Chapter 1 – Luca
September is a controversial month. Nobody questions August’s summer status, and October annually turns into a cult-like festival where the average person obsesses over knit jumpers and pumpkin spice.
But September remains stuck in an identity crisis so severe that even the Christmas crowd tries to claim it through the strategic distribution of chocolate Santas.
When I was eleven, I started a petition to ban the sale of Christmas-related goods before November, but I only collected three signatures – Dad, Simo and Miss M – and had to admit defeat.
I make my way up to the second floor of our building, a mug in one hand filled to the brim with coffee – black, three sugars – minding every step I take in my sliders.
Like every Monday, the lady of the house awaits my attendance.
I can feel her impatience simmer before I’ve reached her door.
I knock and walk into the flat, incense lingering in the air.
She sits by the window, glancing out on to the street, like a queen observing her kingdom.
Her curls are a deep silver, a stark contrast against her umber skin.
She taps the tabletop, every finger adorned with rings.
She’s unchanged from how I remember her from when I was a toddler.
Loyalty and love make my chest swell, and as if she senses the shift, she turns. A grin splits her face.
‘How dare you expose your toes to an old lady, and before I’ve had my coffee!’
I smirk back and set the mug down in front of her.
Miss M opens her arms wide and wraps me into a hug, bony but strong.
Then she orders me into a chair without releasing my hand.
Her eyes fall on the necklace that rests on my chest, but she doesn’t comment.
It’s a fine golden chain with a pearl pendant, shaped into a round disk no bigger than a thumbprint, its surface uneven, like crests on a wave.
‘I know pearls are passé or something,’ Simo had said when it struck midnight and he’d placed the gift box in my hands, ‘but I saw this and thought of you.’
The memory, barely a day old, gives me goosebumps.
‘Now, tell me about the bonfire last night. It all but smoked up my apartment!’
Miss M has a taste for dramatics. While it may be true that the wind carried wisps of bonfire smoke all the way up the street from the beach and through her top-floor window, I know she still welcomes every source that keeps her informed of the goings-on in town.
‘It was perfect,’ I say, and I mean it. It’s one of my favourite birthday traditions.
There’s something magical about a fire by the sea.
Flames tickling the sky as it turns purple.
Stars popping up by the millions. Dad to my left, Simo to my right, as we hold sticks towards the flames, the dough wrapped around them gaining a golden crust within minutes.
Then we slather the still-warm bread in sour cream and cheese and herbs and olives.
The latter is a new development. I used to detest olives, but eating them feels very adult.
It’s what I like to think of as character growth.
I tell Miss M all this and she nods and hums, her eyes half closed.
‘Paul shut the kiosk and joined us with ciders,’ I tell her.
‘Librarian Joni brought her dog and her guitar and had Dad choking on his food with some of her bawdier sea shanties. And even Simo’s parents came by to say hi, though they didn’t stick around. ’
‘Don’t like sea shanties, do they?’
‘Not exactly,’ I say. Simo’s parents are complicated, to say the least, but they have their reasons. ‘You should have joined us, Miss M. We missed you.’
Miss M effectively adopted us when Dad showed up in Lombard one day, with my heavily pregnant mum and a broken-down car.
Seventeen years later, Miss M is the most constant person in my life, apart from Dad.
And Simo, though Miss M has been around for longer.
She is the only grandparent I have ever had.
Miss M gently presses the palm of my hand. ‘I’m not one for beach outings. I prefer the comfort of my home to any other place on earth, you know that.’
I also know she hasn’t left her flat in months.
I know she’s happy in her own home. She loves few things more than people flocking to her doorstep like carrier pigeons to feed her gossip.
When I was a child, she used to be the epicentre of Lombard social life, but after a couple of ugly falls, she withdrew to her flat.
Now she observes everything in the town below her from her perch up high.
‘And what about my favourite explorer? My very own Jane Goodall?’
She always asks this question, but I rarely have anything new to tell her. ‘Mum is Mum. She’s probably crouching in the dirt right now with a pair of binoculars, watching a rare bird pick a worm out of the mud.’
Miss M grunts, satisfied by the image I’ve drawn.
‘She says she’ll be back in the country when I turn eighteen next summer.’ Mum is often the first person I speak to on my birthday. But sometimes, like last night, Simo beats her to it. He’s usually right there when Mum phones from half a planet away.
‘She can’t miss her baby becoming a man,’ Miss M confirms.
I nod, but then I think, Mum’s missing so many other things.
She tries to keep up and makes me tell her everything that’s going on in my honestly not that exciting life.
But it means she only hears about things after they’ve happened, rather than being a part of them.
I don’t think she regrets moving away, but I can tell that she misses Lombard – and Dad and me – more than she lets on.
‘School’s calling,’ I tell Miss M, then let go of her hand.
‘Ah, a new year. Are you excited, Luca?’
I shrug. ‘Just like every other year, isn’t it?’ Change means chaos, and I like the way things are.
‘We’ll see,’ says Miss M with the authority of someone decades older than me. ‘Don’t forget to send me today’s message on the noticeboard!’ she calls in lieu of a goodbye.
‘I’d never forget!’ I shout back, the familiar words rolling off my tongue before the door to her flat falls shut behind me.
We do this every Monday morning; I bring her coffee and updates from the cafe, and she gets to inquire about my life and give me advice that I generally ignore.
In my defence, Miss M gives awful advice for someone so old.
I’m not going to start eating liquorice because it allegedly ‘makes ashy elbows moist again’.
Body lotion exists for a reason, and besides, liquorice is rank.
I descend the stairs to the first floor, where I’ve lived all my life. I change into more sensible footwear, grab my school bag from my room and make my way down to the cafe on the ground floor. There’s chatter in the air and the smell of freshly ground coffee.
‘Miss M all good?’ Dad asks from behind the counter, busily filling pots of tea with steaming hot water.
‘Chirpy as ever,’ I respond. I grab a sourdough sandwich and a chocolate cookie, the latter earning me a stern look.
Dad disapproves of sweets for breakfast but doesn’t get the chance to tell me off.
A group of half a dozen tourists enter the already crammed place, and so I use the opportunity to escape.
Out on the street, I’m hit by a wave of salty air and the familiar cries of seagulls as they circle the town from above.
A quick jog takes me to the promenade. The ocean glimmers silver in the sunlight, as I go to greet Paul in his kiosk.
Instead of waving back, Paul turns towards the radio and frantically begins working its buttons.
I don’t think much of his strange behaviour, until a pack of primary-school kids walking the other way spots me and instantly stops chatting.
They giggle as I pass, and I make sure that I’m zipped up.
I go to check if there’s something on my face with my phone camera and see several missed calls from Simo. I hit the call button.
The boulevard begins to slope up, taking me above sea level.
If you pluck Piccadilly Circus out of London, then swap the mega-screens for a big slab of wood fixed between two poles and stick the whole thing bang on the coast of our little town, you basically get Lombard town square.
It’s way cuter though, I think as I step on to the cobbled square from one side, with the town hall and a lighthouse offering shelter from the sea wind and rowan trees dotted all around, their branches loaded with red berries.
‘Have you seen it?’ Simo says, picking up after just one ring.
‘Seen what?’
‘You haven’t seen it.’ His voice is oddly toneless. ‘Where are you?’
‘Almost at the noticeboard,’ I reply, rounding the square so I can read the announcement.
The thing about the noticeboard is that its message changes weekly.
Most of the time, it’ll be birthday wishes for residents reaching a significant age, or a massive storm warning, or holiday greetings.
But now and then we get something hilarious or unexpectedly raunchy, like the time when Linda, the mailwoman, announced a split from her husband after she caught him cheating with the pet-shop owner.
For a week, all of Lombard saw the words HARRY HICKS SLEEPS WITH FLEAS blasted across the town square.
Suffice it to say that nobody’s seen Harry since, and the pet shop shut down a few weeks later.
Heloise, the mayor’s right hand, is watering the plants in front of the lighthouse, but freezes when she sees me, as if I caught her in the middle of committing a crime. ‘Why is everyone acting so weird today?’
‘Luca, I need you to—’
‘Wait,’ I interrupt Simo. ‘Let me take a picture of the message and send it to Miss M.’