One Night in Italy (45 page)

Text to: George

From: Catherine

Oh God, how awful. So so sorry. Hope you are hanging in there. Am here if you need to talk. x

But he didn’t ring. He didn’t even reply. So that, thought Catherine sadly, was that.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Due settimane dopo
– Two weeks later

Anna walked past the cascading waterfalls and fountains of Sheaf Square, her overnight bag on one shoulder as she approached Sheffield station. Next stop, London, she thought, and a thrill rippled through her. All that searching she’d done, all that wondering and imagining . . . it was coming to an end today. After nearly thirty-three years in the world, she was at last going to meet her father.

They had spoken on the phone a few days ago and a weight had lifted from her; a weight she hadn’t even realized she’d been carrying until it was gone. He was real. She had talked to him. He had a London accent and a husky chuckle and said he couldn’t wait to meet her.

‘Me too,’ she managed to say, unexpected tears pricking her eyes. ‘Oh, me too.’

‘I hope it’s okay, but everyone’s very excited about you coming down. My wife, my mother, all the relatives want to see you. If it’s too much, I can hold them at bay, so just say if you’d rather not . . .’

‘I’d love to meet them,’ she said, happiness bubbling inside her at the thought of this big Italian family waiting for her. ‘The more the merrier.’

She had spent the night before baking a cake for him – well, for all of them, really. It had taken her a while to choose the right recipe, but she’d settled on a layer cake, Dolce alla Napoletana, with pastry cream and flaked almonds. She hoped they would approve of it, and her too, more importantly.

Her phone bleeped in her bag suddenly and she stopped to read the text.
Hope it goes well today, love. Thinking about you. Mum xx

Anna was grateful that her mum was taking this new relationship with her dad so well. Tracey had become quite emotional when she’d at last revealed the truth. Never usually one to wear her heart on her sleeve, Tracey had burst into sobs, berating herself for not trying harder to find him, admitting how difficult it had been as a single mother, apologizing if she’d let Anna down in any way.

‘Oh, Mum,’ Anna said, choked up herself, her head whirling with all these confessions. ‘You haven’t let me down. I’ve never thought that for a minute!’

Tracey was still in full flow though. ‘And I know I’ve been hard on you sometimes, but I just didn’t want you to . . .’ Her words were drowned out in a new gale of sobs. ‘I didn’t want you to make the mistakes I did. Not that
you
were ever a mistake . . .’

‘Honestly, Mum, you don’t have to say this.’

‘You were – are – the best thing that’s ever happened to me. And I mean that. I might not have said it enough . . .’

‘Mum, it’s fine.’

‘But I hope you know I mean it.’

They held each other for a few minutes until Tracey gave a spluttery sort of laugh and wiped her eyes. ‘Sorry about that. I don’t know where it all came from.’

Anna gave her a last squeeze then let go, just as Lambert, the enormously overweight ginger moggy, strutted into the room, demanding attention with a loud meow. Both women laughed and the conversation turned to more mundane things: work, and Anna’s nan, and the weather forecast for the weekend (brightening up, according to Tracey), but Anna felt there was a new understanding between them, a new depth of closeness. No more secrets keeping them apart. It was all good.

Another text had come through.
PS Take a photo of him for me, will you? He was a right looker back in the day.

Anna laughed as she stuffed her phone back in her bag and went on towards the station, waving as she saw Joe waiting for her outside.

‘Whoa, get you,’ she teased. ‘Savile Row?’

‘Yeah, right,’ he scoffed, glancing down at his suit. ‘Marks and Spencer’s more like.’ He leaned in to kiss her. ‘You all right?’

She kissed him back, feeling the usual swooping sensation inside that came whenever she was with him. ‘Raring to go. How about you? Practised all your difficult interview questions? Where do you see yourself in five years and all that bollocks?’

He arched an eyebrow. ‘Sitting in the boss’s chair, running the show, of course,’ he said. ‘Come on. We’ve got ten minutes before the train. Let’s grab a coffee and find our seats.’

She grinned at him and they went into the station together, her own question running through her head. So where did she see
herself
in five years? Well, that was impossible to answer. Right now, she felt as if anything could happen.

The simple answer was just two words though: with Joe. As long as she was with him, she knew she’d be happy.

Epilogue

Io ricordo
– I remember

The Italian sky was a bright, cloudless blue and the scent of the hot pink bougainvilleas around Lucca’s poolside bar mingled intoxicatingly with the tang of coconut sun oil and cigarette smoke. Catherine was twenty years old, with a well-stamped inter-rail ticket, a red dress and the best tan of her life. The air had shimmered with heat and a million possibilities. Anything might happen.

And then there
he
was, Mike, pulling himself out of the pool, water streaming down his muscular arms: he was tall and athletic, with golden skin and a crooked smile. As he straightened up, she couldn’t help noticing the way his swimming shorts just revealed the tops of his hip bones and she shivered with sudden desire.

He walked over, beads of water still clinging to his body, his eyes never leaving hers. ‘
Ciao, bella,’
he said, his voice low and husky.

She turned hot all over. Her breath caught in her throat. It felt as if this was the moment she’d been waiting for. She raised an eyebrow flirtatiously and smiled back at him. ‘
Ciao,’
she said.

What a summer that had been. Catherine and her friend Zoe had gone backpacking together during the university holidays and ended up chambermaiding in a lively hotel in Lido di Jesolo on the Venetian Riviera. One day after their shift, she’d come down alone to the pool and there he’d been.
Ciao, bella
, he’d said in his best Italian accent. She’d fancied the pants off him from the word go.

He was there for ten days with a group of mates, and the two of them had a good time together, dancing at the resort disco, sinking lurid cocktails, kissing passionately as the sun went down . . . and the rest. Neither of them had thought it was anything other than a holiday fling: two young things swayed by the heat of the Mediterranean sun and their own dizzying lust. The pregnancy test proved otherwise, though.

Funny how life turned out, wasn’t it? Sometimes you seemed to complete a full circle. Because now, almost twenty years later, Catherine was back in Venice, a short boat ride away from where it had all started.

‘
Una spremuta, per favore
.
Grazie
,’ she said to the waitress who came to take her order. It was a glorious sunny April day and she had arranged to meet the others in a café overlooking the Grand Canal. From here you could see the watertaxis and gondolas, the slow-moving crush of tourists, cameras flashing as they attempted to capture small slices of the city’s magnificence.

‘
Uno momento
,’ the waitress replied with a smile.

A fortnight earlier, term had finished at Hurst College and the ten-week Italian course had come to an end. All of the class – well, almost all – had gone out for an Italian meal together afterwards to celebrate and say goodbye. And then, the very next day, on a whim, she’d booked return flights to Venice and an apartment a stone’s throw from the Frari Church. Well, why ever not? You could do these things when you were footloose and fancy free, after all.

Venice was stunning, every bit as beautiful as she remembered. More so, in fact, because as a twenty-year-old she hadn’t appreciated the sheer majesty of the Rialto Bridge, St Mark’s Square, the Palazzo Ducale and, oh, all of it. She’d forgotten, too, how one stumbled upon astonishing piazzas and ancient churches around every corner, all the bright red geraniums that bloomed on windowledges, the skinny stray cats slinking around dusty alleyways, strings of chilli peppers and bowls of fat lemons, Murano glass twinkling in every shop window . . .

Oh yes. Well, she appreciated it now. Every last ravishing bit of it.

Her juice arrived and she thanked the black-clad waitress and sipped it, enjoying the warm spring sunshine on her face. She still couldn’t quite believe she was back here, just a few miles from the spot where her life had swerved off course so dramatically nearly twenty years earlier. Well, it was back on track now at least, that was for sure. Full steam ahead.

The last Italian lesson had felt quite sad, as if something really significant was drawing to a close. Over the ten weeks of the course, the class had become more than just a learning experience for her. Every single member of the group had given her something precious in their own way: friendship and new confidence in herself, not to mention the best haircut ever. She planned to keep in touch with all of them.

Phoebe had been promoted recently and Catherine was booked in for another cut with her soon. Freddie and Nita were an item, and already planning a weekend away in Milan. Geraldine had been allowed home again, on condition that she stayed in bed. She was hoping to be up and about on crutches within a few weeks, and she and Roy were still going ahead with their Italian holiday of a lifetime in September.

Anna had recently met her dad and nonna, and received a rapturous Little Italy welcome, by the sound of things. She and Joe were still very much together and Anna positively glowed with happiness whenever she talked about him. Over their class meal out, she had broken the news that Joe had been offered a job in London and had accepted it – and that she had decided to move down with him. She was going to continue her cookery column on a freelance basis while looking for work in the capital. ‘And my dad says there’s always a job for me at Pappa’s if I get stuck,’ she said with a grin.

Catherine was going to miss her but knew that this was the right thing for her friend. ‘I hope you’ll come back and visit us loads,’ she said when they hugged goodbye at the end.

‘Of course I will,’ Anna said. ‘I’ll be back all the time to get my Yorkshire fix, you wait.’

Sophie, too, was making big plans for her future. Now that she’d discovered what she wanted to do with her life, she wasted no time in auditioning for the Drama School in Manchester and was offered a place. This time around, nobody intercepted the offer and she accepted it happily. Before term started in September, she and Dan were saving up to go inter-railing around Europe together as a last blast of freedom. Catherine was glad that Mike’s guilt money was being put towards such brilliant purposes, and no longer sitting like a bad smell in his own account.

As for George, well, he had never made it back to the class, sadly. She guessed his head was all over the place. But even though nothing had quite happened between them, becoming his friend had been a wonderful, rewarding thing in its own right, she realized. She carried a packet of wildflower seeds with her at all times now, sprinkling them between her fingers whenever she walked along a grotty street or neglected patch of wasteland, just in case one seed was to find its way into a crevice and bloom there. Like George and his guerrilla friends, she couldn’t help seeing the city as one big garden, just waiting to be filled with flowers and fruit. It was astonishing how quickly an unloved place – or even a person – could be transformed.

A voice interrupted her just then. Two voices. ‘Hey, Mum!’

‘
Ciao!
’

They were back, Matthew and Emily, sliding into seats opposite her at the table, both in sunglasses and T-shirts, their arms already turning brown from the sun.