‘If he was on the autistic spectrum too?’
‘Possibly.’ I twist my hands awkwardly. ‘But there were other things he did that didn’t fit.’
Joe is looking thoughtful. ‘So that’s why you understand me.’ It’s not a question.
I nod. Embarrassed. And yet also grateful that this man understands me too.
‘I’m so sorry about your horse.’ Joe’s voice has a softness I’ve never heard before.
I look up at him. His eyes are brown now. How can he do that? Go from brown to black and back to brown again?
‘Actually,’ I add, searching in my bag for a tissue, ‘he was Daniel’s. That’s what made it so difficult.’
‘Let’s go for a walk,’ says Joe. And as we stand up, it seems quite natural for him to take my hand in his.
22
Carla
A few days after Carla’s visit, Maria had put up her hand at register and asked if she could be moved to another desk in the classroom.
‘Why?’ whispered Carla, even though her sinking heart told her the answer.
Maria ignored her. It was as if she hadn’t spoken.
‘Who would like to sit next to Carla?’ said the nun with the gappy teeth.
No one volunteered. Instead, everyone shuffled away. One of the girls – the one with pigtails who usually invited her to play hopscotch – cupped her hand around her neighbour’s ear to say something quietly. The other one let out a little gasp.
It was like being at the old school all over again. Carla was so upset that she could not complete her maths exercise: a subject she now shone at. The figures hung in the air with giant question marks. What was going on?
‘They have sent you to Coventry,’ said another girl – the most unpopular one in the class, whom the nun had sent to fill Maria’s place next to Carla. She had greasy hair which her mother would only allow her to wash once a month because, so she had told Carla, it was better for the ‘natural oils’. This girl was always last to be chosen for teams: to be placed next to her was one of the gravest insults.
‘Coventry?’ Carla did not understand. ‘Where is that?’
The girl with the greasy hair shrugged. ‘It’s where they don’t speak to you.’ Then she held out her arm. ‘It will be much nicer now there are two of us.’
But Carla didn’t want to be friends with the girl with the greasy hair whom everyone else despised. She wanted to be friends with Maria, whose mother had invited her back for tea in their lovely big house on the road with the wide pavement, where no one kicked beer cans in the street.
At milk-time, Carla sought out Maria in the playground. ‘Tell me what I have done wrong,’ she pleaded.
For the first time that day, Maria raised her face and looked at her. Those beautiful blue eyes were cold. Disdainful. ‘Papa has an uncle who lives at the foot of the mountains, not far from Florence.’ Maria was talking as if Carla smelled of something nasty. ‘He knows your grandparents. They all do. And they say your mother is a bad woman.’
Mamma? A bad woman? Mamma with her kind warm smile who smelled of Apple Blossom and all the other lovely scents that she sold every day at an expensive shop for other men’s wives? That could not be true.
‘Maria! Maria!’ It was the gappy-toothed nun, striding towards them with her crucifix necklace swinging and her lips tightening. ‘I am under instructions from your mother not to let you talk to that girl.’
Carla’s eyes welled with tears. ‘Why?’
The nun crossed herself swiftly across her large breasts: breasts that she and Maria had giggled about together only last week. ‘You will find out soon enough. Be sure to collect an envelope addressed to your mother from the school office before you go home this afternoon.’
Mamma wept and wailed when she read the letter. ‘The Mother Superior wants to see your birth certificate,’ she sobbed, head in hands on the wobbly kitchen table. ‘She wants proof that you had a papa. This is my fault for sending you to a Catholic school. The old one wouldn’t have cared.’
Carla put an arm around Mamma. ‘Perhaps it is under your bed where you keep your special things?’
Mamma’s lip curled. For a moment, she reminded Carla of the wicked witch in one of her favourite books from the library. ‘How dare you go looking there?’
Carla thought of the handsome man with the funny hat whom she looked at every now and then when Mamma wasn’t home. He always smiled at her so kindly!
‘They are only pictures, Mamma. I was curious.’
Mamma let out a groan. ‘Perhaps you deserve to know. That man is your papa.’
Her father! So that is what he had looked like. ‘Maybe,’ said Carla, trying to be helpful, ‘he has taken these papers with him to heaven.’
‘No. He has not!’ Mamma rose to her full height, tossing back her glorious black hair. She was angry now instead of sad. ‘If you had not opened your mouth to Maria’s mother, none of this would have happened.’
The sob burst out of Carla’s mouth like a giant hiccup. ‘But I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong.’
It was no good. Mamma took herself to her bedroom and – for the first time that Carla could remember – locked her door.
‘Please, please open it,’ she begged from outside.
But all she could hear was Mamma sobbing.
Maybe, Carla told herself, Mamma’s mood would pass, like it had after Christmas. Perhaps on Monday the girls would start to be nice to her again.
But she was wrong. It got worse over the weeks. Then Mamma received a letter from the Mother Superior. She had until March to produce the birth certificate. Otherwise, Carla would have to leave. It should have been ‘presented’, apparently, when she had started school. But there had been an ‘oversight’.
No one wanted to play with her at break-time. Snow had started to fall last week: all the others pressed their noses against the window and talked excitedly about building snowmen when they got home. Maria had already got a new best friend: a pretty girl whose uncle had given her a silver cross which she showed off to everyone. Even the greasy-haired girl moved away from Carla when they had to crowd into the gym because it was too wet to play outside.
‘I heard someone say you were a bastard,’ she said quietly.
Carla ran the word around her mouth all afternoon and until she got home. How strange. It wasn’t in the Children’s Dictionary. ‘What does “bastard” mean?’ she asked when Mamma returned from work in her smart white uniform.
‘Is that what they are calling you now?’ Then her mother placed her head on the kitchen table and beat her fists so that one of the legs cracked and had to be propped up with the telephone directory.
Another day passed. And another.
‘The certificate has not come from Italy yet?’
‘No, cara mia.’
Even when Mamma eventually admitted there was no such certificate, they still both waited for the postman. ‘Then we can honestly say that we are waiting for it to arrive,’ explained Mamma, brushing Carla’s hair as she did every night. ‘If only I could tell Larry. He could help.’
That was another thing. Larry was working very hard. So hard that he didn’t have time to visit them. ‘He is an important man,’ Mamma often said. ‘He helps the Queen decide what is right and what is wrong.’
Then, one evening, when Carla was already in bed, she heard his voice at the front door. Usually he came in through the back. Besides, it was a Wednesday! Larry only came here on a Tuesday and Thursday and sometimes on Sundays (although recently his visits on the Lord’s Day had become more frequent). Something had happened. She could tell. Creeping out of bed, in her pyjamas, she saw Larry twirling Mamma in his arms right out there in the corridor for everyone to see. Ugh!
‘Love you … We won the case … Wanted to tell you before I went home.’
Words drifted out. Words she didn’t understand. Then there was another voice.
‘Tony?’
It was Lily!