The Love of My Life (21 page)

‘Stop it!’ I cried, turning round to slap him, but the bud had turned into a great blowsy rose of laughter and I put my hands over my mouth, but it was no good, I couldn’t contain it. The two of us collapsed on to the grassy bank and rolled around laughing.

When we were exhausted, we lay together side by side, on our backs, and I looked up at the blue, blue sky and the white clouds and the gulls and all my problems turned to nothing.

‘People are mean,’ said Luca, taking my hand. ‘They’re making such a big deal of this because their own lives are so dull and boring. You’ve just given them something to gossip about.’

‘That’s what Anneli’s dad said.’

‘He’s right. In another week or another month they’ll have moved on to their next victim and they’ll have forgotten all about you.’

‘What about poor Mrs Parker?’

‘She said he’d done it before and she stuck with him. If he’s done it before then he’s going to do it again and she must know that. That’s her choice. It’s not up to you what she does.’

‘You’re right!’ I said, sitting up and looking down at Luca, who was squinting into the sun. ‘I’ve kept worrying about her but you’re right, thank you. I’d never have worked that out!’

Luca looked pleased with himself. ‘Ah well,’ he said. ‘Some of us have it and some of us don’t.’

I smiled at him. ‘Bighead.’

‘And you know what they say about lads with big heads . . .’

‘Ah, stop it, Luca Felicone.’

‘I’m only telling it as it is.’

I shook my head and stood up, brushing down my skirt with my hands, and then walked over to lean on the safety fence that protected the cliff-edge. There was a Samaritans notice and a phone number for anyone who felt inclined to follow in Emily Campbell’s fictional footsteps. The sun was on my face. From here, I could look down at Portiston and see what a small town it was. Just a tiny little insignificant part of the world, that was all, a place of no consequence to anyone. I made a mental note to myself to find my copy of
Emily Campbell
and see what was going through her mind just before she jumped to her death.

‘It’s nice up here, isn’t it?’ said Luca, coming up close behind me.

I sensed danger. I had the teenager’s animal instinct for sex. I knew he wanted to kiss me and more. Part of me thought that after everything I was going through on account of sex, the last thing I needed was Luca Felicone’s hands slipping beneath my T-shirt, lovely as the thought of his fingers on my breasts was. And another part of me thought that seeing as everyone thought I was a marriage-wrecking slut anyway, what did it matter if they did?

At the last moment I turned to face him, smiling as if I hadn’t been aware of what was about to happen.

‘Why are you marrying Nathalie?’

He paused. ‘Oh. She told you.’

‘Well yes, of course she did. I sort of knew it was on the cards but . . .’

Luca sighed and looked down and his face went into shadow, hidden under his hair, just the tip of his ear visible in the soft dark waves. Little bits of grass and twig were caught in his hair. He picked up a pebble and rubbed it in his hands and then flung it over the fence. It didn’t make the sea but bounced on the rocks beneath us.

‘It seemed like the only thing to do,’ he said. ‘Get engaged. That’s what they all wanted.’

‘What about what you wanted?’

He shrugged.

‘What
do
you want, Luca?’

‘Oh, I’d like to go to London. Have my own business. The usual.’

‘So why don’t you?’

He shrugged again. ‘I can’t, can I? They need me here.’

I looked at him. Surely he didn’t feel trapped in this town.

‘You mean you feel like there’s no way out of your life?’

‘Do you know a way?’ he asked.

I shook my head. ‘But there must be one. More than one. Especially for you.’

‘Carlo and Stefano have both left and Pop and Mama need somebody to run the place.’

‘It doesn’t have to be you.’

‘Who else?’

‘Marc? Fabio? Oh come on, Luca, there’s no law that says you have to stay here all your life if you don’t want to.’

‘There’s family, and that’s worse than the law.’ He scratched his head fiercely with the fingers of both hands, a nervous habit I remembered from when we were children.

‘They can’t make you do anything you don’t want to.’

Luca picked a catkin off a tree that overhung the path and began to pull it apart.

‘For the last couple of years everyone’s been talking about me and Nathalie getting married and running the business. Everyone, not just Mama and Pop. There’s all this expectation, you know?’

I shrugged.

‘You don’t understand what it’s like to be in my family, Liv. Everyone is expected to do their duty, do what’s right by the family.’

‘You’re not a prisoner, though. You could go to London if you really wanted.’

‘No,’ said Luca. ‘Nathalie wouldn’t want to go to London. She likes it here. She says she never wants to leave Marinella’s. She says it’s the only place where she’s ever been happy.’

I thought Nathalie had a funny way of being happy but I didn’t say anything. Maybe she
was
happy when I wasn’t around. Maybe she was the life and soul of the party. We were silent for a moment. I moved a pebble around with the toe of my shoe.

‘I’d go to London with you,’ I said. ‘If you weren’t engaged.’

There was a heartbeat’s pause. Then Luca said, ‘Yeah, but who’d want to go to London with a marriage-wrecking little slut like you?’

‘You’ll regret that, Luca Felicone!’ I cried, lunging at him. We tumbled on the ground and mock-wrestled and chased each other all the way back down the hill towards our insignificant little town and at the bottom of the hill we struggled to say goodbye.

I think I knew then what was going to happen. I think we both did.

thirty-seven

Breakfast next morning was served in a sunny little annexe overlooking the valley, which was gloriously lush and green in daylight. Summer-yellow sunshine was streaming through the glass roof and on to three small tables, two of which already bore the debris of breakfasts eaten.

We sat at the third. I drank the small glass of orange juice in one swallow. Marc, fondly, passed me his too.

‘I am never drinking again,’ I said.

‘You should have stuck to Guinness. I feel fine.’

‘Nobody with a hangover likes a smug breakfast companion,’ I warned him.

A young blonde woman with a kind, round face came over and wished us good morning.

‘What can I get you?’ she asked.

‘Full cooked for me, please,’ said Marc. ‘And paracetamol on toast for Liv.’

‘Ha ha,’ I said. ‘I’d just like some tea, please.’

‘Were you down at the pub last night? It’s great on a Friday, isn’t it?’

‘Liv did a tribute to
Riverdance
,’ said Marc. ‘It was unique. Unforgettable. The regulars will need counselling.’

The woman laughed and disappeared to fetch our breakfasts. I groaned and put my head in my hands. My fingers smelled of soap and sex.

‘What time do you have to be in Limerick?’

‘We’re meeting at four. I’ll have to leave here after lunch, I guess. We’ve got a few hours, we could go for a walk.’

‘OK.’

‘Will you be all right here, on your own this afternoon?’

‘Of course I will.’

‘I don’t want to leave you.’

I gave a little ‘So what?’ shrug. Marc reached across the flowery cotton tablecloth and squeezed my hand.

‘It’s lovely being here with you, Liv.’

That little moth of unease flickered into my field of vision again, but I ignored it. The young woman came back with a tray of tea and milk and sugar and we set about the business of breakfast and everything was all right.

thirty-eight

I didn’t know how to tell Lynnette about our dad probably still being alive. I was still having difficulty coming to terms with the fact that anyone could have told such a terrible lie, especially my God-fearing, gossip-fearing, holier-than-thou mother. It was also weird that she didn’t appear to feel the slightest remorse about what she’d done. She held tight to her conviction that she had taken the only reasonable course of action, that she was the one who had been wronged and that any good mother would have done the same.

Later on, I would have more sympathy with her position, but at the age of eighteen, I was furious and sad. Unless something had happened to him in the meantime, I had a living, breathing father and my immediate instinct was to start searching for him. Then I realized that if he’d wanted contact with us, he could have come looking. Surely we wouldn’t have been
that
difficult to find. He must have known some of Mum’s relatives, they could have pointed him in the right direction. And what if he had come and Mum had sent him away again? What if he’d been told that we were dead? There were so many questions and, because Mum wasn’t speaking to me, no way of finding the answers. With no school to go to, and because there was no work in Portiston (and even if there had been, nobody wanted to employ me), I had too much time on my hands. Anneli was studying for her A levels, and though she never turned me away, I knew it was unfair to burden her with my boredom. Sometimes I drifted amongst the streets and paths like a wraith, my eyes cast modestly downwards, my posture that of the penitent, but that was only when Mum and Mr Hens-ley were at home watching TV or holding one of their meetings. The house seemed increasingly joyless and grey. It was too quiet. Nothing ever happened. Nothing changed. It was always the same: cold meat on Monday, mince on Tuesday, shepherd’s pie on Wednesday, sausages on Thursday, fish on Friday, cheese sandwiches on Saturday and a cut of meat on Sunday. Mr Hensley’s shiny suits, his carbolic attitude and Mum’s pursed lips, her unflattering, self-cut hair, her ageing face devoid of make-up and pleasure. They deprived themselves of the smallest treats – ‘Would you care for a biscuit?’ ‘I’d love to, but I won’t.’ ‘There’s a programme you might enjoy after the news.’ ‘But look at the time, it’s nearly ten, I must be going’ – and were constantly competing to see who could be the most humble, the most self-denying and self-deprecating. Nobody ever ate the last potato out of the pan because that would have looked greedy. Delicious morsels of food were thrown away. Sunsets were missed because there were dishes to be washed and every mealtime felt like a rush to see who could start clearing away first. They denied themselves anything that could be regarded as an extravagance (I don’t mean real extravagances like holidays, but simple things like a bar of chocolate or a pot of hand cream). People who spent their money on such fripperies were discussed in disparaging tones. There was nothing pretty in our house, nothing that didn’t have a practical purpose. Except, I suppose, me.

Eventually I got my life back on track. I applied for, and was given, a job at Wasbrook’s department store in Waters-ford. I loved it from the start. Mondays to Saturdays, I caught the early-morning bus which travelled the single road out of Portiston and took me into the city. I loved going round to the back of the grand Wasbrook’s building and in through the staff entrance by the delivery bays where the lorries reversed. I enjoyed saying good-morning to the Sikh security man who was called Garth and who always offered me a fruit Polo. I soon learned to associate work with a stickiness between my back molars. I liked the cloakrooms, where I had my own locker, and where the female staff gossiped and laughed and shared things. It was like being part of a flock of highly scented birds. My colleagues took me under their collective wing. They showed me how to tie my hair back so that I wouldn’t get into trouble, they told me to ditch the sparkly nail varnish and go for something simple and pale instead, and they advised me to invest in a pair of low-heeled shoes for the benefit of my feet. They didn’t know me but they seemed to like me. In the canteen at lunchtime we ate cheese-and-pickle baps and the women made fun of the men and talked about sex and contraception and stuff like that in a completely uninhibited and thoroughly educational manner. They swore a lot. They were the kind of people my mother and Mr Hensley would have called ‘crude’ but they were generous and loyal and kind. At work, in my blue skirt and cardigan and my white blouse, amongst my new friends, I was perfectly happy. It was just the going home I dreaded.

As a general assistant, I was moved about Wasbrook’s from department to department. I never went on the cosmetic counters where the girls with flawless complexions traded, or anywhere else that required specialist knowledge, but started to learn a little about a lot of things. Soon I could demonstrate how food mixers worked and advise parents-to-be on the pros and cons of different kinds of pushchair with equal confidence. I knew which ribbons went with which fabrics, and which hats with which gloves. No question fazed me. If I didn’t know the answer, all I had to do was ask.

I saved as much money as I could, but Mum was, quite reasonably, taking board out of my wages, there were bus fares to pay and I needed money for drinks with my friends in the White Hart after work. I realized it would take for ever to save up enough for lodgings of my own in Watersford, and this thought depressed me. When the landlord of the pub asked if I’d like to help him out a couple of evenings a week, I agreed gladly. That kept me out of home too, and it was fun. The landlord and his wife were jolly, friendly people, the money was good and I was popular with the punters, who were always telling me to get one for myself. I thanked them, and put the money into an empty pint glass under the counter to take home and add to my kitty.

In the pub I kept male admirers at arm’s length. I was especially careful not to flirt with anybody old enough to be my father, just in case he
was
my father. It was a good game. There were men I hoped were my dad, and men I hoped weren’t. I longed for Lynnette and the chance to share my secret.

Life was looking up, and I was becoming more independent, and the day when I moved out of Portiston and into Watersford was drawing closer by the minute. Then one day in October, when I was working in the bridal department, Angela came in with Nathalie.