CHAPTER 31
Nicholas
Cornwall
The landline rang. Nicholas broke off from studying his computer screen. He’d been unable to concentrate anyway. He was restless. He’d been restless since he got back from El Cotillo; uneasy, certain there was something he should be doing, but not sure what it was.
He picked up the handset. ‘Hello?’ He was expecting it to be Celie, since it usually was.
She worried about him, he knew, and he about her.
It was hard not to think of her as his little girl, and perhaps she always would be.
The gap she had left in his life was greater than the one Rachel had left.
When you were married, he supposed, you didn’t always reflect on who kept you locked into it – your wife, or your kids.
But, ‘Ciao, Nico.’ It was Giuseppe.
‘Hey, how goes it?’ Nicholas sat down in the cane chair by the phone, let his body sink into the plump red cushion. Giuseppe’s calls were always long ones; this would be a business update, a sort of chilled tele-conference. He stretched out his legs.
‘Sales from the new outlets in Venice, they are very encouraging.’ Giuseppe never wasted time beating about the bush. He reeled off some figures while Nicholas made the odd note or two, hemmed and hawed, chewed the end of the pen he kept by the phone.
After about five minutes, he heard the word ‘expand’.
‘Where to?’
They threw some ideas around. Italy was pretty much well covered by stores in Rome, Milan, Venice, Florence and Pisa, plus some smaller outlets that Nicholas didn’t visit personally.
Barcelona had been a relatively recent successful addition since becoming such a European designer shopping centre; Paris and Nice were also flourishing, as were the various cities they supplied in the UK.
Although, much as Nicholas couldn’t bring himself to criticise Italian style, the jewellery designed by Rachel’s sister Isobel – who undeniably had talent – and handmade by her and Giuseppe was a touch brash for British taste.
It makes a statement was one of his favourite sales patters.
But actually, it was expensive bling – with attitude.
‘How about Lisbon?’ he heard Giuseppe say. Bloody hell. That was a bit of a coincidence.
He’d received Joanna Shepherd’s email but not yet replied.
It had swept him away. She’d got pretty personal, understandably after what he’d told her.
Nicholas had never written to anyone like that in his entire life and he wasn’t sure how an innocent communication could have blossomed into such intensity so fast. Maybe they both needed some counselling . . .
‘Lisbon?’ he echoed.
‘It is in our league, do you think?’ Giuseppe had picked up some charming English slang. ‘They might go for it there, yes?’
Nicholas hesitated. The ball appeared to be in his court. ‘I don’t see why not. It’s—’
‘Hang on.’
Nicholas knew that Giuseppe was already online, delving into the jewellery shops, the tourist dens, the department stores of downtown Lisbon.
And Nicholas had no idea what he would find.
He’d never even visited the city. But he wanted to.
He realised now just how much he wanted to.
What might she have seen there? he wondered.
When he had first written to Joanna Shepherd, he had thought it would be a one-off.
It had been a slightly peculiar and random experience, which no doubt could be explained somehow – by a trick of the imagination or the light perhaps; by coincidence.
Reflections in the water indeed. Some sort of Atlantis lost and buried in a Venetian canal?
And then he’d seen it too. The woman running – including the golden ribbon that Ms Shepherd had apparently seen but not mentioned in the brochure.
How weird was that? He had found the experience both refreshing and fascinating, he had felt a strong urge to tell the author what had happened, to let her know. But now . . .
Giuseppe was analysing out loud the shopping districts of Lisbon.
That was his department; he was a good businessman, Nicholas would give him that.
Isobel was the creative one, and Nicholas had people skills – although at times he still found this hard to believe; he’d always thought of himself as rather a solitary man.
‘It’s a popular city obviously – especially with young people,’ Giuseppe was saying. ‘There’s a lot of modern infrastructure, new buildings, hotels . . .’
‘Yeah. D’you want me to check it out?’ he asked Giuseppe.
‘Maybe . . .’ He didn’t sound sure. And although it was ridiculous, Nicholas wanted to convince him.
And yet, what did it matter? If he so wanted to go to Lisbon (did he really?
Did he honestly want – or need – to get into this .
. . this, whatever it was?), he could go anyway.
He didn’t have to justify it with a business trip.
‘OK,’ said Giuseppe. ‘Why not? Thanks, Nico.’
And Nicholas felt a twinge of guilt. He’d never thought of himself as a dishonest man.
After the usual exchanges about children and family, Giuseppe rang off and Nicholas read her email once again.
Dear Nicholas, he read.
I’m really glad it’s all good.
He smiled.
A similar thing happened to me, you may be surprised to know . . .
She had added a smiley face emoji here.
Are we living parallel lives? I wonder.
‘Could be.’ Nicholas raised an eyebrow.
I wasn’t playing the role of wife exactly, but my husband and I . . . well, we were moving further and further apart.
Nicholas certainly knew how that felt.
I thought and hoped I could do something about that, but it turned out we’d travelled even further away from one another than I’d guessed.
Nicholas nodded. He felt a pang of empathy for Joanna Shepherd.
So that left me without a direction.
Venice, he thought.
I had a decision to make about my marriage which I only made when I got to Venice.
Uh-huh, that bridge walk of hers was suddenly making a lot more sense, he thought.
(There’s a lot more about Venice that I could say, but that’s plenty for now!)
Shame . . .
I have no idea, by the way, why I’m telling you all this. I suppose it’s just that you saw the golden ribbon.
The golden ribbon . . . Again, Nicholas smiled.
And yes, I am doing another bridge walk – in Lisbon. I’m there right now. I’ll keep you posted . . .
Warm wishes, Joanna
And now he was going to Lisbon too. Nicholas liked the way she wrote, in a stream, as if she were here in the room. And if she were here in the room? They probably wouldn’t have a word to say to one another. But he didn’t believe that for a moment.
She and her husband had split, he assumed.
Just like he and Rachel. They had both been at a crossroads in Venice, both leading separate lives.
And now they had both been honest about it, even though they’d never met.
So, what? Maybe more people ought to be honest about how they felt instead of constantly pretending everything was fine.
He’d seen what she’d seen. Something that couldn’t so easily be explained. Something that must have knocked her sideways. Did he believe in magic? No. He believed in things you could touch and feel and easily understand. Concrete things. But still . . .
He pulled on his fleece, went out of the front door and cut down some foliage from the garden – some holly, some purpley sprigs from the spruce, and some winter jasmine.
He sniffed. Tiny white flowers and yet they smelt as heady as summertime.
Rachel would have said, For God’s sake, Nick, go to the shop and buy some yellow roses at least. But sometimes she missed the point, he thought, as he arranged the foliage into a rough sort of bunch.
He crossed the road to the churchyard, entered by the lychgate and walked down the rough concrete path, alongside the old stone church, over to his aunt’s grave, which was tucked into the corner, by the wooden bench under the fig tree.
The bench was damp, the fig tree looking a bit bent and battered.
But it was a special place for Nicholas.
‘Hey,’ he said softly, and, ducking under the branches of the fig tree, laid the bunch of greenery on top of the mildewed stone.
‘What would you do if you were me? Go back to El Cotillo? Go to Lisbon? Email Joanna Shepherd? Or leave well alone?’ When he was young, he’d wanted to be an explorer, wanted to do something different with his life. When you were young you had no fear.
And now?
The wind was whisking through the bare branches of the birch trees around the churchyard; apart from that no other sound could be heard.
Not even the birds. In the summer, someone had left a note on the church door asking people to keep it closed so that swallows wouldn’t get trapped in the church; they nested up in the beams above the porch.
Ah well. His aunt was as enigmatic in death as she had been in life.
She was the older sister, but she had outlived Nicholas’s mother by six years – six teenage years for him, and in many ways he felt closer to the woman he’d spent so much time with in summer holidays and suchlike than he did to his own parents.
Something about her, some strand of unhappiness, drew him to her.
She’d never talked much about her private life.
But he kind of knew it hadn’t worked out for her exactly how she had hoped it would.
He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans. A bit like his own life then.