Chapter 47
There was a weird vibe at work the next morning when Sabrina arrived with her copy of the Daily Trumpet to check the entry. Teddy was on the phone to them when she walked in, shouting at someone down the phone about getting something
so important so wrong. It didn’t sound like him, and she knew he was stressed. And Flick was playing at being normal. She
smiled as she said good morning, but something about her was off.
“Have you seen the lost and found page?” she asked.
“Not yet,” replied Sabrina.
“I wouldn’t get your hopes up. They’ve really cocked it up. Unless you’re a parrot—then you’ve got a great chance of being
reunited with your family.”
“ Goodbye .” Teddy ended his call and let rip a string of Italian words that might have given the foul-mouthed parrot a run for its
money. “They’re running a corrected piece on Wednesday, if they have the room. They’d better have the room.” He looked enraged,
but as he passed Flick, he squeezed her shoulder tenderly. Sabrina read from the gesture that they’d spoken, that they knew
they were more closely related than they thought they were.
“We get to keep you for a bit longer,” said Flick. She smiled, but Teddy’s touch of affection had weakened her frail composure
and she strutted off in the direction of the office before emotion overtook her.
Sabrina wasn’t sure if she was supposed to know or not, so she kept her head down, scrubbed, mopped, and wiped. Then just after Niccolo and Roberto arrived for their shift, Teddy left the kitchen, stood in the middle of the restaurant, and clapped his hands.
“Everybody, come in here, I have an announcement to make. Come on, all of you. Sit down.” George and Antonio wandered through;
Sabrina sat, as did the waiters. Teddy stood behind Flick, his hands on her shoulders.
“I wanted to wait until you were all here. Yesterday I found out that Flick is my sister. There, that’s it. Announcement over.”
There followed a stunned silence. Niccolo broke it, speaking in Italian, and Teddy replied to him in Italian.
“If you’re going to talk about me, can you at least do it so I can understand it?” said Flick impatiently.
“I’m sorry,” said Teddy. “He asked me how and I said that I think he could guess without all the graphic details.”
“Oh my God,” said Roberto, clamping his hand over his mouth. “That means I am also directly related to you now, Flick. As
if my life couldn’t get any worse.”
“ Cristo ,” said his brother, equally horrified. Then both of them and Flick exploded into laughter. They’d handled it perfectly, lightly
in a way that Teddy couldn’t have, because he was too close, his loyalties and emotions tangled. George and Antonio gave her
a hug—and playful commiserations—and the tension that had been weighing down the air all morning was gone. At least where
that was concerned. Teddy, once again, had to go out and remonstrate with builders who had parked up on their private land
to work on the property earmarked to be the new Ciaoissimo.
Flick came into the ladies’ loo when Sabrina was mopping the floors in there after the lunch customers had left.
“You’ll be back working at your desk soon and cleaning our bogs will be a distant memory,” she said, leaning against the sink and smiling, but it was a sad sort of smile. When Sabrina looked up at her, she thought that she seemed to look even more like Teddy Bonetti since the news broke.
“Vital job, Flick. Do you know how important it is to have spotless toilets in restaurants?” Sabrina said. “People seem to
equate the state of the loos with the state of the kitchen. Also, restaurants are very much judged on their dessert offerings
too. Women especially turn to the puddings on the menu before they ever look at the mains.”
“Oh my God, I do that,” said Flick. “If there’s no cheesecake on there, I just want to leave.” She laughed but then became
suddenly serious, and Sabrina knew that she hadn’t come into the toilets to talk trivia.
“Did my auntie Marielle tell you what my mum did?” she asked.
“Well, it wasn’t just your mum, was it?” replied Sabrina. It wasn’t fair that Cilla should take the entire blame. “How do
you feel about it all?”
Flick tilted her head one way, then the other, as if that would help her answer.
“I don’t know; it keeps changing. I never knew my dad... well, the dad I thought I had. He didn’t have any relatives, so
I didn’t grow up with any of his family in my life; I only ever knew Mum’s side. Teddy said that his dad really loved me,
which is nice, isn’t it? I suppose I’m expecting to feel different, but I don’t.”
“You haven’t suddenly changed through this news, Flick. You are who you have always been.”
“I don’t know what I feel about my mother, though. How could she have done that to someone she thought of as a sister? But
then, she didn’t try and excuse it. She didn’t do her usual trick of trying to blame it on anything or anyone else, which
was really weird.”
“Give yourself time to unknot your feelings, Flick.” Sabrina snapped off some toilet roll and handed it over because Flick
was sniffing.
“Hugo’s gone. She had him arrested.”
“I heard,” said Sabrina.
Flick blew her nose loudly, then said, “I don’t think I’ll ever trust a man.”
“Yes, you will, one day, when you find someone worth trusting,” Sabrina replied, though she couldn’t say for sure if she’d
ever found that person for herself.
“Sabrina, will you stay in touch with me when you go?” asked Flick then. Her voice was so wobbly that Sabrina dumped the mop
in her bucket and went over to her, giving her a hug, and just for a minute, she let herself believe that this was what hugging
Linnet would have been like. This was how a daughter felt in a mother’s arms. Cilla was a fool to have this and not recognize
how special a relationship it was.
“Of course. I promise. I’d like to know how you’re doing at university.” Flick’s hair smelled of apples. Linnet would have
used a similar shampoo, something fresh and clean. Sabrina pushed her out to arm’s length before the scent pierced her tear
ducts.
“Both of us have to leave our comfort zones and that’s going to be a bit scary, Flick. But it’s for the best.”
For Flick, Sabrina knew that for certain. She would excel at uni; she would thrive and grow. For herself, stepping back into
her other existence was a necessity she couldn’t avoid. And only time would tell if it was for the best or not.
Orrible was in the best of moods. Even the fact that he’d been summoned to Billy the Donk’s house could not dampen his spirits, because he was definitely in for brownie points.
In the past four days he had delivered a top-of-the-range, brand-new Range Rover Sport SVR to Shifty Smith’s garage in Middlesbrough and had become an engaged person.
Okay, he’d become a bit giddy after finding that the handbag of dreams contained some nice bits of gold jewelry and a wad of money in the purse.
He wasn’t usually a gambling man, but after seeing that a horse called Handbags at Dawn was running in the two thirty at York, he’d flung a ton on it and it had come in at fifty to one.
He’d had too much celebratory herb and then proposed to his girlfriend Tina, but he hadn’t woken up and regretted the decision—far from it. He doubted he’d
find anyone better than his Tina. He doubted he’d find anyone else really.
Also, he’d had definitive proof that the fainting woman hadn’t recognized him; he was in the clear. He’d caught her when she
fell and saved her from bumping her head this time, and sat with her while the ambulance came, like a Good Samaritan. She’d
even thanked him as she got in it.
There was a bag of brooches in the bottom of the bag, cheap tat, and the phone was prehistoric, no good for selling. There
was an envelope with documents in it: birth and death certificates, stuff like that. He supposed he could have done something
with them at a push, but his engagement had made him feel a bit mushy. The woman—Polly—had had a bit of a rough deal at his
hands. Taking everything from her would sour the blissful state he was presently in, but a little giving back would entirely
salve his conscience.
He strutted into Billy’s office swinging a carrier bag and smiled at him.
“Put that smile away, Orrible, you’re bringing up my breakfast,” said Billy, averting his eyes.
“You’re happy, aren’t you, Billy? I did good, didn’t I?”
“Yes, son,” said Billy, “you have indeed come up trumps. Pay the man, Charlie.”
Big Charlie tossed Orrible a roll of notes. He teased a twenty out before putting it in his pocket and placed it on the desk.
“It’s for the donkeys,” said Orrible. “Will you pass it to them?” Billy, Big Charlie, and Square all exchanged glances of
amused shock.
“I will indeed,” said Billy. “That’s very kind of you, Orville.”
Orrible grinned. Billy had called him by his real name, which was testament to how chuffed he must be.
“A little birdie tells me that congratulations are in order,” said Billy, leaning back in his chair, templing his fingers.
Those little birds Billy knew didn’t half have bloody big beaks, thought Orrible. And they were everywhere. He just hoped
one of them wasn’t the seagull he’d clobbered with a rock.
“Yep, me and Tina are now fiancé and Beyoncé.” Orrible chuckled.
“Every king should have a queen,” said Billy, nodding. “Even if she is Anne of Cleves.”
Square snorted and covered it up as a cough.
Orrible’s grin was now so wide, full-sized letters could have been mailed through it.
“Cheers, Billy. She’ll be really ’onored you called her a queen.”
“Now, Orville, before you jog on your merry way, we must address the small matter of a handbag,” said Billy, his eyes darkening,
even though his mouth was holding a smile. “The one that was lodged up on the cliff. The one that isn’t there anymore.”
But Orrible was fully prepared. Hardly anything got past Billy; it wouldn’t have done to pretend that the bag disappearing
had nothing to do with him.