Chapter 36
‘You went to see your father.’ My thoughts race one after another. ‘You went to find your father in Sicily.’
The reason for the state he was in last night is perfectly, painfully clear.
He kicks the wet sand.
‘He’s in Rome. If he was in Palermo where he grew up, I would have found him months ago. But my grandmother was from Rome, so I widened my search.’
‘How long have you been looking for him?’
‘Just after I started therapy a year ago. Turns out I’m riddled with daddy issues – who’d have thought?’ He smiles wryly. ‘I thought this was the way to deal with them. My therapist wasn’t convinced, but I didn’t listen.’
‘Not like you at all,’ I gently tease.
He shakes his head. ‘Larnaca – Rome return in under twenty-four hours. Would not recommend.’
‘I’m not interested in your one-star Tripadvisor review. I’m interested in how you feel.’
‘That’s easy, I feel fucking stupid.’
‘Why?’
I wait for him to tell me to drop it, or that he wants to go home, but he doesn’t.
‘Because it felt like a rejection all over again.’
His voice is thick with emotion.
‘I’m so sorry, Mark.’
His energy has changed. A tightly controlled emotion is breaking free, and the words are about to spill out. All he needs is someone to listen.
‘How was he?’
He scratches his forehead like he’s trying to summon the memory.
‘Giovanni Marino is a changed man. A pillar of the fucking community, if you can believe it.’ He laughs bitterly. ‘Coaches football to blind orphans. Or something.’
‘Did you tell him you were coming?’
‘No, because I wasn’t sure I’d go through with it. He seemed surprised to see me but not overly moved. He acted like I was an old work colleague – vaguely interested to know what I was up to, but only asking superficial questions.’
‘Was he not like you remembered?’
‘He was smaller, thinner, slower. He was just … a nobody, a nothing. And yet he terrorised us all those years.’
‘Bullies only pick on people weaker than them. And that’s not you any more.’
He nods. ‘Were we really so hard to love? Because he seems to do okay with his new family. If he’d been a lonely old man, raging into a bottle of Johnnie Walker, I could have laughed at him.
But his new wife doesn’t look haunted, and he doesn’t have that ticking time bomb behind his eyes, none of us knowing when the fucking thing would go off.
’ He pauses. ‘On the way home, I kept asking myself the same question. Was it me? Did I bring it out in him?’
I feel his pain like a knife in my side. I take his hand and squeeze it tightly.
‘No, you didn’t.’
I hate the idea that he might think he’s not enough – that he’s responsible for what his father did.
I turn so I can see his eyes; I need to know that he hears me. ‘An abuser doesn’t get to say, “Look what you made me do.”’
His chest rises on a slow inward breath, and he nods. ‘I know,’ he says. ‘Most of the time.’
‘You’ll get there.’
The sun catches the sparks of gold in his eyes. There’s a shadow of vulnerability in them, but the longer I hold his gaze, the more it ebbs away, replaced by something else. Something fierce. Something that makes my heart beat faster.
I look away, finding the intensity too much, then half-smile to break the awkwardness. ‘Sorry, I’m being a therapist.’
‘You’re being a friend,’ he says softly. ‘To someone who doesn’t deserve your friendship.’
There was a time when I would have agreed with him. That he didn’t deserve any sympathy from me, but after last night, I’m not sure I feel that way any longer.
‘That’s not true,’ I tell him.
‘You’re one of the kindest people I know. I’ve done some shitty things in my life. You were at the receiving end of one of the worst.’
Everything inside me stills. The sounds of chattering children fade, the circling gulls are muted, and it’s just him and me and my thudding heart.
This isn’t the time for recriminations. After the terror of last night and what Mark’s just confessed to me, I can’t summon any righteous anger for his grief-stricken outburst outside a church fifteen years ago.
‘Let’s not dredge up the past,’ I tell him. ‘It’s all ancient history.’
His attention is caught by something behind me. A kid is barrelling towards us holding an enormous inflatable flamingo. It completely obstructs his view, I realise, a second before Mark pushes me out of the way.
I keep my balance, but Mark topples backwards. I watch, horrified, as his head lands heavily in six inches of water with Flamingo Boy on top of him.
Panicked, I thunder over to them.
‘You stupid idiot!’ I yell at the kid. ‘He just got out of hospital!’
The kid promptly bursts into tears.
‘Crying’s not going to help!’
‘En taxi, re mitsi,’ says Mark soothingly, telling the kid it’s okay. ‘Did you hurt yourself?’
This kid does not deserve Mark’s concern. ‘He’s fine,’ I snap. ‘He just needs to be more careful.’
An angry-looking woman – probably the kid’s mother – stomps towards us.
If she tries to blame his tears on us, I’ll tell her exactly what I think of her parenting skills.
But she storms past me, too busy berating her son for letting go of the flamingo they’d ‘only bought that morning for twenty Euros!’
They leave without a second look. ‘Yeah, don’t worry about the man with the head wound,’ I say under my breath.
I crouch down next to Mark, not caring if the hem of my dress gets wet.
‘Fuck, you gave me a fright. Are you okay? Did you hit your head?’
‘I’m fine,’ he says gruffly, getting up. ‘Stop acting like I’m broken.’
I’m taken aback by his prickliness. ‘I’m not, it’s just …’ The sentence hangs unfinished.
You nearly died in front of me.
He hears it, though.
‘Sorry,’ he says after a beat. ‘Shall we head home? There’s an inflatable unicorn over there who looks ready to attack.’
I smile. ‘Yeah, of course, although …’ I trail off and indicate his soggy clothes. The back of his T-shirt and shorts are soaking wet.
‘Are you worried about the car or getting another piggyback?’
‘I’m not jumping on your back. You’re drenched.’
He half-smiles. ‘There’s more than one way to ride this pony.’
Before I can react, he puts his shoulder to my abdomen, wraps an arm around the back of my knees, and flips me up in a fireman’s lift.
‘What the hell, Mark?’ I shriek, balanced precariously on his left shoulder. ‘You were knocked unconscious twelve hours ago!’
‘Relax, I’m not going to drop you,’ he says, marching up the beach.
It’s not falling I’m worried about, it’s everyone seeing my knickers. I’m not sure my dress is fully covering my arse.
The blood rushes to my head, and the curtain of my hair means I can’t see anything. Resigned to my fate, I bounce up and down, clutching his damp T-shirt, my hip pressed against the side of his neck and my face hovering above his firm backside.
Having no control over my movement from A to B is so disorientating.
No wonder Zorba hates being picked up. And the way Mark flung me over his shoulder, like I weighed no more than a five-kilo cat, made my tummy flip.
Millennia of evolution, and his effortless caveman move still triggers a spasm of lust.
We reach our sunbeds, and Mark puts me back on my feet. Annoyingly, I’m more out of breath than he is.
‘If you’re quite finished with your manly display.’
He grins. ‘Sweetheart, I kissed manly goodbye when I put on these flip-flops.’
I needn’t have worried about his wet clothes on the car seat. It’s so hot in here, any dampness evaporated into steam on contact.
The steering wheel is still uncomfortably hot as I pull up at the airport car park so he can pick up the car he was too drunk to drive last night.
Before he gets out, I put out an arm to stop him.
‘I’m sorry about what I said that first night at Tig’s.’
He frowns. ‘What do you mean?’
‘When you were driving me home, I said you were an arsehole like your father.’ I hold his eye. ‘It was a horrible thing to say, and I’m really sorry. I don’t think you’re remotely like Giovanni.’
He nods. ‘It’s okay. I know I’m not.’ He swings open the door. ‘I’d never have the patience to coach blind orphans.’