Chapter 29
A week to the day, and a week after the kitten arrived into our lives, and I’m up early.
I push open the shutters to lose myself in the view.
The orange sun is rising over the fields and cypress trees, perhaps a little lazier than the past few weeks, as if taking the pressure off, signalling the start of late summer.
The cicadas are singing and I have butterflies in my stomach.
In a good way. It’s the workshop. And once I’ve shown Giovanni how this can work, I’ll be leaving here knowing I did the best I can.
I hurry to dress, dropping in on the children, who are still in bed, and putting a kiss on each of their heads, then telling them to dress and come with me to La Tavola.
I head downstairs into the brightly painted living room, clean and fresh, then straight out of the back door, into the morning, lifting my face to the sun.
Then I go back into the kitchen to make and drink coffee as the children get ready without argument.
Gathered by the newly painted front door, we walk outside.
I close it behind me and step onto the cobbles, heading up the hill.
The warming stones under the soles of my shoes are becoming familiar.
A familiarity I like. I look back at the little house, cleared of the weeds at the front, shutters open, cleaned and painted by Enrico.
It is a very different house from the sad, closed-up one we encountered when we first arrived. A lot has changed since then.
I haven’t seen Stella. I’ve asked Giovanni.
‘It’s best to wait and let her come to you,’ he told me.
Tonight is the Friday dinner and the nonna s will work in three teams, making the food for the village and delivering it.
Each student will visit a village resident with dinner.
Tomorrow will be a market visit to the neighbouring town and the guests will have lunch there, enjoying the cafés, the street food on sale, and pizza at La Tavola in the evening.
And on Sunday, there is lunch, with one last important decision to make: whose lasagne recipe shall we use?
I unlock La Tavola’s door and leave it ajar so that anyone can come in to join me for coffee and a chat.
The place is spotlessly clean because I scrubbed and scrubbed all week.
All I need to do is lay out what’s needed at three different work stations.
I put my bag on the table, and it’s only then that I realize I’m still carrying Mr Fluffy around in my bag.
Exhausted and finally retired, he looks as if he deserves a good rest and now needs to be put into a darkened drawer to recover.
I smile at him. ‘Thank you, Mr Fluffy. You’ve been amazing.’
Outside I can hear Aimee showing Isabella the kitten, taking it in turns to hug, kiss and love it.
I head into the kitchen and make straight for the coffee pot.
‘Can I help?’ I jump and spin round to see Stella standing there.
I falter. ‘I really have to get on. We have students arriving,’ I say, trying to put off the conversation. But she doesn’t move. ‘I’m sorry for how I reacted last week. It was a shock. It’s all been a bit of a shock,’ I say.
‘You’re right, I shouldn’t have brought the kitten. It was irresponsible. I’m sorry. So stupid.’
She sighs, drops her head and, with it, her guard. She starts to cry.
‘It was impulsive, not stupid. It was a kind thing to do.’ I point to a stool at the work station. ‘Come on, sit,’ I tell her.
‘Impulsive. Yes. I am.’
‘Well, at least I know where you get that from!’
She chuckles, and sniffs.
I make the coffee and put a cup in front of her. Its steam rises, a phoenix from the ashes, spreading its reviving roasted-coffee-bean scent, and she lifts her head slowly. ‘I wish I’d known him more.’
‘You’re very much like him in many ways. You probably just need to look at yourself to know who Marco was. He gave his all to whatever his plan was at the time.’
She smiles again and goes to wipe her tears on her sleeve.
I reach for the kitchen roll instinctively and hand it to her.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t know about you. But that night, after you’d gone, I went through his emails.
I know you’d only just met. And he planned to introduce us, here, once we came out together to see the house.
I see that now. We just never had that moment. ’
She blows her nose, loudly.
‘And it’s just that—’
‘You want to know how I happened? If he cheated on you with my mother?’
I nod. ‘Yes, I do. I want to know if my memories of us are still special.’
‘He didn’t,’
A heavy weight has just lifted off me. ‘Please don’t say it to save my feelings. If anyone should be having their feelings saved, it’s you. You thought you’d been abandoned and now you find out the father you’d only just met is dead.’
‘Really, I promise. I’m not bullshitting you. Sorry.’
‘It’s fine.’ I smile as we try to navigate the situation as best we can. We’re like a couple of rookie dodgem drivers, bumping into each other.
‘My mother told me. She was totally into him. They met at a festival. She was in a band. He was cheffing for the acts. She thought he was the one. But then, after the festival, he went to London. He arranged to meet her. She thought he was going to propose, and she planned to tell him she was pregnant. Instead, he told her he’d met someone else, the love of his life, and he couldn’t see her any more.
He was honest about it. He never strung her along.
But she wanted a clean break. So she never told him she was pregnant.
She never badmouthed him. Just said they’d split before I was born and he had found happiness.
Just like she did eventually with my stepdad before she died.
When I was sixteen. She stayed here. She’d got into a bad crowd and Giovanni helped her when she was trying to stay clean.
But she couldn’t stop living the life she lived, on the road, with people she knew.
This village became a safe place for me.
Giovanni has been here for me. And I looked up Marco online when I was old enough. Facebook is a great thing!’
‘That’s debatable!’
‘He wanted to tell you. But he said he wanted to meet me first. Take things carefully. He had a family to think of. He came here to meet me, and saw the house. He told me he was going to buy it, and wanted to bring you here, for us to meet in person.’
‘That’s what he said in the emails …’ Tears fill my eyes. ‘And now we have.’
‘Just without him.’
‘What about you? Where did you go when you didn’t hear from him?’
‘Here and there, staying in Casa Luna when I was in the area. It felt the closest thing to a home I’d had.’
‘You were staying in the house! So that’s why it wasn’t in as bad a state as I was expecting.’
‘I tried to keep it nice for when he finally came back.’
‘Oh, Stella.’ This time I can’t help but put my hand over hers, and she lets me.
‘But he didn’t come back. His family did. A family I wasn’t a part of. And he wasn’t here.’
‘But,’ it catches in my throat, ‘a little piece of him is here, in you, Aimee, Luca … in this place, where he had a dream of us all getting to know each other.’
She drops her head again.
‘And we can still do that …’
She rubs her nose. Her hard mask has all but gone, leaving in its place a vulnerable young woman, who looks exactly like the man I loved. ‘You mean you don’t hate me?’
‘Why would I?’
‘It seemed that way when I told you,’ she says quietly.
I put out my hand, wanting to make this better. ‘I’m sorry. I was in shock.’
She looks up at me. ‘And I wasn’t exactly making it easy for you!’
I shake my head and we smile.
‘No … but that’s what teenagers do. And I have all this to come with Aimee and Luca.’
She laughs. ‘They’re lovely children. I’d like to stay in touch if I can.’
I nod firmly. ‘Of course!’
‘And, again, I’m sorry about the kitten. I’ll find a way of looking after it and letting Aimee know.’
I pat her hand. ‘If Marco’s death has taught me one thing, it’s about living for today.
And we have today. And … there’s no reason why we can’t do what Marco intended, for us all to get to know each other.
It’s taken me a long time to stop thinking about him every minute of every day.
It was all so sad. Anniversaries, birthdays, first days of school …
I tried to carry on for the children’s sake, but since I’ve been here, I’ve felt different.
Not so sad. I’m still thinking about him, but I also feel lighter.
He’s part of the family, even if he’s not here any more, but it’s not all sad. It’s okay to be happy too …’
‘Giovanni once told me, when I’d got into some sort of trouble,’ Stella says, ‘that that’s why cars have bigger windows at the front and smaller ones at the back. It’s so you can look forward and see the future and not look back so much.’
‘Giovanni is a wise man,’ I say.
‘He is.’
‘Well, I’m going to make today the best I can to try to repay him for how he’s helped both of us.’
I move towards one of the tables in the kitchen and Luca moves to its other end. Together, we start to create three distinct working areas.
‘Team work is how kitchens function,’ I tell Luca. It’s as if I’ve slipped into a pair of comfortable shoes, not the old pair: new ones that are twice as nice.
He giggles. ‘Try telling the nonna s that!’
Suddenly I’m nervous again about today. Even though I’ve had the deposit from Harris Headhunters’ bank, a list of arrival times, I’ve passed on accommodation details and the minibus is booked, I’m still on edge about pulling this off.