April
We’d only been together for two months when I got pregnant.
I was twenty-five and Noah was thirty-six.
One morning, when it was just us, I told Anna – casually, between mouthfuls of cereal – that my period was late.
How long, did she think, before I had to worry?
She grabbed my hand and marched me out of the kitchen and into my room.
Get dressed, she said, we need to get you a test.
Anna’s mother had put the fear of god into her about getting pregnant when she brought home her first boyfriend, Sam, with the lanky legs, aged fourteen.
She’d also taken her to the doctor, who’d put her on the pill.
She’d swallowed it ever since, which meant her periods were regular – definitely to the day, pretty much to the hour.
It was Anna who’d recommended I try it, which I did for a while at university.
Then I read an article about several women coming off it and seeing an improvement in their mental health.
I was struggling with what I would describe as low-level anxiety at the time, a gentle but insidious simmering beneath my skin.
Now, when I call that feeling to mind, I think of a pot gently boiling on a hob ; the water isn’t bubbling over but if you turn up the heat by just one more notch, you could be in danger.
I’d decided that I too would be better off without it, and I explained this to Anna as we walked up the road to the nearest pharmacy.
She rolled her eyes and told me that simmering feeling was normal when you had a hefty student loan to pay off and, as of yet, no promise of job stability and an income.
The door to the pharmacy dinged merrily as it swung open.
I kept close behind Anna as she strode confidently towards the pregnancy tests.
Standing in front of them, I froze, arms stiff by my sides.
Anna, meanwhile, diligently studied the different brands.
As my gaze drifted along the plastic shelves lining the walls from floor to ceiling, it occurred to me that the space had been badly curated.
Who had decided that it was a good idea to place the pregnancy tests between the different-coloured condoms and squeezy bottles of flavoured lube and the baby lotions and nappy-rash creams?
The last thing I wanted to think about was sex and babies.
At the till, I didn’t realise I was tapping a rhythm on the counter with my fingernails until Anna gently rested her hand on top of mine.
‘Why don’t we just nip across to Starbucks?’ she suggested with a gentle but take-charge tone. ‘You can do it there – less time to think about it.’ She linked her arm through mine and ushered me towards the zebra crossing before I had a chance to reply.
We had to buy something to get the code to the bathroom, so Anna ordered a vanilla latte, then the two of us went in together. While I peed on the little plastic stick, and a little on my fingers, she sipped her sweet, milky coffee. I’m sure an ‘mmm’ escaped from her lips.
When I was done, I held out the stick at arm’s length from our faces, and we waited, and waited, so long that I remember my arm started to feel heavy.
When two small pink lines appeared, and failed to disappear when I shook the stick, hard, I turned back around to face the loo, sensing that I was about to be sick.
At the beginning of April I came home from work to fresh pasta with pesto, one of Noah’s specialities, and, he told me, a surprise.
He picked up his phone and tapped the screen, and a few seconds later my own phone pinged.
I opened my emails and clicked on the most recent unopened message.
The subject line : ‘Fancy spending Easter with your man friend in Italy?’ Attached were two plane tickets.
‘Really?’ I asked, grinning.
‘Really,’ he insisted, with a grin that matched mine. ‘And I got the promotion.’
I crossed the room and threw my arms around him. ‘When did you find out?’
‘They announced all the changes happening within the department today.’
‘I’m so proud of you.’ We hugged some more, then I nipped upstairs and retrieved the bottle of champagne I’d been stowing at the back of my wardrobe.
‘And you say I’m over the top,’ he said, trying not to smile.
I kissed him and put the bottle in the freezer for a quick blast, then I asked if anyone was disappointed.
‘Not that I know of, but I did get out of there pretty quick this afternoon just in case.’ He laughed and I did, too. ‘There is one other thing—’
‘There’s more?!’
‘Well, wait.’ He bit his lip. ‘I’ve also been invited to take part in an exchange. They want me to go and teach a semester in New York at the end of the year.’
‘Wow.’
‘I know.’
‘What an opportunity.’
‘You think so?’ He looked at me with the same face he pulled whenever he was reading, brow crinkled. ‘Because I can always postpone.’
‘Noah.’
‘You don’t quite seem yourself at the moment.’
I said his name again, this time followed by a question mark.
‘Yes?’
‘Please don’t worry about me. I love you, and I know you. This is something you’ve always wanted.’
I’d spent three months in Florence before starting university, studying art history and learning Italian.
I went by myself but quickly found my group.
There were late nights in sweaty clubs and more than a couple of adult sleepovers.
Early on in our relationship, I made the drunken mistake of telling Noah it was my wildest time.
He laughed, and to begin with I was indignant.
What? It was! When he laughed some more, I realised how ridiculous it sounded.
I’d been back since, but this would be our first trip there together.
‘It’s about time I get to know your wild side,’ he said, as we boarded the plane. He was no longer laughing, but I could tell he was smiling from the lilt of his usually well-modulated voice.
‘Very funny,’ I replied, playfully swatting the back of his thighs as we climbed the unsettlingly shaky metal steps, and taking the same deep breaths I took whenever I was about to be ferried up and into the sky. ‘No, I would much rather we spend our time eating good food and visiting museums.’
‘If you say so,’ he said, taking hold of my hand as we entered the plane. He knew that I wasn’t especially fond of flying and could do with some comic relief. ‘Just let the wild Cathy know that, if she changes her mind, she’s welcome to join us.’
He’d booked us into a pensione in Sant’Ambrogio, a neighbourhood to the northeast of Santa Croce.
After pressing the buzzer, then trying the number on the website, then pressing the buzzer again, the heavy door popped inelegantly out of its socket.
On the other side was a square courtyard dotted with round tables and filigree chairs in matching shades of pistachio green.
There were more terracotta pots than plants and two pigeons trying and failing to bathe in a dried-up water fountain.
The sun was shining, its rays skipping across the stone building that closed the courtyard in on three sides.
Wisteria crept up and across the facade, and roses had been trained to grow up a wooden trellis.
‘ Buongiorno !’
The gravelly voice made me jump. I spun around and came face to face with the owner, a buxom woman with long red hair piled on top of her head like a bundle of yarn.
It was tinged violet, not unlike the blooming wisteria.
Her face was ruled with narrow lines, and I was busy trying to guess her age when we locked eyes.
‘ Buongiorno !’ Noah replied for us both, belatedly, giving me a look that told me he’d been waiting for me to do the talking, and continuing in broken Italian, ‘ Mi chiamo Noah e … ’
‘ Il mio nome è Cathy .’
‘ Va bene ,’ she said, glancing at her watch, then giving it a shake. ‘ Vieni, vieni .’
We followed her into the reception, a small space at the foot of the stairs, the walls covered with old family photos, mostly black and white and in plain frames.
She tapped at her keyboard and leafed through a diary filled with spidery script in pencil and ink, and after a few minutes she handed me a small brass key attached to a heavy metal keyring.
Our room was upstairs, the first door on the left.
It was simply furnished, with eggshell-white walls and wooden floors, a big wooden wardrobe, and a nice writing desk.
As I unzipped my bag, Noah unlatched and opened the windows, which overlooked the street, stereotypically lined with mopeds.
I was reaching for my sandals when he pulled me towards him and said he liked it when I talked Italian.
I talked Italian some more – not fluently, but not badly – and twenty minutes later, the two of us lying on the bed, our clothes discarded around us, he said we should come to Florence more often.
After three days of cold persistent rain, he reconsidered.
Though Noah had been to Florence before, he wanted me to act as his guide and take him to my favourite places in the city, which I did, gladly.
I was also glad that the constant drizzle meant museums were top of his list, too.
We started with the Uffizi, where we stood for some time in front of Botticelli’s decorative canvases and mimicked the grave expressions of the duke and duchess in Piero’s celebrated diptych.
It had been cold waiting outside in the queue, and as we walked between the artworks Noah blew warm air onto my fingers.