Chapter 8 Fon
Fon
Fon knelt in the dirt while the chickens pecked and fussed around him, as if he was in their way.
Behind him, his mother was pegging laundry onto the washing line; his father was out on the boat.
He had no idea where Dante had got to and doubted he’d get a straight answer if he asked.
There were no water-skiing trips booked in for the day, so Dante had headed off ‘on business’ to some undisclosed place.
He had been out here for an hour now, hammering posts into the rock-hard ground and trying to channel his agitation, but even if his body was tiring, his spirit was still restless.
Running into Rafaella and Fede like that had been the worst possible coincidence.
To his shame, Rafaella had come to his rescue and given him the opportunity to get away without a black eye, but it had almost felt worse to push through the encounter with two-faced smiles.
Fede had been warm and generous, the age gap, which had felt so huge and unbreachable when they were children, now irrelevant.
All these years, Fon’s attention – jealousy, he supposed – had been focused on Cosimo; being ignored by him every year had felt like being trapped in a Siberian winter while the others summered under the Puglian sun.
But today Fede had approached him as a friend, and the very things he had once hated them all for – the grand villa, the lazy days, that effortless charm – had been intoxicating.
He couldn’t believe Fede had invited him over so casually, as if it was nothing …
It wasn’t nothing to Fon. He had thrilled at the invitation.
In that moment he had wanted to be worthy of friendship with a man like Federico Franchetti, so affable, cultured and clever, always ready to smile at everyone.
For a moment, it had felt like a door into another world had opened up, a world in which he finally belonged.
Now, away from Fede’s warmth, kneeling in the dirt as chickens pecked at him, Fon’s doubts surged back.
What could he possibly offer in return? He was poor – worse than that, he was insubstantial.
He knew that at the heart of him, he had no fixed centre.
He had never been able to describe the fear exactly, but it was as if he was full of swirling shadows, hiding him even from himself.
He stood unnoticed in rooms and was spoken over in conversation.
Only Rafaella had ever looked past the surface with him, and now he’d ruined it with her, all for the sake of impressing his brother, to whom it was just a joke anyway.
He’d seen the disgust in her eyes and there was no coming back from it with her, he knew that. Both Fede and Rafaella were too good for him. He’d dishonoured them both, and it was only a matter of time before Fede despised him too.