Chapter 19 Rafaella
Rafaella
‘Knock, knock.’
Rafaella looked up from her narrow bed, the book falling from her hand as she saw Romola’s face peering round the doorway. ‘… Oh,’ she said, unable to hide her surprise. She felt her heart switch up into a gallop, a flutter of happiness in her stomach.
Romola hesitated, looking terrified. ‘Is it OK that I’ve come? Cosi said he saw you yesterday and that …’ She shifted her weight, looking like she wanted to sprint away. ‘But I can go if you’d rather …’
‘No.’
Rafaella regarded her – she had lost weight and looked pale; she didn’t look like she’d stepped outside all week. Romola had punished herself harder than Rafaella could ever have managed.
She scrambled from the bed and went towards her with arms outstretched, their embrace long and hard as their faces pressed into each other’s shoulders and the terrible tension between them was finally crushed.
Cosimo’s drawn-out, ridiculous and stubborn apology on the beach yesterday had been followed up with bright smiles between them in church this morning, even though his black eye still looked sore and awkward whenever he moved his face.
‘I’m sorry,’ Romola said when they finally pulled apart, looking her straight in the eye this time.
‘I know,’ Rafaella nodded, appreciating the sincerity. ‘But … it’s done. In the past. Let’s leave it behind us now.’ She squeezed Romola’s shoulder. ‘You look like you need some sun. Shall we sit?’
Rafaella led the way to the small balcony outside, where two small wooden chairs were set.
The farmhouse was large, arranged over two floors, with all its doorways and windows shadow-painted with blue trim.
Her bedroom was positioned at the back of the house, looking over the crest of the hill and surveying the south-westerly aspect of the estate.
Lines of olive trees, planted in diagonals, stretched away into the distance until they butted up against the oak forest that lay like a giant green lung between the port and Tricase town.
They sat down together on the chairs, currently drenched in sunlight, and automatically put their bare feet on the stone wall.
They had spent many hours sitting here as young girls, talking into the night as the cicadas ticked and the stars came out.
‘I always forget how beautiful your view is here,’ Romola said, breaking the silence as they gazed out.
‘No sea view, though.’
‘Oh, overrated if you ask me. I mean, all you’re really looking at is the horizon – a blue line that looks the same in Rimini as it does here …’ Romola shrugged. ‘The sea’s only interesting when you’re actually on it, looking back at land. This, though …! This could only be Puglia!’
Rafaella smiled at the overcompensation. Romola held an opinion on everything and she had nothing if not the strength of her convictions.
‘Your dress is so pretty,’ she said, her gaze wandering over Romola’s sundress. ‘I was admiring it in church earlier.’
‘You were?’
The dress was lilac-and-white-striped cotton, with a square-cut neckline and mother-of-pearl buttons. ‘Is it from your new designer?’
‘Pucci?’ Romola laughed. ‘Oh, no! This is nothing. Just a –’ She stopped herself. ‘I mean, I do love it, though. It’s so pretty, isn’t it?’ She gasped as an idea came to her. ‘Why don’t you try it on? It would look so much better on you than me!’
Rafaella smiled as she shook her head. As little girls, they had often swapped clothes, she and Gina prompting looks of amusement as they skipped through the port in silk, with Romola alongside in patched linens.
More often than not, come summer’s end, the local housekeeper would find clothes left behind on the bed as she closed up the house, with orders to give them to the girls now that Romola had ‘outgrown’ them.
But they were no longer little girls. Clearly. ‘I’m not trying on your dress.’
‘But I want you to have it!’
‘Romy, we’re not doing that. You don’t need to give me something. I told you, it’s behind us.’
Romola swallowed, and Rafaella could tell she felt awkward being diffident. It wasn’t her usual role, but it felt difficult just reverting to their old footing again. No matter how hard they both wished it, things couldn’t go back to exactly how they’d been.
‘I wish you’d confided in me,’ Rafaella said quietly.
Romola’s head whipped round.
‘Cosi told me when we spoke yesterday – about your parents’ … difficulties.’
There was a horrified pause. ‘He shouldn’t have done that.’
‘Don’t be angry at him,’ Rafaella said quickly, seeing how the alarm settled on her friend’s face. ‘I made him explain. I couldn’t forgive until I had some sort of sense of … why.’
‘Yes, well, it doesn’t really follow logic.’
‘Pain never does.’
Romola seemed to shrink in the chair. ‘I guess I thought if I hurt him, like he hurts us …’ A small noise escaped her, and she looked away. ‘Oh God, I’m such a terrible person.’
‘No, you’re not,’ Rafaella said quickly. ‘You’re just suffering.’
‘… I feel … I feel so ashamed that this is what we are. People think we’re so wonderful! A noble family with no problems! But where’s the nobility in our father sleeping with our mother’s friends? With the nannies? With his own –’
She stopped herself as her voice rose through the octaves. She was trembling and Rafaella put a hand over hers. ‘You’re not your father. You get to choose who you want to be … You’re eighteen years old, and your whole life is ahead of you. Be better than him.’
‘Be better than him.’ Romola echoed the words, as if trying them for size. She gave a small snort of derision. ‘Well, that shouldn’t be hard. It’s a low bar.’
Rafaella gave a small laugh. ‘You’re a good person, Romy. Don’t forget that.’
‘I’ll try,’ Romola said, squeezing her hand and looking touched.
Rafaella looked back out over the trees, wishing she didn’t have to be the one doing all the forgiving. It was draining having to be bigger than she felt, saying words she scarcely meant. Telling Cosimo they could be friends had almost undone her yesterday.
‘… Hey, so what are you wearing to the wedding?’
‘Silvana’s made me a dress.’
‘Could I see it?’
‘Of course.’ Rafaella got up and returned a moment later with the blue dress her sister had just finished.
It was looser and longer than she had wished now it had the extra panel and lace hem her mother had insisted on after coming to her last fitting.
In fact, it was so modest, it looked like the kind of dress they might have worn at first communion.
Romola’s smile froze. ‘Ah,’ she said diplomatically. ‘… Sweet.’
Rafaella giggled at the true Romola coming through at last. ‘I know. It’s terrible! But Mamma got involved.’ She rolled her eyes.
‘I’ve got a brilliant idea! We should go shopping and buy you a new one!’
‘Where? With what?’
‘My treat!’
‘I’ve already said no to any of that.’
‘But you can’t go to your sister’s wedding dressed as a ten-year-old!’
Rafaella shrugged as she hung the dress back on the wardrobe door. ‘Who really cares how I’m dressed? It’s Silvana’s day.’ She came to sit down again, stretching out her long, tanned legs.
‘Yes – but you’re not invisible, you know,’ Romola protested. ‘You deserve to look pretty too.’
‘I know that.’
‘Hmm.’ Romola looked at her doubtfully. She watched Rafaella watching her father and Dado working in one of the groves; it was Sunday, but they had gone straight out after Mass, worried about a possible olive fruit fly infestation. ‘You know, Cosi is really happy now that we’re all friends again.’
Rafaella suppressed a flinch. ‘Me too. I’ve missed you both.’
Romola gave a small laugh. ‘He had to go without dinner last night. He felt so sick he couldn’t stomach anything! And he’s got a temperature. Mamma can’t understand what came over him, sitting out like that!’
‘He was such a pain! He sat there all day, holding up a table that other customers could have used – but every time I went near him to get him to go, he just ordered another Coke!’
‘Well, thank God you gave in! He said he was almost sick, but he was braced to go back down every day for as long as it took.’
‘That would have been dangerous. Gina would have given him a much harder time than me!’
‘Yes, he said he was banking on breaking you early.’
‘Well, I have always been the soft touch,’ she shrugged self-deprecatingly.
Romola reached over and touched her arm. ‘No. You’re strong, just in a quiet way.’
Rafaella gave her a small smile, but looked away.
She didn’t feel strong. She felt stranded, beached.
Stuck on a rock she didn’t want to be on.
She was glad she could put the incident with Romola behind her, but with Cosimo …
she didn’t know how to rewind her feelings for him.
He wanted them to be just how they had been before, but the kiss had changed everything for her.
She kept trying to forget the way she had felt in his arms that night.
She was a realist – she knew her future lay here in the port, not in some fancy villa in Rome.
Her daydreams of a life with Cosimo could never become a reality.
But she had peered into Pandora’s box, and what she’d found there had ruined her.
No matter what her head told her, her heart said differently.