Chapter 49
Mum has been busy cooking all day so I can take Dad some ‘proper food’ when I visit this afternoon.
She went to see him this morning and was so horrified with the food they’d given him that she went straight from the hospital to Yousefi’s, the Kurdish greengrocer, to get what she needed to make him something he’ll like.
I survey the kitchen counter, currently doubling as an obstacle course of tupperware.
‘Mum, I’m not sure I can take all this food.’
‘People take food into hospitals all the time. Your auntie Styliani took your uncle Kyriako steak, egg and chips when he had his bypass.’
I feel like a drug smuggler as I enter the hospital reception. I’ve got a tote bag over my shoulder, the tupperware box still warm with the fried chicken and okra. I wait for someone to order me to halt, but somehow, I make it to the lifts without a SWAT team descending on me.
I find Dad’s ward easily. He’s in the last bed on a row of eight.
‘Hey, Dad,’ I say and swoop down to kiss him on the cheek.
‘Hello, darling,’ he says, then when he spots my bag. ‘Oh, have you got the bamies your mum promised me? I hope they’re from Yousefi.’
I smile, relieved he’s so chipper. ‘Of course, Dad – still warm. I’ve brought some Cypriot bread, too.’
I pull up a chair and sit beside him. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Oh, fine, fine,’ he says. He hates being fussed over, so I take him at his word.
‘Not too bored?’
‘I’ve got a nice view from the window.’
The view is of a grey tower block and a major London artery road. Still, he can see sky, which right now is clear and blue.
‘Has Mark been in to visit?’
He nods. ‘I’m not sure that boy ever sleeps.’
‘Can I ask you a question – about Mark?’
‘Of course.’
‘He said something last night about not being able to repay you for what you did. What did he mean? It couldn’t be because you taught him how to shave.’
‘Will you get me some water, Nella mou?’
I reach for the jug next to his bed and fill up his plastic beaker.
‘Here you go, Dad.’
He takes slow, careful sips, then passes the cup back to me so I can put it down.
‘This is going back twenty years plus.’
‘It obviously still means a lot to him.’
I wait for him to explain. He looks strangely emotional.
‘Mark’s dad was a bad man.’
I nod. ‘Yes, I remember him. And Anthi’s black eyes.’
‘I kept telling your mother we needed to call the police. But Anthi would beg us not to – what could the police do? A slap on the wrist, then the next time he’d hit her twice as hard. Mark, too.’ He pauses, a determined look on his face. ‘So, I came up with a different solution.
‘Giovanni drank, but he also gambled, and he’d racked up a lot of debt.
And whoever he owed it to was threatening to break his legs.
So, I found a way to use that to my advantage.
I told him I would pay what he owed plus a little extra, as long as he left.
And not just London – I wanted him out of the country. ’
‘How much are we talking about?’
‘A little over twenty thousand pounds.’
‘Bloody hell, Dad.’
The man in the bed opposite looks up from his crossword.
‘No swearing, Nella mou. Although, I think that was your mum’s reaction, too.’
This wasn’t the sort of sum my parents would have had lying around.
‘Where did you find the money?’
‘I had a parcel of land in Cyprus that I owned with my brother. I persuaded him to sell it so we could split the money.’
His brother – Niki’s dad. Is that why she remembered something about a Sicilian that had caused problems between the brothers?
‘I take it he didn’t want to sell the land?’
‘No, especially at short notice when we wouldn’t get the best price. In the end, I had to split the proceeds with him forty/sixty. It made an already uncomfortable situation with your mum even worse.’
I remember the year or so after Dad’s return from a solo trip to Cyprus how frosty Mum was with him. I was terrified it would end in divorce.
‘That was incredibly generous of you – brave, too.’
Tears well in his eyes, but his voice doesn’t break.
‘Nella, you know I love you and all my children, but there was never a choice. You don’t ignore that sort of violence.
Not if you can do something about it. My father used to hit my mother.
Maybe it wasn’t as bad as what Giovanni put his family through, but it was terrible all the same.
‘I was so helpless as a boy – I couldn’t do anything about it, so I knew that if there was something I could do now, so another son and another mother didn’t have to go through what we did, I would give my right arm to stop it.’
‘I had no idea Granny Maria had been through that.’
‘It was a different time then. People didn’t talk about it, even when it was happening right under their noses.
Anyway, at least my father died young – too much drinking and smoking.
It was the best thing that happened to us.
’ He swallows back a tear. ‘Having a violent father doesn’t make a boy violent.
It makes him realise how important it is to do everything he can to defend those who can’t defend themselves.
When I see how Mark has flourished, I feel so proud.
He needed someone to give him a chance and he grabbed it with both hands. ’
I’m properly crying now, I can barely see anything. I get up and wrap Dad in a huge hug.
We both sob, but I’m conscious not to press too hard on him and break open his stitches.
I pull a couple of tissues from the box next to his bed and give him one. Then wipe away my own tears.
He holds his finger up. ‘I haven’t finished.’
‘There’s more?’
‘Mark wants to pay me back, but I’ve told him it’s not his debt to repay.
And besides, it was never a loan. It was a gift.
He tried to give me a cheque but I wouldn’t touch it.
He says one day he’ll convince me, but in the meantime he is being very sneaky and paying for other things.
He paid for our anniversary dinner and that villa you all stayed at in Cyprus. Yan’s flight, too, I think.’
Fresh tears fill my eyes. ‘Oh, bloody hell, Dad.’
This time, he lets the swearing go.
‘I hate it when your mother says Mark is like his father. He is not – he has decency and honour.’
‘I think he learnt that from you, Dad.’
‘I would be very proud to call him my son.’
‘Not Mum, though,’ I say.
‘Your mother saw her friend duped by a terrible husband – she wouldn’t want the same thing to happen to her daughter.
It’s one of the reasons she pushed you towards Leo.
She didn’t want your head turned by Mark.
’ He pauses, before continuing. ‘My dad was the village balikari – the local heart-throb. That’s why your gran and mum always tell you to beware of good-looking boys. ’
‘Is that why mum says she married you because you look like the back-end of a donkey? She doesn’t mean it as an insult.’
Dad chuckles. ‘No, not the back-end of a donkey – the face of a donkey. I don’t mind. I happen to think donkeys are beautiful.’
‘Me, too, Dad. Me, too.’