by Katy Cannon
Anyway, there was still stuff to do, was the point. And I couldn’t do all that with Mabel looking over my shoulder or asking what I was doing on my tablet.
“Actually, I’m still kind of tired.” I looked up from my phone and smiled at Mabel, so she’d know I wasn’t avoiding her. Much. “Would you mind if I went to my room? I’d like to, uh, unpack and stuff before I go to bed.” That sounded better than ‘figure out the next stage of my master plan’.
“Of course!” Mabel bounced to her feet again, then grabbed me a glass of water from the filter jug in the fridge, and guided me towards the spare toiletries in the bathroom (like I hadn’t brought my own – well, Alice’s – anyway). Finally, I shut the door to my room behind me again, and I was alone.
I flopped on to my bed and pulled out my phone, swiping through to open Alice’s dossier. I could base mine on hers, right? Then I’d check out the message group.
I yawned again. Time to get to work.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Re: Dossier
Hey Alice
Thanks for the profile. Mabel asks LOTS of questions, so I reckon it’ll really help.
Um, in case I didn’t say earlier, I’m sorry about your mum, by the way. That really sucks.
Here’s Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Willa Andrews (but didn’t have time on the plane to ask).
W x
WILLA MAY ANDREWS
Age: 14. Which you already know. My birthday’s October 7th (only two months away, so start present planning now!)
Height: 162cm (last time I got measured)
Eye colour: Chocolate brown. Like my dad.
Family: I’m an only child too. My parents always said that one was more than enough when that one child was me. Other than that … you’re basically meeting more of my family this week than I ever have. Mum fell out with her parents before I was born, and like I told you, Dad’s dad remarried and moved to Italy when he was a teenager and they didn’t really speak much after that. I’ve never even been to Italy, in fact. Anyway, Dad’s mum – my granny – died when I was little.
Friends: My friendship group basically imploded this spring, when everything about my dad came out and I might have got a little bit moody. So anyway, they’re not worth talking about. But if you need to mention names at all, you can talk about Noemi and Tara.
Interests & Hobbies: Acting, obviously. Shopping. Hanging out with my friends. And I used to do dance, until last year.
History: I was born in Chester, and we’ve basically lived in Cheshire most of my life, until the LA move this summer.
Medical Information: I have six toes on my left foot. (Kidding. Obviously I don’t. But I don’t have any interesting allergies or conditions to share either.)
Other Information: I like to dress up, so don’t be afraid to try out new combinations from my suitcase or whatever. And I never go out without make-up, so get practising your brow definition.
I crept back down the stairs from my bedroom in the attic the next morning, not yet sure of the rhythms of Sofia’s house, or of what I should be doing there. I wasn’t even entirely sure about my choice of outfit from Willa’s suitcase. I’d tried to play it safe with denim shorts and a top, but the shorts seemed to hang too low on my hips, and the top, with its cutaway shoulders, seemed like something other girls at school wore on weekends, but I always assumed would look stupid on me. Like I was trying too hard.
The worst part though, by far, was Willa’s underwear. Instead of the white, cotton, stretchy crop-top bras I had, or even the one or two proper ones, Willa had packed hot pink, purple, and even zebra print, plunge-style push-up bras with padding – and I had nowhere near enough to fill them.
They looked awful, even under my clothes. I wanted to grab my own bra – even if I had been wearing it for two days and thousands of miles – but Sofia had already whisked all my travelling clothes away to be washed.
So, it looked like it had to be Willa’s bras.
I chose the least baggy one, but even then I could feel it gaping around my chest.
I’d put a white, lacy cardigan over the red top and hoped it didn’t look too ridiculous.
Willa had sent her dossier over late the night before, even by UK time, and I’d read it in bed that morning – thankful for the Wi-Fi code Luca had reeled off to me from memory after supper. It didn’t really tell me much more than I’d learned on the plane – except maybe that Willa seemed lonelier than I’d expected a girl like her to be. She was so beautiful, so confident, I’d imagined she’d have friends and family across the globe, just waiting to spend time with her.
Which I supposed she did, in a way, since as I reached the bottom of the stairs, Rosa popped into the kitchen doorway and beamed at me.
“Willa’s up!” she bellowed, surprisingly loudly for such a small girl. “Now can we go out? Please?”
Sofia’s face appeared behind her, smiling. “Do you not think Willa might want some breakfast first, Rosa?” she asked gently.
“She can eat on the way to the village.” Luca pushed past them both, a bag slung over his shoulder and an apple in his hand. “Catch!” He tossed the apple at me, and I blinked quickly before reaching out to catch it.
Luca grinned. “Good reflexes. And I’ve muffins in the bag. Come on.”
I looked at Sofia for permission, and with a small shrug, she nodded. Apparently I was leaving with Luca and Rosa. I glanced back over my shoulder, wondering where Antonio was this morning.
“Where are we going?” I asked, as we started down the track away from the farmhouse. Even though it was still early, the sun was already hot and high in the sky, tracking its way over the olive groves we’d driven through the day before.
“Well, there is a choice,” Luca told me. “Beach or town.”
I knew which one I’d choose – beach, every time. Except I wasn’t being Alice today. And Willa – with her love of cities and shopping – would definitely pick the town. But her family probably wouldn’t know that, right?
Before I could answer, Luca carried on talking. “But Sofia said your dad told her you’re a city girl, so you’ll probably want to go see the shops and stuff first, right?”
So much for the beach.
“Right. Town would definitely be my choice,” I lied, and Luca nodded.
“OK,” he said. Rosa looked disappointed, though.
“But maybe … we could do the beach another day?” Rosa perked up at my suggestion. “I’d like to explore all around here. I’ve never been to Italy before.” At least, I knew now that Willa hadn’t. I’d have to be careful not to slip up and mention my last Italian holiday.
Luca shrugged. “We can do that. The harbour is pretty cool.”
“But the gelato is better in town,” Rosa admitted.
The sun was warm across my back as we passed the gate marking the end of Sofia and Mattias’s property and started climbing the hill towards the village I could see perched at the top. The stone houses gleamed in the morning light.
“Do you like living with Sofia and Mattias?” I asked, as we walked. I figured there was no point avoiding the topic of their foster care.
Rosa nodded emphatically. “I love Sofia. And Mattias, even though he can’t cook.”
Luca took a moment longer to answer. “They’re very kind,” he said slowly. “And I like the farm. I like helping with the animals.”
Rosa had mentioned chickens last night, I remembered. “But I thought Antonio said it was an olive farm?” I tried not to blush as I said his name, and remembered him meeting my gaze for a second in the rear-view mirror as he drove and Sofia talked.
I knew Antonio was too old for me, and even though he’d been friendly, it wasn’t as if he’d been flirting with me or anything. So why couldn’t I stop thinking about him? And blushing, of all the ridiculous things.
Maybe trying to Be More Willa was affecting my brain.
“There ar
e olive groves too,” Luca replied, oblivious. “But Sofia loves animals. And she says that if you live somewhere like this, it’s only right to keep some. So there are chickens, a goat, a cow for milk, that sort of thing. Oh, and the sheepdog. Even though there aren’t any sheep.”
“But there are cats! You mustn’t forget the cats!” Rosa put in. “Mattias says they’re the ‘most overpaid mouse catchers in Italy’.”
I laughed. “Your English is so good, Rosa. And yours too, of course, Luca.”
“We’re half English,” Luca reminded me. “Our father only ever spoke English to us. So we had to learn.”
There was something in his tone, something darker that told me not to ask any more questions.
I looked away. “Well, I’m sorry I don’t speak any Italian. But I’m a quick learner, and I love languages. So maybe you two can teach me?” Too late, I remembered that Alice loved languages, not Willa.
Luca and Rosa wouldn’t know that, but I had to remember to Be More Willa. I couldn’t be sure how much Sofia and the others already knew about her – her dad had told them about her love of towns over beaches, after all. How much more had he told them? Probably more than he’d told Willa about them, I was guessing.
Rosa linked her arm through mine, skipping a little to keep up with me. “I can teach you Italian. First we’ll learn ‘Good morning’. That’s Buongiorno. Say Buongiorno.”
“Buongiorno,” I echoed, purposefully badly enough to make Rosa sigh heavily.
“This is going to take a while,” she said.
Luca and I exchanged a look, and he smirked, just a bit.
“I reckon I need to be able to order a gelato in Italian by the time we reach the village, right?” I said.
“Definitely,” Luca agreed. “Better get to work, Rosa.”
Rosa gave me a long-suffering look. “I think you’d better learn to order three gelatos.”
“Fair enough,” I said, with a laugh. “So teach me.”
The walk to the village of Tusello took another ten minutes or so, by which time I could manage a passable gelato order, much to Rosa’s delight. But instead of taking us straight to the gelato shop – which didn’t open until eleven, Rosa informed me, the minute I’d mastered the phrase – Luca took us on a tour of the village.
For someone who’d only been living there eighteen months, Luca had clearly made it his mission to learn every nook and cranny of the place. He led us confidently through piazzas – small squares where many roads through the village met and pastel-coloured houses with wrought-iron balconies looked out over benches and trees and tiny, dark shops that sold everything. He took us past cafés with people sitting outside them sipping coffee, and ancient churches and monuments. But when I asked about the history of the buildings we saw, he just shrugged.
“I like to know where all the paths and roads go,” was all he said. “The rest of it isn’t important. Come on, the gelato shop should be open by now.”
He hopped down from the low wall we were sitting on, watching people go by, and headed across the street and down another alleyway that – I was almost sure – led back to the main piazza.
Rosa slipped her hand into mine as we followed him. “We’ve lived in a lot of places,” she said, quietly enough that Luca, paces ahead of us, wouldn’t hear. “Luca always goes out investigating when we end up somewhere new. It’s so he can find the best escape routes. And hiding places. He likes trees best for that. He can climb higher than anyone, even Antonio.”
Which made me wonder about what circumstances had led Luca, Rosa and Antonio to be placed with Sofia and Mattias. As I watched Luca’s dark hair shining in the sun, and his shoulders hunched over as he darted past cars, I got the feeling they must have been really bad.
Whatever those circumstances were, I knew I’d never ask Luca. But maybe, if we became friends, he’d tell me in his own time.
Even if I could never tell him the truth about my own family.
“Now, say it one more time for practice,” Rosa instructed, as we reached the piazza. “And remember, I want strawberry.”
“Fragola,” I said, remembering.
“See?” Luca said. “She’s ready. Come on, let’s order. Then we can go eat them by the walls.”
Rosa only had to help me once with the ordering (I got confused by a question about cones or cups) but soon we had our three gelatos (strawberry for Rosa, pistachio for me and vanilla for Luca) and were heading back through shaded side streets.
“So, why haven’t you ever visited Sofia and Mattias before?” Luca asked, catching me by surprise as I savoured my pistachio gelato. “I mean, you’re their niece, right? But Sofia said she’d never even met you before yesterday.”
I took a large bite of gelato, hoping that having my mouth full would give me long enough to try to remember the details from Willa’s dossier. Mostly it just made my teeth hurt, though.
“Ow! Ow, ow, ow,” I moaned around the gelato.
“Sensitive teeth,” Rosa said sagely. “Antonio has that problem. You should lick, not bite.”
“Right.” I swallowed down the gelato. Now I had an ice-cream headache, and still didn’t have a good answer for Luca.
He was waiting for one, though. My show with the gelato hadn’t distracted him from his question at all.
“Um, I … don’t really know why,” I said honestly. “My dad never talked about Sofia. She’s his half-sister, you see.” At least I remembered that much. “I don’t think they really even knew each other growing up. They’ve only recently got back in touch.”
All true, for Willa, at least as far as I could remember. But I wasn’t sure that Luca was completely sold on my answer.
Finally, we popped out of the dark alleyways into blazing sunlight.
“We’re here,” Rosa said delightedly, hopping forwards to sit against the perimeter wall that Luca had promised me was the best place to eat ice cream.
It was a little tumbledown in places, but I wasn’t looking at the crumbling masonry. I was looking beyond it – down the hill, away from the village and out to sea.
The Tyrrhenian Sea sparkled in the sunlight, glittering all the way out to where it joined the Mediterranean. (I’d studied maps of the area around Sofia’s farm on my phone, waiting for the plane in London, so I at least knew the names of the places I’d be seeing. I hadn’t been able to spot Mum’s waterfall, though.) Below us, I could see the harbour, along with a row of hotels and restaurants and shops that bordered a sandy white beach, which ran all the way to the rocky cliffs that marked the end of the cove.
“It’s beautiful.” I breathed in the salt air, breezing up from the ocean, and instantly felt at home.
Luca was watching me carefully. “There’s caves at the end of the beach. One of them even has a mini waterfall running through it from some underground stream. It’s small, but kind of cool.”
The one Mum had wanted to see – that she claimed could set all your worries free – could never be called ‘mini’, so it couldn’t be the same one. But it was still a waterfall.
I smiled. I’d definitely made the right choice, being Willa this summer.
“Your gelato is melting,” Rosa pointed out.
I stopped staring out to sea and licked the edge of my cone before it started dripping on to my already sticky hands.
We finished our gelatos in silence, our backs against the medieval wall, looking across at the village that Luca and Rosa called home, for now.
As we started back down the winding path round the hill, Rosa skipped ahead, finding wildflowers on the edge of the road and coloured stones to store in her pockets.
Luca walked beside me, both of us watching her go.
“Why didn’t you pick the beach this morning?” he asked, after a moment. When I shot him a confused look, he raised his eyebrows. “I saw you looking out at it. You looked like you were … longing for it. I wouldn’t have thought a city girl like you would look like that.”
Oops. I’d let myself
be Alice, instead of Willa, just for a few minutes. I couldn’t afford to do that again. Especially around Luca, it seemed. Apparently paths and hiding places weren’t the only things he paid close attention to. He was perceptive about people too.
I’d have to be careful to always be Willa around Luca.
“I can’t like both? Besides, Rosa said the best gelato was in the town,” I said lightly, hoping he didn’t remember that she’d said it after I’d chosen the town. “And I really wanted gelato this morning.”
“Right.” Luca didn’t look convinced but he didn’t ask any more questions.
Which was just as well, as I didn’t have any answers. At least, not ones I could share with him.
“I’m really so sorry about this,” Mabel said for, like, the fourteenth time since breakfast. “It really shouldn’t take me too long to finish and then we can do something else. After lunch at the latest.”
She stopped walking suddenly and I had to backtrack a couple of steps until I saw the plaque on the building she’d halted at. Queen Anne’s University, London.
I’d checked out the university Mabel worked at online the night before, and it hadn’t looked like this. The photos on the website were of an imposing building with columns and steps.
This place had no columns. It just had, well, bricks. And a plaque.
“Back entrance,” Mabel said, picking up on my look. “I promise the place is more impressive from the front, but I tend to get collared by research students who haven’t gone home for the summer. Much easier to get in and out this way, if I’m in a hurry.”
Sneaky.
Mabel had been mortified that she’d been called into work on my first day, but actually I didn’t mind so much. It meant she’d be distracted, for a start, so wouldn’t ask so many questions about my life or my feelings (which was even worse). As far as I was concerned, feelings were for sharing with friends, and maybe boyfriends. Not someone else’s sort-of step-mother. Especially since the feelings she wanted to discuss were Alice’s anyway.