Chapter Forty
Mid-note in the bustling dawn chorus of the city, the streets and alleyways of Venice were an absolute maze, but Olivia – somehow – while on the water taxi she had run for, had conjured up the directions for Inizio’s from when she’d been there before: through St Mark’s Square and then turn right, left, then right again, a final right at the little tabaccheria and head past the fruit stand.
Right, left, then right again. Past merchants setting out street displays and sweeping front steps.
Past early-bird tourists walking aimlessly alongside the Grand Canal, soaking up the pale cool of the morning.
She almost knocked into an elderly Venetian with a cart full of oranges.
She startled a young couple about to embrace.
Her bag slipped from her shoulder, her plimsolls were too tight to be running in, but she was running.
There was the tobacconist’s. There was the fruit stand.
And here was Inizio’s. It had the tiniest of entrances.
Inside was a narrow galley of a bar, a glass-fronted counter, hosting row upon row of pastries and filled rolls.
Men, three or four deep, in coats and woollen hats, queuing at the counter, talking animatedly to each other.
Those in the front row rested their elbows on the glass, waiting, or were already drinking from small brown cups on small brown saucers.
Three generations of men were serving, constantly moving to and from the counter.
To and from the coffee machines. Plonking down steaming espresso cups.
Taking the white saucer of coins slid to them. Ringing cash in at the till.
Inizio’s had its own cheerful symphony: the chime of the cash register, the clink of cups in saucers, the morning babble.
Venetian men, fuelling up for the day. And there he was, standing at the end of the bar, front row, squished between two gents in woolly beanies, hunting in his coat pocket for coins to put in the dish, an empty cup in its little brown saucer on the counter in front of him.
She squeezed past the old boys, who paid her no mind. And she was already close to Leo, in his big coat and his furry trapper hat, when he turned.
‘I hope you’re not following me,’ he said, his face warm and surprised.
‘Well, I kind of am,’ she replied, but her voice had gone at the sight of him, and she was crying, crying right here in the coffee bar among all the old boys. ‘Gillian died.’
‘Oh, Livs.’ His arms were already around her, he was already holding her up, stopping her from falling to the tiled floor below. She let him take her weight, allowed herself to sink into him, permitted him to catch her. She let him hug her. ‘When?’
‘Last night.’
‘Oh, I’m so, so sorry.’
She nodded. Gave a sob. ‘I got there too late. She had already passed away. But she left me a note. She said that all these years she’d been distant because she couldn’t bear to see me, because I’d reminded her too much of my dad.
And the night he collapsed.’ She could barely get the words out.
‘She said he knew I was proud of him. But she’d already gone.
’ She buried her face in his coat and she cried into it for a long time, in the hubbub of the coffee bar, for her godmother, for her father, for the lost years .
. . then she finally lifted her face to his.
‘Sorry about that,’ she whispered, tears still in her eyes.
‘That’s perfectly alright.’ Leo’s voice was tender. His arms were still tight around her. ‘I’m so glad you got that,’ he said. ‘That closure. I know you really needed that, Livs.’
‘I did.’ Her voice was small. ‘Please don’t set me off again,’ she pleaded at the look on his face, ‘I might never stop. You wrote on her notepad,’ she added. ‘In the hospice. Thank you for that, Leo.’
He shrugged gently. ‘It was only a few words,’ he said.
‘But it was worth a try. Words are always worth a try.’ He held her for a few moments.
‘What do you need me to do?’ he asked her, looking into her eyes.
‘I can be in Venice for as long as you need me. I can come with you, whatever you need to do or arrange. I’ll be here to support you. ’
‘I believe that,’ she said.
‘You do?’
She nodded. ‘Can we talk about us for a little while?’ she asked.
‘If you want to.’ He was hesitant. He stroked her back.
‘I need to.’
He released her, but he didn’t let her go. He kept hold of her hands, the space between their bodies narrow, the space around them small in this tiny bar. ‘OK,’ he said.
‘I believe a lot of things – now,’ she said, her eyes steady on his.
Her heart was pounding. She was grieving.
She was resolute. She was ready. ‘I believe you,’ she said.
‘I believe that I’m on your list. That you have thought about me.
That you still put me on your list after everything.
I just needed time.’ She smiled gently and tapped at her bag, at her side.
‘And I have your Gratitude Lists. I wasn’t snooping, I promise.
Tanya dropped your notebook, and I picked them up. It’s been mended, by the way.’
Leo nodded, his gaze fast, his eyes not leaving her face. ‘Glad to hear it.’
‘Scusi?’ A man in a flat cap pushed past from behind Olivia, and got himself up to the bar, elbows landing, fingers clicking for the server.
‘Have you really thought about me for twenty years?’ she asked Leo.
‘Yes, I have,’ he said. ‘From the moment I first saw you, I wondered what your story was, and whether I could ever be a part of it. And I’ve been happy that you’re in the world, whether you’ve been in my world or not. I’ve just liked to think of you out there somewhere.’
‘And now I’m here,’ she continued, ‘in Venice, with you. And forty old boys getting coffee. I’ve been reading the wrong words for a long time,’ she said. ‘I’ve been unable to turn the right pages. But now I want to make it to the end of the story. Our story.’
‘Your godmother has just died,’ he said gently. ‘So, in the kindest possible way, are you sure you know what you want?’
‘Yes, I do, and I know what I need, too,’ she said, the tears in her eyes sparkling. ‘I’ve never been surer.’
Another man, standing next to her, was staring at them, his rheumy old eyes unblinking. He said something to Olivia, and she replied in clumsy Italian, ‘I’m just getting my morning coffee and the man I love – hopefully.’ And he smiled at her, a perfect Italian toothy grin.
‘Bella,’ he said. ‘Buona fortuna.’
‘You speak Italian?’ Leo looked surprised. ‘You never told me that.’
‘You never asked. I took a class, that week in Venice. I went to Italian school every day.’
‘And what did you say to our friend here?’
‘I said I liked his hat. Leo.’ She turned back to him as the clamour of the coffee bar percolated around them: the clink, the froth, the steam.
She looked into his beautiful hazel eyes with all their fire and all their strength and all their vulnerability, and, with all of hers, she chose her words carefully.
‘Nobody else makes me feel like you do. Nobody else comes close. You’re the only one I want to go on a road trip with.
The only one I want sitting in my bathroom, while I have a bath.
The only one to tell me I can do this, when I really feel like I can’t.
And you’re the only person I want to listen to me saying these words, right now. I love you. I love you.’
Leo smiled. A slow succulent smile that spread across his lovely face and lit up his eyes. He pulled her into him again.
‘I love you, too, Olivia,’ he whispered into her neck.
‘I’m pretty sure I always have.’ He stroked her back.
He took one hand and cupped the side of her face, drinking her in.
The row behind them was jostling for coffee.
A man in a green coat was gabbling at them in Italian, equally amused and exasperated.
‘I think we need to move on,’ she mumbled.
‘I agree,’ Leo replied. ‘How about getting married and making a baby with me?’
‘That would be quite some move.’ She looked up at him, eyes wide. ‘Is there time?’
‘We can make time. We can write it into the book of us.’
‘I’ve got a busy few days,’ she said, biting her lip and trying to quieten another rising swirl of emotion.
‘We’ve got a busy few days,’ Leo reiterated. ‘We’re going to get through this together.’
Olivia nodded, wiping away the tears she knew would come again, but, with Leo by her side, she could let heal her.
‘And then we’re going to create something wonderful.’
Her aching heart soared to the ceiling along with the steam of the coffee.
‘Can I kiss you now, please? I’ve spent thirty-six hours thinking about doing it again, and most of those believing I’d never get another chance.’
‘Do you think the “old boys” will mind?’ she asked him tenderly.
‘Let’s try them . . .’
He kissed her, and the old boys stopped chattering to each other and raising their morning coffee cups to their lips; they whistled through their teeth and clapped and cheered, and the steam rose, and the change clinked in the saucer, and the coffee machine hissed and spluttered, and the pale winter sunshine nodded through the steamed-up window, and another wonderful day in the beautiful city of Venice was about to be written, in a perfect story of love.