Chapter 13
Back at the hotel, Amy quickly completed translations of the papers Adam had given her and sent them back to him with a note confirming her initial impression that he didn’t need to be too concerned about the contents. Some follow-up action was needed for some of them and she repeated that she would be happy to help out if required. She spent a lot of the evening thinking about Adam and what he had said. As far as Martin Slater was concerned, it was looking more and more likely that he and her mother must have had an affair, but without proof she was unwilling to entertain the thought that everything her mother had told her had been a lie. Could it really be that her real father hadn’t been an officer in the Marines, tragically killed on active service as told by her mum, but a totally different man? It would, of course, explain the amazing bequest, but until she could get concrete proof, she refused to let herself believe it.
She also allowed herself a few minutes to think about Adam. She couldn’t deny the frisson that had gone through her when she’d seen him up close in his office, but she knew deep down that she would do well to dismiss any romantic ideas. First, he appeared to already be in a relationship, and second – and most importantly – she was already in a relationship herself, however precarious, with Gavin.
Although the farmers were crying out for rain, it was unseasonably hot – no doubt to the delight of people on the beaches down on the coast – over the next couple of days and nights. The hotel didn’t have air conditioning but she was pleased to find it was still cool enough in her room with the window open, for her to be able to sleep all through the night, albeit just covered by a single sheet. What was interesting was that she fell asleep both nights thinking not of Gavin, but of Adam.
On Saturday morning, after taking Max for a walk in the fields, she plucked up enough courage to venture down to the cellar to take a better look around. All went well at first, but not for long. She was sifting through a pile of old junk and lifted an old china chamber pot when there was a sudden movement beneath it. She found herself confronted by a black and yellow snake, barely a foot long, clearly annoyed at losing the roof over its head. She dropped the pot, which smashed on the ground, before she scampered back up the stairs as fast as she could.
She was still thinking about the snake an hour later when there was a knock on the door. She opened it to find Rosa, holding a basket, with Coco the dog.
‘Rosa, how nice to see you. Do come in.’ Amy stood aside and the dog slipped past, followed by Rosa.
‘Ciao, Amy. It’s good to see you again.’
Amy stroked Coco and then pointed towards the sofa.
‘Come and sit down. Can I make some tea or coffee? I’m afraid the coffee’s only instant for now, but an all-singing, all-dancing coffee machine is being delivered tomorrow.’
‘A cup of English tea would be wonderful, thank you. I hope you don’t mind me popping round, but it’s the only way to get in touch. Martin used to say he was perfectly happy without a phone. He did almost everything by letter. I still can’t understand how he managed.’ Rosa sat down on the sofa and put the basket on the floor at her feet. ‘Do you like peaches? We’ve got three trees in the garden and there’s a limit to the amount of jam I can make.’ She removed a bag from the basket and handed it to Amy. Inside were a dozen gorgeous ripe peaches and the aroma wafting up from the bag was enticing.
‘How wonderful. Thank you so much. I’m afraid the garden here’s a bit of a wasteland.’
‘Martin used to enjoy gardening but it doesn’t take long for it to get out of hand.’
Amy went through to the kitchen, filled the kettle, and switched it on. As usual, the lights dimmed as she did so. She remembered the electrician’s words and kept her fingers crossed that the electrics would hold up for another few days. While the kettle heated up, she went back to the living room and found Rosa standing at the open French windows, peering out into the garden.
‘I remember coming here a few summers back. Martin invited us round for a glass of champagne to celebrate England winning some cricket match or other. It was a fine evening and we were all out in the garden. It’s been let go terribly since then. I suppose he did nothing to it in his last year or so. You’ll have your work cut out.’
‘Have you got a big garden where you live?’
‘Big enough. I’m always finding things that need doing.’
Just then, the kettle reached the boil and switched itself off with a loud click. Amy went back to the kitchen and made the tea and then she and Rosa sat and chatted. After a while it turned out that Rosa had come around with an invitation to lunch the next day.
‘Vincenzo so likes his roast on a Sunday. Do say you’ll come. It’ll just be us and a few other friends. I’m sure they’ll all be so terribly pleased to meet you. Do come.’
Amy realised that she would probably do well to try to get to know a few more local people. ‘That’s very kind, I’d love to.’
‘Excellent. Vincenzo said to tell you he can promise you some good wine. He knows his wines and he likes them.’
‘That sounds wonderful. I’ve been drinking the local wine and it’s really good. I found a couple of dozen bottles in the kitchen cupboards and I met Signor Montalcino the other day. He’s the man who rents the fields belonging to this property, and he pays the rent in wine. He’s told me he’s got two hundred litres of back rent for me and I can have it any time I want. I’ll bring a couple with me.’
‘Lucky you.’
Barely half an hour after Rosa had left, Amy had another visitor. It was Signora Grande and she had brought Amy’s four-legged bosom buddy with her. Unlike the Labrador, she was looking worried.
‘I wonder if I could ask a big favour of you, Amy. I’ve just had a call to say that that my sister in Livorno has had what sounds like a stroke and my son’s coming from Pistoia to collect me and take me to see her. I don’t suppose you could look after Max for me. I’ll be back tonight.’
‘I’m so sorry to hear about your sister, I do hope it isn’t too serious. Of course I’ll look after Max. In fact, I’ll take him for a walk now.’
She and the boisterous Labrador had a pleasant, if hot, walk and returned to the welcome shade of the old house. Amy gave Max a drink and a couple of biscuits – which disappeared down his throat in seconds. After he had stretched out on the cool floor and appeared to be fast asleep, she left him and went upstairs. She decided to have a go at clearing Martin Slater’s study before the tradesmen came in on Monday. Gradually clearing the worst of the clutter, she couldn’t help thinking back to the spring when she had found herself doing the exact same thing in her mother’s house. It was sobering to reflect that both her mum and Mr Slater had died so relatively young and she spared a thought and a tear for her mother as she worked. She hadn’t always seen eye-to-eye with her, but they had still been very close and she knew she owed her a great debt of gratitude for managing to bring her up all on her own. She was still coming to terms with her mum’s death now, even though months had already passed.
The floor of the study was littered with boxes, books, piles of paper and files. There were even pieces of a suit of armour and a rusty dagger in a tatty leather sheath. She had just about reached the far side of the room, her hands dusty and her fingernails black, when she made a discovery. Shifting stuff on one of the lower shelves – very gingerly after coming face-to-face with a whopping great hairy black spider – she saw something sticking out of the stone wall behind. She pulled half a dozen big books out of the way and found that what she had spotted was a dial, protruding from the front of a solid metal safe firmly cemented into the thick stone wall. Fascinated, she knelt down in front of it.
It wasn’t very big – probably no bigger than an average briefcase. There was no keyhole, just the brass dial, with numbers around the rim. She screwed up her eyes and peered at the numbers as she twisted the dial in both directions to see if it opened. After a bit, she tried using her ears. She turned the dial a few more times, listening closely to hear if it made any more significant clicking sound on one number rather than another, but to no avail. Frustratingly, it remained firmly locked.
She sat down on the chair and racked her brains for a solution. It didn’t take long.
‘The letter!’ She found herself shouting out loud. She ran back downstairs, startling the comatose dog, and together with him hurried out of the door and ran like a mad thing back to the hotel, with Max bouncing along excitedly beside her. While he sniffed around her room and wandered out onto the balcony to admire the view, she dug into her suitcase and pulled out the envelope that the notary had given her. She retrieved the letter and looked again at the riddle Mr Slater had set her. As soon as she read the first couple of lines, she realised she had to be on the right track. The words key and safe leapt out of the page at her.
My dearest Amy
Initially this may puzzle you, but you will find that these are key questions. Keep them safe.
1) On what day was your mother born?
2) On what day were you born?
3) Your mother has a brooch in the shape of an animal. How many diamonds are there on the brooch?
4) The pub opposite the church where you were christened – how many bells on the sign?
She set about answering the questions in her head. Her mother had been born on the ninth of October and her own birthday was the thirtieth of March. The pub was the Seven Bells and the only complication was the brooch that she realised was still buried in one of the cardboard boxes back at the flat in London. For a moment she toyed with the idea of calling Gavin and asking him to go round and look for it but, as he still hadn’t bothered to contact her, she didn’t really feel too much like talking to him and decided against it. Still, she reckoned from memory that there were between fifteen and twenty little diamonds on it, so it should be possible to make it work. Armed with the letter she and Max hurried back to the house.
Upstairs in the study, she dropped to her knees in front of the little safe and wondered what to do. How many numbers would it need? She started with 9 30 15 7. She carefully spun the dial so as to compose the numbers, but nothing happened. She tried again, using all the numbers in third place from sixteen to twenty, but still without success. She tried inserting the month of her mother’s birth as well as her own, but still to no avail. Frustrated, she sat back on her heels and considered her next move. She read the letter again very carefully and suddenly realised something she had missed. The first word of the riddle was initially. Maybe this meant that only the initial digit of each number counted? She tried once more, this time just with the numbers 9 3 1 7. Again no joy, so she tried substituting a two for the number of diamonds and as she clicked on the final 7, the door sprang open.
She had done it.
She leant forward and reached into the safe. As far as she could see, all it contained was an old-fashioned cardboard box file. Amy pulled it out and then peered inside the safe, even running her fingers around the interior in case anything was left behind, but found nothing. Picking up the file, she got to her feet and went over to the desk.
Sitting down on the chair, she switched on the table lamp and opened the lid of the box. The first thing that caught her eye was a wad of banknotes. They were green one-hundred-euro notes and a quick count revealed that there was a total of twenty thousand euros there. Although she dealt regularly with seven- and eight-figure sums in her working life, she had never handled so much cash before and she felt almost awe-struck. Mr Slater’s generosity knew no bounds. She set the money carefully aside and checked out the rest of the contents of the box.
There were some odd keys, a British passport in the name of Martin Thomas Slater, a collection of old cheque book stubs held together with a rubber band, and a copy of his will. A quick check revealed that this was exactly the same as the one she had received from the notary. Beneath them, held together by a bulldog clip, was a clutch of other documents. She flicked swiftly through them and saw that they all appeared to be relating to the house, insurance, guarantees for household items and so on, along with a load of old invoices and bills. And then, underneath everything, she found a sealed envelope addressed to My dearest Amy. With shaking hands, she slit the envelope open and took out two sheets of paper.
The first bore the heading of a private clinic in Geneva, Switzerland and, although Amy had never seen one before, it was clear that it was the DNA profile of Martin Thomas Slater. The other document was a single typewritten letter. It was dated the thirteenth of January the previous year, not many months before his death.
Amy read the letter closely, word by word. As she read, she found herself having to keep stopping every so often to unclench her fingers, such was her state of nervous tension. When she reached the bottom of the page, she went back and read it again, and then again, until she had absorbed it all. Only then did she drop it back onto the pile of documents on the desk and sit staring blankly out through the window. Teardrops began to form and run down her cheeks. She had never, ever, in her whole life felt so totally bemused, stunned and perplexed.
My dearest Amy
I imagine this will come as a considerable shock to you and I apologise for not being able to tell you in person, but your mother made me swear never to contact you during my lifetime. As the doctors tell me my life will now come to an end within a few months, I’m finally able to tell you what I have been waiting all my life to say. I just wish it could be to your face.
Amy, I am your father. (I’m attaching a DNA test that will support my claim.)
You are the product of the relationship your mother and I had while your father was away on active service in the Marines. I never met him but I’m sure he was a good man and I have carried the burden of guilt for what we did throughout my whole life. I was much younger then, more irresponsible, more selfish, but I loved your mother very dearly. I can still remember the thrill that ran through me the very first time I saw her. To me she was the most beautiful woman in the world and I can honestly say it was love at first sight. I truly believe she felt the same way about me, but your father’s death hit her very, very hard. She was struck by an insurmountable feeling of guilt that changed her whole being. Although we had agreed to break the news of our relationship to him as soon as he returned from abroad, the news of his death changed everything. From that moment on, your mother refused to see me ever again and, as I say, she made me promise never to contact you.
I was left with no choice other than to respect her wishes and move away. I gave up my job teaching history at Bristol University and went to Canada. I lived and worked in Edmonton for some years until I was lucky enough to write a bestselling book. There are copies of Far From Home on the shelves of my study if you ever want to read it. Although fictionalised, I can tell you that I drew heavily on my own personal heartbreak when writing it and deliberately wrote under an alias so as to avoid any possible embarrassment for your mother.
When my subsequent books sold even better and I realised I was able to make a living from my writing, I desperately wanted to return to the UK but, instead, I settled for Italy. Much as I felt the urge to return to England and to see you, I knew I had to stick to the agreement I had made and keep my distance, hard as it was. At least I was in nearby Europe and not separated from you by the ocean. I spoke reasonable Italian, so I came to Italy and settled here in this wonderful historic building. Here, after so many unhappy years, I finally found some contentment, although, without you and your mother, it was never all I could have wished for.
I have many regrets in my life, and I am acutely aware that my actions have brought unhappiness to those I loved as much as to myself, but the greatest by far is that I have never spoken to you, held you in my arms. I gave your mother my solemn oath and I had no choice but to stick to it. All I can now do is to ensure that you are well provided for and hope that, now you know the truth, you will be able to think well of me. I do so hope your own life has been, and will continue to be, much happier than mine.
With all my love, my dearest Amy, from the father you never knew.
Martin Slater
She was still sitting there, weeping softly, when she was roused by the unmistakable sound of Labrador paws on the wooden floor. She looked around and saw Max standing at the study door behind her, his head cocked to one side, his expression troubled. As they made eye contact he trotted across to her side and laid his big hairy head on her thigh, his unblinking eyes staring up at her. She reached down to scratch his ears.
‘You know you shouldn’t be up here, don’t you, Max? Dogs live downstairs, not upstairs.’ The reprimand would have carried more weight if her voice hadn’t been croaky and she hadn’t had to stop partway through to blow her nose.
In spite of her words, he just kept looking up at her and then sat down and raised a big heavy black paw and laid it on her thigh in a canine gesture of solidarity. She caught hold of it with her free hand and held it tightly. And the tears started once again.
It was quite a considerable time later before she roused herself and headed back downstairs for a sorely needed glass of wine.