by Zoë Folbigg
‘Excuse-y me, Oliv-livvi-lee, will you ma-ha-marry me? That’s amore…’
‘WHAT?!’
Daniel didn’t sing anymore. He stopped, gave into his fears, and soaked up the smile on Olivia’s face.
Mimi turned to Olivia and hit her, thinking she must have misheard, but from Olivia’s smile it was clear she hadn’t. Their eyes locked as she nodded, stood up, threw her arms around Daniel for knowing how brave he had been, and kissed him. ‘Will you marry me?’ he repeated, in a whisper.
‘Si,’ she said in his ear, before kissing it repeatedly, and then his lips, to great cheers from the room, the drunkest of the businessmen joining Daniel and Olivia in their blissful huddle.
Thirty-One
December 2017
Cambridgeshire, England
‘Happy birthday to you…’ A swarm of 7 and 8-year-old children stood around the table, all eyes wide on the circus-themed cake in front of them. Olivia wasn’t the best baker – she didn’t like to cook much since nothing was ever a patch on Mamma Due’s hearty dinners and pastries – so celebration food was a team effort for the Messina Bleekers. Daniel would cook the beef or veal centrepiece for the Sunday roast and all of the trimmings; Olivia would fashion a ring out of bay leaves and clementines to go around it. Daniel would bake sponges for the girls’ birthday cakes; Olivia would decorate them elaborately. Daniel always created the solid base; Olivia would give it flair and make it look standout. Daniel had made three tiered sponges; Olivia had iced them.
She had intended to make the cake colourful: a red and white big top; sugarcraft animals and bunting in primary colours arching over a number eight, but her artistic edge shunned the Pinterest board and its garishness for something altogether more gothic. Pure white icing wrapped smooth sponges then a palette of smoky grey shades worked their way in an ombre to the top, like a mist clearing on the blackest of nights in a snowscape. At the top, Olivia modelled two ladders from royal icing and between them, the black silhouettes of two trapeze artists, a woman and a man, hands meeting in the middle mid-swing. It was quite beautiful, fit for a wedding more than a kid’s birthday party.
‘Happy birthday to you…’ Flora stood next to her mother, a good way taller than her sister and classmates, holding a knife and a stack of paper napkins, her serious face cracking in fondness. Daniel tried to take photos on his phone while chatting to some of the parents who had come to collect their children. Thirty kids with wet hair and tired eyes lisped and spat as they sang a hearty and tuneless rendition of Happy Birthday, while all marvelling at the almost-spooky centrepiece. A blond boy called Buzz stole a white Malteser from the base of the cake, and was met with a stern glare from Olivia.
‘Happy birthday dear Sofia… happy birthday to you!’
Everyone in the cafe clapped while the empty swimming pool beyond the glass panorama looked weirdly still.
‘YAY!’ they cheered. Sofia beamed. Flora broke into a smile.
The blond boy went to take another Malteser – he was the boy who had been shouting ‘TURRRRRRRRD!’ while dive bombing onto people in the pool earlier, and Daniel and Olivia had speculated if he knew what the word meant; whether he knew he was the biggest one at the party.
‘Erm, hands off please!’ said Olivia wielding a knife. The boy gave her a princely and petulant stare.
Jesus!
In the excitement and chaos of the situation, as Olivia sank the large knife through vanilla and raspberry sponge, all she could think was how tired she felt.
While radiotherapy and the shell mask had been claustrophobic and frightening, it was painless, and Olivia hadn’t really believed Dr Okereke or her deputy, a softly spoken Irish doctor called Marian McQuillan, when they warned her about the side-effects of fatigue. How could lying down for twenty minutes just four times render you so weak?
But weak she was. Her head felt foggy, her limbs heavy. And even though she still hadn’t had a single headache since collapsing in Ibiza and being diagnosed with brain cancer, her eyeballs hurt, as though she were wearing Sofia’s swimming goggles and they were too tight.
‘You OK?’ Daniel whispered, seeing the grey haze wash over Olivia’s face.
‘So-so. Get the party bags and give Buzz one first, I’m done with him. Little turd.’
Olivia sliced finger portions and Flora wrapped and put them into the thirty party bags that were waiting on a table by the door. Kids were becoming impatient. Kids were becoming tired. Parents started to trickle in to see how their little darlings had behaved and whether they had had a good time.
This was the milestone Olivia was wanting to get to – treatment over and Sofia’s birthday. Sofia was born after a time of trauma, after Olivia and Daniel had lost the second child they were expecting. Sofia’s birthday was always a signpost of relief. She was their rainbow baby, their gift. A gift for their 5-year-old to dote on and to cuddle after the heartbreak of dashed hopes. A baby brother they had to explain away. Sofia’s arrival, and every birthday since, always heralded celebration and relief. Perhaps that was why Olivia had focused so intently on getting through surgery, radiotherapy and recuperation with this day in mind. Now she was here, feeling exhausted, wanting to bat away the irritating children when she knew she ought to feel fortunate. All she wanted to do was run away. Or crawl out given how she felt. Take her daughters home to the Huf Haus, cut herself off and isolate with her tribe.
Deep breaths.
Parents walked in and cocked their heads to one side. They had known it hadn’t been easy for the Messina Bleeker family. They were surprised Olivia was going to the effort of throwing a whole-class party.
‘Was Buzz OK?’ asked his well-meaning mother. Olivia went to open her mouth.
‘Great!’ interjected Daniel.
Thirty-Two
May 2003
Tuscany, Italy
‘My baby just cares for me…’
Mimi crooned to the castle dancefloor, where Daniel led his new bride onto the thick stone floor, wearing her first proper Olivia Messina creation. She couldn’t find a wedding dress that felt right, so she set to work with silk chiffon and lace, creating a bohemian, tiered dress that was perfect for the relaxed bride she was. Her deep red hair tumbled onto her shoulders as the champagne silk plunged at her chest and thin straps revealed a low back and freckled shoulder blades.
Daniel cried when he saw Olivia approaching in it, a simple wreath of peach blooms and lavender berries adorning her crown. As the sun lowered and the silver olive groves and vineyards turned golden, Olivia walked up a cypress-lined path flanked by her mothers, her father’s gems anchoring her ankle, to Daniel and Jim, standing next to the registrar on a terrace in front of guests.
Olivia hadn’t wanted to get married on Lakes Como or Maggiore; she’d been to four hundred Pirelli weddings there when she was a little girl, and springtime in the lakes was too busy. So when Gili, an Israeli schoolfriend from Milan, offered up her vineyard, Olivia and Daniel flew out for a romantic weekend to check it out.
Gili had moved to Bordeaux to study viticulture, but knew that her heart was in chianti, so she moved back to Italy and restored an old castle in the grounds of a vineyard, falling in love and marrying her cellar master, Andrea, in the process. Olivia and Daniel’s weekend spent exploring Tuscany was heavenly: meandering in their Fiat 500 hire car past villas of terracotta, yellow and peach; drinking coffee in courtyards under pine trees that looked like green canopy clouds; walking through forests abundant with wild capers, asparagus, chicory and fennel; tasting chianti Andrea had lovingly produced and proudly poured. As they flew back to London there was no question where they would wed.
Gili and Andrea staged the most beautiful celebration for Olivia and Daniel, who took their vows while guests looked out onto the fruit and fertile earth of the rolling Tuscan countryside behind them. As the shadows from the burnt-orange and brick exterior walls of the castle grew long, the wedding party tucked into cured meats, cheeses and fried zucchini flowers at tr
estle tables, washed down with prosecco and frizzante. Ravioli and rabbit followed, and before Jim gave a rousing best man’s speech, Daniel paid tribute to his wife, and Olivia said some words in memory of her father. Guests tucked into torta nuziale and kept cheering ‘Evvia gli sposi!’
Daniel didn’t have many school or university friends at the wedding, since he spent most of those years with Kelly, travelling between Farnham and Brighton to see her at weekends. A few of his newspaper colleagues from The Guardian flew out – his sports team, the picture and travel editor, the fashion editor Lillie who had taken a shine to Olivia, and her actor boyfriend. Plus, Andy, Duncan and Kathy from the Elmworth Echo. Daniel had bumped into Viv Hart on a weekend back visiting his parents, and she said she was disappointed she couldn’t make it: ‘Half-term, I’m away with the kids…’ she apologised, even though Daniel hadn’t invited her.
Matt and his wife Annabel were there – she mostly sat looking bewildered by all the foreign food and outpourings of love and emotion. Annabel was seven months pregnant and rather inconvenienced by having to travel to Italy so close to her due date, but Matt was the reliable and charming usher who performed his responsibilities with pride, until he discovered a penchant for limoncello, drank his way through the cellar and forgot the rest of his jobs.
‘Is there not pizza?’ Annabel had hissed into Matt’s ear when waiters proudly presented their table with a platter of fritto misto antipasti.
Annabel didn’t ‘do’ vegetables, so she was put out by the fried courgette flowers and pumpkin as she pushed them around her plate in disdain. Surely in Italy of all places, she could get a cheese and tomato pizza?
Matt was too merry to be weighed down by it, but his parents fussed around Annabel, excited by and nervous for the imminent arrival of their first grandchild, so they asked a waitress if she could get anything for their pregnant daughter-in-law and put it down to cravings. The waitress brought out a focaccia steeped in olive oil.
‘Foreign muck,’ Olivia saw Annabel mouth to herself, angrily.
Olivia had more friends at their wedding, given her youth had been so misspent, her life so sociable and her education so rich. Milan’s International School diaspora had spread far and wide. Friends from Chile, Sweden, Hong Kong and the US mingled with Olivia’s sleepy and shrunken grandparents from Sicily. Alessandro’s parents, Vincenzo and Renata, were older than Maria’s parents, Flavio and Veru, but all four sat quietly at trestle tables on the terrace, being looked after and talked at by bright young things from around the world. Nancy’s parents, Jean and Archie, had flown in from Scotland, and found the whole notion of their granddaughter marrying a Sassenach quite bizarre.
There weren’t any children at the wedding – not because the bride and groom didn’t welcome them, but few of their friends had become parents yet, and those work colleagues who had kids revelled in leaving them at home in favour of a weekend in Tuscany.
As the wedding band took a break and filled their platters, Gili joined Mimi at a second microphone and joined in with ‘My Baby Just Cares For Me’.
They’d had their ‘official’ first dance to ‘That’s Amore’, but as Mimi and Gili crooned Nina Simone, and Jim and Wesley joined Olivia and Daniel on the rustic castle’s stone floor, the bride and groom spun within a circle of tea lights.
Olivia looked at Daniel, handsome in a tux Maria had made him, and knew that this was all they both wanted in life. To unite their families, from Lombardy to Cambridgeshire; Lothian to Sicily, and to forge the bonds of a unique family of their own.
Thirty-Three
December 2017
Cambridgeshire, England
‘She’s awfully antisocial, isn’t she?’ Nancy whispered as Olivia shook the roast potatoes in a tin on the hob. ‘Hasn’t stopped looking at her phone. On Christmas Day. At the table!’ Nancy had to talk quietly as there were no dividing walls separating the Huf Haus kitchen from the long dining table on the far side of the living area, and she looked down over her spectacles as she spoke. ‘Here, mind the oven.’
Olivia shook the aged tin with all her might and felt the tired pull on her limbs again. Her mother always sounded more Scottish when she was being critical; it was something that made Olivia and Daniel chuckle – unless she was being critical of them, of course.
‘It’s OK, I’ve got it.’
Olivia slid the heavy tray back into the oven for the final crispy push and Nancy shut the door for her.
‘I’d never noticed the extent of it before. Mind you, she was a misery when I first met her at your wedding.’
‘Twenty-one years!’ Olivia said, putting an oven glove to her brow.
‘You haven’t been married twenty-one years.’
‘No, they’ve been together twenty-one years. Imagine!’
‘Urch!’ Nancy said, scrunching up her face as the steam from the Brussels sprouts pan covered her glasses.
‘Daniel says she was like this from the off.’
‘Urch!’ Nancy added again for emphasis, as she cleared her lenses on the corner of her Oxford shirt. ‘But Matt seems so… warm.’
‘He is.’
‘Surely he must be screwing someone at work?’ Nancy speculated, her rrrrs of screwing and work rolling more and more as she became more outraged.
‘Not everyone does that, Mum,’ Olivia said, raising one eyebrow. Nancy hit her on the arm with a tea towel.
‘Ow!’ Olivia feigned pain and laughed, but she could actually feel the impact on her aching body.
‘What does Matt do now? Is he still big in Safeway?’
‘Well, they were bought out by Waitrose. But he’s at John Lewis now. Store manager in town. Most of our Christmas crockery and decorations came via him.’ Olivia nodded her head towards the table in gratitude.
‘Well, surely he’s screwing one of the Saturday girls.’
‘Annabel was the Saturday girl. Twenty-one years ago.’
‘Old habits die hard…’ Nancy said with a wink and the two gossips laughed.
‘Mamma, is it ready yet?’ Sofia bounced to the kitchen.
‘Yes! Five more minutes. Here, take these spoons. Ask your sister to top up drinks. And tell Papa he can start carving.’
*
Christmas was always an elaborate feast in the Messina Bleeker household. The family tended to alternate between Maria’s apartment on Via Tiziano – the spare room now decked out with two single beds for Flora and Sofia – and the Huf Haus in Cambridgeshire. The Milanese Christmases of crostini with liver pate and tortellini followed by lamb, broke the fast of Christmas Eve, when Olivia, Daniel and the girls would accompany Maria and Nancy to the Duomo for mass: Flora and Sofia loved getting a stocking from San Nicolas, or if they were staying until Epiphany, La Befana would come bearing gifts. It was a more religious and a more culinary affair, which Maria especially made magical. And always somehow easier without the English pressures of consumerism, five-bird roasts and tense dining tables.
Christmases in Guildington were lively but stressful. The advantage was Flora and Sofia could play with their toys and see their friends over the holidays. The downside was the circus. Nancy and Maria would come and stay, weighed down with ridiculous amounts of presents and panettone, pandoro and panforte – sometimes with a boyfriend in tow if Nancy had a significant other. Maria had never looked at another man since Alessandro’s death, but Nancy had dated the odd Italian banker, American art critic or like-minded widower from her cycling club. Daniel’s parents, Silvia and John Bleeker, would come because the Huf Haus was much more accommodating than the house on Albert Road in Elmworth, and Matt would turn up wearing a jolly Christmas jumper with Annabel and their son Bertie, a rotund teen with a large head and pink cheeks.
It was a large and convivial table, apart from the spectre at the feast, Annabel, who had the bitter resting face of someone who didn’t want to be there. Olivia and Daniel often pondered why she came, and imagined the terse conversations between Annabel and Matt in the run-up t
o Christmas, him trying to persuade her that it was her best offer, given they had no intention of hosting. Regardless of where they were in the world, Nancy always made a Cranachan trifle, doused in amaretto instead of whisky.
This Christmas mattered more than any before. The Messina Bleekers needed to be at home after the fright of the past six months. Despite the fatigue of shopping, cleaning, filling the fridge and hosting, Olivia didn’t want to go away, this of all years. This Christmas needed to be low-key and slow, a reminder to be grateful for their health.
Sofia’s birthday, then Christmas.
It had been the milestone Olivia wanted to hit through her most awful of autumns.
She had memories to make, a worried family to calm, A/W 2018 to finish – a colourful new direction away from muted tones and bridal gowns, inspired by her heritage and her holiday – and a business partner to reassure. A brain to heal.
Daniel feared hosting Christmas would be too much; Olivia had been so tired since the radiotherapy and had never been one to find respite and relaxation in cooking. He worried that the pressure of having everyone over would take its toll. He even suggested they go away, and Daniel wasn’t the sort to go away at Christmas – he liked the turkey and trimmings too much.
‘Somewhere exotic!’ he said, as they were unpacking a Tesco delivery. ‘The Caribbean perhaps?’
But that all felt a bit… terminal to Olivia. Too last-ditch. Like a final hurrah of a holiday just in case the operation and radiotherapy hadn’t actually been a success. Plus Olivia was booked in for an MRI and CAT scan at Addenbrooke’s on Christmas Eve, and she just wanted it out of the way.
*
As Daniel finished carving a citrus-ringed turkey and Annabel looked at her phone, the rest of the family tucked into the main event, thanked the hosts profusely, and reflected and reminisced about Christmases past. The presents they had given. The plays and shows they had performed in. Bertie proudly told the table he had been Joseph, all three wise men and Buttons in various school Christmas productions, because he’s ‘a better actor than Ben, even though Ben goes to drama club’. Silvia said Bertie must have got it from his father, because there wasn’t a school play Matt hadn’t shone in, and perhaps that was why he was such a success as a store manager. ‘You have to be a bit of a showman to juggle everything in an operation like that,’ she said proudly. Sofia laughed at the prospect of Uncle Matty dressed up as PT Barnum.