by Zoë Folbigg
Angelo’s son Santino and his girlfriend Elisabetta dropped in just before midnight and Olivia felt completely comfortable opening a bottle of prosecco and pouring them each a glass.
‘So what’s it to be?’ Haruki asked, with a kind and handsome smile. ‘Sushi with me, or stitching for Bernardo?’
‘I am trying to poach her you know,’ Bernardo confessed to Maria. ‘We need some vibrancy in the studio. New energy.’
‘Ahhh Bernardo, but that would mean working just for you – my angel’s wings are too big to tie her to one house.’
‘I know!’ he objected.
Just before midnight Nancy turned on the television, mainly to see firework displays from Rome and across the world, but also to see if it would work – all this talk about a Millennium Bug and Italy being the most ill-prepared country to face it had made them wonder. Olivia stepped out onto the balcony terrace for a moment of solitude; to see the fireworks erupting across the city let off by revellers who couldn’t wait. As she gazed out to the cold and smoky night sky, the smell of gunpowder, sulphur and charcoal filling her lungs, she was surprised to think of Daniel. The guy who had rescued her ankle chain on her travels and had rescued her the night she went too far. She thought of his sweet and handsome face and wondered what he might be doing tonight, remembered that his New Year would come an hour later. She thought of London and didn’t feel sick to her core as she usually did.
‘Funziona!’ Nancy cheered. And as quickly as Daniel had entered Olivia’s mind, he evaporated again, as she turned back into the living room where everyone had congregated. As Alessandro’s grandfather clock struck twelve and the needle still crackled over the turntable, Olivia knew that she was going to be all right in the year 2000.
Twenty-Seven
October 2017
Cambridgeshire, England
Vaani walked around the light bright downstairs of the Huf Haus with her hands in the pockets of her sleek Paul Smith trousers. In all the years she had known Olivia (thirty) and in all the time Olivia had lived in Guildington (thirteen), she had never ventured out of London to see her. Even though she had been rather interested in the ‘Teletubby house’ as she called it.
It wasn’t that Vaani was lazy, or that she found meeting Olivia a chore. Business was thriving and they hadn’t had a cross or misunderstood word since they went into partnership together soon after Flora was born. Vaani just didn’t leave London unless she had to – and that was usually to go to Mumbai, Paris or Babington House. And although Olivia insisted she was fine, that she could make the journey into London and meet Vaani at their Belsize Park headquarters, Vaani felt an unusual sensation that was so strong, it made her take a train. Into suburbia. And that was guilt. Vaani couldn’t make Olivia go back into London just four weeks after she had brain surgery there. Today she knew she had to dig deep and get a train beyond the M25.
‘Journey OK?’ asked Olivia, putting some fresh coffee in the machine that belched lovely aromas.
‘Yes! Turns out I didn’t have to pre-book,’ Vaani answered in surprise. ‘You can just buy a ticket and jump onboard. Choose any seat.’
Olivia frowned at Vaani in a half smile, to check if she was joking.
‘But you already know this, of course…’
‘Well yes, it’s hardly London to Paris on the Eurostar.’
‘And did you know that each terminal in London is famous for having trains that take you in a certain direction? So, say, Paddington is the one you always use if you’re going to…’
‘Bristol?’
‘Yes! Places over… there.’ Vaani took her hand out of her pocket and waved it towards the garden. ‘And you go to King’s Cross if you’re going to Scotland,’ she said, pointing to the high roof.
‘And Cambridge.’
‘Yes, who knew?!’
Vaani strode around the house, perusing the walls appreciatively, pleasantly surprised by how artists like Tracey Emin, Jeff Koons and Stuart Jones had made it out to the sticks.
‘I knew. We’re hardly in Scotland.’ Olivia handed over the coffee in a shiny copper cup. ‘Shall I show you the garden?’
Olivia often marvelled how Vaani – a businesswoman and style influencer with 100k Instagram followers, a well-dressed, savvy, competent citizen of London and Mumbai – could live in such a bubble. She could bust investors’ balls in business meetings and hold her own sitting between Anna Wintour and Victoria Beckham in the front row, yet she couldn’t take a train to Cambridge without a fuss. It was certainly part of her charm.
Olivia opened the glass doors and felt the October chill on the shaved part of her head that no one could see.
‘This is nice, isn’t it?!’ Vaani said with surprise. Olivia wasn’t sure what Vaani had expected, but was glad she was impressed, as they walked among autumn’s gold and red jewels, and looked back at the house.
‘Yeah, we got lucky with this.’
‘Really lucky.’
‘So how is life in the big wide world?’ Olivia asked keenly. ‘How’s the studio? Has Meg settled in yet? You should have let me come in, you know.’
Just before the summer Vaani and Olivia had hired a new assistant who cried on her first day when she mistook Vaani’s dismissive tone for a firing.
‘Well, she’s finally stopped whimpering around me. Thank god.’ Vaani rolled her enormous eyes. ‘Sachin and Meenu have gone back – I think it was definitely worth them coming over, seeing the UK side of things. And it’s just business as usual. You got the sales breakdowns for S/S 2017, didn’t you?’
‘Yeah,’ Olivia said unsurely. She couldn’t shake the feeling she was out of the loop. She’d missed the big visit from the managers of their Indian workshop; she’d missed meetings with investors, influencers and press interviews. She’d felt bad for not having been able to do Meg’s induction; she knew she was a more welcoming face to the brand than Vaani. She’d ducked out of daily life at Olivia Messina London – her own brand – for three months now, and felt as if she were neglecting a child.
‘Well, come in before the chemo starts, yes?’
‘It’s radiotherapy.’
‘I never know the difference. Which is the one where you lose your hair?’
‘Well, that tends to be chemo…’
‘Oh thank god.’
‘But there might be a localised patch of baldness with the type of radiotherapy I’m having.’
‘Shit, sorry.’
Vaani winced, then they both laughed. She was the only person who could get away with saying any such thing to Olivia.
‘Well I’m definitely coming into London before the radiotherapy starts, I have such FOMO.’
‘Oh, you haven’t missed much.’
‘I missed all of Fashion Week. We pulled the show!’
Vaani hugged her coffee cup to warm up.
‘You know what, I don’t think it will have made too much difference in the scheme of things. Makes us more of a big deal come Feb. People know why we didn’t show – it’s not like you couldn’t be bothered. And buyers are still buying. The PR team did an amazing job.’ Vaani took a sip and gestured to the studio at the side of the long leafy garden.
‘Want to see what I’m working on?’ Olivia asked. ‘It’s not much, just some sketches, but Ibiza got me inspired… well, until everything fell apart.’
‘Good girl. I’d love to,’ nodded Vaani, as Olivia unlocked the studio door with the big key in her cardigan pocket.
Twenty-Eight
May 2001
Milan
Hi Olivia,
I hope you’re well. I met you at the bottom of the world the day before your twenty-first birthday, then again in London.
So I followed your advice and changed my job, I got out of my rut and moved to London. I’ll be in Milan next week to cover a football match for The Guardian, I’m a sports writer here. It would be great to catch up for a coffee… if you’re free?
Daniel
X
*
Olivia, surprised by how handsome he was, how he looked like a man, walked towards him, along a stone and sand path in Parco Sempione, her colour-stained hands outstretched. The neat green park set behind a fortress castle, touched by both Da Vinci and Napoleon, was Olivia’s favourite outdoor space in Milan; her mind felt uncluttered and her breathing was always calm as she navigated the paths and ornamental ponds between the green lawns of Milan’s lungs. In spring it smelled of orange blossom, in winter roast chestnuts. Jutting out of its western edge was La Triennale, a design museum for this perennially stylish city, where Olivia had spent hours finding inspiration in peaceful isolation. Sempione always provided a serene sort of assault on the senses, which is why she suggested it as a rendezvous to Daniel. Somewhere tranquillo.
‘No!’ she laughed. ‘I’m very real.’
She wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him, pulling into his chest, smelling his scent of cedar, mandarin and the sea through the shirt under his open jacket. As he rubbed her back in their embrace, her spine felt smooth under her shirt dress, her body softer. She wore a slouchy leather bag across her shoulders and silver trainers that shone in the evening sun.
She’s here.
Olivia’s accent sounded more like an Italian person speaking English again, her skin was olive and tanned. She pulled back so she could examine Daniel’s face, planted a palm on each cheek, and kissed him vigorously on one side and then the other. Daniel blushed. She was friendlier than Daniel expected, there was a warmth in her he hadn’t seen in London.
‘Why? Did you think you had imagined me?’ Olivia questioned. ‘That perhaps I was the dark side of your alter ego?’
‘Like Fight Club,’ they both chimed, and then laughed.
Daniel tried to clarify himself.
‘Well, we met summer 1996, then summer 1998. So according to our rhythm, we really should have met up in the year 2000. When we didn’t, I wondered if I had, in fact, invented this amazing Italian character.’
Olivia raised her palms out to her sides and gave a philosophical shrug.
‘Well, summer ’98 was not a good one for me, I was a pig’s misery.’
‘Huh?’
‘You know, when things can’t get worse?’
She said it with such peace in her eyes, the golden hour of the Lombardi sunshine making them glimmer, that Daniel knew things must be better.
‘Rock bottom?’ he asked with a wry smile.
‘That’s right! Pig’s misery is rock bottom!’
I get it.
‘Then in ’99, well I was kind of… trying to get my shit together. Recuperando, if you know what I mean.’
Daniel knew.
‘And last summer?’
‘Last summer, I went to see my grandparents in Sicilia.’
Olivia laughed at the simplicity of it and Daniel wanted to kiss the corner of her mouth. The little mole that looked almost edible.
Daniel thought back to his summer of 2000. He had just started as a junior on the sports desk at The Guardian, and even though he was beginning at the bottom again; even though he wasn’t invited to go to Belgium or the Netherlands to cover Euro 2000, he loved his new job, his new life renting a room in a flatshare with Jim Beck and Wesley De Boer, and the confidence it had given him to finally end things with Kelly. After a nine-month slog, transitioning from one millennium to another, Daniel soon realised that not much had changed about Kelly, and her demands and double standards were getting him down. When he remembered how much better he was without her, that he would rather be the Daniel he was when he was travelling, even if it meant he was on his own, he got the courage to end it. To move on as he moved out of Elmworth.
And here he was, in a park tinged all colours of orange and pink, with a sweet honeysuckle scent rolling on the early evening breeze, glad to be the man he was now. Relieved that Olivia remembered and cared who he was. Perhaps he hadn’t been as insignificant to her as he feared.
He smiled and Olivia kept looking at his face, as if it had the answer to a question knitted in her eyebrows. Daniel definitely looked older. Twenty-seven suited him. He looked more mature and manly, with a light smattering of a beard now. Not one from the inertia of travelling. One that suited his face. His broad shoulders supported a heavy-looking backpack, and his strong legs anchored him to the soil and shingle of Sempione.
‘Your hands!’ Daniel said, breaking Olivia’s gaze, scared he didn’t have the answers. He knew he was always more needy, more reticent in their brief dalliances, but he took a deep breath, looked at her long hands, coloured with paint and jewellery, and remembered he was here on his terms. A grown-up. Nothing to feel needy about or to be ashamed of. He stroked the top of one of her hands as he looked at it and they both felt a charge run down their spines.
‘Si, they get kind of… messy!’ Olivia laughed, that laugh, as she looked down at her fingers, rings interwoven with yellow and blue dyes, from a day assisting the print and embellishment team at the Etro studio on Via Spartaco. Bernardo had managed to convince Olivia, in the spring of 2000, to liven up the studio he had managed for a decade, and she had loved it from day one.
Surrounded by moire, taffeta and heritage print – sequins, ribbons and handwriting textiles – with the hum of the Necchis in the sewing room, Olivia felt the most content she could remember since her father had died. And she was even being paid to do a job she loved. Daniel could see that joy in her placid face.
‘I’m working for a fashion house. Embellishment, embroidery, threadwork – lots of colour assisting,’ she said, holding up her palms as if to say, you got me.
But she did have him. She just didn’t know it yet.
‘Shall we walk?’ Olivia said, as she dropped her sunglasses down from the perch on her head to the bridge of her nose and her hair tumbled. She gestured to a large pond beyond the bushes and pathways ahead of her.
‘That would be lovely,’ Daniel said, putting his hands back in his pockets. The park was filling up with people at the end of a busy day’s work. German and Spanish tourists exploring the city before the big game. Children’s laughter echoed as they played on a roundabout. Two binmen picked litter while each licking a gelato.
*
‘I was surprised to get your message. I hoped you wouldn’t remember me!’
‘Oh, really?’ Daniel felt disappointed by her bluntness, but realised her smiling face belied her words.
‘Or rather I hoped you wouldn’t remember how you last saw me. I don’t think it was good.’
‘You look better now.’
Daniel worried about being offensive, but as he stole a look from under his brown-bear hair, he realised Olivia hadn’t taken it the wrong way.
‘I was coming here for work, and then I remembered you.’
Daniel didn’t say it was the other way around. That he hadn’t not thought about Olivia for a day since the day before her twenty-first birthday, and he had done everything he could to engineer a trip to Milan for work. To cover Bayern Munich v Valencia in the final of the Champions League, taking place at the San Siro the next night. He hadn’t had any luck, his hints gone unnoticed, until football’s fortunes favoured Daniel, at the expense of his boss.
His sports editor, a Yorkshireman called Lloyd, who always kept the best sporting gigs for himself (he’d send Daniel to Queens but would always take Wimbledon), was a Leeds United fan, and so devastated when his team lost in the semi-finals of the Champions League, he couldn’t face the heartache of going to a party his beloved Peacocks should have been at.
‘You go, lad,’ he’d said, putting the press pass on Daniel’s desk, after returning from the drubbing in Valencia. ‘I can’t watch, I’ll only be blubberin’.’
Daniel thanked his boss and clung onto the golden ticket. He finally had a reason to go to Milan.
To seek out Olivia.
From his computer on the sports desk he looked on AOL, Google and Friends Reunited, searching for an Olivia Messina in Milan, and was shocked to find a Hotmail address that he duly etched into his brain and hoped it was the right Olivia Messina. He lingered on it for three weeks before writing his simple, hopeful message, asking her if she’d like to meet for a coffee.
He sent it from his work email address, to show he had done something right. He had got out of the clutches of a boss who had done everything she could to manipulate, belittle and strip her employees of their confidence. He had finally moved to the sports desk of a national newspaper, where he showed his determination, diligence and passion – and wasn’t ever distracted en route to a shift. And he had broken down a broken Leeds United fan enough for him to send Daniel to Milan instead.
Thank you, Valencia.
Olivia had replied with a simple:
Perfect! I see you in front of the castle, Sempione Park.
They sorted the time and date, and didn’t say anything else. And here they were, walking towards terrapins basking in the mud on a sunny spring evening.
*
‘I can see you love your job now. I can tell it from your face.’
‘You can?’
‘Yes.’
‘Funny, I was just thinking the same about you.’
‘Well, isn’t that wonderful?’ said Olivia, with a wonderful smile.
‘It certainly is. And I have you to thank for that.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you told me to get my shit together. To leave the puttana I worked for.’
Olivia choked on an intake of breath.
‘I said that?!’
‘Yes. I thought porca puttana was a pizza, but turns out it was a really nasty swearword.’