If You Could Go Anywhere

by Paige Toon

Chapter 24

  Giulio is sitting out on the patio with Enzo and Eliana when we return, a glass of red wine in his hand. From the enthusiastic way he greets Valentina and me, I think he’s on the Tipsy Train, destination: Drunk.

  I smile and sit down on the chair he’s pulled out for me.

  ‘Giulio was telling us that your grandfather was an opal miner,’ Eliana says.

  ‘Yes.’

  Valentina wants to know what an opal is, so I pull up the sleeve of my top to show her my bracelet. She gasps, leaning in closer to study it.

  ‘My grandfather used to polish and prepare the opals himself,’ I tell her. ‘These are ones I found myself in the rock piles.’ They’re mostly blue and green. ‘But the colours on some opals are unbelievably vibrant – red, pink, orange… I have one back at Cristina’s apartment. I’ll show you sometime.’

  Enzo asks about my hometown so I tell everyone about life in the desert, and after a while I realise that Giulio is listening intently. It’s the first time I’ve dominated a conversation that he’s been a part of. I don’t think he knew much at all about where I’ve come from.

  No one can believe it when I say that I live in a cave ‘like the Flintstones’. Eliana and Serafina clap and look at each other with delight, and they’re even more animated when I admit to not knowing what a lawnmower was until I was twelve. Giulio wants to know where Coober Pedy is on a map, so I make the shape of Australia with my hands. ‘You know Uluru, or Ayers Rock, the big, red rock in the centre?’

  They nod.

  ‘Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, is here.’ I point near the bottom. ‘And Coober Pedy is here, roughly halfway between the two. It takes about nine hours to drive from Adelaide.’

  Jacopo comes out of the kitchen with a glass of what looks like lemonade in his hand. He sits down and his mother quickly brings him up to date on what we’ve been saying.

  I wonder where Alessandro is.

  ‘Have you seen Mad Max 3?’ I ask Jacopo. ‘Beyond Thunderdome – you know, with Tina Turner?’

  ‘Si, si,’ Enzo chips in eagerly. Jacopo nods hesitantly. I guess it’s a bit before his time.

  ‘Part of it was filmed in the area around Coober Pedy.’ I think most of it was shot out on the Breakaways, which is the end of a mountain chain about twenty miles north of the town. ‘What about Pitch Black?’ I ask Jacopo. ‘The space movie with—’

  ‘Vin Diesel!’ he interrupts. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Also filmed in Coober Pedy. One of the old spaceships that they used on the set is still sitting in the town centre.’

  The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert was also partly filmed in Coober Pedy, but my favourite is an indie film called Opal Dream, which was based on a book I love by Ben Rice: Pobby and Dingan. It’s about a mining family and a little girl who has these imaginary friends called Pobby and Dingan. When they get ‘lost’ down a mineshaft, their ‘disappearance’ has a knock-on effect for the whole family. It reminds me of the stories my grandfather used to tell me, except his stories were about the garden gnomes that Jimmy gave Nan for Christmas. Henry and Henrietta lived in our front yard and Grandad claimed that they came alive at night to throw parties down the mineshafts. I used to look for them when Grandad took me to the opal fields.

  It’s late afternoon now and the sun is on a downward trajectory. We decide to move indoors, but first I do a sweep of the landscape. Alessandro still hasn’t returned.

  I catch sight of him, down by the river. He cuts a lonely figure: dark and solitary against the green landscape.

  ‘Is Alessandro all right?’ I ask Giulio, tugging on his arm before he steps over the threshold.

  He follows the line of my sight. ‘He is okay. Being here hard for him sometimes, remind him too much of his mother.’ He points down the hill to a cream-stone house with orange terracotta roof tiles. ‘That is where Giorgio and Marta grew up. Alessandro spent much time there as a boy.’

  ‘That house was his family home?’

  ‘Si, yes. Come, is cold. We go inside.’

  There’s a piano in the living room with a music book open to Claude Debussy’s ‘Clair de Lune’.

  ‘Do you play?’ Eliana asks when she spies me looking.

  I nod. ‘This was one of my nan’s favourites.’

  Serafina overhears. ‘Play it for us!’ she exclaims.

  ‘No, no, no.’ I shake my head, embarrassed.

  ‘Dai ti prego,’ she implores. ‘Andrea, my husband, played to me. Valentina, she is learning, but…’

  ‘I am terrible,’ Valentina chips in and everyone laughs.

  ‘Please,’ Eliana says with a smile, switching on the nearby lamp in preparation. ‘It would mean a lot to my mother.’

  I take a seat at the piano. I don’t really need the music book, this one is so familiar to me.

  The room breaks out into applause when I’ve finished, no one clapping louder or more enthusiastically than Giulio.

  ‘Will you teach me how to play it?’ Valentina asks.

  ‘Only if you teach me how to use one of those.’ I nod at her vintage headscarf.

  Her eyes light up and as she dashes out of the room, I notice Alessandro standing in the doorway. His expression is warm and open, his eyes glinting as they meet mine. He turns to address Giulio. ‘We should go. We need to get back for the wine delivery.’

  Everyone else protests, but Giulio agrees, wobbling slightly as he stands.

  Valentina reappears with a light-blue headscarf in her hands. I wait as she slips it underneath my hair and fashions it into a knot on top, prompting Giulio and Serafina to cry, ‘Bella!’ simultaneously.

  As I settle myself on the back seat of the van, repeatedly promising to return soon, I can’t help but wonder why Alessandro doesn’t feel more at ease here. I don’t believe this lovely family could make him feel anything less than utterly welcome.

  Before I slide the door shut, I notice Serafina giving Giulio a bunch of bright pink flowers. He climbs into the front seat and closes his door, winding down the window to call out his final goodbyes.

  Alessandro gets behind the wheel and glances across at Giulio’s lap, his brow furrowing. He says something and Giulio shrugs, still waving enthusiastically.

  But when we’re out of sight of the house and the window has been wound up again, Alessandro again speaks in Italian. His voice is low and deep and it carries a warning.

  Giulio responds irately and Alessandro does in turn. I watch with a sinking feeling as the mood in the van deteriorates and then Giulio raises his voice and Alessandro abruptly falls silent.

  What was that about?

  ‘We need to make a detour,’ Alessandro tells me after a minute or so.

  ‘Okay,’ I reply.

  Soon afterwards we pull into a car park. A cemetery car park.

  So that’s what the flowers are for. But whose grave are we visiting? Marta’s? Or someone else’s?

  ‘He’ll only be five minutes,’ Alessandro tells me as Giulio gets out of the van and shuts the door, still looking slightly unsteady on his feet as he walks away.

  ‘Don’t you want to go with him?’ I ask gently.

  He exhales heavily and after a long moment, nods. He doesn’t say another word as he gets out of the car.

  I watch as he walks away, and then something inside me snaps. Maybe it’s because of Nan and Grandad and the secrets that they kept, but I find myself doing something very uncharacteristic. Leaning forward, I pluck the keys from the ignition and climb out of the van, locking it behind me.

  I walk amongst tombs and crypts, beneath tall cypress trees and past marble headstones and stone statues of urns, angels and crosses. My feet crunch on the gravel, my footsteps occasionally softened as they land on grass growing through. The longer and further I walk, the more I begin to doubt myself.

  I’m about to give up when I see them, Giulio and Alessandro. They’re standing before a white stone statue of an angel, their heads bowed.

  They be
gin to turn around so I duck behind a tree, almost high-tailing it out of there in an attempt to make it to the van first.

  But I can’t do it, not when the truth could be here for the taking.

  They slowly walk away in the opposite direction and I realise I might still have a chance of getting to the van before them if I hurry.

  Coming to a stop in front of the stone angel, my head begins to spin as I try to make sense of what I’m seeing. It’s a family tomb with more than one person buried inside. Names jump out at me: Andrea, Marta, Carlotta… There’s also the same photograph of Carlotta that was sitting on the table – the pink flowers have been put into the vase beside it.

  Mindful that I don’t have long, I study the dates beside Marta and Carlotta’s names. Only the years of birth and death are inscribed, but they died the same year.

  Carlotta was only two.

  For some reason I think of the small pink bunny in Alessandro’s van and the vice around my heart tightens.

  Was Carlotta Alessandro’s sister?

  I tear myself away, my walk transforming into a jog as I hurry along a dark, shady path beneath the trees.

  I’m still trying to compute the information. How long ago did they die? I manage to do the maths as I run: twenty-one years ago.

  Wait. I’m twenty-seven. My brain races as I work out that Carlotta was born four years after me. Were Marta and Giulio still married?

  My heart crushes to a pulp.

  Did I have a little sister?

  Chapter 25

  I approach the van, no longer running. Alessandro and Giulio are waiting, their expressions wary.

  ‘Was Carlotta your daughter?’ I ask Giulio.

  He nods dejectedly.

  I turn to Alessandro. ‘I had a half-sister?’

  He’s looking wretched, but now he’s also confused. ‘I thought Valentina told you earlier?’

  ‘That Carlotta was my sister? No! All she told me was her name!’

  ‘We were going to explain,’ he says in a low voice, glancing at Giulio. ‘It was hard to find the right time.’

  They’re obviously both still deeply affected by these deaths. I’m hurting knowing that I had a small half-sister who was lost, but they lived through losing her. They knew her. They loved her. I’m only mourning the idea of her.

  ‘What happened to them?’ I ask in a choked voice.

  ‘It was an accident,’ Giulio replies.

  Alessandro glances at him and then looks away. When his eyes find mine, they’re full of suffering. ‘Carlotta—’

  ‘It was an accident!’ Giulio cuts him off, raising his voice in anger and distress.

  Alessandro’s shoulders slump. ‘Si, it was an accident,’ he tells me resignedly. ‘She fell from the balcony of our apartment.’

  I gasp.

  But he’s not finished. ‘And two days later, my mother followed her down.’

  I stare at him in shock and horror.

  ‘It was an accident,’ Giulio repeats, but he’s broken.

  ‘It was not an accident,’ Alessandro tells me, enunciating every word quietly but firmly. His eyes well up with tears. ‘Keys, please,’ he commands, holding out his palm.

  I mutely hand them over and he unlocks the van.

  Never has a silence been heavier than on that journey home.

  I sit in the back, brushing away tears as I try to comprehend what this family went through. Giulio lost his daughter and then his wife. Alessandro lost his sister and then his mother. Two days apart.

  How can anyone ever get over that? Alessandro was just fourteen years old when his mother committed suicide. I understand why Giulio wanted to call both deaths an accident – if Marta was mentally ill, as they knew she was, then she was unlikely to have been in control of her actions.

  I can’t imagine the grief she must have felt, losing her little girl. It must have been overwhelming. Who wouldn’t have considered doing what they could to escape the pain, even without depression blackening their lives? How could anyone come through that?

  And yet Giulio did come through it. He’s here, surviving. And clearly still suffering.

  My poor father.

  And oh… Alessandro. I think of the pink bunny again and have an overwhelming urge to unclick my seat belt and climb between them to tell them I’m sorry.

  I act on my impulse.

  Alessandro jolts when I appear at his side, but he keeps his eyes on the road as I place one hand on Giulio’s knee and the other on his.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper.

  Giulio covers my hand with his and squeezes it hard, and then Alessandro takes my other hand and brings it to his lips, giving my fingers a brief kiss.

  ‘Put your seat belt back on, Angel,’ he says in a husky voice. ‘We don’t want to lose you too.’

  Chapter 26

  I stand and stare at the apartment blocks lining this stretch of road. I’m walking to work, taking the short cut.

  Did Alessandro and Giulio live with Marta and Carlotta in one of these apartments? Did Carlotta fall and Marta jump from one of these very balconies? Alessandro told me that they lived nearby. Is that why he wanted to avoid coming this way when he walked me home on Friday?

  Last night, I found it difficult to sleep. In the end I gave up, retrieved my new phone from its charger on the windowsill and called Bonnie, bringing her up to date on the past week. I needed someone sensible to talk it all through with.

  ‘So you and Alessandro share a sister,’ she mused. ‘But you’re not related.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And he still seems happy that you’re there?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. At least, he was until yesterday when I found out about Carlotta.’

  I had my opal in my hands and was rotating it absentmindedly, watching the colours flash under my bedside table lamp.

  ‘If Giulio lost a daughter all those years ago, maybe Alessandro is pleased that he has a second chance to be a father.’

  This made me freeze. ‘You think he sees me as some sort of replacement for her?’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. But you don’t know what Giulio was like before you got in touch with him. Maybe Alessandro knew that he was missing something from his life. Maybe that’s why he’s pleased you’re there.’

  ‘Maybe.’ I rubbed my thumb over the rough sandstone still clinging to part of the opal’s surface. ‘Anyway, how are you? What have you guys been up to?’

  ‘Oh, same as always, darling. Not much changes here.’

  ‘Mick still showing no signs of retirement?’

  She laughed wryly. ‘What do you think?’

  I took that as a no.

  ‘Jimmy seems to be slowing down a little,’ she divulged.

  ‘Is he okay?’ I asked worriedly.

  ‘Just getting old. He and I have been listening to those audio CDs you left for him.’

  I was surprised. Bonnie always had her nose in a book – I didn’t think she’d be interested in… Ah. Reading between the lines, I gathered she’d been doing it to keep Jimmy company.

  ‘Has Jimmy been lonely?’

  ‘He’s absolutely fine, my love, don’t you worry about a thing.’

  ‘I’ll call him in a bit,’ I told her. ‘But can you give him a hug from me when you next see him?’

  ‘Of course I will. He’ll probably hit me with his walking stick, but anything for you.’

  This made me laugh, but how I missed Jimmy. I missed all of my friends and the familiarity that came with them. I was with my family, but they didn’t feel familiar to me. Not yet.

  ‘What is it, darling?’ Bonnie asked gently when I sighed.

  ‘I’m still not entirely comfortable around Giulio,’ I admitted. ‘I don’t know how to be around him. He’s a nice man, everyone likes him, even the people who run the restaurant down the road, and you’d think they’d be in competition with each other. He has people working for him who’ve been there since his parents ran the place and they’re still there now
. It’s like they’re one big family, but I’m his blood and I don’t feel like family.’

  ‘It’s early days, love,’ Bonnie replied. ‘Give it a while. It must be very strange to suddenly find you’ve got an adult daughter. He may well feel quite intimidated by you.’

  I remembered Serafina trying to persuade him to come to Villa D’Este with us and wondered if that could be true.

  ‘Do you have anything in common? What are his interests?’ she asked.

  ‘Food, food and food.’

  ‘That’s a good start. Why don’t you bake something for him? Or perhaps you could ask him to teach you something?’

  ‘Mm, that’s a good idea.’

  One thing was certain. It was going to take a lot more than a hug and a hand squeeze before we’d feel at ease in each other’s company.

  *

  When I arrive at Serafina’s, Alessandro is behind the bar. I spy Giulio in the kitchen, but he has his back to the serving hatch.

  ‘Hey,’ I say to Alessandro.

  I came in early so that we could clear the air.

  ‘Ciao,’ he replies curtly.

  I place Cristina’s Chupa Chups tin on the bar top.

  ‘Lollipops?’ He’s mystified.

  ‘Cristina let me borrow her tin.’ I open the lid to show him what’s inside. ‘Kolaczki cookies. I baked them this morning.’ They’re made from circular-shaped dough, folded in at two opposing edges with jam in the middle. ‘They’re Polish. Would you like one?’ I offer nervously.

  ‘Er, sure.’ He reaches into the tin and takes one out.

  ‘What do you think?’ I ask.

  ‘Yum,’ he murmurs, shaking his head in bewilderment before meeting my eyes. ‘Speaking Hungarian, playing the piano, and now baking. How did you learn how to play like that?’

  ‘My grandfather taught me. Actually, he only taught me the basics. I wasn’t very interested when I was younger, but Nan loved hearing him play, just as Serafina did Andrea.’

  He eyes me thoughtfully. ‘So, after your grandfather died, you learned for your grandmother?’

  I shrug. ‘It was the one thing that calmed her down when she was feeling anxious.’

  It was also a way to break the silence.