‘What . . . what do you mean?’
‘I’m sorry for what happened last night. That it’s taken until now to realise it. I’m sorry that I can’t be what you want me to be. Because I am about to be a parent . . . and if there’s one thing I’m determined to do right, it’s that.’
Chapter 65
Ed
Ed has everything and nothing all at once. His beautiful wife. His successful business. And now he is going to be a father.
Yet as he lies on his back on the sand, the sun glowing red through his closed eyelids, all he can think about is that he is in love with the wrong woman. He also knows he is to blame. He had a lifetime to recognise and act on his feelings for Allie, but failed to do so. Now it’s too late.
But Ed isn’t the same man he was before he came to Italy. He will not be pulled into a well of powerlessness. He has rediscovered his strength and he won’t cave in under the weight of his sadness. He has made his decision and his life with Julia will work. He’ll make sure of it. Because that is who he is. That is the gift that Allie has given him in these weeks in Italy. She’s reminded him of the man he is capable of being.
Ed discovered long before he met Julia that life doesn’t always go your way. He also discovered that sometimes the sacrifices are worth it. He’s already feeling the power of a father’s devotion. He imagines his baby as a girl for some reason, though he doesn’t know why. And it’s the most random things that pop into his head. Making sandcastles with her. Watching The Goonies. Teaching her to playing chess. Drawing and cuddling and dancing.
No matter how bad Julia is, he won’t leave her. Not now that there is a child to be loved and protected. He wonders how much of that he will need to do. Because while he hopes Julia will find it in herself to be a loving and patient mother, he is realistic enough to know that she may not be capable. Which is why he will be there, by her side, stepping up to the role in which he’s found himself. Ed is convinced of all of this, but there is a sharp twist in his gut that seems to exist solely to remind him of another inconvenient truth: he won’t ever shake off his feelings for Allie. He will try, but he will fail.
His love for her didn’t begin with the heat and affectations of romance. It began with the sweet, green shoots of friendship. Over years, their roots spread through him, mapping themselves underneath his skin, until she had filled up every corner of him. What they’d had at the start had grown into something magnificent and rare and real.
In his dreams, there will always be an alternative, impossible path. In which Allie is the mother of his baby, not Julia. In which he wakes up every morning and feels her warm breath against his neck. In which they grow together, holding their child’s hand on her first day at school, letting it go as he or she leaves home.
When they are old and infirm, their house would be filled with the glow of love, and they would sit in the garden, thinking about the days on the bus years before, laughing until their cheeks hurt.
‘You’re going to get a dodgy tan there.’
A shadow falls over his eyes and he sits up, squinting in the sun as he realises he’d left his book lying open on his chest. Allie sits down sharply next to him, sending a cloud of sand billowing.
‘That novel might be a Booker Prize winner, but you’ll still look stupid with a big white square on your belly. Sorry.’
He’s grateful for the lightness in her voice. It reassures him that she doesn’t hate him, though he thinks she could be entitled. He wishes he could repeat what he feels for her, the words that he should’ve said so long ago. But that wouldn’t be fair. So he says the only thing that’s within his power to say.
‘Allie, we need to discuss what happens when we return home.’
Her eyes soften as she replies, ‘It’s okay, Ed.’ She manages to smile. There is strength behind that smile, a resilience that is one of the many reasons why his admiration for her knows no limit. ‘I know what you’re going to say.’
He suspected she might. ‘We need to not see each other anymore. We need to stay away. I understand and I think it’s for the best too.’
He can see the torrent of pain in her eyes and he can’t bear knowing he’s the one who caused this, on top of everything else she’s facing right now.
‘I’m sorry, Allie.’ The breeze slips into her hair and she brushes it away. She has never looked more beautiful.
‘So am I.’ Then she sniffs and puts on her sunglasses. ‘Come on. Let’s go and get one gelato before we pack. I wonder if they’ll do them with a Flake?’
The two friends walk side by side, as the sun beats down on their shoulders and, for one last time, they breathe in the heavenly smells of a hot, Italian summer.
Chapter 66
Allie
As we approach the hotel, I realise Ed’s steps are slowing. I can’t work out why until I follow his gaze. The man he is looking at is the same but different from the one I’ve seen in pictures; familiar, but not.
‘Are you all right?’ Ed asks.
I nod, but it feels as though I’m stepping through quicksand. He reaches out and squeezes my elbow and I am grateful for this final gesture of solidarity, before I let go and walk towards a man who is both family and stranger all at the same time. I recall the tiny, helpless baby Grandma Peggy described and try to reconcile that image with the man before me.
He is fifty-four years old now, tall, with hair that is thinning, though without a fleck of grey. His skin is tanned to the colour of a chestnut, with white smile lines sloping upwards from his eyes. He’s dressed in a quintessentially Italian style, with a loose cotton shirt and stone chinos, turned up above tan leather shoes. Something about him reminds me of Cary Grant in those old romantic thrillers.
‘Allison?’ he asks. He looks surprisingly nervous, though somehow gives the impression he is not used to feeling like this. I accept that these are bizarre and unusual circumstances.
‘Yes. But it’s Allie really. Call me Allie.’
The suggestion of a smile appears on his lips but I can’t bring myself to return it. ‘Stefano.’
He reaches out and shakes my hand with a firm grip. ‘It’s good to meet you.’
*
I perch on the edge of my chair on the terrace of the hotel and I wish that the waiter would hurry up with the coffees so I at least have something to do with my hands. I had a hundred questions and now can’t recall any of them.
‘It was quite a shock to hear from you,’ he says. He is sitting three feet away, close enough to see the weathered patterns on his hands and smell the sharp, clean scent of his aftershave.
‘I haven’t really been in touch with anyone from the UK since I left. I heard your mother died. But under the circumstances it wasn’t appropriate for me to come to the funeral. My mother was still alive then.’
It takes half a heartbeat to realise he means Vittoria.
‘I didn’t even know you existed until relatively recently,’ I tell him. ‘Grandma Peggy had never told me about what had happened to her. The fact that she had a baby, I mean. Did you know you were adopted?’
‘Yes, I always knew that. I can’t recall when I was told exactly, but that was never kept from me, nor the fact that I was born in the UK. But when you’re young, you don’t torment yourself with questions about your past. As far as I was concerned, Michael and Vittoria were my parents. They were the people who brought me up. The idea that I would go off searching for my real mother never occurred to me. I had nothing against her. I simply hardly thought of her. I certainly had no desire to find her.’
He clasps together his hands. ‘The one thing I was interested in though was the fact that I was technically British, yet I didn’t feel British. I was fascinated by that. That was why I wanted to come to the country when my father got a job in Liverpool and went back to see my Nonna as she was in poor health. The fact that it was a city on the coast helped too – I thought I could get a job working on boats, like I had in Italy, but that didn’t quite work out.’
>
‘How long were you there before you met my mother?’
‘Six months or seven months. I’d taken what I’d hoped would be a temporary job as a night porter in the hospital, but in the daytime I’d occasionally go to the library. I wanted to improve my English. Your mother was studying for exams and I’d see her on the days I went. She’d sit at the desk opposite me and would always place an apple and a bar of chocolate next to her that she’d eat during a break from her work.’
The waiter arrives with two coffees, before Stefano continues. ‘Then one day I noticed she didn’t have either, so I said: “Where are your snacks?” She laughed and replied that she’d forgotten them. I told her to wait while I went out and bought a bar of chocolate from the shop over the road. She teased me, told me I was flirting, but she didn’t ask me to leave. After that, we would talk on most days. We . . . how can I say this . . . we hit it off.’
I pick up my coffee but regret it when the cup rattles against my saucer, laying bare my nerves. He studies my expression. ‘Do you want me to carry on?’
‘Yes. Absolutely.’
‘I knew she had a boyfriend, but I was drawn to her. When you’re nineteen years old and you’re a boy who has his head turned, you don’t put much thought into other people, just yourself. She’d said she loved him when we first met, but then we started seeing more of each other and . . . we got swept along with the idea. Of each other.’
‘So she was unfaithful to him.’
‘She was confused about her feelings,’ he says carefully. ‘Then, one night, she ended up confessing to him that she had met me. I don’t think she’d planned it. But once it was done, it was done, and they agreed to go their separate ways.’
‘Then you got together?’
He frowns and picks up his coffee, bringing it to his lips as he thinks. ‘The first thing you need to understand, Allie . . . is this. Christine and I had no idea that we already had a connection with each other. There was no way we could’ve guessed we had the same mother. My poor parents had returned to Liverpool without any clue as to the identity of my birth mother. The idea that she could’ve been living so close to the neighbourhood they’d chosen simply to be close to my Nonna and my father’s work never occurred to them. Besides, they’d been told that, as a baby, I had been unwanted and that my birth mother was from London. What did happen was never considered a risk.’
He places his coffee cup down and continues, thinking carefully about his words. ‘Christine and I started to see more of each other. We had a real connection. Despite our totally different upbringings, in two separate countries, there were things about us that were so similar that I found myself wanting to know everything about her.’
‘What kind of things?’
‘In some ways it was as basic as the fact that we would both laugh at the same things and we both loved Hitchcock movies. In other ways, it was simply that being around her made me feel at ease with myself.’ He looks up and says tentatively, ‘I interpreted this as meaning I was in love with her.’
Chapter 67
Stefano’s words make my stomach turn over. ‘It became clear however that her feelings were not as simple,’ he continues.
I shift forward. ‘In what way?’
‘She missed Joe after their relationship ended. I could see that immediately. I don’t believe she ever stopped loving him.’
‘And what about the day you met my grandma?’
He takes a slow breath. ‘Your grandmother will have told you that she realised quickly who I was, but I had no clue until she went to my family’s house and spoke to my mother. It was agreed that Christine and I were never to see each other again.’ He looks up at me. ‘That was the right thing to do, but it was a very difficult time. To have discovered what we did that night was hard.’
‘I can imagine,’ I manage lamely.
‘Until then, as far as we were concerned, we were behaving like two normal kids who’d met and started dating. Then all of a sudden we are told that we are half-brother and -sister. It was a terrible, confusing, upsetting time for everyone. For me, for my mother and father, and for Christine too. As well as all that was the realisation that there I’d been, standing in the same room as my real mother, talking to her. I’d barely thought about her before then and had never felt inclined to meet her. Having not dwelt on this much, a whole river of questions had burst its banks. The one at the front was: how could she have given up her child? Who would do that?’
‘You were angry with her.’
‘Wouldn’t you be?’
I don’t answer that question. I can’t even begin to try and put myself in his shoes, I’m not capable of it right now. ‘You ended up moving back to Italy shortly afterwards, didn’t you?’
‘My parents insisted and, although I didn’t want to go back, I knew I had to.’
‘Why didn’t you want to return?’
He swallows and looks at me, embarrassed at what he’s about to say. ‘I still had feelings for Christine. I thought I was in love with her. I wish that wasn’t the truth, Allie. But it was very hard to just switch off what I felt. Still, I did go back to Italy and I spent years confused about this whole thing, until finally I found the strength to put the past behind me.’
‘You met someone else?’
‘A wonderful woman called Rosa, my wife. We have four children and a beautiful two-year-old grandson, Roberto. I was lucky enough to be able to pursue not one but two careers that I’ve loved. I worked in a vineyard until recently, then sadly my mother and her brother died within a year of each other and I inherited my uncle’s boat yard. It was a very sad time, but Rosa and I did get to move to this lovely place. It’s only small, but our own little slice of heaven. So life has been good to me and it still is. Was it difficult to find me?’ he asks.
‘Yes, but I’m not much of a sleuth,’ I confess. ‘I can understand why you’d be shocked to receive my letter.’
‘Yes. But I realised you would have some important questions and that I had a duty to address them. I know what it is like living with a history that is . . . muddled. That was why I phoned your grandmother. I still had the letters from her. Her telephone number remained the same from all those years before.’
‘That must’ve been a very strange conversation.’
‘It was . . . a short one.’ He frowns but says nothing more.
‘You know she was forced to give you away?’ I say.
‘Yes. She made that clear in her letters to me, after we’d returned to Italy.’
‘But you still didn’t want anything to do with her?’
He sits back in his chair and thinks before speaking. ‘This might be difficult to understand but I’ll try my best to explain. I don’t want to cause your grandmother pain. I never have. But I was very close to my mother. Vittoria wasn’t just a parent to me, she was my best friend. It would’ve destroyed her if I’d started nurturing a relationship with Peggy. I would never have betrayed her by doing so, and I never will. That does not mean I am not sorry for what happened to your grandmother.’ He says it as if he is talking about a complete stranger. ‘And I’m even more sorry about Christine. She was too young to die. A lovely girl. A wasted life.’ He suddenly looks up and gestures to the waiter for the bill. ‘Have I answered all your questions?’
‘Well . . . there’s still one.’ Anxiety prickles on the back of my neck but I know this is my only chance of addressing the one big issue that brought me here in the first place.
He takes out his wallet and places some notes on the little plate with the bill.
‘What is it?’
‘Okay.’ I take a deep breath and start talking. ‘My mum became pregnant very soon after you left England. So, there is a question mark over which one of you is my father. My dad – Joe – or you. That’s the reason I’ve come here. I need you to agree to something. And I’m sorry this is a really uncomfortable thing to ask, but it’s the only way. Would you have a DNA test? I need to know whether it’s you
or my dad or—’
‘Allie,’ he interrupts and only then do I realise how fast I’ve been speaking. ‘It isn’t necessary. You’ve said yourself that your father brought you up and he’s the best father you could ever wish for. You said that.’
‘I know but—’
‘And more importantly, there’s this. Your mother and I . . . we never did . . .’ He shakes his head meaningfully.
I study his face. ‘You didn’t?’
‘No. Not once. We spent a few weeks in what you might call a relationship, but it never resulted in that. Christine was still in love with your father. That’s why they were reunited so soon afterwards. They were destined to be together. To have you.’
The heat behind my eyes builds until I can’t speak.
‘We all make mistakes when we’re young, Allie. And your mother made one. But there’s one thing I can tell you categorically and without hesitation. I am not your father. It is simply not possible.’
Chapter 68
I waffle on at the airport. I can’t do anything else except that, and down a miniature bottle of Prosecco that costs substantially more than it’s worth. I do it all under the uncomfortable, fluorescent light of the lounge, without actually looking at Ed, even though I can see from the periphery of my vision that he hasn’t taken his eyes off me.
‘I can’t tell you how relieved I am. That Stefano and my mum never, you know . . .’ I try to think of a word that doesn’t make me want to bring up my lunch, ‘consummated their relationship. The reason we look alike is simply because his mum is my grandma.’
Ed nods.
‘And apparently,’ I continue, ‘it was Grandma Peggy’s dad we both inherited the teeth gap from. She never had a picture up in the house of him so I hadn’t known.’
‘Your grandma must have hated her father for what he made her do with the baby.’
I shrug. ‘I don’t know. Given how important her Christian values are to her, she will have tried her best to forgive him, but having his face on the wall would’ve been a step too far for anyone.’
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