Chapter 6
The train was pulling into an underground station. The sign on the platform spelt out Sanremo, all in one word, the Italian way, but Stella didn’t recognise it at all. She remembered the train tracks running along the coast, a station painted pink, a view of the sea.
Joe helped bump her suitcase down onto the platform. They followed a crowd of travellers to the start of a moving walkway.
‘This is so strange; it looks so different.’
‘They moved the station inland years ago. Didn’t you realise?’
‘I had no idea.’ There was no reason why she’d keep up with the news from Liguria.
She hadn’t set foot in the place for more than forty years.
She hadn’t even gone back for Mamma’s funeral.
She’d only been twenty-one when she’d heard the news.
And she knew she wouldn’t be welcome. Why would the mother who hadn’t wanted to see her in this world want her hanging around like a spectre as she made her way to the next?
And Stella could not face the stares and whispers, the judgement of the villagers.
She couldn’t bear the accusing looks on her brother and sister’s faces and to hear them spell out loud what a terrible thing she had done.
‘Watch your feet!’ Joe grabbed both suitcases. The travelator was coming to the end and there was another ahead of them. At last, they stepped into the ticket hall. Outside, a line of taxis stood waiting.
‘I’d like to walk,’ Stella said. She needed the fresh air, the chance to focus on her surroundings, not the thoughts in her head.
‘If you’re sure… It’s not far to the hotel but you seemed a bit tired on the journey.’
‘I’m fine. I think I recognise this street.’
‘I guess you must have been here a hundred times.’
‘Hardly ever.’
‘But your family lived just a few miles away. You can’t have spent all your time in your village when you were a teenager. There wouldn’t have been much to do.’
‘I don’t know about that. There was always something going on: a visiting theatre company, a dance in the village square. And every village around has its own food festival. The snail festival was one of the best.’
‘You’re not serious!’
‘Deadly. Food is almost a religion here. And of course we had the saints’ days, the parades and the village band. Anyway, my parents didn’t like me and my brother and sister to get the bus down to the coast. I guess they felt there were too many temptations.’
‘Makes it sound like you grew up in the 1950s, not the eighties!’
‘That’s the way it was.’ Sanremo with its nightlife, its tourists and its fancy shops had only been a bus ride away but for her family it was as foreign as Madrid or Berlin. Or the moon. But she knew it would sound ridiculous if she tried to explain.
‘No wonder you upped and left. You must have been longing to stretch your wings.’
‘Isn’t that the Tourist Office over there?’ Stella said quickly. ‘We could do with a proper map.’
They picked up a few leaflets and a city plan with all the sights numbered and colour coded.
She hadn’t wanted or needed to soak up any culture when she and Gino had roared into town.
They hadn’t needed to visit this or that or eat fancy meals.
They had been happy just to be together, to escape their families for a while.
Joe wheeled both cases past the great church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, palest green decorated with white stucco trim like icing on a wedding cake.
The colour and style were typical of the big churches in this part of Liguria but the wide tree-lined street that led to the hotel felt more like Paris.
Couples strolled past hand in hand; waiters attended tables and chairs arranged under glass canopies.
Snatches of conversation reached her: English, Italian, German, none of the Ligurian dialect of home. She could breathe more easily.
They entered another wide street, this one pedestrianised, lined with upmarket clothing stores.
‘We’ll come shopping tomorrow morning. I’ll treat you to a couple of outfits,’ Joe said.
She was on the verge of protesting; Joe had spent more than enough money on her and she really didn’t need any more clothes but the shopping street was a safe place. Within the air-conditioned branches of Marella and Luisa Spagnoli she could pretend she was in Florence or Milan. Anywhere but here.
‘Yes, that would be lovely… thank you. It’s so kind of you. I really am lucky.’
‘It’s only what you deserve,’ Joe said.
She bit down on her lip. It wasn’t true. She didn’t deserve to be happy after what she’d done.
* * *
Amy started packing the uneaten sandwiches into a Tupperware box.
Jack wasn’t much help, hovering around picking things up and putting them down again with one newly tattooed hand, the other still clutching the poem he’d read.
He’d shot up in the nine months he’d been away, the hems on his grey suit trousers now hovering around his ankle bones.
The little brother who’d once followed her around like a puppy was all grown up.
In a few months, he’d be starting university.
Grandpa would have been so proud to wave him off but now he’d never see the man Jack would become.
He’d never see Jack graduate or what Amy did with her life.
All their family celebrations, their milestones, their triumphs and their tears would take place without him.
Grandpa would never meet his great-grandchildren; he wouldn’t be sitting in the front pew when Amy’s dad walked her down the aisle.
Dad closed the last of the church hall’s blinds. ‘That was a good turnout, considering.’
‘I’m glad they’ve all gone. I couldn’t listen to another person making excuses for not coming to see him when he was still alive,’ Mum said. She cast a last look around to make sure nothing was left behind.
‘Grandpa said it didn’t matter that I missed his birthday, we were going to celebrate later on.’ Jack’s voice cracked. ‘But that was just talk. I should have come back.’
‘I didn’t mean you, love. He was proud of you, saving up and going on your adventures,’ Mum said, holding the door open for Dad, who was laden down with the leftovers.
‘You all heard the vicar. When Grandpa was about my age he was fighting in the desert. He was captured in Libya, made a prisoner of war. What’ve I been doing?
Backpacking on the gap-year trail with a load of trust-fund kids.
I’m supposed to be flying back out on Monday, but it all seems so pointless. ’
Amy thought of the wallchart, the half-used box of red drawing pins. ‘You’ve got to finish your trip; Grandpa would want you to.’
‘I don’t know…’
‘Amy’s right,’ Mum said.
‘He left you his Africa Star medal,’ Dad said, as if that somehow settled the matter. He locked up the hall, posted the keys back through the letterbox.
‘Maybe Amy should take my place. How about flying off to Costa Rica? You could go rafting down the Tarcoles River dodging crocodiles.’ Jack grinned.
Amy tried to laugh. She didn’t want to think about what she was going to do next. She kicked at a small stone on the church path. It landed on the verge amidst a scattering of damp confetti. Christenings, weddings, funerals: life would go on but it didn’t feel right.
‘Amy hasn’t decided what to do yet,’ Mum said.
‘I’ll be signing up at the temp agency, I suppose.’ She touched the coin necklace nestled beneath her dress.
‘Why not just go to Italy?’ Jack said. ‘Grandpa can’t tell you stories about where he grew up but that doesn’t stop you going there.’
‘By myself?’
‘The Italian riviera is very safe. Alassio is a seaside resort,’ Mum said.
‘It could still be dangerous.’ Jack smirked. ‘Amy might get blinded by a spray of sand in her eyes or choke on a giant ice-cream.’
She gave him a punch on the arm. ‘Very funny!’
‘So, what about it, Amy?’ Dad said, putting down a cool box and pointing his key fob at the car door.
‘Your brother’s idea isn’t so bad. You can take a few weeks out before you come back and look for a job.
I know Lance will have left you a little sum of money and Mum and I can sub you the airfare until probate’s settled, can’t we, Eileen? ’
‘Of course we will. It will do you good, love. I don’t like to think of you stuck in a call centre or some such all day when you’re already feeling down.’
‘I dunno,’ Amy said. She climbed in the back seat.
They drove the short route home in silence.
Amy studied the Order of Service even though she knew the hymns and readings off by heart.
Mum had chosen a beautiful picture of Grandma and Grandpa’s wedding for the back page, Grandpa with a tie pin and a carnation in his buttonhole, Grandma in a homemade two-piece.
On the front, a smiling Grandpa sat in a striped deckchair on last year’s daytrip to Brighton Beach.
Grandpa had bought them all ice-creams; Amy had tried paddleboarding and waved at him from the sea.
Photographs and memories – that was all she had left of him.
Mum unlocked the front door. Amy left Dad and Jack unpacking the boot.
She walked into the open-plan living-dining room.
Beyond the glass sliding doors, the little robin Grandpa loved to talk to sat expectantly on the branch of the apple tree.
The shed stood empty. She and Grandpa would never sit there working on his memoirs.
But Jack was right. Amy didn’t just have memories and photographs.
She still had the story Grandpa had planned to tell. A story that started in Italy.