Chapter 21
Greeting Donatella with a kiss on the cheek, Tuesday morning, Gabri kept half an eye out for Toni, hoping he’d see her – part of him dreading when he saw her but couldn’t kiss her. He was rather horrified by how much he’d missed her in his bed last night.
‘The new wedding planner arrived yesterday,’ Donatella told him. ‘She’s with the bride and groom at the moment but let me introduce you later. She might need a little hand-holding, I think.’
‘Why would she need that?’
The way Donatella drew back suggested he’d snapped those words with too much emphasis.
‘It’s her first wedding on site, apparently. I’m used to Sophie and Ginny knowing who everyone is, but she seems nice. A single mother.’
He had a hundred responses to that: she’s not just a mother; she’s not simply ‘nice’, she’s warm and funny and intuitive and a good listener. ‘Yes, I’ve had a lot of contact with her via email. If she’s busy, I’ll just get my initial supplies unloaded.’
‘Oh, I need to talk something through with both of you,’ Donatella said, holding him back with a hand on his arm. ‘It’s only a small change, but we have a turtle nest on the beach and we need to move the position of the ceremony – the spot where you’ll build the wedding arch.’
He froze, turning back to her. She might call it a small thing, but a nest from an endangered sea turtle was an important event for the community – and even more for the island environment.
‘Have you spoken to the municipality, just to be sure? It’s early for hatching, but it wouldn’t be unheard of. ’
‘I’ve spoken to the celebrant on the phone and she didn’t mention a problem. Of course, we’ll stay well away from the nest.’
He hesitated, wondering if his concerns were overblown. ‘I’ll take a look at the nest, but I think to be on the safe side, we need to speak to the municipality – the environment department – and to Legambiente. Their volunteers will be monitoring the nest.’
Cristina was a volunteer for the environmental charity; at least, she’d talked about it once or twice when they’d been seeing each other.
‘It’s a small wedding on a large beach. What could be the problem?’
‘You might be right, but I’d rather know for certain. The species is protected and there are only a handful of nests on the island. How about you bring Toni down to the beach when she’s finished and I’ll meet you there?’
After quickly stowing his supplies in the storage room in preparation for the work to come creating table centrepieces for the reception room, he made his way down to the beach.
A fierce libeccio wind was blowing, churning up the sea.
Striped umbrellas tugged at their fastenings and the sunloungers were unusually empty, but for a few hardy holidaymakers struggling to hold open the pages of their magazines and paperbacks.
He didn’t initially see the nest, so he tugged off his Birkenstocks and headed onto the sand. It was mixed with pebbles here, warmed from the sun. The peak of Monte Capanne rose in the distance to the right. It was a beautiful spot for a wedding, even if it hadn’t been called Innamorata.
As he dawdled in the direction of the water, looking up and down the beach, he noticed a small figure hurrying between the sunloungers, holding a plastic spade. The child threw himself down onto the sand at the end of the row of umbrellas and began furiously digging.
That was when Gabri noticed the fence posts, strung with red and white tape, warning people that the turtle nest was buried there.
‘Ehi!’ he called out. Taking off at a jog – laborious over the sand – he rushed to the nest to stop the boy disturbing the eggs. ‘Stop! You can’t dig there!’
He wasn’t sure why he’d spoken in English. Too much time spent with Toni over the past week. Or perhaps it was something about the boy’s blond hair. It was the right thing to do, because he looked up immediately, pale eyes huge in alarm as he cowered on the sand.
He was all arms and legs, like a baby deer. Gabri had no idea how old he might be. But it was his face, something about the shape of it that snagged Gabri’s attention – and the tiny freckles on his nose.
Gabri froze, his heart kicking in something like alarm.
The boy’s eyes weren’t brown. Toni’s husband must have been fair.
But the resemblance was unmistakable enough that his gaze was drawn to the echoes of her in this face while he said nothing.
He simply dropped to his knees beside the boy and stared.
‘I’m sorry,’ the boy said. ‘I didn’t mean to do it.’
Gabri wasn’t an expert on British accents, but this one was the exact shade of Toni’s. He needed to explain to the boy – Cillian was his name – but his astonishment had stolen his voice. He shouldn’t have been astonished. He’d known Toni was here with her son. But he hadn’t expected…
As daft as it sounded, the resemblance had socked him in the gut and had a hold of him still. God, what would his child have looked like, if any of those embryos had survived?
‘Am I in trouble?’ Cillian asked, his lower lip wobbling. ‘I don’t want to get my mum in trouble. She’s working here. I was just pretending this was buried treasure. It was just a game. This feels like a pirate’s beach, with the cliffs and the rocks.’
‘It is buried treasure,’ Gabri blurted out in reply, startling them both. ‘And this is a pirate’s beach, but not in the way you think.’
Cillian’s expression scrunched up in confusion.
‘There’s a turtle’s nest under there. Maybe a hundred eggs.’
His green eyes widened comically. ‘Really?’
‘That’s why it’s protected with this tape,’ Gabri explained gravely.
‘The mamma turtle came to the beach late one night and dug a big hole. Usually, she wanders around a bit beforehand, looking for the best spot and sometimes, she gives up and returns to the sea. But one mamma turtle found this exact place and moved around until she dug a hole with her—’
He cut himself off when he realised he didn’t know the most appropriate word in English to talk about a turtle’s backside with a child.
‘She dug a hole and laid the eggs there, then she covered it up and went back out to sea. Turtles return to the same beach where they were born to lay their eggs. Now, we’re waiting to see if they will successfully hatch.
When they hatch, the tiny baby turtles have to make their way safely to the sea.
It’s a… delicate process and people have to keep well away so we don’t interfere. ’
The alarm was back. ‘Do you think I hurt them? Will they die?’
Gabri was probably reading too much into a simple interaction – he definitely was, given his own foolishly profound emotions – but he imagined that word was more familiar on this child’s lips than it should have been.
‘I don’t think so. You didn’t dig very deep and they’re not hatching yet. Nature sometimes has a way of surprising us and allowing the weak to survive.’
The look in Cillian’s eyes was doubtful and Gabri didn’t think he was imagining that. He certainly wasn’t imagining the squeeze in his own chest.
‘Why did you say this is a pirate beach?’
‘Ah, that’s because of the local legend behind the name.
It’s called the spiaggia dell’Innamorata, it means “the lovers’ beach”, or “the beach of the woman in love”.
The story is from the Middle Ages and it’s about Maria, who witnesses her boyfriend, Lorenzo, being captured and killed by pirates, so she throws herself into the sea after him. ’
The further he went into the story, the slower he spoke, belatedly realising that it was highly inappropriate for the boy on a number of levels.
‘I don’t think it really happened,’ Gabri added, too little, too late.
‘Why did she do that if Lorenzo was gone anyway?’
‘You know what? I have no idea.’
‘Did she become a mermaid or something? Like a scary one? I heard mermaids used to be scary.’
‘There are no ghosts in this story – or mermaids. Or treasure, I’m afraid.
’ That was it – the end of the conversation.
Time to say goodbye. Instead, what came out when he opened his mouth was, ‘Have you been to the next beach, around the headland? It’s a bit of a secret and you can see lots of little creatures in the rock pools. ’
The boy’s face lit up in a stunning likeness of Toni when she smiled. Gabri found himself grinning back rather helplessly.
‘Cillian!’ An older woman hurried in their direction, the wind picking up her straw hat and billowing in her beach wrap.
Grasping the boy’s arms, she tugged him to his feet.
‘Are you all right? I thought you were waiting for me outside the toilets! Haven’t you learned that you don’t talk to strangers? ’
Cillian gave an uncomfortable shrug as Gabri hauled himself to his feet, slowly and unthreateningly.
‘I was still on the beach. I knew you’d see me when you came out,’ Cillian defended himself.
‘But anyone could—’ Her continual, uneasy glances stuck in Gabri’s throat. He’d promised Toni he’d stay away from her son, but instead, he’d stared at him in a mixture of wonder and horror and told him wild stories.
‘He was just telling me about the turtles,’ Cillian said brightly. ‘Granny, there are turtle eggs under there. One day, they’ll hatch and a hundred little turtles will go into the sea!’
‘Oh, is that… right?’ Another critical look.
‘And there were pirates here in the Middle Ages and they killed people, so their lovers threw themselves into the sea!’
Gabri struggled against a grimace, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment as colour rose in his cheeks.
‘I was just letting him know that it’s not allowed to dig there – because of the turtles,’ he said as evenly as he could.
‘At least you didn’t threaten pirates,’ Toni’s mother mumbled with a huff that reminded him of her daughter.
His lungs were seizing up again at the resemblance and he needed to get away from her family before he burst a vein.
‘You understand now?’ he asked superfluously, turning to Cillian.
The boy gave a solemn nod.
‘I should— A meeting. You enjoy your stay on the island and… listen to your nonna.’ He backed away with what he hoped was a warm smile on his face.
He thought he’d escaped when Cillian’s voice stopped him. ‘Excuse me! What’s your name?’
Santo Cielo, of all the questions he could have asked, that one was the worst. Gabri froze, his jaw working as though that would help his brain provide an answer to an impossible question.
He couldn’t lie to a child; everything in him rebelled at that.
But he felt the older woman’s gaze, couldn’t be certain what Toni had said about the week she’d spent with ‘Gabri’.
He could still summon the memory of Toni panicking at the thought of her mum finding out how they’d truly spent their week – and it still gave him a twinge of hurt, even though he understood her reasons. Angelo. Riccardo. Dante. Anything would do.
‘Gabriele.’ He didn’t look to see if the granny reacted.
‘Gabriele?’ the boy repeated, unable to roll the ‘r’, but otherwise capturing the lilt of his name tolerably well.
He gave the boy a wobbly smile. ‘What’s yours, little adventurer?’
Cillian drew himself up. Gabri had no idea if he was tall for nine years old, but he seemed taller in that second, and Gabri realised what he’d called the boy. An adventurer. Like his father. Merda, he could do nothing right.
‘My name’s Cillian,’ he said with a polite smile, holding one hand out to Gabri.
His throat thick, Gabri took the small, pale hand and shook it gently, desperate to ignore the prickle on his skin of some kind of connection. He didn’t want it. Couldn’t have it.
‘Piacere.’ He muttered the Italian from the depths of his foggy brain. ‘It’s nice to meet you, Cillian.’ He hoped the boy didn’t realise how deeply he meant it.
The prickle became a cold sweat as he made his way back to his car without seeing anything. He was supposed to meet Toni and Donatella at the beach, but human interaction would be too much to ask right now.
One thing was certain: Toni would be angry with him. There was no way she wouldn’t find out. Any minute, his phone could ring and it would be her, telling him he wasn’t fit to be around her son, and her mother had worked everything out and he’d ruined her life – or her week, at least.
But his phone didn’t ring.