by Sarah Morgan
‘What time does pizza night start?’
Meg stared at him. ‘Y-you’re coming? Seriously?’
‘I wouldn’t miss it. What time?’
‘Oh—er—indecently early. Six o’clock. Jamie goes to bed around eight so we have to eat around then. That’s way too early for you, I’m sure, so maybe we should just—’
‘Six it is.’
She looked at him helplessly. What was this all about? Why did he want to eat pizza at her house? Why had he helped her child? ‘Dino—’
‘Would you mind talking to the relatives of the child who fell off his bike? They’re worried about their son being discharged home. They need a head injury information sheet and some of your special brand of “I’m-a-mother-too” reassurance.’
‘Right. I’ll do that.’ He was behaving as if there was nothing strange about the fact that he was coming round for dinner. As if it were something they did all the time. She had no idea what was going through his mind. Unless it was the fact that her mother had yelled the word ‘sex’ across the whole valley and he thought he may as well make the most of what was on offer. Perhaps he’d decided that the mistletoe was some sort of hint. On the other hand, a man like Dino wasn’t exactly going to find himself short of offers or opportunity. Mistletoe or no mistletoe, he didn’t need to settle for a girl who didn’t paint her nails.
One thing she knew for sure—once he’d tasted her food, he wouldn’t be coming back for more.
Dino pulled up outside the cottage and tried to remember when he’d last eaten a meal at six o’clock in the evening. Locking the car, he smiled. Probably the same time he’d last eaten pizza.
Another fresh fall of snow had dusted the path and he saw a small pair of blue Wellington boots covered in pictures of Spiderman abandoned on the step.
As he waited for Meg to answer the door, he studied the wreath. It was a festive twist of ivy, pine cones and fat, crimson holly berries. Looking closer, he saw that it was just a bit haphazard, and suddenly had a vision of Meg and Jamie making it together, laughing at the kitchen table. A family preparing for Christmas.
He was eying the mistletoe thoughtfully when the door was dragged open and he was hit by light and warmth.
Jamie stood there, a grin on his face, Rambo wagging his tail by his side. ‘You made it. Come in.’ Unselfconscious, he grabbed Dino’s hand and pulled him inside. ‘You have to choose your topping. Pepperoni, olive, ham or mushroom. Usually I’m only allowed to pick three but Mum might let you have more as you’re the guest.’
Dino followed him into the kitchen and found Meg, red in the face, making pizzas on a scrubbed wooden table.
‘Hi—you made it. That’s great.’ She looked flustered. White patches of flour dusted the front of her apron and the arms of her jumper. Her hair was clipped to the top of her head and tumbled around her face in a riot of haphazard curls.
Her eyes changed colour, he noticed, according to her mood. Tonight they were a deep, sparkling blue like one of the lakes on a summer’s day. ‘I bought you something to drink.’ He held out the bottle and she looked at it and gave a hesitant laugh.
‘Champagne? I don’t know what you’re expecting, Dino, but what we have here is a basic pizza with a few toppings. Nothing fancy.’
‘Champagne goes with everything.’ He looked around him. Her kitchen was warm and homely, delightfully haphazard, like everything else in her life. At one end of the table there was a stack of papers and unopened post, which she’d obviously cleared to one side in order to make the pizza. Brightly coloured alphabet magnets decorated the door of the fridge and the walls were adorned with Jamie’s paintings and photographs.
Intrigued, Dino strolled across the room to take a closer look. There were photographs of Meg and Jamie wrestling in the snow. One of Jamie in his school uniform, looking proud. Jamie and Rambo. Meg and Rambo. A family.
Something pulled inside him and suddenly he felt cold, despite the warmth thumping from the green range cooker that was the heart of the kitchen. This was what a childhood was supposed to be like. A million small experiences, explored together and retained for ever in the memory. A foundation for life. In comparison to the rich tapestry of family life spread around the kitchen, his own experience seemed barren and empty. His mother had paid expensive photographers to record various carefully selected moments and the subsequent pictures had been neatly catalogued and stored. Whatever artwork he’d brought home from school had been swiftly disposed of because his mother had hated clutter of any sort. The walls of his home had also been adorned with priceless paintings that no one could touch. His mother would no more have displayed one of his childish drawings than she would be seen without her make-up.
Pushing aside that bitter thought, Dino opened a glass-fronted cupboard and helped himself to two tall stemmed glasses.
As he popped the cork on the champagne, he realised that Meg was watching him as she shaped dough into rounds.
‘Sorry, we’re in a bit of a mess.’
‘I like it.’ He poured champagne into the glasses. ‘This is a lovely cottage. How long have you lived here?’
‘The house belonged to my grandfather. When he died my dad fixed it up and then they rented it to tourists for a while. Then I had Jamie and needed somewhere to live, so they stopped renting it out and it became mine. I love it here. The views are incredible, the walking is fantastic and in the summer we sail on the lake, don’t we, Jamie?’
‘Grandma bought me my own boat. It’s a single-hander.’ Jamie climbed onto a stool. ‘Do you like boats, Dino?’
‘I’ve never had much to do with boats.’ He put a glass of champagne down next to her hand. ‘But I know I’d love sailing.’
‘Sometimes I capsize. That’s the best part.’
Meg finished the last pizza base and gave a sigh of relief, as if preparing the food had been a test she’d faced and passed. ‘OK, guys, over to you.’ She pushed two of the bases across the table towards them and picked up her glass. ‘Cheers. What do you say in Italy?’
‘Salute!’
Her glass made a gentle ringing sound as she tapped it against his. ‘Salute. To superheroes and pizza night.’ She sipped the champagne. ‘Oh, that’s so good. I’ve never tasted anything like it. Where did you get it from? Is it expensive?’
‘I picked it up last time I was home,’ Dino avoided the question, putting the open bottle in the fridge. He looked at his pizza base. ‘I’m going to need some help here, Jamie. Do you have any advice for me?’
Jamie was holding a bowl of tomato sauce. ‘I can do yours for you if you like.’
‘That would be great, thanks. You obviously have more experience than me.’ Dino sat down on a chair, watching Meg. Her face was pink from shaping dough and a few more wisps of blonde hair had escaped from the clip on her head. He’d seen her handle the most complex medical situations without working up a sweat, but here in the kitchen, she was definitely sweating.
‘OK, Jamie, I’m ready for tomato.’ She pushed her pizza base towards her son. ‘You know what to do. Not too much or you’ll make it soggy.’
Dino leaned across and helped himself to an olive. ‘So how was school today, Jamie? Any trouble from Freddie?’
‘Nope. Not today.’ Jamie carefully spread tomato sauce on the three pizzas. ‘He wants to be my friend now.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Not really. It’s only because he wants a ride in your car.’ Jamie picked up a bowl of grated cheese and Dino looked at Meg. She was staring at her son and there was so much love in her eyes that he felt something squeeze his insides.
‘You’re pretty wise about people for someone who is only seven years old. I wish I’d known that much at your age.’
Jamie pulled a face. ‘Yesterday he didn’t want to be my friend, and today he does. I haven’t changed. The only thing that’s changed is that he knows you’re my friend.’
‘That doesn’t matter, Jamie.’ Meg’s voice was husky. ‘As long
as he isn’t being nasty, that’s the important thing.’
‘I think the reason he picks on me is so that he doesn’t get picked on himself.’
Startled by that insight, Dino put down his glass. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘The way people behave…’ Jamie sprinkled cheese over the pizza bases. ‘There’s usually a reason. My mum taught me that. People are complicated. What you see on the outside isn’t what’s on the inside.’
‘Right.’ Dino looked at Meg but she was busy chopping mushrooms.
‘You can’t always believe what people say,’ Jamie said stoutly, plopping olives and pepperoni onto one of the pizzas. ‘Sometimes people say things they don’t mean. And sometimes they don’t say things they do mean. Do you want pepperoni and olives?’
‘Sì, grazie,’ Dino said absently, his mind on the conversation. Sometimes people say things they don’t mean. Was that what had happened with Jamie’s father? ‘So who is your best friend at school?’
‘Luke Nicholson.’
‘Sean and Ally’s youngest son.’ Meg took another sip of her champagne. ‘Luke is a really nice boy. Sean’s been taking the two of them climbing. Jamie, that’s enough for one pizza. Do one of the others now.’
Jamie loaded the other pizza bases with toppings. ‘If we lived in Italy, could we eat this all the time? I bet you made loads of pizzas with your parents when you were little, Dino.’
Dino thought about the atmosphere of his parents’ home. On the rare occasions he’d been allowed to join his parents for dinner, it had been an excruciatingly formal occasion with no concession to the presence of children. His sister and he had endured countless long, boring evenings when he would rather have been playing or asleep.
‘I didn’t make pizza, but I always wanted to.’ At the time he hadn’t imagined that kids did that sort of thing with their parents, but clearly he was wrong.
Jamie pushed a base across to him. ‘Go on, then. The cheese and tomato is the hard part and I’ve done that for you. You just have to choose what else you want.’
Smiling, Dino sprinkled olives, pepperoni and mushrooms and Meg slid the pizzas into the oven.
Jamie jumped down from his stool. ‘I’m going to watch TV until it’s ready. Don’t let them burn, Mum.’ He vanished from the room and Meg gave Dino an apologetic glance.
‘Sorry.’ She started clearing the various bowls from the table. ‘Not what you’re used to, I’m sure.’
‘No. It’s better.’
‘Don’t patronise us, Dino.’
‘Is that what you think I’m doing?’
‘You just admitted you didn’t eat pizza when you were a child.’
‘Not because I didn’t want to. Usually my sister and I ate alone in the kitchen with one of the nannies while my parents entertained in the dining room.’ He looked around her kitchen. ‘And the kitchen was nothing like this one.’
‘You mean messy.’
‘I mean homely.’ He picked up one of Jamie’s paintings that had been tidied to one side of the table. ‘He’s such an important part of your life. The evidence is everywhere.’
‘That’s because I don’t spend enough time cleaning the place.’ She blew the strands of hair away from her eyes. ‘I’m not a natural housekeeper.’
‘You’re proud of him. It shows. And the place looks fine to me. No kid wants to live in a mausoleum.’
Startled by the sudden abruptness in Dino’s voice, Meg risked asking a personal question. ‘Is that how your house felt when you were growing up?’
Dino pushed his chair away from the table and stretched out his legs. ‘We had paintings wired to alarm systems that connected straight through to the police station. Once I brought half the Rome police force round to the house by kicking a football indoors.’
‘Ah.’
‘My parents’ child-care strategy was that children shouldn’t be seen or heard. Which meant that basically we lived separate lives.’
A tiny frown creased her brow. ‘I admit that doesn’t sound great.’
‘It wasn’t.’ Dino spoke quietly, not wanting to disturb too many of the memories. ‘So perhaps now you’ll believe me when I say I’m enjoying pizza night.’
‘Oh, well—good.’
‘You do this every Friday?’
‘Yes. Unless I’m working.’ She washed her hands and removed her apron. ‘I wanted to thank you again for what you did yesterday. It’s made all the difference to Jamie. And to me. It was such a relief to see him bouncing out of school today instead of slinking along. I can always tell what sort of day he’s had by the way he walks out of the building.’
‘It was tough not intervening. I wanted to pick Freddie up by the collar and give him a talking to.’
‘I think you found a more effective way of silencing him. Hopefully it will all calm down now.’ Reaching up, she closed the blind in the kitchen. ‘It’s snowing again. Did you hear that they’ve issued an avalanche warning? Can you believe that in the Lake District?’
‘We have had half a metre of snow in some places. Add to that a high wind and you end up with drifts that are only loosely attached to the mountainside. The snow pack needs time to consolidate.’
‘I suppose you’re used to it, having been brought up in the Alps. Apparently it’s lethal underfoot. Some of the edges are literally breaking away and if you’re standing underneath at the time, you’re in trouble. They’re warning people not to venture out. But people will, of course. There’s always someone who thinks they’re cleverer than the weather.’ The conversation was light, skating over the surface of the personal, but he felt the undercurrent of tension and he knew she felt it, too.
Since that moment in the tent on the mountain, everything had changed.
Every interaction they shared had another level—something deeper.
Sensing that this wasn’t the moment to explore that further, Dino looked at the dog stretched out in front of the range cooker, enjoying the warmth. ‘Is Rambo trained to search in snow?’
‘Yes. Whenever we have snow we do extra training because obviously there aren’t that many opportunities around here. But it’s a different skill. A search dog is trained to find the person, bark, and then return to the handler. They carry on doing that until they’ve drawn the handler to the body.’ She bent down and stroked Rambo’s head, making a fuss of him. ‘When they’re working in snow they have to stay with the scent and dig. He’s good at it.’
‘How long have you had him?’ Dino crouched down to stroke the dog too and Meg immediately pulled her hand away.
‘He was my eighteenth birthday present from my parents. I was already involved with the mountain rescue team. I used to help out manning the base and I worked as a volunteer body. That means losing yourself on a mountain so that the dogs can practise finding you. Then, when I had Rambo, I trained him. It took longer than usual because halfway through I discovered I was pregnant and that—well, let’s just say that complicated things.’
He wanted to ask her how, but he was afraid of triggering the same response he’d seen a few days earlier when he’d asked if Jamie’s father was still on the scene. ‘So you moved into this cottage?’
‘My dad died the same year I had Jamie.’ She pulled a face. ‘It was a truly terrible year. I lived with Mum for a while, it worked better that way. We were both on our own and somehow we got through it together. Then she suggested I move into Lake Cottage. I’d always loved it and it’s only half a mile from her house so it’s perfect. If I’m called out in the night on a rescue I just drop Jamie with her, or she comes over here. I’m lucky. How about you? How did you get involved with mountain rescue?’
‘When I stopped competitive skiing, I started off working as a ski guide to earn money before I went to university. Then I did mountain rescue.’ He wanted to ask whether she’d been on her own right from the start. Whether Jamie’s father had walked out before he was born. Had she married the guy?
‘How did you end up in Englan
d?’
He’d been escaping. ‘I wanted a change. Do I smell pizza?’
Meg gasped and grabbed a cloth. ‘Jamie will kill me if I’ve burnt them.’ She pulled them out of the oven and Dino smiled as he looked at the bubbling cheese and perfectly cooked crust.
‘I thought you told me you were a lousy cook.’
‘I am normally. You were the one who reminded me to get them out of the oven before they were burnt to a cinder.’ She cut the pizzas into slices. ‘Jamie! It’s ready!’
They ate pizza together and he watched as she listened attentively to Jamie’s questions and answered them. She was interested in her child, he thought, and that gave the boy confidence. He tried to remember a time when his mother had given him that much of her time, but failed. Families were all different, but this—this was the way he would have wanted his to be.
After the pizza had been cleared away and Jamie had gone to get ready for bed, Dino decided that this was the right time to ask the question he’d been waiting to ask. ‘I have two tickets to the Christmas ball.’
Her shoulders tensed. ‘Good for you. I hope you have a nice time.’
‘I’ll pick you up at eight o’clock.’
It took a moment for his words to sink in, but when they did her entire face changed. The tension that had been simmering below the surface bubbled up. ‘Me? No way. I don’t go to that sort of thing.’
‘Why not?’
‘For a start, I don’t dance.’
‘Pathetic excuse.’
‘That was just one. I have loads more. I can give you a list.’
‘And I’m not going to be impressed by any of them.’ Dino wondered why it was such a big deal to her. Judging from the expression on her face, he might have just asked her to have his babies.
Was it him? he wondered. Or men in general?