by Victoria Fox
We step into Reception, but the desk is empty. There is a notice board tacked with fliers: timetables for afternoon trips, tea and cake in the garden, a menu for that evening’s supper. It’s a far cry from the wild, ruthless glamour of the Barbarossa, but Vivien won’t see it that way. She will enjoy the orderliness, the compact quiet, and most of all how every floor and wall is anonymous to her: no secrets or shadows.
I tap the bell. Gio Moretti steps up beside me. In his sixties, he remains a strikingly handsome man, and those eyes are something else.
‘Are you ready?’ I ask.
He turns to me, black and green, like dark sea crashing against an emerald shore. ‘I’ve waited this many years,’ he says. There is passion in his eyes that I once saw in my fantasies as a girl, imagining what true love looked like. There it is. Gio has it. ‘I don’t mind waiting a little longer.’
On the wall, the clock spits seconds. Tick, tick, tick…
My hands are shaking, so I put them in my pockets. I can’t believe he’s next to me. I can’t believe I’ve brought him back to her.
I was amazed when Gio turned up at my father’s door. I’d been difficult to find, he told me. Me? What about him? It transpired that he had been searching for me the entire time I had been searching for him – and so, of course, had never stayed put, moving from place to place, just as I was, each of us seeking out the other.
He had read about the Barbarossa burning down. My name came up, as it had in a few articles published at the time. ‘I had to find out who you were,’ he told me that day at Dad’s. It was clear I had worked at the castle, and had a friendship with Maximo Conti, whose aunt he had employed. ‘It didn’t take much,’ he said. ‘You knew more than you should. And I hoped you’d know where Vivien was.’
Ever since Gio materialised, all through our shared accounts, our painful revelations, the decision to come out here, every moment of the flight from London, I’ve been able to think about only one thing: Vivien’s face when she sees him again.
Will she cry? Will she laugh? Will she run to him? It’s so right to picture them holding each other, together. Looking at Gio, I can see he’s anticipating the same. ‘My arms have felt empty for too long,’ he told me, over one of our many cups of coffee, Dad bringing refills and hovering by the door, pretending not to listen.
During our confidences, I swung between trust and caution.
Why hadn’t he tried to contact his wife before? He had, he pledged, in the early days. But then… Too many vicious words had passed between them, toxic accusations that could never be retracted. Vivien wrote to him soon after he walked out – who could blame her? Gio certainly didn’t – telling him they had reached the end and she could never see him again. Isabella was his fault: Vivien had warned him from the start. ‘I should have kept trying,’ Gio disclosed. ‘But Vivien was waking me up to everything I already knew and didn’t want to face. I’d always known that Isabella was ruined – but I never opened my eyes and saw how much. There wasn’t a way back for her. She’d gone too far down the road to destruction, alone, mapping out her vengeance. I just never thought she would hurt me. Taking Alfie from us… Never mind Vivien longing to kill her, I’d kill her myself.’ He’d shaken his head. ‘There was always a part of Isabella I couldn’t get to, as much as I tried – and I ignored it because it frightened me. Alfie was our world. We loved him so much…’
On the counter, there is a leather-bound Visitor Book. Gio lifts the cover; his long fingers turn the pages delicately, respectfully. There is a column for entrants to record who they have come to see. Vivien’s name is absent.
Has she wished for company, or has she preferred life without it?
Please, help me. Help me to find my husband.
I did find him, Vivien, I think. I found him. He’s here. Look.
I ring the bell again.
It was a relief, for me, to be able to share Vivien’s desire: that she was as set on their reunion as he was. Gio’s reaction to her present state had been hard to read. He seemed to accept news of her illness with stoicism, as if he had thought such a thing inevitable. When I shared her deception over Adalina, he’d nodded, and said:
‘It’s a long time to be alone.’
I am about to call out, impatient now, when we catch sight of a frail woman at the end of the corridor. Gio moves before I do. I am not sure what I see: a flash of white-blonde hair, brittle shoulders, before she turns a corner and disappears.
‘There she is.’
I don’t know if he says it, or I do. But then we’re through the doors and following, Gio up front, and my knees feel wobbly and my heart is thumping.
What will Gio see when he looks at her? Will she be the woman he married or the woman he lost? Will she be the film star or the grieving mother? Will she be the wife he fought with, or the one he made love with? Will she be the girl who screamed at him, or the victim weeping over their son’s body? Watching Gio rush ahead, it strikes me how much guilt this man has carried. His quarantine has been self-imposed, a shame borne of his inability to see Isabella for the creature she really was.
But none of that matters now. Not now they’re going to be together again.
A shout rings out from behind us.
‘Signor!’ a nurse calls. ‘You can’t go through there!’
Gio pushes through a second set of doors and we round a bend. Several things happen at once. First there is the woman with the white-blonde hair, easing herself into a chair in the courtyard, and, now we see her face, she is not Vivien at all. Then there is an open suite right there next to us, and on the wall a tablet reading VIVIEN LOCKHART. And when we look inside, we cannot understand what we see.
The room is empty and the bed is stripped.
Silence.
The sheets are covered in winter sunlight. I see dust mites drifting through a shaft of warmth. Somewhere in the distance, a long way away, a dog barks.
‘Are you looking for Signora Lockhart?’
I turn to the nurse. She’s supposed to be mad, and I wish she were. I wish I saw anger instead of concern. I wait for Gio to speak. He doesn’t.
‘We’re looking for Vivien,’ I say, and the words are leaden in my mouth.
‘I’m very sorry,’ the nurse says. ‘Vivien died this morning.’
The room throbs, once, hard. Its edges dissolve, reassemble.
This morning we were boarding our flight. This morning we were nearly here.
She can’t be! I want to shout. She’s here! You’re lying!
But I know she’s not. I’m afraid to look at Gio, but he doesn’t make me.
Instead, he walks to Vivien’s bed. He runs a hand across those sun-kissed sheets and he bows his head. He murmurs something in Italian that I can’t hear.
‘I’ll leave you alone,’ says the nurse gently. ‘Vivien is in the chapel if you’d like to say goodbye. I’d be happy to show you where.’
She leaves us. I don’t know whether I should go too, let Gio be alone, but before I can decide he turns to me. I expect to read all sorts of emotions in his face, mirrors of my own a hundred times over – frustration at not having got here sooner, anger at the injustice of death, despair at how it has cheated us of our ending.
I read none of these things.
All I can see when I look at Gio Moretti is peace.
‘She’s with him now,’ he says.
My voice is a whisper. ‘But what about you?’
Gio smiles. ‘I won’t lose her again,’ he says, and passes his hand through the golden sunbeam, alive, shimmering, glimmering, light. ‘She’s everywhere.’
I close my eyes. I see Vivien walking away from the Barbarossa. I see the fire behind her, the ghosts dissolved. I see her start to run.
‘We were too late,’ I say.
He shakes his head.
‘No, we weren’t. This was Vivien’s time. She was ready.’
*
We step out into the cold. Gio and the nurse go ahead. The chapel is down
by the water, a modest building on the lip of the lake. It’s hard to imagine her there.
I stop. This is his, now. Theirs.
‘Thank you, Lucy,’ Gio says. ‘For bringing us back together.’
I want to say something meaningful, but my heart is heavy and I’m afraid I will cry. I nod, take his hand, and he squeezes life back into mine before letting it go.
I watch him walk across the lawn towards her, the gentle slope in the grass. There is a quiet ripple where the lake comes into shore, blue, clear, quiet. I feel cold, and wrap my coat tighter around me.
‘Hey…’
Max slips an arm round my shoulder and draws me close.
We stand together as the distance between Gio and Vivien gets narrower, Gio taking his time, not hurrying, for they have time now, whatever time is left.
Max kisses my hair and I lean into him, closing my eyes, safe.
‘You did the right thing,’ he says.
And, as I watch Gio open the door to the chapel, pausing briefly before he vanishes inside, I know that I did. I did the right thing for Vivien, and for Gio.
I did the right thing for me.
My mum knew it, when I didn’t. When I was ready to run, she told me to stay. She knew I wasn’t finished with the Barbarossa yet – and it wasn’t finished with me. I was meant to find this secret and the secret turned into a key, and the key would be the opening to the rest of my life. She knew that our worlds, Vivien’s and mine, had yet to discover their meeting point – and this was it. This day, this hour, this place.
I set Vivien Lockhart free, and she did the same for me. One fate balanced against the other, a future in exchange for a past.
I turn to Max and kiss him, the deepest kiss I’ve ever given, deep with desire and intent and every good thing I will never let slip away.
‘What was that for?’ He laughs, stroking my cheek.
‘We’re alive,’ I say.
‘We are.’ He smiles. ‘So come on.’
I take his hand and we walk back to the car, and he warms my fingers in his, shooting me that sideways smile that I love. ‘Buy you an ice cream?’ he says.
‘It’s freezing!’
‘Limoncello, then.’ He hugs me as we walk. ‘Warm you up a bit.’
As we drive away from the lake, I know in my heart that Vivien wasn’t alone when she died. She was with him. Her son. She saw his face, and he saw hers.
They were together.
There is wonder in this, I think, as we thread between soft green hills and out towards the road. There is wonder in Max’s hand as it rests on my knee. There is wonder in the sky, and the earth, and the burst of birdsong as bright and clear as an open window on a February morning. There is wonder in knowing that Vivien has found her peace – and that the end of her story might just be where mine begins.
EPILOGUE
It was always the same dream, and she moved into it for the last time just like any other. A bright light, gathering pace from a sheet of dark. A lucid thought, a picture more real than any she could fathom in waking hours. She stepped towards the light, arms open, weak, and she knew it was a trick, but suddenly there she was, blissful, forgetting, her lips on his forehead, his soft skin and his smell, inside the deepest parts of her, never gone, never dimmed, a candle shimmering against absolute black.
Come with me.
I’ve been waiting.
She thinks: I’ve been waiting too.
The water, still and cool and silver and quiet. Inviting.
Come with me…
It feels sublime to hold him, her son, her boy; for the first time he is real, the weight of him in her arms, living, bright, that wriggle of energy as he goes to break free and show her the way. She takes his hand and follows him into the glow.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to Clio Cornish, my exceptional editor, whose understanding of this story and ideas to make it better have been invaluable. To the whole team at HQ, especially Lisa Milton, Nick Bates, Louise McGrory and Jennifer Porter. To Lesley Jones for her sensitive copyedit. Also to Tory Lyne-Pirkis at Midas PR for being the best in the business – and the most fun too!
To Madeleine Milburn, Thérèse Coen and Hayley Steed, who work so passionately and brilliantly for my books.
To Mum, Dad, Toria and Mark for enabling me to write with a baby.
And to little Charlotte. I love you more than I can say.
Copyright
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2017
Copyright © Victoria Fox 2017
Victoria Fox asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Ebook Edition © March 2017 ISBN: 9781474050678