by Paige Toon
Oh, God. . .
‘Logan was furious. The other jumpers too. Most have had a brush with death or know someone who’s had a serious or fatal injury – nobody wants to see their friend come to a sticky end. And when one person acts recklessly, it puts the whole base-jumping community at risk. If people die or get seriously injured, then jumps are liable to become illegal. Lots of thrill-seekers then want to do those forbidden jumps. It’s bad for the sport. So after the last time this happened, Logan got Alessandro to join him on a jump in Greece and tried to have a heart to heart with him. Alessandro didn’t like it. Logan didn’t hear from him again until we ran into you the other day.’ Lea gives me a sympathetic look, knowing this is hard for me to hear. ‘Logan was so happy to see Alessandro. He’s thought about him a lot, wondering what had happened to him. He was disappointed to hear that he’s still jumping.’
‘What would make him stop?’
‘It’s not something anyone can force. He has to be willing on his own terms.’ She gives me a sad smile. ‘You really care about him, don’t you?’
I nod, watching Alessandro at the bar. He glances our way. Our eyes lock and his easy expression fades. Logan says something to him to take his attention away.
I excuse myself to go to the bathroom, needing a moment to compose myself before I face Alessandro.
Base jumping is already a death-defying sport. If Alessandro acts recklessly, how long will it be before death refuses to be defied?
When I return to our table, he’s sitting in my seat and Lea is perched on Logan’s knee.
Alessandro edges himself as far back in the armchair as he can, patting the space between his legs. I sit down and he wraps his arms around me from behind, resting his chin on my shoulder as he reaches for his drink.
I pick up mine – a cocktail of some sort – and he chinks my glass.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asks in my ear.
‘Let’s talk later,’ I murmur, and feel him tense up behind me.
Lea friends me on Facebook before the night is out so I’m glad I have a way of contacting her if I need to. She and Logan are flying to California tomorrow, and have urged us to get in touch if we’re ever in the area.
Alessandro gets his phone out and makes a quick call as we walk. Far away, at the end of the road, the Monument of Vittorio Emanuele II glows with a golden light.
‘What did Lea tell you?’ he asks as soon as he’s finished.
I wasn’t expecting to be having this conversation so soon.
‘She said that one of the last times Logan saw you jump, you were reckless.’
He doesn’t deny it.
‘Nobody else was jumping,’ I add.
‘I wasn’t hurt,’ he replies. I wouldn’t go as far as to say he’s angry, but he’s certainly not happy.
‘She said the conditions were dangerous.’
‘I wasn’t hurt,’ he repeats. ‘They can’t have been that dangerous.’
‘Why didn’t anyone else jump, then?’
‘You’d have to ask them that.’
‘You think they were being too cautious?’ I want him to say yes, but he doesn’t.
‘I don’t judge anyone else for their actions, so I would prefer others not to judge me. I make my own decisions. I am no one else’s responsibility.’ He turns to look at me. ‘Do not make me your responsibility, Angel.’ He says it like a warning.
‘You’re not my responsibility, but you’ve become my friend.’ I grab his hand. ‘And I don’t want to lose you.’
He extracts his hand. ‘Everybody loses everyone in the end.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’ I raise my voice.
‘It means we will all die one day. I have accepted death as a part of life. When it’s my time, I will go.’
‘But you’re staring death in the face whenever you jump off a cliff edge!’ I protest. ‘You don’t have to do that!’
‘You’re wrong. Jumping is the only thing that makes me feel alive.’
I regard him with dismay. ‘It’s the only thing?’ What about us? What about friendship?
‘Nothing else makes me feel free,’ he mutters.
I frown. ‘Free from what?’
He looks frustrated. ‘I’ll never stop, so don’t ask me to.’
‘I’m not asking you to,’ I say, even though it’s the one thing I want to do right now.
He nods up ahead. ‘I think this is your taxi.’
That was the call he made?
He speaks through the open window to the driver and passes him a few notes from his wallet.
‘I have money,’ I protest, as he opens the back door for me. I climb in and he shuts the door, then turns around and walks in the opposite direction without another word.
I stare out of the rear window as the driver pulls away from the kerb, shocked at the sudden end to our evening. As we’re taking the corner, Alessandro stops and spins around.
I know that the tormented look on his face will deprive me of sleep tonight.
Chapter 34
Coober Pedy is a small town and everybody talks.
Not me.
If someone trusted me enough to tell me something, I never broke that trust. Not once in all my twenty-seven years.
So I feel terribly guilty about betraying Alessandro’s confidence now.
‘He holds your hand?’ Louise asks.
At least she’s on the other side of the world and it’s unlikely they’ll ever meet.
‘Yes.’
‘That’s not normal.’
‘It doesn’t feel strange,’ I reply. How can I make her understand what my relationship with Alessandro is like when we’re away from Serafina’s?
‘But it’s not normal. It’s like you’re two primary school kids playing at relationships. It’s weird.’
I’m starting to wish I’d called Bonnie instead.
‘And he’s never had a girlfriend?’ Louise continues. ‘Sorry, Angie, but that’s properly freaky. Thirty-five and he’s never had a girlfriend? Does he look like the Elephant Man or something?’
‘No!’ I exclaim. ‘He’s attractive!’
‘What’s wrong with him then?’
‘His mother and sister died within two days of each other.’ I told her this earlier, but she obviously needs reminding. ‘He ran away from home. It’s not like he doesn’t have sex; it’s just that his encounters don’t develop into anything meaningful.’
‘Have you had sex with him?’
‘Don’t you think that would have been one of the first things I’d have mentioned?’
‘Fair point.’
‘He’s slept with some of the waitresses from Serafina’s. At least two that I know about.’
‘That’s a bit dodgy.’
‘They’ve quit now.’
‘I have to say, I’m not loving what you’re telling me so far.’
I sigh heavily. Louise is far too straight-talking for my liking. ‘I’m exhausted,’ I say, wrapping up this conversation. It’s two o’clock in the morning.
‘Why don’t you think he wants to get close to anyone?’ she asks, reeling me back in.
‘I guess he doesn’t want anyone to try to stop him from doing what he loves.’
He said as much in Pompeii.
‘Why is he allowing himself to get close to you then?’ she muses.
‘I feel like he shut the door on that tonight. He’ll never take it further than friendship, anyway.’
‘Holding hands is not friendship, Ange,’ she says pointedly. ‘If it’s really never going to go further, maybe you should put an end to that sort of thing.’
‘Why?’
‘Can your heart take it?’ she asks with surprise. ‘Mine couldn’t. I don’t know how to help you here, I’ve never heard of anything quite like this.’
‘I’ve got to go,’ I say again.
‘But he obviously likes you,’ she chips in. ‘Maybe you should ask him outright how he feels. But, hang on, even if he’s up for t
aking things to the next level, I’m not sure that you should. He sounds like a bit of a dud. Sorry, Angie, but maybe this one is best avoided.’
I’m more confused and stressed than ever by the time we finally hang up.
I can’t avoid Alessandro. It’s simply not going to happen. But I don’t want to go into work on Tuesday and have tension between us.
On impulse, I text him.
Are you awake?
He replies within a minute. Something wrong?
I dial his number.
The phone rings and then stops, but it doesn’t go to voicemail.
I ring again and this time he answers.
‘Whasswrong?’ He sounds drunk, much, much more drunk than he was when I left him.
‘I’m fine. Are you okay?’
‘You-got-home-okay?’ Every word sounds like it’s an effort to enunciate.
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ I repeat. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Sshh,’ I hear him tell someone in the background, and my blood freezes in my veins at the sound of a girl replying in low, sexy Italian. He says something in Italian in return and there’s a giggle. There’s no other background noise. They’re not at a bar, they’re somewhere private, maybe a hotel room or even his van.
‘Talk-tomorrow,’ Alessandro says to me and then the line goes dead.
Chapter 35
Alessandro does not call me the next day. And I do not call him. I can’t quite believe that he put me in a taxi and then went back to a bar to pull a girl.
What’s more, I feel incredibly stupid for finding that so difficult to believe.
Cristina wants to know what’s put me in such a slump, but I can’t bring myself to tell her. I can’t tell anyone. I sure as hell don’t want to ring Louise and fill her in.
But I can’t help but think that Louise is right. I’m out of my depth here. Alessandro is far too complicated for me. I had no intention of getting myself into a relationship, anyway, and certainly not a confusing one like this is turning out to be.
I don’t know how it happened. How did I become attracted to the one man that I can’t – and shouldn’t – have? I’m only twenty-seven! I should be out having fun, going on easy dates and maybe sharing a few kisses. Even I could see that I wasn’t short of male attention on Friday night at the club – a couple of guys were quite cute – but I shut them down without a second thought.
*
On Monday, Giulio and I return to Tivoli and spend a glorious early summer’s day in the countryside. Valentina didn’t milk the goats fully this morning so we finish the job together, and she dissolves into fits of giggles as she tries to teach me how to wrestle milk from the saggy teats.
Nonna – and it doesn’t feel as strange calling her that as I thought it would – teaches me how to make ravioli and I’m riveted watching her form perfect pasta parcels of ricotta, spinach, nutmeg and pepper.
In the afternoon, Valentina and I practise our duet on the piano and my eye is caught once again by the photograph of Carlotta. I ask if there are any more photos of her so Jacopo hunts out the family albums.
With my grandmother on one side and my father on the other, we look through the pictures. There were many taken of Carlotta during her short life and I have to keep swallowing down a lump in my throat as I watch her morph from a scrawny newborn baby with a shock of fuzzy black hair to a chubby-cheeked toddler with big brown eyes fringed with long lashes. There are snaps of Giulio and Marta too, and in many Marta is smiling, looking much happier and at peace than she did in her wedding photograph. And, of course, there are pictures of Alessandro, including one of him celebrating his eighth birthday, his expression gleeful and his green eyes shining in the light of the candles on top of his birthday cake. I’m stunned when Giulio points out my mother in the background, looking happy and pretty with her long dark hair fashioned into a braid. She seems so young and she was. She was only twenty when she returned home, seven years younger than I am now.
Tearing my eyes away from her, I turn to the next page of the album.
I soon realise why Alessandro seems so unfamiliar and it’s not merely because he’s only a boy. It’s because he’s wearing colour. There’s one photo of him holding Carlotta in his lap that I’m especially drawn to. It was taken soon after her first birthday, Giulio thinks, which means Alessandro was thirteen. His tanned limbs are long and gangly, his dark features overly angular and his teeth slightly too big for his mouth. He’s wearing a light-blue T-shirt and is grinning as Carlotta, in a yellow dress, reaches out towards the lens with a look of excitement on her face. I think I’m able to work out what it is that has her attention because the next photograph shows her staring with wonder and delight at a familiar pink bunny clutched in her hands. Alessandro is gazing down at them both with a smile.
Hearing him with another woman was the reality check that I needed, I remind myself as my chest contracts.
If he’s distant again with me tomorrow, that can only be a good thing.
When it’s time to leave, I ask my father if we can go home via the graveyard to put some flowers on Carlotta’s grave.
Standing before her angel statue with him at my side feels in a strange way cathartic. I might not have known my small half-sister, but she was my blood, we shared a father and my heart pines for her.
Giulio puts his arm around my shoulders as we turn away and we walk a few steps like that.
‘Remind me when you are going home,’ he says.
‘Beginning of September.’
‘Why you have to go then? Why can’t you stay?’
‘For Christmas?’
‘Forever.’
I glance at him and my insides feel funny. ‘I do love it here,’ I say thoughtfully. ‘But I miss my friends. And I need to decide what I’m going to do with my grandparents’ home. I’ll come back, though, of course I will.’
‘We must arrange Italian citizenship for you,’ he says. ‘I don’t want you to have any visa problems.’
‘I’m not sure how we’d go about that. You’re not on my birth certificate.’
‘Then we will get a paternity test. I will speak to my friend who is a lawyer.’
*
I’m dreading the return to work on Tuesday, dreading seeing Alessandro again. I hate that I feel betrayed when he owes me nothing in the way of loyalty and other women.
But he’s reverted to being his usual work self and I’m glad. I’m feeling cool towards him in turn when we exchange our usual good mornings.
In the afternoon, we run out of prawns so I offer to go down to Bruno’s to collect some the restaurateur is willing to spare.
Bruno himself isn’t there, but his son, Carlo, comes out of the kitchen to say hi. He’s about my age, tall and slender with a narrow face, long straight nose and dark floppy hair. His eyes are kind – brown and a little droopy at the corners, but in a nice way. He reminds me of a puppy dog.
‘Giuseppe is boxing them up,’ he tells me. ‘An espresso while you wait?’
‘Sure.’
He stays and chats to me for a while and notices when I grimace.
‘You don’t like espresso?’ he asks with a small laugh. ‘You should have told me, I could have made you something else.’
‘I’m trying to get used to the taste. I want to live like a proper Italian, at least in this way, before I return to Australia.’
‘There’s a great coffee shop not far from here. Lucia’s. Have you been?’
I shake my head.
‘They do excellent coffee cake and cappuccino. Maybe we could go sometime?’
He seems nice and friendly. Why would I say no?
I don’t.
We exchange phone numbers as Giuseppe comes out of the kitchen with the prawns. I walk back to work with a spring in my step, feeling positive about taking some control of my life.
I felt out of control enough when it came to Nan. I can’t – I won’t – let that happen again, not if I can avoid it.
Carlo doesn�
�t play games. He texts me that afternoon and asks if I’m free in the morning.
I grab Cristina on her way to the kitchen. ‘Are you familiar with Carlo, Bruno’s son?’ I ask her quietly.
‘A little. What do you want to know?’
‘Is he okay? I mean, is he nice? He’s not a serial killer or anything, is he?’
She laughs. ‘From what I’ve heard, he’s decent. Why? You like him?’
‘He’s asked me for a coffee.’
‘Go!’ she urges.
I nod and text him to make arrangements.
*
The next day, we meet at the coffee shop Carlo mentioned and have a perfectly pleasant morning. He’s friendly and likeable, and easy to talk to. The only awkwardness comes towards the end of our time together when he blushes while asking if I have a boyfriend in Australia.
‘No, I’m single,’ I reply. ‘You?’
‘My girlfriend and I broke up a few weeks ago.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
‘It’s okay. I’m okay. She’s okay,’ he adds with an easy shrug of his shoulders.
‘What happened?’
‘We were going—’ He moves his hands away from each other. I nod with understanding and he cocks his head to one side. ‘Can I take you out for dinner tomorrow night?’
I wasn’t expecting this question so soon, but I find myself agreeing. ‘I’ll have to check they don’t need me at work.’
Giulio and Alessandro are at the bar when I walk in. My father greets me in his usual exuberant manner.
‘Do you need me tomorrow night?’ I ask Alessandro.
‘Why? You got a hot date?’ Giulio teases.
I laugh, but don’t confirm or deny it.
Alessandro checks the rota. ‘No, that’s fine.’
‘I am happy you are here with me,’ Giulio says, ‘but I am pleased you are taking some time off. You should be exploring. Sightseeing.’
‘I know,’ I reply. ‘The weeks are slipping away.’
It’s early July now and I’ve been here a month already. The next two will fly by if I’m not careful. A big part of my reason for coming to Italy was to get to know my father and experience life in Rome and I’m glad that I’m doing that, but I do want to see a bit of the country and possibly even stray further afield.
