‘You are always cold,’ he says. ‘Let me keep you warm.’
I let myself be pulled against him gratefully, for once simply enjoying the sensation of his body against my own. I wait to feel uncomfortable, but the jitters never arrive. Instead I just feel calm and at peace. When we reach the corner where the walkway curls back down into the water, Marco clutches me even tighter.
‘Don’t jump!’ he cries, laughing as I go to hit him. ‘There is so much to live for!’
‘Idiot,’ I chide, but I’m laughing along with him.
There’s just enough room for us to sit down at this spot and lean back against the wall, but Marco is so much taller than me that he’s forced to bend his knees to stop his feet from trailing in the lake, whereas the heels of my boots dangle just over the edge.
Gino and Nico are busy digging holes in the soft earth of the shore a few feet away, but Bruno has predictably followed Marco and me, and is now curled up in a ball on my lap. I know that if I lift my chin and turn my head, then my lips will be level with Marco’s, and a thrill scampers through me. I want to ask him what he’s feeling, but it seems cheap somehow. I don’t want to shatter the strange ambience of the moment, so I entertain myself by stroking Bruno until he falls asleep, his gentle snores making both of us quiver with laughter.
‘Taggie,’ Marco says, his arm still around my shoulder.
‘Yes?’
‘What is the best piece of advice you have ever been given?’
It’s a good question, but one I hadn’t been expecting him to ask, so I take my time formulating an answer while he waits, patiently, right beside me.
‘Well,’ I begin, shuffling forwards a fraction so I can face him without our noses touching. ‘When I was still very young, I can clearly remember being set this piece of homework, which was to write a few sentences about what we wanted to be when we grew up, and then draw a picture of ourselves above it.’
He nods, understanding.
‘All my friends came back with pictures they’d drawn of themselves as nurses or doctors, firemen or teachers or football players – but I just drew a picture of myself, albeit older and taller – always taller.’
‘You didn’t know what you wanted to be?’ he guesses, but I shake my head.
‘Not exactly. I didn’t know which job I wanted to do, but my dad had always said to me that the most important person you can grow up to be is yourself. He told me that as long as you stay true to who you are, and what makes you happy, then the rest will work itself out.’
‘And did it?’ he asks, fixing me with a look I can’t decipher.
I smile sheepishly. ‘Any day now.’
‘But you are still you,’ he states, and I nod.
‘Yes. I always have been. I guess I always will be. I’m thirty-two now, so I don’t imagine I’ll change much.’
‘You are lucky,’ he murmurs.
‘To be thirty-two?’ I joke, even though his expression hints at something far more serious.
His eyelids seem to be heavier today, or maybe it’s just the sun causing them to droop.
‘I wish I had known you when I was a little boy,’ he continues, his face more intense than before. ‘I was not a happy child.’
‘Why not?’ I ask, ready to be sad for him.
‘I was bullied.’
‘You?’ I exclaim, unable to believe that the tall, proud and self-assured man next to me was ever anything less than super-confident.
‘Yes,’ he confirms, meeting my eyes. ‘I wanted to be someone else for a long time. I did not like being me.’
‘But you’re amazing,’ I blurt, slapping a mortified hand over my mouth and waking Bruno up in the process.
Marco grins. ‘Grazie.’
‘Tell me what happened,’ I urge, shifting until my knee is touching his thigh. I want to know this man, to drink in every detail and learn him off by heart, to see inside his mind and figure out the way he feels. I want it all.
‘Please,’ I add.
And so, Marco takes a breath, picks up my cold hands, and begins his story. He tells me that he was born and brought up in Como by his Italian father and English mother, both of whom doted on him. When he was just six, however, their marriage collapsed and his mother moved back home to Yorkshire to be close to her family, with her son spending half his time with her, and the other half back in Como. Teased at the schools in both countries due to his strange Anglo-Italian accent, and unable to build any proper friendships due to his constant back-and-forth lifestyle, Marco began to struggle. He felt especially miserable in Leeds, where there were no lakes and mountains to soothe him, and tried to run away from home on more than one occasion. When his mother remarried, Marco, who was only fifteen at the time, begged his parents to let him move to Italy permanently, and an agreement was reached.
‘I used to come to this beach when I was a child,’ he explains. ‘Just the same as you. I came to drink it all in before I had to go back to Leeds, and I would sit here for hours, trying to memorise every little detail, so I could take it all with me. It was what I did to feel brave,’ he adds, and I feel my heart go out to the poor, isolated Marco of so many years ago.
‘A few kids tried to bully me at school,’ I confide, grinning wickedly. ‘They soon regretted it.’
He chuckles with pleasure and holds my hands a smidgeon tighter.
‘I can believe that,’ he says. ‘I almost feel sorry for them.’
‘Oi!’ I laugh. ‘I’m not a monster – I’m just a bit feisty, that’s all.’
‘You are extraordinary,’ he proclaims, talking over me as I go to disagree. ‘You know it is the truth. If I’d had a friend like you when I was a boy, someone so strong and so true to themselves, then maybe I would have been happy.’
‘But maybe you would not be the same you,’ I argue gently. ‘And I like this you.’
He lifts his eyes, hopeful. ‘You like me?’
I nod, my smile communicating what I cannot put into words. So much of what Marco and I say to one another seems to be through looks alone, as if we’re communicating on a different wave length to everyone else. I like the idea of us having that connection, and I’m suddenly overcome with a need to touch him, to feel the solidness of him and know that he’s real, even though he’s right here. Right here in the very same spot that we found each other.
‘It’s nice to be here with you,’ I say, gazing round at the still water, the proud boats, the blue mountains.
‘Yes.’ He squeezes my fingers. ‘The place we met.’
‘Friends?’ I ask, leaning back so that Marco can put his arm around me again.
‘Of course,’ he replies, pulling me close. ‘I think now we will be friends forever.’
As the wind picks up and rustles the trees, Marco brings his hand up and strokes first my cheek, then my jaw, then my hair off my face. A moment passes where all I see are those mesmerising green eyes of his, gazing down at me intently. Then he bends his head slowly, so very slowly, and presses his lips against mine.
53
Lucy
I haven’t seen my mum since October. She insisted on coming down to London to take Julia out for a birthday dinner, and I was invited along to join them. Stubbornly, though, I deliberately didn’t book the day off, and so of course ended up working late at the hospital and only made it to the restaurant after the two of them had sunk a couple of bottles of Prosecco. My mum, tipsy and shrill, had accused me of being judgemental when I told her to keep her voice down, and I’d stormed out soon afterwards. Most un-Lucy-like behaviour, but then she always did bring out the grumpy teenager in me – even before I was one.
As soon as Pete and I landed at Heathrow Airport yesterday afternoon, however, I felt an overwhelming urge to talk to her – and not just over the phone or via email, but sitting down opposite her. I wanted to take in her expressions, hear the tone of her voice, watch her body language. For this to be an honest conversation. And it feels important to me that we do it in person.<
br />
I didn’t even bother dropping my case off at the flat in Finsbury Park. I just caught the tube to Liverpool Street station and got a train straight out here to Suffolk, where my dad was waiting to collect me. I spent last night at the family home, taking comfort from the familiar surroundings and Dad’s home cooking, and now it’s the third morning of the year and I’m standing here, on David the pig farmer’s gravel drive, watching the shape of my mum grow bigger through the frosted glass panels beside the front door.
‘Lucy!’
She’s understandably surprised to see me.
‘Hi, Mum.’
She bends forward to give me a quick hug, leaning over rather than taking a step out of the house. It’s been raining all night and she’s not wearing any shoes. From the look of her outfit, my guess is that I’ve just interrupted her in the middle of one of her many home workout DVDs.
‘I hope it’s not a bad time?’ I say, walking boldly over the threshold and wiping my boots on the mat.
‘Not at all,’ she replies, a hand patting absent-mindedly at her blonde beehive. She always wears her hair up in some sort of elaborate pile, my mum. Heaven knows how long it must be by now.
‘David not here?’ I enquire politely, following her into the kitchen. It’s achingly modern in here, with granite worktops, polished chrome fittings, and one of those truck-sized fridges with an ice dispenser on the front.
‘He’s gone to have a look at some pigs that are for sale,’ she says. ‘Tea?’
‘That’d be nice, thanks,’ I reply, shaking my head when she thrusts a basket at me containing a range of fruit and herbal teabags in little packets. ‘Builder’s is fine.’
‘Just like your dad,’ she quips without thinking, but we both ignore the comment as if she’d never said it.
‘Happy New Year, by the way,’ I say after a few seconds, and she turns from where she’s been resolutely staring at the kettle.
‘Thanks.’ She smiles. ‘You were in Italy, weren’t you?’
I nod, swallowing down the lump that’s formed in my throat.
‘Lake Como.’
‘You always did love it there,’ she says, stirring in the milk. ‘Is it still just as beautiful?’
I think for a moment.
‘It’s unforgettable, that’s for sure.’
If she notices a strange tone to my voice, she doesn’t react, instead beckoning for me to follow her through into the living room, where I perch awkwardly on the edge of one of the white leather sofas. There’s a yoga mat unrolled not far from a huge, flat screen TV, and a woman with waist-length dreadlocks has been paused in an uncomfortable pose on the screen, one of her feet almost touching the back of her head.
My mum notices me looking.
‘Yoga,’ she explains. ‘Dave got it for me for Christmas.’
I try to smile, but it comes out all lopsided and insincere. It’s not that Dave is particularly a bad person, he’s just not my dad. The two of us have done a splendid job of basically ignoring each other for the past eight years, and it’s a practice that suits us just fine. And anyway, it’s not Dave that I’m here to talk to; it’s my mum. Now that I’m sitting here, though, with nobody else to steal her attention away from me, I’m finding it hard to get the words out.
‘Are you OK, Lu?’
The tears are on my cheeks before I can stop them, and my mum immediately gets up from her armchair and hurries across her expensive cream carpet to wrap her arms around me. I can’t remember the last time she hugged me, and this makes me cry even more.
‘What’s happened?’ she asks. ‘Have you and Julia had a row?’
I shake my head.
‘Is your dad OK? He’s not ill or anything, is he?’
She sounds genuinely fearful for a second, and I shake my head again.
‘No, it’s not that, but …’
I take a deep, shuddering breath.
‘Mum, why did you really leave Dad?’
She peels herself away and looks at me.
‘You know why, Lucy.’ As she says it, she sighs, presumably as fed up of answering the question as I am of getting an unsatisfactory answer. I know that she fell out of love with him, just like Pete fell out of love with Taggie, and my ex, Spencer, did with me – but what I need to know is why. It’s no longer enough for her to claim she has no idea; I want her to try harder than that. It scares me so much, this idea of waking up one day to find that you don’t love your partner any more – or vice versa. I want to know that it won’t happen, not to me.
‘I broke up with Pete,’ I say then, and watch her wince in sympathy. Her grey eyes are so like mine that sometimes when I look at her, it’s as if I’m staring at a future version of myself.
‘Oh, you poor, poor darling,’ she says, brushing the hair away from my damp cheeks. ‘He must be an idiot if he can’t see how wonderful you are.’
Of course, she assumes that he broke up with me. It’s not as if I don’t have experience of being dumped and cheated on and trodden into the dirt – but she could at least have checked first.
‘It was me who ended things actually,’ I say, sniffing and moving my head away. ‘Everything changed in Italy, and I told him I needed some time alone.’
She glances round to where her tea is sitting abandoned, beside mine, on the glass-topped coffee table. There’s a coaster under each mug, and a ring of condensation has formed around them both.
‘Aren’t you going to ask what happened?’ I say then, my voice dry, although where would I even start if she did? With the miscarriage? With Taggie? With my own insecurities?
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she replies, staring down at her socks. ‘All that matters to me is that you’re happy.’
I let out a hard laugh.
‘Really, Mum? That’s all you care about?’
‘Lucy,’ she begins, but I don’t let her finish.
‘It didn’t seem to bother you how happy I was when you ran off and left us,’ I mutter. ‘It didn’t faze you in the slightest when I told you I’d been cheated on by Spencer.’
She tried to interrupt, but I barrel on and talk over her protestations.
‘I used to be just like Dad, you know. I let Spencer walk all over me like you walked all over him – but this time I haven’t let it happen. This time I chose to go.’
‘I didn’t walk all over your father,’ she says quietly. ‘We talked everything through and he told me I should go. He wanted me to be happy, and I didn’t want to lie to him any more.’
‘But he was so sad,’ I argue, tears threatening again. ‘He still is!’
She shakes her head. ‘I’m sorry for that, I really am, but there isn’t anything else I can do. The truth is, your father has behaved like a bit of a martyr throughout all this. I bet he refuses to even try to meet someone else, doesn’t he? Because that would feel like giving in – and I think he enjoys the attention you and Julia give him.’
‘Don’t say that!’ I snap, angry with her partly because I suspect there may be a grain or two of truth in what she’s saying.
‘Lucy, listen to me,’ she says, her voice infuriatingly calm. ‘Sometimes being sad isn’t a choice – especially when emotions are still raw. But other times you do have a choice. You can either let what you’re feeling engulf you, or you can do your best to overcome it. People can learn to cope with awful, horrible things when they put their mind to it – but your dad has never even tried.’
I think about Pete, allowing himself to try for a happy ending with me so soon after losing a girl he once loved and the child they would have had together; and I picture Taggie, so broken but still so strong, and that message she sent to Pete on our last day in Lake Como. It’s OK, she had written. I forgive you. All I want is for both of us to be happy.
She lost so much more than I ever have, and yet she’s been able to crawl through to the other side of her misery and come back fighting. I know what Taggie would say if she was here right now – she would tell me to cheer up, to
wipe my eyes, to stop being such a drip and to woman the hell up. When I told Pete in Como that I needed a break, he looked crushed, but I think he understood where I was coming from. He listened while I explained how confused I felt, and was patient and kind. Once we’d talked it all through, it was him who suggested that I should come here and talk to my mum. He told me that it was important to forgive her, because, he added, ‘She’s your mum, Lulu.’ And he was right, too. But this still didn’t take away from the fact that Pete and I had been through more than some couples do in a lifetime in the space of a few days, and it had all just got too much for me. I needed to take a step back to think about what had happened, but also to spend some time with myself for once. I need to be enough for me, but it’s not easy.
‘I love him,’ I say, the last words crumbling into a sob, and again my mum wraps me up in her arms, telling me over and over that it will be OK, that I’m beautiful, that she loves me. It’s exactly what I needed, and what I’ve been missing for so many years – just a cuddle from my mum.
She’s saying all the same things that Pete said to me, but I wasn’t ready to listen. I wanted to know that the love we had was infallible and untouchable; I wanted to know beyond any shadow of a doubt that he was the one, and that we would never hurt one another – but of course, no such assurance exists. All you can do is be brave and take a chance. Jump in with both feet and hope for the best, just as Julia and I once did on the shores of that beautiful Italian lake, so young and so free to take on everything the world had to offer. And it’s all still there, that same world; it’s all still there for the taking.
‘You know, Lucy, you’re not your dad and you’re not me, either,’ Mum says then. ‘You are you – and nobody can be a better version of you than you can. Just because I left your dad doesn’t mean that Pete will leave you, and nothing that anyone else has done can change who you are – only you can do that.’
It sounds so bloody simple, but she’s right. Why is it that hearing something from your mum makes you believe it more?
The Place We Met Page 31