Chapter Thirty-Eight
There was a hurried goodbye to Stella, who Olivia insisted stay – to drink the drinks and talk to the people and dance if dancing was required – and Olivia would see her back at the hotel.
There was a speedy exit from the lobby. A hastened jolt down the steps to the jetty.
Then, a mobile phone that started ringing in a bag, the number on the screen telling Olivia it was the Hospice Calma Bianca.
It was Piera’s voice she heard as she reached the jetty and the nurse’s words stopped her in her tracks.
They were the words no one ever wanted to hear, about someone they had once had in their lives.
‘I’m afraid your godmother is really not well, and I think you should come at once.’
The water taxi was not fast enough. Olivia’s feet did not carry her swiftly enough to the oak door of the hospice, which was locked and had to be banged on several times until Olivia heard a voice behind it, and the shift of a key in the lock and it was Damonte, quiet-faced, pulling the door open for her, and she was afraid she was rather noisy, in her high heels and the swish of her dress, crossing the empty lobby and through the glass door and over the herringbone of the courtyard, under the Americana awning and up the staircase where Leo had tugged at the knees of his jeans – and her phone began to ring again.
Gillian’s door was closed. Olivia knocked softly but then, scared, burst in, to the dimmest of dimly lit rooms, the nodding lamp on the bedside table bent so low there was merely an inch between its domed head and the circle of light on the melamine.
A hush, that was like the hush of a thousand stars, looking down silently on the earth.
And her godmother motionless in the bed.
Her hair softly combed. Her arms down by her sides.
‘Is she gone?’
Olivia’s voice was frantic. Piera was at the far side of the room. Her face was pale and it crumpled a little when she turned and saw Olivia.
‘Yes. I’m so very sorry.’ Piera spoke softly, concern and compassion flooding her round face. ‘There was an increase in the infection. A sharp, unmanageable rise in temperature. Her organs shut down and it was all very, very sudden. I’m so sorry.’
‘Oh no!’ Olivia approached the bed, sank down on to the chair. Felt despair at the sight of her godmother’s face, silent and peaceful.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Piera repeated.
Olivia nodded. Dropped her head in sadness, the past flooding back to her.
Charlie waving goodbye from the stage inside the theatre.
His funeral, with Gillian’s true and good words up at the lectern, and Olivia’s ineffective ones.
Gillian’s face, and how she couldn’t ever look at her god-daughter.
The years and the distance between them, never bridged.
‘You can say goodbye to her,’ Piera said. ‘I will go, but I will return soon. To make sure you’re OK.’
‘Thank you, Piera,’ Olivia mumbled, among tears that were now free-falling.
Piera walked to the door, but hesitated in the doorway.
‘And I think maybe she knew this was coming. This morning, Damonte said she wrote something for you. It’s on the nightstand.
I cannot make head nor tail of it, but maybe you can,’ she added, and after smiling sadly at Olivia, she left the room.
Olivia sat with Gillan for a few moments, weeping silently, and then she rose from the chair.
Gillian’s notepad was next to the water beaker, the notepad on which she had played Hangman and Dots and Boxes with Damonte, had written her instructions and her thoughts.
At the very top of the open page, in familiar handwriting, was a note: Damonte, I feel .
. . but this had been crossed out. And underneath it were more words, that Olivia read quickly, her heart pulsing in her chest.
Dear Olivia, if there is no more time, I’m writing this now, so you will know.
I couldn’t bear to see you. That’s the truth.
After your dad had gone. You look so much like him and I couldn’t bear to see your face, as every time I did, instead of making me remember him with love, it made me remember how it ended for him, outside that theatre.
How he fell, and I wasn’t able to catch him.
I wasn’t able to save him. I’m so grateful that you weren’t there that night to see it.
That you had already said goodbye. Please be grateful, too, Olivia.
He wouldn’t have wanted that for you. He was so proud of you, and I know you were proud of him, too.
And I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I was cruel. And distant.
I’ve been so, so foolish.
And I hope these words are enough. x
Olivia read this note several times, this letter to her that told her so much, and after the fifth reading, her heart a little lighter, she flicked to the page behind, her eyes taking in a completed game of Dots and Boxes, and a line, right at the bottom, in a different familiar handwriting.
Leo Greene’s.
If time doesn’t heal, words can.
Leo, she thought.
Leo had written Gillian a note and it wasn’t about food at the hospice, like he had said.
It was advice, suggestion, salvation. His words had meant Gillian had written to her, bringing peace, an explanation, a redemption.
Yes, her godmother’s words were enough, for they meant Gillian had not been angry with her; she had just not wanted to be reminded.
And Charlie knew his daughter had been proud of him after all.
Olivia closed the notebook, placed it quietly back on the bedside table and re-took her place at the bedside.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered to Gillian. ‘Thank you.’ And then she whispered into the room, into the night, into the forever, ‘I’m going to write about my father in my next book.
I’m going to have a wonderful character – a dad, who’s a carpenter.
I’m going to do my father justice. And he can have a best friend just like you.
A loyal and lovely best friend. I hope you’re together again.
I hope that girl who played Mary and the boy who played Joseph are dancing on a stage somewhere. And if I could write that, I would.’
And, as the darkness and the lights of Venice courted the window and the world continued to turn, Olivia held her godmother’s hand and whispered the words she would honour for the rest of her life, while knowing that Leo’s had been everything.