Chapter 28
The next day is—finally—Saturday, and I’ve arranged to call Auntie Julie at four o’clock. Although how I’m going to contain myself till then, I don’t know. I’ll just have to keep busy.
I’m thrown a lifeline while we’re eating breakfast in the temporary kitchen. All of sudden, Mabel sits up and screams. “Oh my god, there’s a mouse!”
I swivel around but can’t see it. “Where? Where did it go?”
She lifts her feet up onto the chair and points to the far wall, on the other side of the lounge area. “Oh my god, what if we catch rabies?”
“What’s rabies?” asks Archie, jumping up and running over to the wall.
“Mabel, we’re not going to catch rabies,” Theo reassures her. “Just try and calm down and tell us exactly what you saw.”
“It was a mouse,” she splutters. “It ran along the wall and disappeared into a hole in that corner.”
I feel a tug in my gut. Since the day we arrived at the house and mice had eaten through the kitchen, I’ve spotted their droppings a few times—but I just kept sweeping them away and hoping no one would notice.
I couldn’t face setting traps to kill them and told myself that all the noise the builders were making would probably scare them off.
Clearly this hasn’t been the case. Just as I’m worrying that all the progress I’ve made with Mabel is going to be lost—or that she may tell her mum—Theo seizes control of the situation and turns it into a game.
He and the boys get down on all fours and scour the room for holes.
As well as the one through which the mouse disappeared, they spot two others and block up all three with pieces of cardboard.
I’ll ask Giuseppe to seal them properly on Monday.
“Remember he hasn’t started on this room yet,” I point out. “So there’s bound to be the odd hole. But by the time he’s finished, the entire house will be mouse-proof.”
Callum looks disappointed. “Can’t we set traps?”
“Yeah, can we not kill them?” asks Archie, excitement flaring in his eyes.
Over Mabel’s shoulder, I catch sight of the photos of Wilf and Arnaldo hanging on the gable wall. I remember what Angelika said about Wilf deciding not to fight nature. “I’m afraid there’s no point trying to get rid of them completely. The best we can do is just to stop them coming in.”
To my surprise, Mabel declares, “I agree.” She lowers her feet back onto the floor. “Besides, killing them would be cruel.”
Theo stands up and returns to the table. “Come on, let’s finish eating, then clear everything away. And the best way to stop attracting mice is to make sure we don’t leave a single crumb.”
As we do as he suggests, I console myself that the situation could have turned out much worse. And in fairness to Mabel, seeing a live mouse probably did come as a shock.
“You know what, it was only small,” she concedes as she finishes her cereal. “It was probs just a baby. Now that I think about it, it was actually quite cute.”
Under the table, Theo presses on my foot and I give him a smile.
As soon as we’ve finished clearing up, I remember my phone call this afternoon.
I look at my watch. Five hours to go. …
I decide it’ll be the perfect distraction to get a haircut.
After three weeks in Italy, Mabel’s long hair is fine, but mine, Theo’s and the boys’ is starting to look unkempt.
And Theo and I joke that our eyebrows and ear hair seem to be growing much quicker than usual, wondering if it’s the sun or just a symptom of aging.
Whatever’s going on, we’re in dire need of a trim and tidy.
Stefano has told us the best barber in the area is in Camaiore. While I’m not looking forward to going back to the town so soon after we were insulted, I think it’s probably a good idea: we can hardly avoid it forever.
“Now, who’s feeling strong?” asks Theo, when we’re all in the car.
“Me!” Archie and I chorus.
“Who’s ready to stick together?” continues Theo.
“Me!” Archie and I trill.
“And who’s afraid of horrible old men?”
“Not me!” Callum and Mabel join us to shout, much louder.
We set off, through the olive grove.
But when we arrive in Camaiore—parking the car on a bizarre hybrid of a roundabout and a car park—I sense we’re all a bit nervous.
Theo and I put our hats in the boot, making the excuse that we’re having our hair cut so don’t want to take them off and forget them in the barber’s.
But we both know that isn’t the real reason.
I remember the photos of Wilf and Arnaldo and feel a rush of defiance. “Actually, I am going to wear mine,” I announce.
“Yeah,” says Theo, straightening his spine. “Me too.”
We lift them back out of the boot and place them on our heads.
As we walk down the main street, it’s busier than it was on Tuesday and there are plenty of shoppers. But nobody really looks in our direction.
When we come to the barber’s, I stop outside.
“Here we are,” I say.
Loud rock music is blaring out, video screens are showing sports games, and a twentysomething with a bolt through his nose is hovering outside, tugging on a cigarette. The shop’s name is scratched like graffiti over a painting of an angry bull, brandishing a pair of clippers like a weapon.
“What do you think, gang?” asks Theo.
Just as I’m about to say I’m not sure this is the right place for us, a voice shouts, “Adam!”
I turn around to see Vito bounding towards us—all six feet, five inches of him.
He’s dressed in navy chinos, a pale blue linen shirt, and moccasins, very different to the clothes we see him wearing on the dig, and very different to the crop top and shorts he was wearing in the gay bar at Torre del Lago.
Although he does have a lapel badge of the Pride flag pinned to his shirt.
“Hi, Vito,” I say. “Ciao!”
“Ciao!” chirrups Archie.
Vito greets us all in his excellent English. As he does, I notice how handsome he is, how thick his dark brown hair, how positive his energy. I hope Dom’s let him down gently. To be on the safe side, I avoid the subject.
“What are you up to?” I ask. “Do you live around here?”
He smiles. “Yes, I do. I am on my way to the museum. But I am not officially working: I have come to examine the ceramic Luisa found at the castle.”
I grin back at him. “Yeah, that’s really exciting. I can’t wait to hear what you think.”
“You will.” Vito gestures to the barber’s. “Are you here for a haircut?”
“Yeah!” cheeps Archie. “I’m having wax in mine!”
Vito smiles. “Wonderful! I’m sure you will look very handsome.”
“Actually, I was just thinking, I don’t know if this place is quite right,” I say, scrunching up my nose. “It seems a bit … I don’t know … laddy.”
Vito looks confused. “Laddy?”
I shake my head. “Sorry—very macho, very male.” I lower my voice. “Very heterosexual.”
Vito’s eyes swell. “Ah, I understand. But Marco is very nice. He is my friend. And his mother is a lesbian!”
Theo and I quirk an eyebrow. We look around to check no one’s listening, but everyone seems to be getting on with their own business.
Vito shouts Marco’s name and a striking young man in a black string vest puts down his clippers and jogs over.
When he’s standing before us, I notice that his short black hair has bolts of lightning shaved into the sides.
Vito speaks to him in Italian but I recognize the words famiglia, castello and zio—which Luisa taught us means uncle—and Marco nods in acknowledgment.
He shakes all of our hands and tells us in decent English that we’re very welcome.
“Dad!” interrupts Archie, and I can guess what’s coming: “Can I have my hair like his?”
“We’ll see, squirt,” says Theo. Then he nudges me in the ribs and says under his breath, “We can hardly back out now, can we?”
But, as we step inside, I realize I wouldn’t want to. And I regret ever thinking that just because a handful of old men were homophobic, the whole town must be.
“What do you think about that?”
I’m in the olive grove, where I’ve come for a bit of privacy as the kids help Theo assemble the furniture we’ve bought for the master bedroom in the new family suite.
It’s finally time for my phone call with Auntie Julie and I’ve just told her what I’ve learned about Wilf—that he didn’t come here to be with an Italian woman at all, but an Italian man.
And his family cut him off when they found out.
“Well, you could knock me down with a feather,” Julie answers. It sounds like she’s propping herself up with cushions, no doubt in her favorite armchair. “But now that I think about it, it does make sense. My dad was homophobic. And I remember my granddad making comments, too.”
“Well, both of them made plenty of comments to Wilf—it’s all in the letters. And when he got here, he had to put up with a load more.” I relay some of the detail Angelika gave me.
“That’s awful,” says Julie. “They must have felt like it was the two of them against the world.”
“I expect they probably did.”
I’m leaning against a tree, but a knobble on the trunk is digging into my back.
I wriggle around to make myself comfortable.
I notice that the olives hanging from the branches have grown but are still some way off the size they need to be before they’re harvested.
And just a few weeks ago, the grass was the color of golden sand but now it’s almost white, bleached by the sun.
“There’s something else,” I venture, warily.
“What’s that?”
I pull up a few strands of grass and toss them down the slope. “This friend of Wilf’s told me he’d been in touch with Mum.”
There’s a silence I can’t read.
After a few seconds, Julie speaks. “Yeah, I think she did write to him.”
I feel the choke of betrayal. “But why didn’t you say?”
“To be honest, I didn’t know at the time. I only found out after she died.”
“What difference does that make? That was thirty-four years ago.”
I sense she’s hiding something from me and I don’t like it. It feels like it’s getting hotter and I blow down the neck of my T-shirt.
I hear Julie standing up and giving a little groan. “I’m going to put the kettle on. I’m desperate for a brew.”
“Come on,” I insist, “stop trying to dodge the subject. How did you find out Mum had been writing to Wilf?”
“I can’t remember, chuck! There was loads going on, and in case you’ve forgotten, I was grieving for my sister.”
“Oh, yeah, sorry.” I can hardly argue with that.
Julie turns on the tap and fills the kettle. “But I wouldn’t read too much into it. You know what your mum was like. She was probably just angling for a free holiday. I always said she had champagne tastes and a lemonade budget.”
An electric current shoots through me. I wonder if whatever letter—or letters—Mum sent are still here. I wonder if they’re in that second shoebox.
All of a sudden, I’m overwhelmed by the urge to look.
I shift gears and ask Julie about her holiday, which she seems to appreciate. Then I update her on mine and check in on how things are going with the Airbnb lettings in Manchester. When the kettle starts shrieking, I spot my opportunity and say I’ll leave her to her unpacking.
“Bye!” I sing-song. “I’ll speak to you soon.”
“Yeah, see you, chuck.”
Once I’ve ended the call, I sit still for a moment. I sit in silence, listening to the sound of the crickets and the birdsong.
While I am desperate to look for Mum’s letters, I’m also frightened. What if I find out something I don’t want to know?
There’s a rustle in the undergrowth. I’ve no idea what it is but decide to head back.
I can’t shake off the feeling that there’s something Julie isn’t telling me. But what if she’s trying to protect me?
Yeah, I need to think about this.