The Heavenly Italian Ice Cream Shop (24 page)

‘Perhaps this isn’t a dead end,’ Imogen said.

Clarissa looked at her, bringing her eyebrows together.

‘Perhaps – without realising it – you might have come here to meet somebody else.’

‘Not him, not that man, whoever he was,’ Clarissa said, adamant.

‘No,’ Imogen said, shaking her head. ‘It wasn’t him I was thinking about.’

The next day, with no photography bookings on her calendar, Imogen headed over to the ice cream shop to see Evie. From the doorway, she’d seen that Finn’s surf shop was open, and heard sounds of building work coming from the adjacent archway. She’d felt a strong pull towards it – an overwhelming urge to see Finn again, if only for a moment. Even being able to have a look into the building and see how the project was going would have helped her feel a little more connected to him again. When she’d left their home, the fear she’d had about settling, putting down roots, had melted away, and now it was barely there at all. She longed for a feeling of permanence now, when everything around her seemed unreliable and transient.

‘Hello, Imogen,’ Evie said. ‘Well, this is a nice surprise. How was the trip?’

‘Good,’ Imogen said. ‘Good, and not so good. Long story.’

‘Your dad mentioned you’re living at the guesthouse.’

‘Yes. Finn and I have fallen out.’

‘Oh, dear. Well, I am sorry to hear that.’ Evie paused. ‘I just saw him, actually,’ she said softly.

‘Oh, yes?’ Imogen asked, trying to make it seem as if she didn’t care.

‘He looked about as miserable as you do, if that’s any consolation.’

‘Not really,’ Imogen said, feeling a fresh wave of guilt at the pain she’d caused him. She missed him. The feel of his body against hers, his laughter. The way he’d always supported her in what she was doing, in such an understated way that she hadn’t really noticed it until it was gone.

‘Go out,’ Evie urged her. ‘Go and see him. He’s working over with Andy, in the shop. Would it do any harm to say hello?’

Imogen felt conflicted, but she was instinctively drawn to seeing him again.

‘Give me five minutes,’ she said to Evie.

‘You take as long as you like,’ Evie said, kindly.

Imogen left the ice cream shop, her heart thudding in her chest. She could already see Finn, just a few metres away, working just inside the shell of what had been Evie’s shop. In jeans and a T-shirt, his back to her, as he cleared some of the rubble. She stopped, her feet rooted to the spot. She willed them to move, but her body stubbornly refused to cooperate.

Finn was immersed in the task, entirely focused on building something that really mattered to him. When they were still a couple, it had been something he saw as a solid future for the two of them. That had been part of his motivation. Why had that made her want to run? She couldn’t even pin it down now. All she could see was that she had been wrong. Luca might have represented freedom to her, in some small way, but, with his flighty lifestyle and grandiose ambitions, he wasn’t half the man that Finn was. He never would be.

He turned, seeming to sense her presence, and saw her standing there. His hazel eyes met hers, and her heart skipped.

‘Hi,’ he said, coolly.

‘Hi,’ she said back. ‘I was just at Vivien’s. I thought I’d come and . . .’ In that moment it had slipped her mind, why she came, why she had even felt entitled to. If this break was permanent, and the lack of contact between them made it feel that way, then she was nothing to him any more.

He paused, saying nothing.

‘I shouldn’t have come,’ Imogen said, a lump rising to her throat. ‘It’s too soon, I guess.’

He shrugged. ‘Maybe, yes.’

Tears sprang to her eyes and she turned and walked away. She had no right even to be there any more, to talk to him, and it hurt more than she’d ever imagined it could.

On the guest house kitchen table there was some post addressed to Imogen. A postcard from Bella, a scribble in yellow crayon that Anna had turned into a sun. Imogen read the back: ‘We miss you Auntie Imo! Love Bella x’.

She felt a tug of longing.

Under the postcard was a slim white envelope with elegant handwriting on it. She flipped it over – the return address was in Sorrento.

Curious, she ripped it open and took out the letter inside. ‘Dear Miss Imogen,’ it began. ‘Please excuse my English. A long time since I write a letter like this.’

She knew right away who it was from, and an image of his face flashed up in her mind.

Imogen might have messed up her own love life, but she was more determined than ever to make a success of Evie’s.

She called her up on the phone. ‘Evie, I know it’s late, but it’s important. Can I come around and talk to you about something?’

Chapter 36

Sirens rang out through the Sorrento square, and Anna rushed over to the window of the ice cream shop to see what was happening, her pulse racing.

‘What’s going on out there?’ she asked Matteo. A police van sped past, closely followed by an ambulance. A crowd of onlookers had formed nearby.

‘I’m going to see,’ Matteo said, rushing outside. Anna watched as he spoke with a couple of locals, but they were shrugging, and their faces looked blank. He went over to another man by a blue Nissan, and talked with him.

In the time that they’d been in Italy, Anna couldn’t recall hearing a police or ambulance siren. For a brief while, she’d felt sheltered from the harsher realities of life. Bella tugged at her skirt, and Anna picked her up and held her close.

‘
Nee-naw
,’ she said, pointing to the flashing lights, looking confused.

‘Yes,’ Anna said, working quickly to reassure her. ‘There’s probably a cat stuck up a tree somewhere. That must be it.’ But her heart was still beating fast. She’d lost sight of Matteo in the crowd.

A local, a man in a flat cap, came in and asked for an espresso. Distracted, Anna went back behind the counter and made his drink.

‘
Incidente
,’ he said.

‘What happened?’ Anna asked, in Italian.

‘On the highway. A moped. These crazy tourists,’ he said, shaking his head.

A chill went over Anna’s skin.

‘Do they know yet, who it was, what happened?’

‘I saw them put her in the ambulance. A woman.’

‘Was she old? Young?’ Anna asked.

The man just shrugged. Anna thought back to the food bloggers they’d had in the shop the other day. A couple of them had left on mopeds. She hadn’t thought anything of it at the time.

She walked back over to the window, Bella by her side. The square was quiet now. The emergency vehicles had passed but the area was still full of people. She scanned the crowd for Matteo, but couldn’t see him.

Her mobile rang in the pocket of her apron – Matteo’s name on the screen. Anna pressed to answer it.

‘Anna,’ Matteo said, over the noise of traffic. ‘I’m in a friend’s car, on the way to the hospital.’

‘What happened?’ Anna said. She realised she was clutching Bella’s hand too tightly, and her daughter wriggled free. ‘Are you OK?’

‘No,’ Matteo said, his voice cracking. ‘I’m not.’

‘What is it? What’s happened?’ Anna asked, detecting the emotion in his voice.

‘The woman – it was a moped crash, on the highway. She got hit by a van at high speed.’

His voice faltered.

‘No,’ Anna said, knowing the words that were coming. She put her hand up to her mouth. ‘Oh, God, no!’

‘It was Carolina.’

Chapter 37

Imogen climbed the winding steel steps up to Evie’s first-floor flat. Below her was a lush green garden, carefully tended. After all the ups and downs she’d been through, Evie did seem to have found a way of life that made her happy. Imogen rang the doorbell and hoped she was doing the right thing in coming.

‘Hi, Imogen,’ Evie said, spotting her through the kitchen window and opening the door. ‘Come on in.’

‘Thanks,’ Imogen said, wiping her feet on the mat.

She saw Evie’s expression change as she gauged that Imogen had something serious to talk to her about.

‘Am I in trouble?’ Evie enquired as she gathered the tea things together. ‘I feel like I might be.’

‘No,’ Imogen said, laughing. ‘I was just hoping to ask you a few questions, that’s all.’

‘OK, then. Sounds like we’d better sit down for this one,’ she said, getting some biscuits out.

The two women sat down, and Imogen looked Evie directly in the eye. ‘You’ve heard enough about my love life over the past couple of years. Yet you’ve never told me anything about your own.’

‘Oh, Imogen,’ Evie said, smiling. ‘There’s a good reason for that. I’m in my seventies. There isn’t a lot to tell.’

‘But does it have to be like that?’

‘I’m better on my own,’ Evie said. ‘I’m a stubborn old mule, me. I’m used to my own way of doing things now. I know what I want.’

‘But couldn’t that work to your advantage?’ Imogen enquired gently. ‘Not knowing what I want from life is constantly tripping me up. But you, you know so much about what you want, and yet you’ve just resigned yourself to being alone.’

‘You’re not going to talk to me about internet dating, are you? I’ve heard that’s what everyone does these days, but, believe me, there are some things I’m absolutely sure I’m too old for.’

Imogen shook her head. ‘No. I’m not,’ she laughed. ‘I’m sure you’d go down a storm, but, no, that’s not it.’

‘Well, what, then?’

‘You always say that no one knew you like my grandma, don’t you? That she could almost speak for you, she knew you that well.’

‘Yes. That’s true. We went through everything together.’

‘Did you know anything about this?’

Imogen passed her the letter Vivien had received, along with Luigi’s photo.

‘Vivien . . .’ Evie said, her voice affectionate and irritated at the same time. ‘She always was mischief, your grandma.’

‘Tell me about him,’ Imogen prompted her, gently.

‘Luigi?’ She looked at his photo. ‘He was the only man I ever really loved.’

Evie’s face softened as she spoke, and the fine lines around her eyes disappeared.

‘He looks the same, you know. More grey in his hair, but the same eyes – you couldn’t mistake those.’

‘How did you meet him?’ Imogen asked.

‘I was touring the Amalfi coast on my own, just me and my moped, a year after I first went there with Vivien. I was forty-five. Old enough to know better, some might say. But I’d saved my pennies all year to pay for the trip, and there was nothing to stop me. Your grandfather was getting ill then, so Vivien couldn’t get away – she didn’t want to, she had everything she wanted in her world here. But travel was always a passion for me; it was what kept me motivated through the long winters in Brighton, looking forward to trips abroad.’

Imogen nodded for her to continue talking.

‘He wasn’t the kind of man I’d ever gone for before, but, when I met Luigi, I knew I’d been right not to settle for anyone earlier on in life. I’d had offers, but no one I wanted to share my life with, make the sacrifices that come hand in hand with being married. But with Luigi it felt different. We clicked right away. I felt like he understood everything I said. We didn’t need to explain things to one another.

‘We got to know each other quickly there, over in Italy, and I extended my stay, getting a friend to mind the shop back home. Your grandmother was surprised at first, I think, but very happy for me, too – I told her I’d explain it all when I got back.’

‘You fell in love?’ Imogen asked.

‘Yes. And I felt on top of the world. But that was just the start, before we realised that, in order to be together, we’d have to hurt some of the people Luigi cared about most.’

‘Why was that?’

‘How are you doing for tea?’ Evie asked, peering into Imogen’s cup.

‘Nearly done,’ she said.

‘Let’s have a top-up. Because this is a long one.’

Evie settled back into her chair and began telling the story.

‘Luigi’s life was complicated, and I knew that from the start. He’d been married to his childhood sweetheart, a woman from a well-loved local family. They had two young children. Then his wife died at just thirty-four. He was devastated, and so was his whole family – they’d all been devoted to her.’

‘Sounds like it would have been difficult to live up to that memory.’

‘Exactly, and that’s why we decided to keep it a secret. I knew who his family were – I saw them around town, it wasn’t a big place – but they had no idea I was part of Luigi’s life.’

‘That must have been hard.’

‘When you’re in your forties, fifties, beyond, you accept that most relationships are going to come with some baggage, something extra to handle, and I understood why he made the choice he was making. We agreed that, if things worked out, in time, we would tell people – but he was really close to his daughter, and he didn’t want her to think he was betraying the memory of her mother.’

‘Then what happened? When you had to come home?’

‘I came back to this rainy country, missing him desperately but hoping that after a few weeks the memories would fade and I’d be able to move on with my life. But I couldn’t stop thinking about him.’

‘Did you stay in touch?’

‘Yes, we’d write. And the next summer I took a chance and went back over there.’

‘How was it – seeing him again?’

‘It was wonderful,’ Evie said. ‘But, as the week drew to a close, his daughter started to ask questions about me. We decided together that he had to put his family first, concentrate on raising his children. So, after that trip, I never went back.’

‘And you never wondered?’

‘Oh, I’ve wondered every day,’ Evie said. ‘And your poor grandmother got the brunt of it. Which is what got her started with this meddling, I suspect.’

Chapter 38

Matteo and Anna had agreed that she’d stay at home with Bella while he waited for more news on his sister’s condition. But Anna couldn’t stop thinking of the way he’d sounded on the phone – his voice cut through with desperation and pain. Just after nine in the evening, Anna had a change of heart. She needed to be with him. She called Maria and asked her to babysit, and then got a taxi to the hospital on her own.