Bee’s mother also died that winter, at a great age. They all went up to Penrith for the funeral. There was a bit of trouble as Bee’s brother Donald tried to put Bee and Jinny in the first car and the rest of the family in their own car. Pat would have let it be, but Bee insisted fiercely that her family were staying together. In the end they drove their own car and left immediately from the graveside. “Why did he have to be like that?” Bee asked. “I hate it when people won’t acknowledge my family as real. All of us.”
The girls took their A Levels that summer, 1981. Flora did well but not spectacularly and took up a place at Lancaster. She had grown out of the flower goddess phase and chose to study computer science. Jinny did brilliantly. She was accepted at Pat’s old college, St. Hilda’s, to read English, but in Italy that summer she changed her mind. “I want to study here,” she said. “My student loans are good for anywhere in Europe, aren’t they?”
“They are,” Pat said. “But are you sure?”
“What could be more blissful than studying sculpture in Florence?” Jinny asked. “Can I live in the house?”
“There will be some students living here, but there should be room for you as well. Is sculpture your passion then, Jinny-Pat?”
On the day of the Indo-Pak crisis Jinny had been a plump teenager with long black hair, and now she was a willowy girl with a short crop that curled over her ears, but the look she gave Pat was exactly the same. “I still don’t know. But it’s closer.”
“We might all fly out for Christmas,” Bee said when they told her. “I’ve always wanted to do Christmas in Florence.”
They did that, and discovered the lack of insulation in their house. “It was built to catch drafts,” Jinny said. “Thank you for bringing all my warm clothes!”
In Italy, instead of presents being brought by St. Nicholas at Christmas they are brought by La Befana, the Epiphany witch. “More like Halloween than Christmas!” Philip said.
Bee was enchanted with the tiny objects on sale for nativity sets. “Baskets of mushrooms!” she said. “Prosciutto!”
“You’re buying all the toy food, and we don’t actually have a Nativity set,” Jinny said.
“I’m going to give them to Flora,” Bee said. “Look, a tiny salami! And a wild boar!”
Flora arrived on Christmas Eve and was enchanted with the miniature food. “They’d be wonderful for a doll’s house,” she said.
“I knew you’d like them,” Bee said.
“But it’s freezing! I had no idea it was cold in Italy in the winter!”
“It’s one of Italy’s best-kept secrets,” Jinny said. “I suggest you sleep with two hot water bottles.”
Michael, being Jewish, did not celebrate Christmas. When he visited in the middle of January he was delighted to eat Pat’s truffle pasta with the wild boar salami they had brought home. Philip at fifteen, the only child still at home, ate three helpings.
“You’re looking tired,” Bee said to Michael when they had finished dessert. “Have you been working too hard?”
“I’ve been feeling a bit run down. And I keep falling asleep. And I’ve had a sore throat that doesn’t seem to go away. I may see the doctor about it.”
“You do that!” Pat said.
Two weeks later when Pat came home from school she found Bee crying into her geraniums in the greenhouse. Pat crouched before the chair and put her arms around Bee. “What’s wrong?”
“Michael has it.”
“What?” Pat asked.
“Thyroid cancer. Anaplastic, just the same as poor Lorna. There’s no point him trying the chemo. I told him so. It works for breast cancers and liver cancers, but not for that. Do you think he should come here to die?”
“Yes,” Pat said. “Or we should all go to Florence, perhaps? But what about Philip? He has O Levels this year. How long has Michael got?”
“Months,” Bee said. “Probably not a year. I think he should come here. Philip’s O Levels aren’t all that important to him. He’s already taken Grade 8 in music in all his instruments, and music is clearly what’s going to be his thing.”
“His passion,” Pat said. “You’re right. Yes, call Michael and tell him we’ll take care of him.”
“A lot of it will fall on you,” Bee said.
“The bedpans,” Pat said, and rolled her eyes. “How easily it all comes down to bedpans. You know I don’t mind.”
“Michael’s ten years younger than me and twelve years younger than you. We were all together on the morning of Kiev,” Bee said.
“You said then that the radioactivity wouldn’t get here for days,” Pat said, who remembered that with a burning clarity. “Days later we were here and he was in London, or who knows where, taking pictures.”
“I’m a biologist, why would you think I know anything about radioactivity or fallout?”
“But—” Pat stared open mouthed. “You’re a scientist. You sounded so confident. You were standing right there when you told me.”
“You were pregnant and panicking,” Bee said. “Everything I know about radioactivity is on a cellular level.”
Michael drove down the next day. “You remember we wanted to start our own Renaissance? We’re not going to have one,” he said to Pat.