The Secrets of Ice Cream Success (32 page)

‘
Sorry for
what? Why did you blow up my factory?’ Carlo shouted, jumping up
and hopping around, gesticulating. ‘Look what you did!’

Randy wheezed again and then
tried to rearrange his arms as best he could to make himself
slightly more comfortable. ‘Why I destroyed the factory is a simple
enough explanation. Why that act was necessary in the first place,
I cannot tell you.’

Carlo looked like he was going
to protest, but Randy mastered his voice enough to say ‘Please sit
down, Carlo.’ as loudly as he could.

Carlo relented, though
confusion more than anything else. His mind was racing.

‘
Simply,
though unforgivably,’ Randy began, tears forming in his dust
covered eyes, ‘I made a deal with Mr Hill.’

‘
You did
what?’ Carlo shouted again on hearing the name of his insufferable
rival.

‘
Carlo,
please.’ Randy pleaded. ‘I’m not sure how long I can keep this
up.’

Carlo looked put out, but
nodded his consent for Randy to continue.

‘
As you know,
Mr Hill has wanted either to own or destroy Leodoni’s for some
time. He and your father never got on as competitors nor in their
day-to day-life and Luigi’s death was an end to the resentment as
far as Mr Hill was concerned, so you can imagine he was quite
annoyed when the factory was left to you.’

‘
I was pretty
upset myself so Mr Hill supported my aims until, when I was finally
out of options, he offered to pay me to end the factory forever. I
was to take the money and leave. You don’t need me anymore and you
would have had the insurance money to help you do whatever it is
you wanted. Mr Hill would get his wish to see an end to his
greatest rival and I, well, I would get the opportunity to start
again, in peace.’ Randy coughed himself into silence and closed his
eyes. ‘That is the heart of the matter.’ he finished. ‘I just
wanted to move on.’

‘
And it looks
like you’re about to.’ a voice said from the door to the
study.

Carlo turned his head to see
his father’s ghost stood at the doorway, though he looked
different. Where his normal visible form looked almost solid, there
were now parts of him missing, burnt away and seen only as hazy
static like a TV screen without a signal.

‘
Dad!’ Carlo
gasped. ‘Are you alright?’

‘
Now I was
supposed to ask you that question.’ Luigi smiled. ‘I’m glad to see
you are.’

‘
Carlo! Carlo!
I’m hallucinating, Carlo!’ Randy screamed, with surprising force
for someone trapped under so much debris. ‘Your father, Carlo. I
can see your father! This is the end, he’s come for me!’

‘
Oh be quiet,
you old fool.’ Luigi said, turning to Randy. ‘I’ve come for him,
not you!’ he added, pointing at his son.

‘
You’re a
ghost?’ Randy wheezed.

‘
Clearly.’
Luigi answered.

‘
But I never
told him, you can’t take me.’ Randy said, panic in his weak
voice.

‘
I’m not going
to take you, Randy. But that might.’ Luigi added, nodding at the
pile of rubble blocking the doorway. ‘I better go and tell everyone
where you two are.’

‘
Dad, wait!’
Carlo said. ‘I’m scared, Dad! And Randy has told me some things I
don’t understand.’

Luigi paused as memories from
years ago, formed themselves. Randy told you? he asked vaguely as
past conversations slowly retuned to him. ‘Randy?’ he mused.
‘Randy…?’ Luigi suddenly looked furious. ‘You told him?’ he
shouted, rounding on Randy! ‘You told him?’

‘
No, I didn’t
tell him.’ Randy answered anger and fear on his face. ‘Though I had
every right! You promised me, Luigi! You promised me the factory if
I didn’t tell him!’

‘
I changed my
mind.’ Luigi said, simply. ‘After what you did, you can’t have
expected I would just give you the factory when I died.’

‘
But the boy!’
Randy cried. ‘I wouldn’t have agreed to keep my silence if I had
known. He should have been told!’

‘
That was not
your choice!’ Luigi shouted back.

‘
No! It was
Helena’s!’ Randy retorted. ‘You didn’t even let me see her, Luigi.
In the end you took my love
and
my child!’ he wept, convulsions shaking his
trapped body making the debris above him shake
alarmingly.

‘
Took? Neither
were yours to take.’ Luigi said. ‘In the end, neither were
yours.’

‘
What is going
on?!’ Carlo shouted at both men, thoroughly bemused, scared and
angry.

‘
Carlo,’ Randy
started before Luigi could speak. ‘You are my Son.’ he said,
reaching out to touch Carlo’s leg, but the movement was too much
and a low rumble echoed through the room. Dust and concrete started
to rain down upon them. Randy covered his face from the debris as
Carlo bent down to try to pull him free one last time, but as he
did so a large piece of rubble dislodged itself from the ceiling
above. Carlo briefly touched Randy’s hand when an invisible force
picked him up and pulled him through the doorway into the study as
a suffocating load of rubble crashed into the spot he had just
vacated, covering Randy and obscuring him from sight.

Confused, Carlo looked around
the see the vague outline of his father wrapped around him, having
dragged him from the stairwell. More parts of Luigi’s body seemed
to be melting away as they sat wrapped around each other and Carlo
abruptly fell through Luigi, who began to fade alarmingly.

‘
Dad? I’m
scared Dad. What’s going on?’

‘
I don’t
know.’ Luigi answered, as he became less and less
substantial.

‘
But Randy,
he’s…’

Luigi looked around but could
see no sign of his old friend. ‘He’s gone, Carlo.’

‘
What he just
said…’

‘
I’m not sure
there is time for me to explain, son. It was all in the book, but
the book has been destroyed.’

Carlo looked around the old
study, the final remaining part of the factory. The ceiling had
almost completely fallen into the room and above them smoke could
still be seen curling up into the sky.

There was so much Carlo wanted
to say, so much he didn’t understand, but he was so dazed by all
that had happened his only considerations were now primal.

‘
How do I get
out, Dad?’ he asked though tears, survival his only
thought.

The rapidly fading Luigi looked
utterly dejected. ‘I don’t know, son.’ he said, floating, barely
visible above the rubble. ‘I think I will be gone soon. You have to
hang on. You have to be brave and hang on until they find you.’

‘
But what if
they don’t find me?’ Carlo asked, choking back his fear. ‘I don’t
want to…’

‘
Don’t say it,
Carlo. You’ll be alright. You just need to hang on.’ Luigi said,
kneeling close to his son and reaching out to touch him. ‘They’ll
find you.’ he said as his hand passed through Carlo’s. Luigi looked
at his hand, a ghostly tear forming in his own eye. ‘They’ll find
you.’

But as he looked at his son
through his own hand, he felt his spiritual body jolt.

‘
Don’t leave
me, Dad!’ Carlo cried as his father fell backwards.

But Luigi’s form suddenly
erupted with colour in swathes across his torso, as if someone was
colouring him in with thick fervent strokes. He fell forwards again
and was then pushed upright, floating in the centre of the room. He
looked at his hand, which was almost as substantial as it had been
before he appeared in the factory and then a sudden realisation
entered his mind.

‘
Newton, you
little beauty!’ Luigi shouted to the sky. ‘Carlo, stay here.’ he
said as a look of deep concentration crossed his face and he
disappeared.

Newton finished scribbling on
the scrap of paper they had found in Abi’s bag along with a green
felt tip pen. It wasn’t the neatest penmanship of his life, having
been scrawled using Ben’s back as a table, but he had managed to
summarise the secret that had held Mr Leodoni to this life. He
looked around at his friends and was greatly relieved, if a little
surprised, that none of them had yet asked what that secret was. He
knew that they were too worried about Carlo to be concerned with
anything else.

‘
Now we wait.’
he said with a sad little smile.

‘
How long?’
Abi asked.

‘
I don’t
kno…’

‘
It worked!’
Luigi shouted making the four children jump in shock as he sprung
from the air in front of them.

Norton tripped over the bucket
falling heavily onto his bottom. ‘Must you do that!’ he complained,
though no one was listening.

‘
What
happened?’

‘
Where is
he?’

‘
Is he OK?’
the gang all shouted across each other.

Luigi waved his hands to beckon
them into silence, now fully substantial once more, or as
substantial as a ghost ever got. ‘I’ve found him.’ he said, with a
smile. ‘You were right, Newton, you clever, clever lad. You were
right!’

‘
Is he OK?’
Abi asked, still very concerned.

‘
He’s OK.
Battered, bruised and I imagine now in a very bad mood, but he’s
OK.’

Relief spread through the
group, but reality returned as Ben asked ‘Where is he? Can he get
out?’

‘
He’s in the
study.’ Luigi said, ‘But there is no way out. The Fireman will have
to rescue him.’ Ben nodded his understanding and made to run off to
tell them, but Luigi called him back.

‘
I need to go
back to Carlo now to let him know help is coming. As soon as I’m
gone tell the emergency services. But first, thank you. Thank you
all. You are the greatest friends I could ever have hoped Carlo
would find. Look after him for me.’

The gang nodded, slightly
uncomfortable with the display of affection.

‘
And, Newton.
You understood more about what was going on here than even I.’
Luigi pointed to the scrap of paper in Newton’s hand. ‘This is what
was keeping me here.’

‘
I will never
tell anyone.’ Newton said.

‘
I know… I
know… which is why, I think, that note is the only thing keeping me
here now. You were right. So I must ask one last thing. Once I am
gone, give me fifteen minutes and then destroy that.’ Luigi said,
pointing at the note.

‘
But if I am
right and I destroy this, you will…’

‘
Yes.’ Luigi
answered. ‘As it should be.’

Newton nodded sadly while Ben,
Abi and Norton looked on, not really sure what was being said.

‘
Thank you
again.’ Luigi said to the group. ‘Now go. Go rescue my son!’ and
with that, Mr Leodoni disappeared.

‘
Dad!’ Carlo
exclaimed as his father reappeared in the study. ‘I thought you had
left me.’ he sobbed as he leant against the wall, cradling his
injured leg. ‘I was so scared.’

‘
It’s OK, son.
It’s going to be OK. I’ve told the others. Help is
coming.’

Carlo seemed to sink into the
wall as relief over took him and he slid down to sit on the floor.
‘This has been a very peculiar day.’ Carlo said, feeling more tired
than he could possibly imagine.

‘
Your father
is a ghost. I thought you would be used to perculiar by now,’ Luigi
said with a smile as he came to sit next to his son.

‘
Father…’
Carlo whispered. ‘You
are
my father, I suppose?’

‘
Yes, I
am.’

‘
Then why did
Randy say he was?’

Luigi started up at the smoke
and let out a long ghostly sigh. ‘This is a conversation we should
have had a long time ago, but dying somewhat got in the way,
although it made the mistake of not having told you even more
foolhardy.

‘
Before you
were born, just before you were born, mind you, I found out that
Randy, my best friend of many years, was having an affair with your
mother.’

Carlo was stunned. On this
strangest of days when so much had happened, Carlo was willing to
accept almost anything was possible… anything but the betrayal of
his father by his Mother. Carlo had been led to hold his mother’s
memory in deference by his father, who had told him of her grace,
kindness and beauty throughout his young life. It seemed impossible
to reconcile this new information with the memories of her he had
been given by Luigi. How had they not spoken of this before?

With a pained expression, Luigi
continued. ‘By the time I found out, your mother was eight months
pregnant with you. Eight months during which I believed I was to be
a father. I was devastated when I discovered that she had betrayed
me and I was wracked with doubt that the baby she carried may not
be mine. On the day I found out, your mother had gone to the
hospital for a routine check so I confronted Randy first. He
thought the baby was his and fully intended to support your mother.
I truly believe he thought Helena would leave me. It took all my
resolve to hold myself back from hitting him. I sacked him and told
him I never wanted to see him again. But it was just minutes later
I received the news that they had discovered that damned lump while
Helena was at the hospital.’

Carlo started to cry again. He
had always known that his mother had died of a tumour not long
after his birth, but the circumstances surrounding it were new to
him and distressing to hear.