The Lemon Tree Café

by Cathy Bramley

  ‘I meant you and Rosanna. I’m gonna talk about sex.’

  Mum swallowed hard.

  Dad sprang to his feet and slipped his arms into his anorak. ‘I might stroll over to Ken’s for a pork pie.’

  Part of me wanted to laugh at being referred to as a child. I was thirty-two. The other part couldn’t leave the table quick enough.

  ‘Wait for me, Dad.’

  After Dad and I had dodged the puddles fetching him two mini pork pies, I spent the next fifteen minutes making myself useful, collecting empty mugs, loading the dishwasher and making toasties. Lia and Dad took Arlo out in his pushchair to get him to sleep and I kept sneaking looks at Mum and Nonna, trying to guess what was going on.

  They were sitting together, hands joined on the table, heads almost touching and at one point I spotted Nonna dabbing Mum’s tears away with a tissue. My heart went out to the pair of them.

  I made up my mind: I was going back in, sex or no sex. I had to know what Marco had done to Nonna. But before I had the chance to act on my decision, Verity phoned me.

  ‘Just taking a break from watching Tom teach the Sushi for Beginners course,’ she giggled. ‘I shouldn’t laugh but a man who’s been a right know-it-all the whole morning has just eaten a teaspoon of wasabi paste and now he’s making a noise like an elephant in labour.’

  ‘Sounds painful.’

  ‘There’s always one,’ she said pragmatically. ‘He’ll survive. Anyway, has that attractive blogger been back in, has he posted his article yet?’

  ‘No he hasn’t,’ I said. ‘Because he’s not a blogger and he’s barred. Permanently.’

  I filled her in on the latest goings-on with Garden Warehouse, bogus blogger boy’s blatant sabotage of the café’s business, copying our menu and our current downturn in customer numbers.

  ‘Keep the faith,’ she said. ‘That place has novelty value at the moment, that’s all. Whereas the Lemon Tree Café has the Carloni family. And you don’t get more authentic than that.’

  Except that we were, in fact, Benedettos … But I couldn’t tell Verity that. Nonna had asked us to keep it in the family for the moment.

  I glanced at the mostly empty tables. ‘I hope you’re right. They’re cheap and cheerful whereas we’re just—’

  I was about to say cheerful but at that moment Mum gasped and shouted ‘Bloody HELL’ as presumably Nonna filled her in on more details of her sex life than Mum had ever wanted to know and I couldn’t imagine that she was feeling too cheerful at all.

  I nearly leapt out of my seat when Doreen tapped my shoulder.

  ‘Your mum’s calling for you, love.’

  ‘Hang on, Verity, I’ll just see what Mum wants.’

  I walked through to the conservatory to find Nonna’s head buried in Mum’s neck. Mum rocked her back and forth making shushing noises against Nonna’s white hair as she wept.

  I lifted the phone to my ear to tell Verity I’d call her back later but the look on Mum’s face stopped me in my tracks.

  ‘Mum? What is it?’

  Her eyes burned with fury. ‘That monster, Marco. He killed my twin brother and could have killed your nonna and me too.’

  My jaw dropped. ‘Your twin?’

  She nodded tersely. ‘I had a brother, Gennaro. But my father, Marco,’ she spat his name out through gritted teeth, ‘made sure he never even got to take his first breath.’

  ‘Oh my God.’

  My skin prickled with goosebumps. I wrapped my arms round her and Nonna. Mum looked up to the ceiling and I could see she was trying to be strong.

  ‘It gets worse. He forced himself on her.’

  Blood rushed to my head. No. Not Nonna.

  ‘I’m sorry, Luisa,’ Nonna wept.

  My stomach twisted; she had nothing to apologize for.

  Mum lowered her voice. ‘Mamma was attacked by Marco Benedetto. He got her pregnant and her family made her marry him. And she has been keeping this secret all my life.’

  I was barely aware of my movements as I jumped up, stumbled backwards into the branches of a lemon tree and ran out of the café. I stood on the pavement letting the rain wash over me, my heart pounding fiercely in my chest.

  ‘Hello? Rosie? Are you there?’

  I looked down to see my phone in my hands. Verity was still on the line.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Nonna was raped too,’ I blurted out, wiping the rain from my face.

  ‘OH MY GOD. Who would do that to an old lady?’

  ‘No. Not recently. When she was … I don’t know, early twenties, I guess,’ I corrected her.

  My entire body was trembling: legs on the verge of collapse; hands shaking so much I could barely hold the phone to my ear.

  ‘Jesus. Even so. Poor thing. I can’t imagine – wait, you said “too”?’

  For a moment I didn’t understand what she meant. ‘What?’

  ‘You said Nonna was raped too? Who else, Rosie?’

  My lungs felt as if they’d been jammed in a vice; I couldn’t breathe. I gulped at the air, desperate for oxygen. Across the street on the village green was a bench. I’d go over and sit, regardless of the rain. I stepped off the pavement blindly between two parked cars.

  ‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘Forget I said anything.’

  I didn’t see the van approach. It drove straight through a big puddle and a huge plume of water from the cobbled street hit my lower half.

  ‘Oh my God, it’s you. It happened to you too, didn’t it?’ Verity said with a gasp.

  ‘I have to go.’ I glanced down at my wet jeans.

  ‘Is this something to do with Callum? Is that why—’

  But it was too late; I’d hung up.

  Chapter 24

  The rain was hammering down, lashing against the café’s windows and bouncing off the pavement, and the drains at the edge of the road were gurgling as they struggled to cope with the volume of water. My clothes were plastered to my skin but I was rooted to the spot. Besides, I didn’t care about the rain; it disguised my tears. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Dad and Lia huddling in the doorway of the pet shop. Dad was waving to me and Lia was laughing and shouting something about a drowned rat.

  The van skidded to a halt and the driver jumped out and slammed the door. Someone shouted my name.

  Memories that had been packed tightly away where they couldn’t hurt me were thrashing around in my brain, making a bid for freedom, and I pressed my hands to my head, trying to keep them in.

  I’d never named it. I’d been shocked and then angry, incredibly angry. But I’d never named it. Until now.

  Nonna was raped too.

  Gabe was at my side, holding something over our heads to shield us from the rain. It smelled of wood shavings and oil and showered me with sawdust. I stared blindly up at him. My mouth was dry and my tongue felt numb.

  ‘Rosie.’ Gabe ran a hand through his hair. ‘I’m so sorry, I couldn’t stop.’

  ‘That’s what he said,’ I said with a harsh laugh. I sniffed back my tears.

  His brow furrowed. ‘Are you all right? You don’t look well.’

  ‘Shock.’

  ‘Right. You’re soaked. My fault. Oh God,’ he stared at my hair, ‘now I’ve covered you with sawdust too. Come on, let’s get you inside before your hair turns to papier mâché.’

  He nudged me towards the door of the café, but I wouldn’t budge.

  ‘Not in there,’ I said, shaking my head.

  I didn’t want anyone to see me like this. Couldn’t face the questions. I swallowed hard to force down the lump in my throat.

  ‘I’m not leaving you out here.’ Gabe looked round, sizing up the options. ‘My van?’

  I shrugged, which he took as a ‘yes’, and he pulled me towards it, our feet splashing through the puddles. We got in and condensation began to gather on the windscreen.

  Normally this would be my cue to make some sort of joke about us being so hot we steamed up the windows but not today.
<
br />   ‘Your place or mine?’ said Gabe, starting the engine.

  I shot him a look and he flushed.

  ‘I’ve never said that to a girl, I mean, woman before.’ He gulped. ‘And I didn’t mean it like that now either.’

  I thought about his big bed in his little cabin and felt my own face blushing. I stared out of the window.

  ‘Mine,’ I murmured.

  The van started to move. We passed Dad and Lia with the pushchair. She was straining her neck to see through the misted windscreen, no doubt wondering what was going on.

  ‘I don’t know about you,’ said Gabe in an attempt at jollity, ‘I’m cold and wet and could do with a cuppa.’

  No, I thought, turning away from him, you don’t know about me. Not at all.

  The drive to my cottage was so quick that the windscreen hadn’t even cleared by the time we arrived. I kept a spare key in a bird feeder hanging off the cherry tree and I shook it to get it out.

  ‘Aha, now I can break in,’ Gabe grinned.

  ‘I’ll change my hiding spot,’ I replied without thinking.

  ‘I’d never actually break in,’ he said, hurt.

  I opened the door and let us in. ‘I know. Sorry.’

  ‘Nice place,’ he said, looking round my little home. ‘I love The Neptune, but there are times when it would be nice not to have to walk in single file or bang my knees on the bedroom wall when I get out of bed in the morning.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I stood in the centre of the living room and shivered.

  ‘Better get you out of those wet things,’ he said, taking a step towards me.

  I jumped back. ‘No way.’

  Gabe looked mortified. He held his hands up. ‘Of course not. Sorry. I’m out of practice. Only used to dealing with small boys. If Noah was here I’d peel his clothes off, wrap him up in a blanket in front of the fire and make him hot chocolate.’

  I nearly sobbed; that sounded heavenly.

  ‘I’d better … um.’ I pointed upstairs.

  ‘Right.’ He rubbed a hand over his face and seemed surprised to find it wet. ‘So what can I do to help?’

  The way he was looking at me, so eager to please, so desperate to do and say the right thing, made my eyes feel hot. I turned and ran up the stairs before he could see me cry.

  ‘Hot chocolate and a fire please,’ I said in a wobbly voice.

  When I came back down, Gabe had lit the fire and was stirring a pan like mad with one hand and rubbing his hair dry with my kitchen towel with the other. It was so lovely to have another person here looking after me that my breath caught in my throat.

  Not that I wasn’t perfectly capable of looking after myself. I sneaked another glance at him. But once in a while didn’t hurt …

  I knelt as close to the fire as I could get, added some more kindling and let the flames warm my bones.

  ‘One hot chocolate.’ He handed me a dripping mug covered in a mountain of cream. ‘Noah once asked for the best hot chocolate in the world, I googled exactly that and now I’ve made him this recipe so many times I’m an expert.’

  ‘And so modest with it,’ I said, smiling.

  He looked relieved to see my improved mood and sat down with his own mug perched on the edge of the armchair.

  I sipped at it. It was thick and sweet like pure melted chocolate and completely delicious.

  ‘Oh my.’ I licked my lips. ‘Thank you. That is better than s—’

  The word ‘sex’ died on my lips and my stomach flipped. Why did I always go for those sorts of comments?

  I smiled brightly and scrabbled round for something nicer to say.

  ‘It’s like a hug in a mug.’

  ‘Um.’ He scratched his chin. ‘Are you OK? Because yesterday at Garden Warehouse … and now … well, obviously you’re not OK, but—’

  ‘Gabe, can we just … can you give me a minute?’

  ‘Sure.’

  We drifted into silence. Me lost in my thoughts, letting the hot chocolate work its magic, Gabe alternating between jiggling his leg and prodding the fire with a stick.

  For ten years I’d worn my sexuality like a suit of armour. A hard impervious shell. I’d never shied away from talking about my body or about sex (unless it involved older members of my family) and I wasn’t afraid to show men that I found them attractive. Why should I? What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, I reckoned. I’d always enjoyed men’s company, often more straightforward, less angsty than women’s. I’d had boyfriends too. I wasn’t going to live like a nun just because of him.

  Because of Callum.

  But if anyone got too close, demanded more commitment than I was prepared to give, down came the protective visor. I’d had lovers, but I’d taken care not to fall in love. I, like Nonna, had been too hurt to allow that to happen.

  My thoughts shifted to Nonna; poor thing, raped and then forced to marry her attacker. She’d kept that trauma to herself for five decades. Now that I’d admitted it out loud to myself, I was determined not to do the same.

  I looked at Gabe, his damp hair sticking up in peaks where he’d rubbed it, his eyes watchful, patient, full of concern.

  ‘You’re shivering,’ he said.

  He took a blanket from the arm of the sofa, the one I wrapped myself in when I couldn’t be bothered to light the fire, and tucked it round my shoulders.

  ‘I’ve never seen your bossy side,’ I said, smiling with my eyes over the top of my mug.

  ‘There are lots of sides to me you haven’t seen,’ he said.

  I wondered if he was flirting with me. I looked at him for clues but his grey eyes were as deep as pools and I couldn’t read them. There was a warm sensation in the pit of my stomach that I hadn’t felt for such a long time that I didn’t recognize it at first. I let my eyes roam over his handsome face, his soft friendly smile and jaw studded with sandy-coloured stubble.

  He was a lovely man.

  But we were friends, that was all. And I treasured his friendship, I didn’t want to risk losing it.

  ‘Look.’ He caught me staring and my insides fluttered with the same feeling again. This time I was pretty sure it was attraction. ‘I don’t mean to pry, but whatever it is, you can trust me with it.’

  I blinked at him. ‘Really?’

  He moved from the armchair to the far end of the sofa, still keeping a respectful distance.

  ‘Really.’

  ‘It’s a secret,’ I said. ‘Not even Verity knows. Not properly.’

  ‘It will be safe with me. Promise.’ He made a cross on his chest. ‘I’m actually brilliant at keeping secrets.’

  ‘Well …’ I let out a long breath and thought about it.

  I’d come so close over the years to telling someone: Mum, Lia, Verity … It had never dawned on me to tell a man. But now, cocooned in my cottage, with the fire flickering, the rain tapping softly at the window, a mug of hot chocolate and Gabe’s kind eyes cheering me on … maybe I could.

  ‘OK. But you might not think so highly of me afterwards.’

  ‘Who says I think highly of you now?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, embarrassed. ‘Good point.’

  ‘Rosie, I’m sorry, that was mean of me. For the record, I think very highly of you and I doubt very much you’ll change that.’ He reached for my hand and squeezed gently before releasing it. ‘I’m sorry. Again.’

  ‘OK. I had a boyfriend called Callum,’ I began. ‘Nothing serious, we were only together a short time …’

  Gabe sat mostly in silence, occasionally shaking his head, sometimes frowning while I told him how I’d met Callum. We were both interns at a media buying agency in London’s Canary Wharf. The company didn’t pay much but they did cover our accommodation; six of us, all new graduates, shared a flat in Putney. We were a happy gang and Callum and I somehow became an item. He wasn’t my normal type, he was quiet and shy, too quiet at times, but that drew me to him even more. We were young, completely penniless, but we were living in London and life was bri
lliant. After three months, our internship came to an end, Callum was offered another one somewhere else and wanted me to join him.

  But I’d decided to go home back to Barnaby. Dad’s aunt had died and left me some money and I thought I’d give property developing a go while I looked for a proper job. Before we went out to celebrate my last night in London, I packed my things and had ‘the talk’ with Callum which I thought he’d be expecting: I said I didn’t think we could make it work long distance, it had been fun while it lasted and I hoped we could stay friends.

  He was devastated, declared his desperate love for me, begging me to give it a chance, to try to make it work. I couldn’t believe it; it was obvious to me that we’d split up when I left London. We were both only twenty-two, just starting out, and we weren’t in love, or at least I wasn’t and I’d thought he felt the same. Callum got hideously drunk that night, telling everyone how I’d broken his heart, how he couldn’t live without me, that I’d been his soulmate.

  Callum’s drunken behaviour aside, it had been a good night involving dancing, cocktails and a bag of chips on the night bus home. We didn’t get back to the flat until the early hours and my train was leaving at noon the next day. We all went to bed but Callum pleaded with me to let him into my room, ‘just to cuddle’, but I refused. We were over and I didn’t see the point of dragging it out and giving him false hope. Besides, he was so out of it I thought he might throw up. An hour later I must have fallen into a really heavy sleep, because I didn’t even hear him come into my room. I only woke up when I felt his weight on me, his hot breath on my face and his hands tearing at my T-shirt, pushing it up.

  I struggled. I tried kicking out, grabbing his face, pushing at his shoulders. But he was too strong for me and I was trapped. I started to cry, Callum was crying too, saying that he loved me, over and over. I shouted but everyone in the house had had too much to drink, and no one came to my rescue.

  When he rolled off me I thumped him so hard I heard his jaw crack and nearly broke my own wrist. I was so shocked I didn’t move; I just lay there gasping for breath.

  When I woke up the next morning, I stormed into his room but his bed was empty, he wasn’t anywhere in the flat, he’d simply vanished.