The Love of My Life (12 page)

At this point the girl came in with two mugs of instant coffee on a tray, and a plate of biscuits. She passed me a mug and offered me a digestive, but I declined. The professor thanked her, broke his biscuit in half and dunked it in his coffee.

‘Um,’ I said. ‘If you decided to give me the job, what would I be doing exactly?’

‘Typing up my notes. Putting them on the computer. I’m afraid I prefer to write with a pen.’

‘Oh.’ I smiled and nodded.

‘A tiresome habit but you can’t take a computer to bed with you, or have it with you on the train, or sit with it on the clifftop.’

I thought it would be impolite to point out that you could, actually, if you bought a laptop.

‘So there wouldn’t be any actual research for me to do?’

‘I think,’ said the professor, ‘that if you read the advertisement carefully, you’ll find that I’m looking for a research assistant, to assist me in my research.’

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘I could have advertised for a copy typist, but I thought that would attract the wrong type of applicant.’

‘Mmmm,’ I said non-committally. I sipped at my coffee. It was scaldingly hot, but weak.

‘Well, it sounds as if you have all the necessary qualifications for the post,’ said the professor. ‘To be honest Miss, er . . .’

‘Felicone.’

‘Miss Felicone, I find these interviews tiresome. Would you like the job?’

‘Well, yes, I . . .’

‘Monday through Friday, nine until four. I’d like you to be punctual, please. The pay is standard university rates. I have no idea what that is but it won’t be much. You’ll have to turn off your phone and I’m not very good company. People find me unsociable.’

‘I really don’t mind unsociable.’

‘Good. I’ll get Jenny to put something in the post then,’ he said, standing up and reaching out to shake my hand.

I stood up. His hand was cool and dry. It was an academic hand, skin like the pages of a well-thumbed book. He took off his glasses and gave me the briefest of smiles.

‘Now if you’ll excuse me,’ he said, and returned to his work.

Marc and I drove out to the coast in my car. We took a flask of coffee, a blanket and our coats, and drove to the end of the road. We climbed down a steep, shingly path to a little pebble-beached cove we’d discovered many years earlier with Luca. We knew there was a cave beneath the cliff. The waves were foaming and spuming, clacking and turning the pebbles, seagulls screamed and dived and the clouds raced across the sky. Marc and I lay on the blanket at the entrance to the cave and took off our boots, our jeans and our underwear and had exhilarating, joyful sex, and afterwards I lay on my back laughing up at the sky while he, somewhat bashful in his fisherman’s sweater and thick grey socks, sat beside me, his wide, dark-haired thighs next to my narrow, pale ones, and took photographs with his phone of the seals basking out on the rocks.

‘People used to think that seals were the souls of the dead,’ said Marc, turning his windswept head towards me. ‘It’s something to do with the noise they make, or the way they lie on the rocks.’

‘They look fat and healthy enough to me.’

‘Bit sad, though. Those eyes.’

‘They’re probably bored of the sea. It’s a bit monotonous if it’s all you have to look at day after day.’

‘And an uninterrupted diet of raw fish.’

‘Ugh.’

‘And the weather.’

‘Poor seals.’

‘It’s not much of a life for them.’

Marc turned, and took a photo of me.

I swept the hair out of my eyes and opened my mouth to protest.

‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll delete it straight away.’

‘Delete it now.’

‘OK, OK.’

‘Marc . . .’

‘All right, I’ve done it, it’s gone.’

He leaned over me and kissed me full and warm on the mouth. His lips were salty and dry. I wriggled back down again and he smiled and shook his head and put his cold hand between my legs. I was shivering. I wanted more. I drank him in.

This sweet oblivion, this thing we had, I could pretend it was a survival tactic but that wasn’t the truth so much any more. It had become more than a balm for the raw wound of grief, more than a way for us to comfort one another. That day, the day we went to the coast, I felt something I hadn’t felt in months. For a long time I couldn’t remember what it was I was feeling, but later, back at the flat, as I washed the sand out of my hair, I worked it out. I had, for a few moments at least, been happy.

seventeen

That first summer I worked in the restaurant, I fell in love with the Felicone way of life. I had always found it attractive and glamorous, now I found it utterly beguiling. Compared to my mother, with her flat shoes, large ankles, short salt-and-pepper hair and martyred expression, Angela was like a queen, or a film star. Petite, elegant, blonde, her nails were always beautiful and she always smelled expensive and she always smiled, even when she was telling you off. Maurizio had a neat little beard and what he called a ‘high’ forehead which was really where his hair was receding, like Mr Hens-ley’s. Unlike Mr Hensley, though, Maurizio laughed a lot. He also sang a lot, and kissed a lot, and quoted poetry a lot. And he shouted a lot too, but nobody minded because his explosions of bad temper were always exclusively verbal and over in moments. He praised me and Anneli expansively with dramatic gesticulations. He made us taste titbits from the kitchen, and gave us doggy bags to take home filled with all manner of delicious little leftovers. I loved the cooking smells, the bustle and business, the banter, the music on the radio, the attention to detail, the vivacity of the place. Being at Marinella’s was like living life in colour.

Home was less black and white than grey. Lynnette’s departure to university was imminent, and the thought of me being there with just Mum and Mr Hensley was getting me down. At home, we only ever ate English food. That was white bread and butter, Heinz tomato soup, gristly pork sausages, and dishes made with mince. Occasionally, for a treat, we’d have spaghetti hoops, which I loved. Mr Hensley usually ate with us in the evenings. He tucked his serviette into his collar and made us say, ‘For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful.’ He always praised Mum’s cooking effusively. He didn’t like Lynnette or me to speak until we were spoken to, yet, despite his skinniness, he was a greedy eater who often spoke with his mouth full. He made grotesque chewing noises when he ate. He repulsed me.

I couldn’t bear the thought of Mr Hensley getting his hairy white fingers on the Marinella’s delicacies. Anything in the doggy bags I didn’t eat on the way home, I fed to the seagulls.

When Anneli and I started at Marinella’s, Stefano was at university and Carlo was already working in some kind of law-enforcement capacity at Watersford and going out with Sheila, so we rarely saw the older boys.

Fabio was at Marinella’s all the time. He stayed in the kitchen, cooking up his cakes and pastries with intense concentration. He only had to be shown how to do something once, and then he would reproduce the recipe exactly time and time again. Eventually he learned the confidence to adapt the measurements and to experiment with ingredients of his own, but at this time he was still a year younger than us, and still getting used to being ‘different’ from the other boys his age with their loud, leery ways. He needed to be nurtured and protected like a greenhouse flower.

Also living in the flat upstairs and helping out with the business were Luca and Marc and a pasty, lumpy girl who had come to live with the family. Her name was Nathalie Santo.

Marc told us that Nathalie’s mother had been Angela’s cousin and best friend. She and Angela had gone to school together, and their families had holidayed together. The two women had always promised one another that, if anything happened to one of them, the other would step in and care for the children. Nathalie was an only child. Her father had passed away years ago, and now her mother had died of cancer. Angela had reassured her cousin, when she was on her deathbed and in front of the whole family and the priest, that Nathalie would be loved and protected and be made part of the Felicone family. Angela promised her dying cousin that no harm would ever come to Nathalie, that nobody would ever be allowed to do her wrong and that she, Angela, would make sure Nathalie made a good marriage. The cousin was reassured. Angela was a woman of her word; she knew her daughter was in safe hands.

When she moved into the Felicone household, Nathalie was treated with the utmost respect and consideration. The twins had been told they had to be very kind to Nathalie. They were not to tease her, frighten her or be boisterous around her. It was strange for them to have a girl in the flat. I think they were intrigued and curious. But Nathalie was clever. She did not put her underwear in their laundry basket. She kept her secrets to herself.

I thought it was quite a romantic story, and was a little jealous of Nathalie, but we didn’t see much of her in those days. After the initial novelty of her joining the family had worn off, the boys didn’t talk about her so I didn’t pay her much attention.

Now I know how grief feels, I think I should have been kinder.

The twins were two years older than Anneli and me, and both attended the Boys’ Grammar School. We hadn’t had much to do with them for several years, although obviously we’d seen one another around town and we travelled to and from Watersford on the same bus on school days. Luca was the leader, the confident, more boisterous one. He was the one who smiled at the girls, who gave lip to the bus drivers, who was reputed to get into trouble at school and always got out of trouble through sheer charm. He was the one who drove his mother to distraction, whose shirt was always loose from his trousers, whose tie was always askew, whose hair was too unruly, whose smile was too wide, whose eyelashes were too long, whose body had grown so quickly that he wasn’t used to it yet, the long, bony limbs, the neck with its tendons and its voicebox. He was the pin-up of our year.

Marc was shorter and less lanky, always two steps behind Luca, swimming in his wake but enjoying the ride. He was the cleverer twin, not just academically but socially. Because Luca ‘did’ while Marc ‘watched’, it was Marc who worked out the cause and effect of actions. He knew what made people tick. Luca used his charm instinctively, Marc was more sensitive. He was a nice boy. His teachers liked him. He had a lot of friends who were girls. A lot of these girls were just trying to get close to Luca.

The first summer at Marinella’s, Anneli and the twins and I enjoyed a good deal of light-hearted, flirtatious banter and messing around. We girls weren’t allowed up into the flat. After work, if the weather was fine, we would go on to the beach with the twins, and play football or frisbee. Anneli and I would change into our jeans, roll up the legs, and splash about in the waves, and the boys would throw the ball at us, bouncing it off the water and our knees and making us wet. We squealed and insulted one another; it was all quite physical, but innocent too.

Nathalie was older than us; I don’t think we ever considered her at all. We never invited her to come to the beach with us. It never occurred to us that she might be lonely, or unhappy. She spent all her time at Marinella’s or in the flat. Angela kept her close and nursed her through her grief. The pair became almost inseparable. Angela thought it best if Nathalie had something to do, to keep her mind occupied. She showed her how to balance the books and taught her the skills she would need to manage the staff and suppliers. Nathalie was enrolled on a marketing course at Watersford Technical College so that eventually she could help expand the business.

Even after she’d settled in, Nathalie rarely spoke to Anneli and me, except to tell us what to do, or to reprimand us for lateness, slovenliness or some other lapse in standards. Behind her back we called her a stuck-up cow. She was probably just trying to please Angela. She was probably just shy.

In September, we gave up our jobs at Marinella’s to go back to school and Lynnette left home to go to university. I don’t know who was sorrier to see her leave, me or my mother. We saw her off at Watersford Station together. The three of us sat miserably in the canteen waiting for the train and drinking tea so weak that I made a joke and said the water couldn’t have had a meaningful relationship with the tea-bag. Nobody laughed.

Mum had bought us each a Danish pastry as a treat, but they weren’t nice, sweet, juicy pastries like the ones in Marinella’s, they were dry and hard and the pastry fell away in lumps from charred currants. Whatever had been used to glaze the pastries stuck to our fingers like glue.

Lynnette was anxious to be away, but also anxious about leaving. She was wearing an old pair of favourite jeans, a wide leather belt and a polo-necked black sweater for reassurance. Her hair was pulled rather severely away from her face in a French plait. She had a little make-up on, and flat-heeled pixie boots. She looked very pretty. If I looked at her for too long I felt my eyes prickle. I didn’t want her to go because I loved her so. I didn’t want her to go because I didn’t want to be left behind in that gloomy house, alone with my mother.

As for Mum, she was brittle-cheerful. She babbled on about Lynnette’s wonderful opportunities, the people she would meet, the books she would read. At least once a minute she made some subtle allusion to the fact that she had never enjoyed such opportunities. I would have ignored them, they were so irritating, but Lynnette, eventually, put her smooth hand on Mum’s and said, ‘I know, Mum, and you know I appreciate all the sacrifices you’ve made to give me this opportunity.’

Mum’s eyes filled with grateful tears and Lynnette smiled and looked humbly down at her half-eaten pastry and I, slouched in my chair chewing bubblegum, rolled my eyes and dreaded the next few months.

It was a relief to us all when the train’s arrival was announced, and we went out on to the platform and helped Lynnette on to the train with her remarkably small amount of luggage.

‘Promise you’ll call me at least once a week!’ said Mum.