One Summer in Italy

by Sue Moorcroft

  ‘She was a lecturer in biochemistry,’ Sofia confirmed numbly. It was all she could do to process the story she was being told, no matter how good her Italian. Little shockwaves were rippling inside her as she tried to imagine her father, the person she’d been closest to in the world, stealing his little brother’s girlfriend. She’d never known him do anything that could be described as even vaguely dishonourable but where love was concerned … And once Gianni knew, what would have been achieved by giving Dawn up?

  ‘She was an intelligent woman. She wasn’t conservative. She dressed in all the fashions, she loved rock music, she put colours in her hair.’ He smiled painfully. ‘I know there were many tearful letters and telephone calls between my parents and Aldo in the first years he lived in England, especially when—’ he paused and cleared his throat ‘—he married Dawn without telling them, without giving them the opportunity to be at the wedding because he didn’t want them to risk upsetting me. He said he was “in the wrong”, and every action put him farther outside the family fold. Dawn wrote to me privately and begged me to make the first move. I tore her letter up. I, too, believed Aldo was in the wrong.’

  Sofia felt as her eyes were lined with grit they stung so much. ‘And what do you believe now?’

  Gianni remained silent for several moments. Around them tourists chattered and crockery rattled. The parasol above them flapped in the breeze. Finally, he sighed. ‘I think there was no right or wrong. Only sadness. Perhaps if Dawn had lived, or if my parents had, then someone would have found a way for Aldo and me to settle our differences. Dawn had a very big heart.’ Carefully, he wiped his eyes on his immaculate white cuffs. ‘I will be truthful with you. When I first met you, I saw in you not my beautiful niece, but evidence of Dawn and Aldo’s love. After I allowed all that old anger out, I marched out to my car and drove off in a rage. I raced off up into the hilltops and found a quiet spot. I cried to think of Dawn. Then I was hit by remorse to think how appalled she would have felt at my behaviour towards her daughter and that I was still harbouring anger towards my brother. I returned here to ask for you. Signora Morbidelli refused to discuss your whereabouts, which is why I left the message.’

  Sofia sipped her water in an effort to ease the lump that had risen in her throat as her uncle shocked her with this story of family turmoil. ‘A message I never received. I was surprised when Benedetta offered me a new job, but I didn’t want to leave Montelibertà yet so I took it.’

  Gianni inclined his head. ‘I understand now. But when I saw you working on the front desk, smiling and happy, I felt as if you were doing it to spite me. I apologise, Sofia.’

  So-FEE-ya … The inflection was exactly as Aldo’s had been, as if her father were speaking to her through his brother. The thought turned her voice into a croak that she could barely make heard over the chatter of voices and clatter of crockery around them. ‘It’s bizarre to think of these things going on, things that have affected me in the most fundamental ways, even that I exist at all – and I’ve never heard the truth till now.’

  Gianni leaned back in his chair. He looked exhausted, sunken. ‘Family feuds are terrible. Aldo never returned to see our parents. Dawn—’ he swallowed noisily ‘—had been gone for some time before he told them of her loss. They began to make plans to visit England but the car accident happened. I’ve lived with the guilt that if I’d accepted reality in a more mature way they would have seen their eldest son again and met their English granddaughter. They would have offered Aldo comfort on the death of their daughter-in-law.’

  ‘Ohhhh,’ Sofia breathed, heart swelling. ‘No wonder Papà was always sad when he talked of his family.’

  Gianni wiped his eyes on his cuffs once more. It was a curious, defiant little gesture, as if he was daring anyone to say anything about him crying in public. ‘I thought Aldo must contact me after the accident but I was a coward. I left my aunt, my mother’s sister, to telephone him with the news. He must have thought I meant it when I said I’d never talk to him again. He stayed away because of me, but I thought we’d have time to meet again. I let time go by. And by.’

  ‘I’m sorry Dad never got back here.’ Sofia was half-surprised to realise she meant it for Gianni’s sake, not just Aldo’s. All her antipathy had drained away as he’d made his confession. ‘He couldn’t do much as his heart became worse; travel was impossible in later years.’

  Gianni clutched his forehead, then his heart. ‘I am ashamed.’ He paused. ‘I must now be candid with you.’ He paused again, for longer. ‘My wife, Mia, is unsettled by the idea of your presence in Montelibertà, the daughter of the woman I loved before her. She knows the story, of course.’ He fidgeted with a napkin, smoothing out the crumples before adding in a low voice: ‘It was a scandal at the time. I can understand her anxiety that people will gossip.’

  Leaden dismay settled in Sofia’s stomach. Gianni had swept aside so many barriers between them during this emotional conversation, and now he was revealing the presence of a new one. She flushed. ‘I never gave much thought to how my visit would affect your family. I should have found a way to contact you before I arrived. But I’d made Papà some promises.’ She related the story – leaving out her interpretation of behaving as a young single woman should – and he listened keenly, smiling occasionally, sometimes wincing, as if he found the tale bitter-sweet. She took out her phone and showed him photographs of Aldo she kept in a special folder there.

  Gianni clucked his tongue and sighed, shaking his head, moved to tears once more to see his brother so weak and wan.

  The afternoon wore on and to better enjoy their conversation now they’d cleared the air Gianni ordered a bottle of spumante brut, a dish of olives and a plate of bruschetta, whispering that they were not as good as at those offered at Hotel Alba. Paolo finished his shift and Amy took over, swerving efficiently between the tables with her ponytail swishing, lifting one fair eyebrow at Sofia as if to ask, ‘Is that who I think it is?’

  Sofia tried to communicate back, ‘Tell you later!’ as she and Gianni discussed why Benedetta hadn’t only failed to pass on Gianni’s message but offered Sofia a job herself. Sofia concluded that it must have been that she couldn’t resist the opportunity to annoy Gianni.

  ‘She may have hoped you’d report to her what you saw. In which case,’ Gianni proclaimed, wiping his fingers as he finished disposing of his share of the bruschetta, ‘you must visit us as soon as possible to send Signora Morbidelli quite mad with unsatisfied curiosity.’ He sobered as he added, ‘I would like very much for you to come. Please, Sofia.’

  Sofia’s throat tightened. ‘I’d like that too. But what about your wife? I wouldn’t want her to be uncomfortable.’

  Gianni gave another expressive shrug. ‘Mia’s not your enemy. She is just a little wary.’

  He sounded convinced, so, tantalised by real blood ties to Gianni and Chiara, Sofia agreed to lunch at Hotel Alba the next day. She made a silent vow to give Mia no reason to see her as a threat, though she was too pragmatic a person to expect her aunt to love her on sight.

  Gianni had, after all, named his hotel Alba, which meant sunrise or daybreak.

  Or dawn.

  When Amy finished her shift at one in the morning she felt almost as miserable as she had in the first days of being a waitress.

  Benedetta was a cow. Amy knew the menu and had learned loads of Italian phrases, but today she’d got in a muddle with the word caldo, which meant hot but sounded as if it meant cold. The customer, a local, had been trying to obtain hot milky coffee and she’d taken him cold milk. Why couldn’t the stupid man have just ordered latte like everyone else?

  Instead, he’d roared with laughter at her mistake and made a huge show of drinking his glass of milk, smacking his lips and rubbing his belly. Davide laughed too, before loudly telling red-faced Amy her mistake. Then, while she rushed to get the man what he’d ordered in the first place, Davide, the knob, had told tales to Mummy. Benedetta had called Amy into her office and m
ade her feel a complete idiot.

  Sometimes Casa Felice still felt a hostile place. Amy trailed back in the direction of her room, reading her texts from her brother as she went.

  Kris: What’s up ur not usually this quiet

  That, at least, raised a smile. Amy understood that the message was as much of his soft side as Kris would let show because he was full of teenage-boy BS.

  Amy: I’m working! Why don’t u try it?

  Kris: Pretty sure I wouldn’t like it hahaha

  She returned an eye-roll emoji and then a selfie of herself pretending to hold her sides laughing. Kris sent her a thumbs-up.

  Scrolling through her WhatsApp group with Maddalyn and Della she discovered that while she’d been waiting on tables they’d been having a conversation about wishing they’d gone travelling like Amy instead of bowing to family pressure to go straight to uni. When she got to the end she saw they’d already wished each other Night hun! so it was too late for her to join in. She didn’t know what she’d contribute anyway. Don’t do it!!! felt favourite right now. A nice little bedroom in Halls and student parties sounded attractive when compared to whiney customers and moody-cow employers.

  As she flicked through Instagram, she trod slowly down the steps and through the picket gate, stopping short as she realised Sofia was sitting on the bench. ‘Hey,’ she said, but quietly, because Sofia was dangling an empty wine glass from her fingers and frowning at the moths dive-bombing her in the light streaming from the window of her room.

  Sofia glanced up and smiled. Amy had got to know most of Sofia’s smiles now and this wasn’t a real one.

  Amy flopped down onto the bench too, glad of a chance to unwind before bed. One of the killing things about the last shift was being dog-tired but too awake to sleep. ‘What’s up? Was it your uncle I saw you with? Have you made up with him? I saw him kiss your cheeks when he left.’

  The smile was a little more natural this time. ‘He apologised for before and told me a lot of stuff about Dad.’ The frown came back to chase the smile away, though she added, ‘Want some wine? Get a glass if you do.’

  ‘OK.’ Amy wasn’t mad on wine, though at least Sofia had white instead of red. Red tasted like petrol. Even then, she wished she had a bottle of 7up to spritz the wine up. It didn’t taste so sour that way.

  Sofia didn’t say any more about her dad and Amy didn’t ask her because she didn’t like to see her friend looking so sad. Instead, Amy told her about the man with the cold milk and Benedetta being a bitch. She told it like it was a funny story and Sofia did grin and give Amy a tiny push, saying, ‘What are you like? You know that freddo means cold!’

  ‘I know. I forgot.’ Amy giggled. The wine was beginning to make her feel a bit better. Or maybe that was just being off-shift and hanging out with Sofia. ‘Want to have lunch tomorrow? You’re on at three, aren’t you? I’m off all day, and Tuesday.’ She said tomorrow even though it was today really because they all did that, as if acknowledging finishing work after midnight sucked so much that you had to pretend you hadn’t.

  But Sofia was pulling a face. ‘Can’t, sorry. I’m going to visit my uncle’s hotel. Turns out Benedetta only offered me the reception job to piss Gianni off.’ She explained how Benedetta and Gianni didn’t like each other and how it led to Sofia working on the front desk. ‘So I’m going to Hotel Alba for lunch tomorrow,’ she finished.

  Amy seized on what she saw as the important part of this rigmarole. ‘You’re not going to work for your uncle, are you?’ She thought of not having Sofia in the next room, not being able to go to her when Davide was knobbish. Her stomach lurched like it did when her mum drove too fast over a bridge.

  Sofia sipped her wine listlessly. ‘What do you think I should do?’

  ‘You should stay here,’ Amy responded instantly. ‘I know I’m being selfish but it’ll be scary if you’re not here. And,’ she added, remembering, ‘Levi ate in Il Giardino tonight and he says he’s going home in a few days.’

  ‘Yes.’ Sofia’s expression didn’t change. ‘I handled his last booking. The hotel’s full from Thursday but he said he has to go home to his business anyway.’ She hesitated. ‘He’s a nice guy, isn’t he?’

  ‘Really nice. Always smiley. It would be horrible here without either of you.’ Amy took down her hair from its ponytail and began to comb the strands with her fingers.

  Doling out the last of the wine, Sofia’s smile made a reappearance. ‘I don’t think it would pan out, me working at Hotel Alba, even if I wanted a job there. My uncle told me a load of stuff.’

  Amy sat, wide-eyed, as Sofia launched into this whole big story about her uncle being in love with her mum in the old days. It was like something off the telly, one of those saddo films her mum liked to watch on cable.

  She got so distracted that she almost forgot about Sofia maybe leaving Casa Felice. And before she could bring it up again Sofia was already asking, ‘So, what about your family? Have you talked things over with your mum yet?’

  Maybe it was that second glass of wine or Sofia confiding in her, but Amy suddenly found words flying from her lips. ‘Nothing’s changed. My mum’s still been keeping her scabby secret all my life, my dad’s still not my dad, my brothers are only my half-brothers.’

  Silence. Amy looked at Sofia’s frozen expression. ‘Yeah, I know. I never told you the whole story, did I? I found out my mum had a thing with some bloke just before she married my dad – the man I thought was my dad – and so he’s not my dad.’ She stopped, heart tripping up just at hearing the words on the air. ‘I mean the person I thought was my dad is my stepdad.’

  ‘I get it. That’s really crap for you.’ Sofia slipped a comforting arm around her. She hesitated. ‘And for the dad you’ve always known. How did he take it?’

  Amy felt tears begin to trickle down her cheeks. ‘He was ho-horrified. Dead hurt. He shouted at my mum, said she was just like her weird friend that visited from England – a right trollop. She really cried. I just stoo-stood there. I couldn’t believe it. Then I had to go and be sick. I got really angry and didn’t want to talk to either of them so I left.’ She sucked in a breath that caught on a sob. ‘I feel as if I don’t know who I am. I’ve lost the old me. It’s like when I came round from anaesthetic when I had my tonsils out and was so disoriented I couldn’t stop crying.’

  Sofia stroked a lock of Amy’s hair back from her face. ‘Did you never talk that sense of disorientation through with them? Did your mum explain what happened?’

  ‘She just said she got drunk at a friend’s hen night and went with some local man. She said she truly thought I was Dad’s, not this bloke’s.’

  ‘That’s probably true.’

  ‘She said she got unlucky.’ Amy could hear the hurt in her own voice. She sounded like Louis when he got pissed off with Kris. In a minute she’d say ‘THASSNOTFAIR!’ all in one word, like Louis did.

  ‘Aw.’ Sofia clicked her tongue. ‘Sweetie, I bet she didn’t mean that the way you’ve just made it sound. How could it be unlucky to have a beautiful, fantastic, clever, kind daughter like you? Probably she meant that the odds were very much against her getting found out.’ Sofia hopped up, jogged into her room and reappeared seconds later with a box of tissues.

  ‘Listen,’ she said, passing them to Amy. ‘If you ever get to a few weeks before your wedding, whenever that might be, without having made a mistake or two with men, I’ll be astonished. Just about everybody gets drunk and has sex with the wrong person at some time. Really. Everyone.’

  Blowing her nose, Amy gazed at her blearily. ‘Have you?’

  Sofia rolled her eyes. ‘OK, except me, because I didn’t go out as much as some people because of Dad. I did nearly do it.’ Sofia brought up her hands to cover her eyes. Amy suspected she was over-egging the drama as a distraction technique but was too interested to complain. ‘Dad went into hospital for a few days, just when someone dropped out of a trip to London to see Dirty Dancing and go on the Eye and all that tourist stu
ff. A neighbour was the organiser and offered me the place. Dad was really keen I should go – he felt guilty at how much of my time was spent helping him. So I went and after the show we went back to the hotel bar. I got talking to this lanky guy with terrible dress sense and a boring haircut.’

  ‘And you ended up—?’

  ‘Not quite.’ Sofia fanned her red cheeks. ‘He was too drunk. Mortifying, or what?’

  Her grin was so impish that Amy found herself grinning back. Then she sobered. ‘At least you didn’t end up pregnant with a baby you didn’t want.’

  Sofia tucked Amy’s hair back behind her shoulder so she could look into her face. ‘Has your mum ever actually said she didn’t want you?’

  Amy shrugged.

  ‘I’m sure she did want you. Or she would have terminated the pregnancy, wouldn’t she?’

  Amy shrugged again. ‘Perhaps it was too late by the time she realised.’ But, actually, that possibility had never once occurred to her. It did make her feel a teeny bit less crap.

  Sofia’s voice sank to a murmur. ‘You know you could just ring your mum and talk to her, don’t you? Explain your feelings.’

  ‘No way!’ Amy couldn’t even imagine it. Couldn’t bear to. When you packed your bags and left home because your mum had acted unacceptably you couldn’t just phone up as if it had never happened. ‘No,’ she repeated more loudly and definitely.

  ‘How about your dad? Did you ever speak to him? I feel a bit sorry for him, being the innocent party.’

  Studying her fingernails, Amy frowned. ‘But he’s not my dad. He used to be, but now I can’t even call him that.’