‘You okay?’ Ed asks. He takes a mouthful of water from his bottle and offers me some. I shake my head as the door opens. A man emerges. I feel my knees go weak.
‘It’s not him, he’s too old,’ Ed whispers quickly.
I balance my foot on the pedal of the bike and think about just turning around, but by now the occupant of the house has seen us.
‘Posso essere d’aiuto?’
Ed looks at me briefly, but when he sees that I’m mute, he steps forward. ‘Salve – stiamo cercando un certo signor Stefano McCourt?’ Ed says. I feel heat rise to the surface of my cheeks.
He shakes his head, looking confused. Then he says: ‘Ah! É il padrone di casa. Non l’ho mai conosciuto. Ho solo avuto a che fare con il suo ufficio. Ma la sua famiglia una volta abitava in questa casa, quindi Elisabetta, la vicina, lo conoscerà di sicuro. Lei vive qui da sempre.’
Ed turns to me. ‘Stefano is his landlord but he’s never met him. His neighbour could be our best bet as she knew the whole family when they used to live here.’
I nod at the man self-consciously. ‘Grazie,’ I say, then I turn to Ed. ‘Can you ask him if he’s got the contact details for his office?’
Ed translates and he disappears inside, before emerging with the name and address of a Verona letting agency, scrawled on a piece of paper.
After we’ve thanked him again and he’s retreated into the house, we lean the bikes against a low wall and make our way next door, to a slightly bigger building with terracotta walls and the odd weed sprouting from cracks in the paving. The woman who answers looks to be in her late fifties, with a delicate face and short auburn hair.
‘Um, bongiorno,’ I say falteringly, then look to Ed to step in.
‘Salve. Ci scusi se la disturbiamo,’ he continues politely. She is soon deep in conversation with him. As they talk, her expression unfolds into a smile. It’s clear, even in a language incomprehensible to my ears, that she knows Stefano McCourt.
Chapter 21
I let them talk at first, forcing myself to hold back until there is a lull in the discussion. ‘I take it she knows Stefano?’ I ask Ed.
‘Yes. This is Elisabetta. She says he lived with his parents here for many years after they returned from England. He moved out when he got married, but he must have been in his early thirties by then. She thinks his wife was called Rosa.’
‘What about Vittoria and Michael?’
‘They moved to a smaller home soon after Stefano married. It had always been Vittoria’s ambition to open a pasticceria and she thinks they wanted to put money into that.’
Ed continues the conversation, turning to me to translate intermittently. ‘They were a very private family. But Vittoria absolutely adored Stefano, she was so proud of him. He was a mammone . . . a mother’s boy. Every time they chatted, the conversation would turn to what a good boy he was to her, how loyal and clever. She lavished him with affection.’
The woman says something else and laughs. ‘She says, it’s little wonder that she didn’t loosen the apron strings until his thirties,’ Ed explains.
‘What about Stefano himself?’
‘He was a polite young man, a respectable boy. She’d often see him outside cutting the grass or doing chores. We never saw him much during the summer though; he’d spend those with his uncle who had a boat yard. She says he changed after they came back from England. He’d grown up a lot.’
Adrenalin snaps through my chest. ‘What did he say? Did the family talk about their time in the UK and why they’d returned?’
He asks the question and she replies, before Ed says: ‘Probably just homesick.’
‘But what about now? Has she got any idea where he is these days?’
I can tell from her expression that I’m not going to get far. ‘She doesn’t know where any of them ended up. She says she used to bump into Vittoria in Peschiera or Sirmione every so often, but hasn’t for years. She assumes they moved away. Last time she went to the pasticceria in Peschiera it was run by another lady.’
‘Can she tell me anything else? Anything at all?’
Ed asks her again and she shakes her head.
‘Sorry, Allie. I think we’ve hit a dead end.’
*
As we’re returning the bikes to the hire shop, Julia phones. I leave Ed to go inside to collect the deposit, while I hover in the car park and take the call.
‘How is he, Allie?’ she asks urgently, discernible strain in her voice. The question is reasonable, probably inevitable, but I feel a sliver of discomfort at the idea of discussing Ed when he’s only a few feet away. Or even at all.
‘Well, I’m honestly not sure yet.’
‘Oh.’ She is clearly disappointed at my lack of insight.
‘It’s early days, isn’t it?’
She sniffs. ‘Yes, you’re right. Sorry. It’s all I can think about. I should have left it a few more days before phoning.’
‘Oh, don’t be silly!’ I reassure her, feeling bad. ‘It’s really fine.’
There’s a pause as she breathes in and says: ‘So is it lovely there?’
‘Well, the weather’s nice and Sirmione’s gorgeous, but it’s fair to say that the place we’re staying in probably isn’t the best Lake Garda has to offer.’
‘He’s responded to a few of my texts but only briefly,’ she continues, as if she hasn’t heard me. ‘He seems so distant, Allie. Maybe I’m imagining it. Do you think I’ve lost him already?’
‘No, of course not.’ Ed emerges from the bike shop and pauses to put his wallet back in his rucksack. ‘Listen, Julia, it’s a little difficult to talk at the moment.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry. Maybe we can have a chat in a couple of days – would you mind Allie? I just want to know he’s okay, that’s all.’
‘Of course. And try not to worry too much,’ I add gently.
When we return to the B&B, my luggage has arrived. I’m pleased to be reunited with my own pants, but it’s slightly embarrassing to have to try and explain to the lady on reception that we are leaving today when the room’s already paid for.
‘Was she offended that we were going?’ I ask Ed anxiously, as he lifts my luggage into the boot of the taxi and we slide in to the back seat.
‘She couldn’t have cared less.’
‘So where is this ‘far nicer place’ you’ve found us?’ I ask.
He leans forward to our driver. ‘Villa Cortine Palace Hotel, per favore.’
Cars are not ordinarily allowed into Sirmione old town. But as soon as the guard at the entrance to the historic centre learns where we’re staying, we’re waved through. The car slowly negotiates the narrow streets, so close to the vanilla-coloured walls of the shops and galleries that it feels as though there’s barely an inch either side.
‘How long have you booked us in for?’ I ask.
‘Four days.’
‘I’m not even sure what the point is anymore,’ I sigh. ‘Do you think there’s any way that letting agency could be persuaded to change their mind about giving us his contact details?’
‘It didn’t sound that way.’
Ed phoned the agency as soon as we left Elisabetta’s house, but they said if I want to get in touch with Stefano, I’d need to do so via email, explaining who I was and what I wanted. Then they would forward it on to him. This might end up being my only option but having a discussion about something as big as this via email is a long way from ideal.
The taxi emerges from the labyrinth of streets into a wide turning circle in front of an imposing set of wrought-iron gates. The driver speaks through a security intercom and, after a brief moment, they click open.
A steep driveway snakes through terraced parkland abundant with oversized conifers and palm trees. Neoclassical statues of angels and warriors line our route, with street lamps from a bygone age and stone urns weathered by centuries and patterns of lichen. We pass a large, circular pond thick with lily pads, and a steep rockery dotted with rampaging myrtle and soft pink hyd
rangeas.
At some point as I take this all in, I become aware of the heat from Ed’s gaze on me. I glance up.
‘Okay, you win. It’s very nice.’
He smiles to himself. ‘I’m not trying to win. I’m glad you like it though.’
‘How much is it?
‘It was my idea to move, so I’m footing the bill.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘I’m not. Don’t argue.’
‘But—’
‘Allie,’ he interrupts, smiling. ‘Just enjoy it. It’ll save a lot of time.’
We find ourselves high on a hill, crunching onto a gleaming stretch of gravel where sports cars in kick-ass shades of red and yellow line up in rows. A uniformed doorman clicks my handle and invites me to step out. The air up here is so clean and pure that it feels different just to breathe, as I gaze down to the brilliant blue of the stretching lake and the hills that dazzle in the sunlight.
‘Welcome to the Villa Cortine Palace Hotel.’
I raise my eyes to the colonnaded entrance of a spectacular, three-storey villa with walls the colour of fresh linen and high windows carved with intricate stonework. Three steps lead into a cool reception area, with a patterned marble floor, Murano chandeliers and subtle pieces of modern art. I hang back as Ed checks us in and log onto the Wi-Fi to look at my emails. They consist largely of the usual dross, but one catches my eye, entitled ‘Your bill’ from Ged McKenzie.
Hello Allie,
Sorry it’s taken a few weeks, but I’m finally attaching my invoice for the work completed on your search for Stefano McCourt. Also: a little bonus for you. When I contacted Virginia Boldrini, the investigator in Rome I’d mentioned, she’d apparently completed a brief search. She didn’t come up with much, but she has forwarded this cutting. Not sure it helps, but you’re welcome to it. Good luck with it all – and you know where I am if you need me.
Ged
I’m tempted to reply, pointing out that Stefano doesn’t live at the address he gave me – though it strikes me that he’d never actually said he did, just that he owned the place. I open the attachment to find a copy of a colour picture from a local magazine, a slightly amateurish publication, judging by the jumbled layout of the pictures and text. The date on it is last September and it features five people, standing outside a restaurant, raising their glasses to the camera. I can’t read the headline, so when Ed is finished checking us in I ask him to translate. ‘ “Torri to host new wine festival”,’ he tells me. Then I look at the list of names in the caption and see that the middle-aged man second from right is Stefano McCourt.
Chapter 22
I lie on my belly with my toes draped over the end of a lounger, sunshine soaking into the back of my legs. I had considered going for a walk this afternoon, or hiring bikes again, to explore some of the pretty harbour towns dotted along Lake Garda. But instead, we climbed down the steep hill steps to the water, where a slender bathing jetty cuts into the lake, lined with seashell-white furniture and parasols that cast yawning shadows on the water.
There are two men opposite us, a glamorous couple in their mid-forties, one reading a spy thriller from behind his Ray-Bans, the other fast asleep. A little further along is a woman in white shorts and a navy halter top, holding the hand of a toddler, who laughs in breathless disbelief as he takes a couple of jerky steps.
As she scoops him up, I’m reminded of a video clip from when I was tiny, not much bigger than the little boy on the jetty. Someone had burned it onto a DVD for Grandma Peggy and, though it was only four minutes long, she’d watch it over and over again. I’d been one of a clutch of children allowed to attend my second cousin Anthony’s wedding to his long-term girlfriend Harriet and, despite being nearly two years old, still hadn’t taken my first steps.
‘Your mum had tried everything to persuade you to put one foot in front of the other, but you only wanted to shuffle around on your bottom,’ Grandma told me. ‘She got fed up of people asking why you weren’t walking. Someone even told her she should see a doctor in case something was wrong with you. “Nothing’s wrong,” she’d insist. “My girl will walk when she’s good and ready.” ’
In the clip, the opening bars to ‘It Must be Love’ by Madness pounded out, as Mum sashayed onto an empty dancefloor with me in her arms and gently lowered me to the ground. Then she swept back the pale waves of her hair, bent to hold both of my hands and laughed in delight as I began to swing my hips from side to side. We danced together for most of the song, but as it neared the end, a smile spread to the corners of her mouth and she began to back away, until my fingers gently slid from hers. Wide-eyed and wobbling, I was literally standing on my own two feet for the first time in my life, clearly certain that catastrophe loomed.
Then my mother said something to me. I don’t know what it was, but those private words of reassurance seemed to convince me that I didn’t need her right there in front of me, holding my hands, to know that she’d still be watching out for me. It remains true to this day that the biggest cheer I ever raised in my life was elicited by my first four, precarious steps, a performance that ended with a flourish, on my backside. The next thing I knew, Mum had swept me up and was spinning us around, planting kisses in my hair as I laughed until I could hardly catch my breath.
‘Bravo ragazzo!’ I’m snapped from my thoughts as the Italian woman begins to clap her little boy as he toddles along the jetty.
It’s an adorable sight and I can’t help but smile, before turning over to see Ed sitting on the adjacent lounger, glaring out onto the horizon. He’s been doing that since we got here, occasionally glancing at one of the dozens of texts that ping on his phone, most from Julia, some from his office.
‘So, what do I do with this?’ I ask, gesturing to the cutting on the decking in front of me. ‘Any ideas?’
‘What?’
‘I just wondered if you had any ideas about what I do with this magazine article?’
‘I’ll have a think,’ he replies, his mind clearly elsewhere.
Our silences have always been the comfortable kind over the years. Ed is one of the few people with whom I’ll happily share time without puncturing it with noise. But this doesn’t feel like that. This feels sultry, almost oppressive.
I pick up my phone and decide to check in with Khalid.
All okay with you? Anything to report?
He responds immediately.
Nothing major, still all good. In fact, a couple of the results from yesterday are slightly better than previously. I’ll email the data to you today ☺.
Something approaching hope billows up in my chest but I push it away. I’m an optimist by nature, but nothing is certain until all the results are in and I won’t be drawing conclusions until then. Still, as I tuck the phone under the lounger, rest my cheekbone on my arm and close my eyes, my mind has other ideas.
My thoughts turn to the next big CF conference in Baltimore. I imagine myself on stage, presenting to an audience from a whole spectrum of scientific discovery, clinical research and healthcare provision. Anyone in the room would be able to see how passionate I was about my work, but there would be no need for hyperbole. The results would speak for themselves. The excitement would begin as a ripple, one that would swell and surge into a wave of enthusiastic applause.
The fantasy quickly disintegrates as I think instead about little Rowan Archer, at five years old the youngest boy in a clinical trial in which I’ve been involved at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital. It’s separate from our gene-editing project, something I’ve been helping with for the last five months, during which time I’ve become familiar with his repertoire of knock-knock jokes and still melt every time his brown eyes glitter when he giggles.
When he arrived in the trial room at Alder Hey for our last round of testing before I came to Italy, his mum Dawn took me to one side to tell me that it’d been a bad morning, with an hour of coughing fits before she’d managed to get him dressed, and give him his meds and nebuli
ser.
You’d never have guessed it to look at him, as he leapt on the edge of the hospital bed, full of good cheer, as he waited for me to attach an electrode to his wrist to begin the procedure.
‘So, how is my favourite patient today?’ I asked him.
‘I’ve got some news,’ he told me, looking like he might burst.
I stepped back and mock gasped. ‘You’re getting married?’
He burst out laughing. ‘NO!’
‘Okay, let me guess. You’ve just passed your driving test?’
‘NO!’
‘You’re actually not a five-year-old kid . . . you’re a spy?’
He shook his head and grinned the biggest, cheesiest grin he could muster, before pointing at a gap where one of his lower incisors had been wobbling since Easter.
‘No way! You finally lost it. Well, congratulations,’ I said, shaking his hand. ‘That tooth has been on the verge of coming out for as long as I’ve known you. I think you deserve a sticker. In fact, I think you deserve ALL the stickers,’ I added, offering him not one, but three full sheets, as he released peals of laughter. I looked up and saw his mum smiling too, widely and emphatically, despite the pink rim around her eyes.
‘Time to simmer down now,’ the consultant Mr Atkinson said gently.
‘Sorry. That was all my fault,’ I said, but he flashed me a grateful smile for helping to relax a patient who couldn’t be persuaded to leave his mum’s knee the first few times he came here. This time, Rowan lay down without hesitation and stayed perfectly still while a probe was inserted into his nostril to send a series of different solutions down the back of his throat, which he then had to swallow.
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