the orange light. 'You're beginning your mission?'
'If you want to call it that.'
'And you want to do it alone.'
She frowned as she tried, unsuccessfully, to interpret the odd note in his voice. 'For the moment.'
He rocked his chair, thoughtfully. 'Well, thanks for the last few days. I've enjoyed having you with me.' His tone was polite, and Judith couldn't quite tell whether he was being sarcastic.
They lapsed into silence, and for a while she thought he'd fallen asleep. But then his voice came suddenly. 'How does it feel to be back in Malta?'
'Nice,' she said, carefully.
'Nice,' he repeated, as if he'd never heard the word before.
Chapter Twenty-seven
The s
un was getting some real heat into it, making her roll her shoulders in satisfaction beneath the butterscotch yellow cotton of her light shirt as she approached her cousin Raymond's three-year-old blue Peugeot that looked at least three times as old. After a brief tidy up inside the borrowed vehicle, which involved throwing all the papers from the front into the back, she drove cautiously out of Sliema. She'd decided to begin her 'mission', as Adam termed it, by searching out some way to feel close to Giorgio.
It certainly hadn't happened just by coming back to the island, a little to her surprise. Even in Sliema, where both she and Giorgio had lived, her present life intervened. Perhaps because she wasn't in her own apartment. Perhaps because of Adam, she was tuned in to him in the usual, easy way and that might have interfered with the slide back into the past that she'd assumed she'd achieve by coming back. Instead, she felt like a visitor.
On her last visit, the island had seemed full of Giorgio, ringing with his voice, bright with his smile, unbearable without him. Of course, that had been when his loss was so new.
But now... the office was self-evidently running perfectly well without her, and she had the uncomfortable conviction that it would suit Richard and his family if she simply sold out to them. The small hotel venture had proved profitable, the funds were available. Rosaire had taken over her client list.
She knew that if she declared her intention to take up her old position she'd be greeted with nothing less than a warm welcome. But Richard was spending fewer and fewer hours in the office, his children had formed a team of pleasing symmetry without her.
It seemed to her that the issue of the crucifix, though, was not so clear-cut. She was intent on gaining some sense of what she should do. What Giorgio would have wanted. She desperately wanted to do the right thing - whatever that was.
The roads were no quieter than she remembered, and she felt nervous of the lanes of weaving traffic on the regional road as she became reaccustomed to the Malta driving experience. It all seemed uncomfortably rapid and busy after Brinham, which was usually choked up with cars, and therefore slow. Dust blew in through the open car window on a breeze that held a firm edge of heat, auguring the rigours of the summer just beginning. The sun was harsh as it bounced from the pale new limestone blocks of a building under construction, the site hemmed about by other buildings and the road, a precarious-looking crane lorry swinging the large blocks into what would be the building's basement.
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