The Villa (39 page)

‘Anyway, there’s no chance of us getting together,’ she told Pierro, pushing her cup away. ‘I’m the enemy, and for Tonino the past has the louder voice.’

‘Then he is an idiot,’ said Pierro gallantly. ‘And did you
know, dear Tess, that this place was originally owned by one of Tonino Amato’s ancestors?’

‘It was?’ Tess looked around them. The mauve stuccoed hotel with its colourful grounds was very sleek and upmarket. She couldn’t quite see it somehow.

‘Although then, it was only a bar and restaurant,’ he said.

‘Ah. Luigi Amato.’ The great uncle who had died of heart failure – significantly after a visit from Enzo Sciarra, though Tess decided not to mention this.

‘Yes. He ran it with his sister,’ Millie said. ‘He was gay, though he kept it pretty hush-hush in those days, I imagine.’

‘Really?’ That was another fact that Tonino had omitted to tell her, Tess thought. Not that it was necessarily relevant. But still.

‘And what about Villa Sirena?’ Millie changed the subject, rather to Tess’s relief. ‘What’s happening there?’ She offered more coffee, but Tess shook her head. She was drinking so much of the stuff that she was on a permanent caffeine high.

She told them her plans. She wanted to make the entire bedroom area into four bedrooms en suite, with a private living area for whoever might be running things. The kitchen had to be completely refurbished and the villa decorated throughout. Plus a bit of landscaping wouldn’t go amiss. That was the absolute minimum if she was going to run it as a B & B – with a manageress in charge perhaps.

‘Why not run it yourself?’ Pierro poured himself more coffee.

‘My daughter’s only eighteen,’ Tess reminded him.

Millie shrugged. ‘Then she’s almost off your hands.’ You could tell, Tess thought, that she and Pierro had not had children of their own. ‘Before you know it she’ll be away at university or married. And where will you be, Tess?’

‘Stuck in England probably,’ Tess admitted.

Pierro glanced at his watch and got to his feet. ‘I feel you will come back one day,’ he said. ‘All the answers – they are here in Sicily.’

‘Perhaps not all the answers,’ Millie interjected. ‘It’s a huge leap – from taking a holiday here to moving lock, stock and barrel. Maybe Tess will never be up for it. She has family in England, remember.’

Pierro grinned. ‘They will love coming out for visits,’ he said.

Tess wasn’t so sure about that. ‘My mother couldn’t wait to leave Cetaria,’ she reminded them. If she could ever get Muma out here – especially at her age – it would be a miracle. But a wonderful miracle, she realised.

‘Ah.’ Pierro moved away from the table. ‘
Cu nesci arriniesci
.’

‘Come again?’

‘A Sicilian proverb,’ he explained. ‘You have to get out of Sicily to succeed.’

‘Unless,’ Millie added, wagging a finger, ‘you get into the tourist industry.’

Tess smiled. They’d certainly done OK. But Millie was right. It was a big, big step – not one to undertake lightly. And no way could she leave Ginny.

‘As for Tonino Amato,’ Millie went on, ‘he’s not the only fish in the sea round here, you know.’

The problem was, thought Tess, that he was the fish she wanted.

She left soon afterwards, knowing that Millie and Pierro both had to get back to work. Something Millie said was bugging her – but she couldn’t quite pin it down.

Should she ask her mother about
Il Tesoro?
She didn’t want to get involved any further than she was already, but something told her she had to be. She was here for a purpose – Edward Westerman had seen to that – and maybe that purpose included solving the mystery.

She thought of what Santina had told her – that her mother had found the airline pilot and that she had never forgotten him. Tess frowned. It was difficult to accept that Dad had never been the one and only for her mother. But what did this tell her? That the airline pilot had moved on by the time her mother found him? That Flavia had been too late …?

A nice couple. A nice kiddie …

The words had been resounding in Flavia’s head for the past hour. And yet still she had come here to Silver Street, as if she needed to see for herself, as if she still hoped it would not be true.

She sat down in a tea shop on a corner, watching, waiting. Always waiting, she thought. Always waiting. There was a red-and-gold poster on the wall opposite advertising a pantomime
. Jack and the Beanstalk,
she read
. At the Theatre Royal.

There was a young man behind the counter watching her. ‘You all right, love?’ He’d asked her a couple of times. He had kind blue eyes. Not like Peter’s, but nice … She realised now how many people in England had blue eyes. But Peter’s were still special.

‘Yes, thank you,’ she replied, cradling the white mug of cocoa between her cold palms. She heard the clattering of crockery from behind the counter, the hiss of steam
. A nice couple, a nice kiddie …

‘Only I’ve got to close in a bit,’ he said. ‘You got anywhere to go?’

‘Go?’ she echoed.

He seemed embarrassed. He stood there fiddling with the cuff of his shirtsleeve, visible under his white bartender’s apron. He moved the glass salt and pepper pots to one side and wiped the table with a cloth. ‘Tonight. You look like you might be a long way from home.’

The laughter exploded from her. Hysteria, she thought. She had finally broken, then. But … A long way from home? Yes, if Sicily was home, could ever be home again.

The young man frowned. ‘Can I help?’ he asked. ‘Only …’

And then she saw him. Through the misty cafe window, walking up the street towards her. He was older, heavier, there was a slight hunch to his shoulders that hadn’t been there before, but even in the dim light of a yellow streetlamp, she could see that it was him.

‘Peter,’ she muttered. And she was out of her chair and through the door in seconds.

She stood on the pavement not ten feet from him. ‘Peter.’ She said it so quietly that it was almost silence. His face was drawn; she remembered the faint frown, the sharp angle of his cheekbones, the lightness of his eyes. And that mouth, his lips …

He must have sensed rather than heard her. He looked around, frowned, saw her – all in the same moment. She saw confusion, disbelief, elation cross the mobile features.

‘Flavia?’ Only Peter could make her name sound so romantic. ‘Flavia?’

She flew into his arms. She couldn’t help it. It had been so long and now he was here. And …

‘Yes, it is me,’ she said.

He held her for a moment that seemed to last for ever and yet no time at all. And she felt it. She felt his need, his love, his desire, like amber light winging around her soul.

Until he broke away. ‘Flavia? Is it really you? Good God. What the blazes are you doing here?’ He was flustered. He pushed his hair back from his forehead. Flavia remembered that gesture. He looked
nervously up the street. People were hurrying home in their belted coats with scarves wrapped over their noses and mouths. It was cold. But it wasn’t yet completely dark and the street-lighting gave the sky a strange orange glow. ‘How on earth did you know where to …? ’

‘I went to the house,’ she said. ‘To the address you gave me before.’ Before – in another world.

‘But you travelled all the way here – from Sicily?’ He stared at her almost as if he didn’t want it to be true.

‘Sì,’
she said. ‘To find you.’ It was the simple truth – most of the truth
.

He swore under his breath. Looked up the street again.

Which house did they live in, she wondered. The nice couple with the nice kiddie? Was she inside waiting for him even now? ‘But you did not wait for me,’ she said. This was what she had not been expecting. That Peter would have found someone else. And yet it was so obvious. Why else would he not have written? Why else would he have not come back for her?

Peter grabbed her hands. At his touch, she felt a current of longing streak through her. Peter …

‘You didn’t write to me,’ he said. ‘You didn’t answer any of my letters.’ His eyes were wild now. He held her hands so tightly that it was hurting her.

She wanted that though. It took her mind from that other pain. And then she realized what he had said. It was her turn to stare at him.

‘I did not receive any letters,’ she said after a moment, in a flat monotone. ‘But I wrote to you many times.’

Suddenly, she knew what he was going to say.

‘I never received them.’

She was silent; thinking, trying to understand.

‘I thought you weren’t interested,’ he said. ‘I thought I was just a novelty.’

‘A novelty?’ With her gaze, she traced a path from his head – his fair hair was still short and would be soft to the touch. If she could … Down to the full lower lip and the slightly crooked upper lip, to his jaw – slightly shadowed. His face was fuller now it was no longer wartime, now he was completely well.

‘The novelty of a stranger,’ he said. ‘An English stranger passing through.’ He hung his head. ‘I know that the way we met and everything … ’

She knew he could not bring himself to say ‘fell in love’.

‘…
is not how these things are done in Sicily.’

Those were not his own words. Flavia knew it, like she knew that this was a cold December night and that they were in Exeter, England, and that she was lost. Lost.

‘You didn’t come back for me,’ she whispered.

‘I did.’

The words sliced through her. ‘When?’ But even as she asked him, she knew that too. There had been only the one time. She knew everything now.

‘Four years ago,’ he said. ‘I saw your father.’

Slowly, she nodded. Four years ago, yes.

‘He seemed to know I was coming.’

Well, he would, Flavia thought, if he had intercepted the letters. Papa had friends who had friends in the right places. Like Enzo. He would know what to do. In Sicily everything could be bought, every person corrupted, it seemed.

‘He said that you had married, damn it.’ Fiercely, he clenched his fist. ‘That you were away somewhere with your new husband. That I should forget about you and marry one of my own kind. ‘It is not done this way in Sicily,’ he said. You were his daughter. You had to marry a Sicilian man. A man that your family approved of.’

Flavia nodded once more. She had been sent to visit her Aunt Paola in a neighbouring village – just to help out for a while as her aunt was feeling unwell. At the time, she had not thought it strange. But … Flavia closed her eyes. Peter had been there in Cetaria and she had missed him. Her father had destroyed her life.

‘I will never forgive him,’ she told Peter. ‘As God is my witness, I will never forgive him.’

He let go of her hands. ‘You didn’t marry?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘You were waiting for me?’

‘Yes.’

He had put his hands in his pockets now, as if that would stop them reaching out for her. There was a long pause.

‘I have a child,’ he said at last. ‘A son, Flavia. He’s called Daniel.’

She nodded. But she didn’t want to hear about his son.

‘I am so awfully sorry,’ he said. ‘What can I do? I … ’

His eyes were full of pain. It reminded her of when she had first found him by the broken glider, in the tangled wreckage.

‘Please do not worry,’ she said. ‘I will be perfectly all right.’ To herself, she sounded like a machine speaking, but Peter clutched on to her words like a drowning man on to a life raft.

‘Are you sure?’ he said. ‘Because you could come back to the house. Molly—’

‘No.’ Flavia reached up to kiss his cheek. Not that. His skin was cool and damp. With her fingertip she touched his lips. ‘Goodbye, Peter,’ she said.

And she turned to walk away, upright and strong – at least for the first few steps, for she knew that he would be watching her, and she knew how it hurt to let her go. Because he had come for her … He had come all the way to Sicily for her. And she had never, never known. So he mustn’t guess how hard this was.

Around the first corner, she crumpled. The tears were hot in her eyes. ‘Papa, I hate you,’ she muttered. ‘I hate every bone in your body.’

From nowhere, a man stepped out of the shadows. His arms were raised and Flavia stepped back instinctively, raising her own arms in defence. Close by, a train chugged down the line. And the moon slipped out of its cloud cover, full and luxuriant and ready for a night out on the town.

‘Oh,’ said Flavia, with a kind of choked surprise. ‘It is you.’

Flavia stared at the words in the notebook. When Tess read this she would finally understand why she, Flavia, had never returned to Sicily and why she disliked even talking about the place. She had forgiven neither her father nor her mother for what they had done. The bitterness had burned inside her for years.

Only now … Only now, with a daughter and a granddaughter of her own, could she begin to comprehend her father’s belief that he was doing the right thing, his certainty
that he was the best judge of his own daughter’s future happiness. Only now that she was writing these words, telling this story that she had thought she would always keep locked in her heart … Only now that he was gone, could she feel the first stirrings of forgiveness in her heart for Papa, for Mama, for Sicily.

The young man from the tea shop had taken her firmly by the arm and escorted her back to the house where he lived with his mother. ‘Don’t be scared,’ he said. ‘I won’t hurt you.’

Flavia had nodded. She wasn’t scared. She didn’t care enough. About anything.

‘You can stay here for the night,’ he said, in his kind, caressing voice.

So she had.

She could hardly remember that night – she’d cried most of it away. And in the morning, she’d taken the train back to London, with their address written on a piece of paper in her bag. When she got back to London she had written a polite note to thank them for their kindness and that – she had thought – was that.

She continued working for Bea Westerman – although it was some time before she could tell her what had happened with Peter that night.