The Villa (38 page)

‘Well, I never had any money to come over to England until now.’

Weak, thought Ginny. What about contacting her via the internet? Or by post? Even a phone call would have been good.

He seemed to read her mind. ‘It’s easy to let the opportunity go by,’ he said. ‘And there’s a point where it seems as if it might be too late. Unless … ’

‘Unless?’ she prompted. She thought she knew what he meant about opportunity and it being too late.

‘Unless you feel you can do something. Make a difference.’

Ginny was lost. What sort of something did he intend to do now?

He stirred sugar into his caffè latte. ‘And I guess you’re also wondering why I ran off in the first place?’

That was simpler. ‘Because you didn’t want the responsibility of a baby?’ Ginny suggested. She could understand that. Thank God she wasn’t pregnant. Thank God.

He looked straight at her. ‘I was scared shitless, to be truthful with you,’ he said. ‘I was so young. A kid was the last thing on my agenda. No offence.’

Ginny nodded. ‘None taken.’ He was honest, she’d say that for him.

‘Your mother was so cool about it, so sorted. Seemed like it was no problem for her.’ He was lost in reflection now. ‘But I was terrified. Truly.’

‘So what did you do?’ Ginny sipped her chocolate. It was hot and sweet and the cream was melting into it in just the way she liked it to.

He continued to stir his coffee. ‘Took off to Australia. Did fruit picking, worked in a bar, travelled around, smoked too much weed. You can lose decades smoking that stuff. Sheer bloody lethargy.’

Ginny was a bit surprised at him admitting this, but she supposed he wasn’t your regular run of the mill parent. She had tried a bit of weed herself but though it made her giggly at first, and spaced out in a good kind of way, after a while she’d started to get paranoid and wanted to throw up.

Her father was still talking. ‘I joined a commune of New Age travellers in Western Australia,’ he said. ‘There were a lot of spiritual things going down. It was creative too, you know, music, poetry, painting, all that kind of stuff.’

All that kind of stuff
. … Galloping gorillas. It was quite thrilling, to have a parent who had done
all that kind of stuff
. But the best thing was that he was so laid back about it, like it was normal. The Ball was being a bit sarky about this. ‘Listen to him,’ it jeered. But Ginny wanted to at least give him a chance.

‘I met a Dutch couple there a while ago,’ he went on. ‘We
bonded. They fancied going prospecting in the desert and they asked me to go along for the ride. I’ve always been handy with engines. You don’t want your transport to break down in the middle of nowhere, do you?’

Wow. Prospecting. ‘You mean for gold?’ Ginny was well impressed now.

‘Sure.’ He spooned up some froth from his latte. ‘Loads of people have a go at it. You never know, do you?’ He laughed.

Ginny found herself laughing too. ‘And …? ’

He stopped laughing. ‘We struck lucky, didn’t we?’ And at that moment he looked so young and uncertain, as if he hadn’t really wanted to, as if now, he didn’t know what to do with it. God. It sounded like she’d found herself a reluctantly rich father. Maybe a very rich father.

‘So you came back to England,’ she said. And yet it was all too easy, too glib. She thought of her mother coping for all those years, bringing up Ginny on her own, and suddenly she wanted to lash out at him.

It must have shown in her eyes.

‘I realise you’ve got no reason to even give me the time of day,’ he said. ‘I’ve let you down, I’ve let your mother down, and I’ve let myself down even more. I buggered off when your mum needed me the most. I never even contacted you – for eighteen years.’

‘Exactly.’ She eyed him over the rim of her cup. That could hardly be explained away as a lost opportunity.

‘I wanted to,’ he said. ‘More than you could ever guess. God knows how many times I picked up a pen to write to you.’

Ginny waited.

‘But I was bloody useless,’ he said. ‘I had no money, I made no contribution to your upkeep, I had nothing to offer you. Honest to God, you were better off without me, Ginny.’

The way he said her name made her soften – slightly. ‘You could have tried,’ she said. ‘You could have let me make that choice.’

‘Yeah.’ He nodded. ‘I could have been different. I should have been different. I should never have brought a kid into the world, for a start.’ He paused. ‘Let that be a lesson to you.’

She blinked at him. It was as if he knew … That was how easy it could be; how easy it almost had been for her and Ben … And she couldn’t help warming to him – for his directness, she supposed.

‘You’ve probably hated me for years,’ he said.

‘I hated you for a while,’ she agreed. And then …

‘I don’t blame you.’ He shrugged.

Ginny had finished her hot chocolate and she pushed the cup away. ‘So what do you want from me now?’ she asked.

‘Nothing you don’t want to give.’ He was regarding her intently. ‘I’d like the chance to get to know you a bit, that’s why I came. But also to try and make things – not right, but better. To give something back.’

‘Money?’ She shot this at him in the most disparaging tone she could manage. Money could never make things right. Nothing could.

‘Money buys you freedom,’ he shot back. ‘Money’s not everything, I agree. Jesus, I turned my back on things material a long time ago, believe me. But money can give you choices; money can make you more comfortable. Maybe your mum could use some – even after all this time?’

‘Guilt money?’ Ginny asked. She didn’t want him to be able to shrug off his guilt so easily.

‘Call it what you like.’ He leaned closer towards her and waggled his eyebrows. ‘Late payment of alimony?’

She giggled. There must be something in the stars sending windfalls her mother’s way – first the house in Sicily, now this.

‘Tell me about you.’ His eyes were intent. His face reminded her so much of her own. It was weird – like looking into a mirror that travelled in time. ‘I’ve wondered so often. About you.’

It was over an hour later that they finally got up to go. She had told him about her life – it was easy; perhaps because he was a bit of a drifter and seemed to understand, or perhaps because he was a stranger, and it was easier to tell a stranger. At any rate, the Ball had lessened its grip on her – just a bit – in the telling.

‘What do you want, Ginny?’ he asked her, as they left the cafe.

The million dollar question, that was. ‘I want to do … something unsuitable,’ she said. ‘I want to see things. I dunno really.’

‘And what don’t you want to do?’

That was easier. ‘Study. Do psychology. Go to uni. Stay in Pridehaven.’

He laughed. ‘Anything else?’

‘I don’t want to do what other people want me to do,’ she said, feeling vaguely guilty about her mother. ‘I want to be free.’ From the Ball, she meant. And everything it stood for.

He nodded. ‘Sounds like you need to get away.’

As if it was easy …

He unlocked the door of the VW. Ginny couldn’t imagine him with her mother, not now. She thought of the photograph in the living room at home. If they’d stayed together, they would have split sooner or later – it was obvious. One more broken family … So what did it really matter that he’d left before she was even born?

He dropped her back at Nonna and Pops.

‘How did you get on with him?’ Nonna asked her, the second she walked in the door. She was still wearing her suspicious look. And something else that Ginny couldn’t identify.

‘I liked him,’ Ginny said. And she heard the surprise in her own voice. ‘I liked him a lot.’

And then her mobile bleeped. She dug it out of her pocket. Looked at the screen. MUM. Oh, glory …

It was the nearest thing to a heart-to-heart they’d had for a long time, Tess reflected a few days later as she walked to the Hotel Faraglione to meet up with Millie for coffee. She supposed a part of her – a selfish part, she had to admit – wanted Ginny to tell her father to get lost.
Where have you been all my life?
That kind of thing.

But Ginny had surprised her by being more considered, more thoughtful, she supposed. ‘It’s good for me, Mum,’ she’d said.

‘Why?’ Had she been such a bad mother? Had she not been enough for Ginny all these years?

‘Because he can answer some of my questions,’ her daughter said. ‘Questions that I’ve wanted to ask him for years.’

The sun was already hot and hazy in the blue Sicilian sky as Tess made her way along the narrow streets and dusty cobbles. How could it not have occurred to her, she thought now, that Ginny would have questions to ask David? That there would be things that she, Tess, could not explain? Mainly, she realised, because she didn’t know herself.

‘I’m going to come back home right now,’ Tess told her. ‘I need to see David. You shouldn’t have to deal with this alone.’

‘But, Mum,’ Ginny said. ‘I want to deal with it alone. I want to have time with him. Can’t you see?’

Tess had tried to see. But all she could see was that Ginny didn’t want her to come back. She wanted to be with her father. All their life together up to now seemed to have been cancelled out – as if it counted for nothing.

‘Not because I don’t love you, Mum,’ Ginny had said, as if she knew exactly what her mother was thinking. ‘Not because I don’t miss you. Because I do.’

It had been a long time, Tess realised, since her daughter had said anything like this to her. It made her want to cry. ‘OK, darling,’ she said. ‘But if you need me, just call.’

‘I will.’

‘And Ginny?’

‘Yes?’

‘I love you too.’

Loving your child, Tess reflected, as she entered the cool, tiled foyer of the hotel, was sometimes about letting them go. It might not be easy – but she had to try.

Because Millie was busy with the hotel and Pierro was away a lot on business – he seemed to have irons in a multitude of fires – Tess had not seen quite as much of her new friends as she had hoped to. Nevertheless, it was good to have a woman friend to speak English to, and Pierro had been very helpful with her ideas for Villa Sirena. It wasn’t easy, Tess had discovered, being a woman on her own in a run-down villa in Sicily.

‘Are you OK?’ Millie asked her, as she poured coffee for the three of them. ‘You seem a bit distracted.’ They were sitting on their private terrace which was full of bright flowers in pots, trailing jasmine and purple and orange bougainvillea, and shaded by a linen canopy. Today, Millie was wearing a bright-yellow sundress. With the red lipstick and nail varnish and her black hair she too looked like some exotic flower, Tess thought. Perfectly lovely, but so brittle that if you touched her she might break.

‘There have been a few issues at home,’ she admitted. She was tempted to tell her the whole story – but it was a long one.

‘Teenagers.’ Millie smiled. ‘I can imagine.’

‘And I had a few words with Tonino,’ Tess added. ‘About this ridiculous family vendetta.’

‘Vendetta?’ Millie’s perfectly plucked eyebrows rose. ‘Sounds thrilling. Do tell.’

Tess hesitated, but it was hardly a well-kept secret since most of the village seemed in the know, so she sketched out the gist of it. Even Pierro seemed interested and stayed outside to listen.

‘Gosh.’ Millie’s eyes were wide. ‘So what is
Il Tesoro
do you think?’

‘Search me.’ Though Tess was beginning to wish it didn’t exist.

‘And where do you suppose it disappeared to?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Tess. She accepted another almond
biscotti
from the plate Millie offered to her. They were perfect
dipped into caffè latte. And she could always diet later, back in England … ‘Giovanni seemed to have some idea it was hidden in the villa – when I first arrived he cross-questioned me about it.’

‘Really,’ drawled Millie. ‘I wonder if
he
knows what it is.’

Tess wasn’t sure if it was her imagination but she thought Pierro gave his wife rather a sharp look. Their relationship was hard to fathom. Pierro seemed to adore his wife, but Millie … Sometimes she was very offhand.

‘But wouldn’t it be exciting … ’ Millie really had the bit between her teeth now. ‘To find out? Where it is and what it is, I mean. Didn’t your mother give you any clues at all? Have you even asked her?’

‘No, I haven’t.’ Tess had to laugh.

Millie leaned forward conspiratorially and Tess caught the aroma of her perfume – musky and sweet. ‘Perhaps you should,’ she suggested. ‘It might make all the difference with Tonino if you can find out more about it. Who knows?’

‘Muma doesn’t want to talk about those days,’ Tess reminded her. How could it make Tonino change his mind? For him, what was in the past could never be erased. And besides, she had her pride. If Tonino didn’t want her because of some stupid old family quarrel, then she wasn’t going to run after him.

‘For the Sicilian,’ Pierro said, ‘the past is always woven into the present.’

Millie rolled her eyes.

Tess had some sympathy. Sicilian men were all too fond of
telling her about the idiosyncrasies of their race. Still, ‘Like Tonino with his fairy tales and folk stories,’ she said. Past and present. Sometimes they were so tangled up it was impossible to prise them apart.

‘You like him a lot,’ said Millie. Her eyes were sharp and penetrating.

‘I suppose.’ Though Tess could still hear Giovanni’s voice in her mind.
He is good at tricking women
. The last thing she needed was to get involved with another player.

Pierro smiled. ‘You are well suited,’ he said. ‘It would be perfect. Millie and I would no longer be the only English–Sicilian couple in Cetaria.’

Millie frowned. ‘Tess is half-Sicilian,’ she reminded him. ‘So it isn’t the same.’ She put her coffee cup to her lips and Tess was surprised to see her hand tremble. She was about to say something, but then Millie flashed her a bright smile and the moment was gone.

‘Yes, of course you are,’ said Pierro. He slapped his forehead with the bridge of his hand. ‘For a moment, I forgot.’

Tess had not really felt half-Sicilian while she was growing up. Her mother was a little different, yes, but apart from Muma’s cooking, she’d had a very English upbringing. Now though, being here, she did feel as if she had a part of Sicily in her blood, and as if she always had.