Chapter One
Present day, Como
Jade faced Mary Smith, her grandmother’s notaio, in her office on Via Milano in a creamy primrose building with pale green shutters.
Ten days ago, when the sun shone through June mist and turned the air pink over Lake Como, eighty-five-year-old Mairead Campbell had gently slipped away.
Now it was the first of July and Jade was struggling with what her grandmother had always told her: I don’t want you to mourn.
Mary Smith was a pleasant ex-pat Englishwoman with untidy brown hair that shed all over the shoulders of her blue jacket.
Her mousepad was printed with a picture of two toddlers about the right age to be her grandchildren, and a row of glossy green plants filled her windowsill.
Jade could see that someone so cosy would be exactly Mairead’s kind of legal advisor.
‘Gran chose her own arrangements,’ Jade began.
‘She became a Catholic to marry Nonno, but didn’t attend church much.
’ Except, of course, anything that had marked Jade’s progress through the local Montessori school, such as First Holy Communion, smiling proudly because Jade was involved.
‘The service will be led by a celebrant in the gardens of Villa Panorama. It’s owned by the Sartori family.
Gran and Sheenagh Gregor were great friends, and I went to school with Leo Sartori.
’ The last sentence tied a knot in Jade’s throat.
Why in the hell would she think Gran’s notaio would want to know about Leo?
‘It’s to be one of those funerals about celebrating her life, rather than mourning loss. ’
Mary smiled. ‘That correlates with her instructions to me and the cremation people, and so on. She was a woman with her own ways.’ Before Jade could smile and amend ‘own ways’ to ‘unusual ways’, Mary cleared her throat.
‘She was also clear that Mr Giovanni Beretta, her only child, would renounce his inheritance. He has already confirmed to me via email that he will. He’ll attend a notary public in England to make the appropriate declaration. ’
Jade let out a breath, relieved at this confirmation that she wouldn’t be faced with dealing with her father, the man who meant nothing to her, nor she to him.
She smothered the voice in her head that whispered: what would it be like if you weren’t able to ignore each other?
Crunching her hands together in her lap, she said nothing to indicate that Joey being in England was news.
Neither did she bother asking whether he’d seemed sad to lose his mother.
He’d paid Gran only cursory attention. He wouldn’t come to her funeral any more than he’d attended Nonno’s.
Mary frowned down at a folder on her desk before she spoke again.
‘I have your grandmother’s will, drawn up in accordance with Italian law, but she also left you a letter.
I’m to ask you to read it before we go on.
’ Rising, she withdrew a long white envelope from the folder and passed it across the desk.
‘I’ll leave you to digest the contents.’
A letter from Gran was so unexpected that Jade hardly noticed Mary treading quietly to the door.
The envelope trembling in her hand bore Jade Beretta written in blue in Mairead’s cursive handwriting.
While the open window admitted the drone of traffic from the road outside, Jade turned the envelope, unstuck the flap, pulled out the pages and smoothed them.
My dearest, dearest Jade, it began.
You’ve been such a joy to me, as you were to Nonno. I want you to know how very much we loved you.
In her imagination, Jade heard the chime of Mairead’s up-and-down voice and smiled mistily before her eyes moved on.
Remember that I had a long and mostly happy life, darling.
Sheenagh and Ferdinando will help you when you need them.
It’s a shame that darling Nonno wasn’t in touch with his family, because otherwise you might have had aunts, uncles and cousins to support you.
Rocco’s parents ran away from their families when they discovered baby Rocco was on the way and the rift never healed.
And now I must tell you something you might find hard to understand – I know more about Joey’s life than I let you believe.
He’s adamant that he’ll cut all contact with me if I tell you.
I believe that threat and you know how it scares me.
Is he ashamed that he’s never visited you?
Maybe. Or does he think that if he forms attachments then he’ll be obliged to become less selfish?
Perhaps. I don’t know for certain. Please, please know that I have argued, but he’s so peculiar about relationships.
I think that he literally can’t bear responsibility, just like some people can’t bear enclosed spaces, and being drawn into a family would feel like being trapped in a suffocating box with no room to move and no way out.
Frowning, Jade read that paragraph again, hoping Mairead wasn’t about to make it her dying wish that, regardless, Jade tried to form a relationship with Joey. Then her gaze fell to the next line and she gasped aloud.
Joey has two more daughters.
The page trembled so much that she had to put it down on the desk to read on.
You once conjectured that, having no contact with your father or your mother, you might have any number of half-siblings.
It was hard not to confess then, because I’ve known about the children about as long as Joey himself has.
After he left home, his wanderings took him to Scotland, though of course he made no attempt to contact my cousins there.
Odd boy! When he was twenty-one and staying in Dundee, he had a girlfriend called Lisa Ferguson.
He moved on to some other place that took his fancy without realising Lisa was pregnant and didn’t discover it until he passed back through Dundee when the baby was two.
Evidently, Lisa wanted nothing from Joey – which, of course, suited him fine.
I know little about the child except that she’s called Erin Ferguson and she’s about three years younger than you.
Then, when Joey was twenty-seven, he met Donna Anning.
Her parents had a wee shop in Devon in England and Joey worked for a builder who did a job there.
Joey once told me he loved Donna and perhaps he did, in his own way.
I assume Donna loved him back. Unfortunately, a kidney ailment was discovered when Donna was pregnant and she became ill.
Despite being allergic to relationships and responsibilities Joey stayed in Devon with her, helping care for the wee girl, Rosalie.
She has his name, Beretta, but I don’t think he and Donna married.
Donna died when Rosalie was four and Joey began to drift again, but he took Rosalie.
Rosalie wanted to be with him and Donna’s parents were too grief-stricken over their daughter’s passing to look after her anyway.
They weren’t fond of Joey, so I doubt the three of them could have shared care.
I sensed he was panicked that the best Rosalie could do for a parent was him, so I did begin a conversation about him bringing her to us, but then Nonno died and it wouldn’t have been fair on anyone.
At this sudden, shocking knowledge that one of these sisters might have shown up in Jade’s early teens, Jade had to grab tissues from a box on Mary’s desk. She blotted her eyes and blew her nose, feeling as if she were reading a sad novel rather than a story about her own family. She read on.
Rosalie and Joey lived together until she went to university at eighteen. I’m surprised he managed to keep her in school to get enough qualifications for university. Anyway, with her settled, he wandered off on his own again.
Jade let her attention stray to the window between the pot plants and the section of watery grey-green San Bartolomeo church she could see across the street.
‘This must be a dream,’ she murmured from an aching throat.
‘Gran wouldn’t have known all this and not told me.
’ But nobody woke her and the traffic outside sounded real. She returned to the letter.
I know you’ll be shocked.
The writing wobbled and Jade wondered whether Gran had been upset.
Please, please forgive me for not sharing what I knew, my lovely Jade.
The way I saw things, if I did as Joey asked, I could still have contact with him without alienating you, my darling.
It meant I’d never meet my other granddaughters, which hurt my heart, but staying in touch with Joey meant I could occasionally hear news of Rosalie at least. It felt like making the best of a bad job.
With the stance Joey took, I simply couldn’t have everything – contact with my son and all my granddaughters.