‘He comes from the same place as you,’ Luca chipped in. I instantly regretted offering him scant details of his father’s origins.
‘Northampton? No way! Small world,’ replied James. ‘How long have you been in Italy?’
‘Eighteen years or so.’
‘Papa gave me my first guitar,’ Luca said proudly, smiling at me.
‘That’s how I got introduced to music – my dad did the same for me,’ said James. ‘I still have it, although it’s kind of battered now. He taught me how to play “Mull of Kintyre” on it, but I was pretty bad to start off.’
I swallowed hard. I hadn’t been in his life for so many years, but he had remembered that. I still had a place in his memories.
‘It’s at my mum’s house now. She keeps threatening to put it on eBay.’ He laughed. I fixated on the words ‘she keeps’. He’d used the present tense. It meant Catherine was still alive.
‘Does she still live in Northampton?’ I asked without thinking.
‘Yes, all her life. I don’t get the chance to go back much, but when I do I always stay at hers. Do you go home very often?’
‘No, not for a long time.’
Suddenly a young woman appeared behind James and passed him a deep-red Gibson Les Paul electric guitar.
‘This is for you, Luca.’ He handed it to his brother, who was too lost for words to respond. ‘If you keep practising hard, there’s no reason why you can’t be doing what I’m doing in a few years.’
‘Grazie, grazie,’ Luca replied breathlessly. ‘I . . . I promise I will look after it.’
‘Don’t look after it – use it. Play it until you wear it out!’
Luca accepted the gift like Jesus had offered him a blessing, and held it close to his chest. A hand tapped James on the shoulder and a man whispered in his ear.
‘Luca, it was great to meet you, but I’ve gotta shoot. Email me an MP3 when you’ve mastered the break in “Find Your Way Home”.’
‘I will, I will.’
James turned to me. ‘Nice to meet you too . . . Sorry, I didn’t catch your first name?’
‘It’s Simon,’ said Luca before I could reply.
Suddenly something happened. Something so infinitesimally small, that if you freeze-framed it on a television screen, nobody but James or I would have noticed it.
It was recognition.
As he shook my hand, for a fraction of a second James’s irises expanded and his handshake lost its brawn. I knew exactly what was he was thinking. At first he’d asked himself if we’d met before. Then my name and place of origin had made him think of his father. Now he was allowing himself to consider that maybe he wasn’t dead after all and was standing right there before him.
He’d be trying to recall from his youth his dad’s voice and appearance – the scent of his aftershave, the direction he parted his hair, his posture, the sound of his laugh and shape of his smile – and comparing them all to the stranger before him. Then his rational side took charge and he realised his imagination had got the better of him. Fate didn’t work that way, and he’d be feeling foolish for even considering it.
He regained his composure, his irises shrank and the strength reappeared in his grip.
‘See you guys again,’ he smiled, and followed his assistant.
An animated Luca jumped up and down, gabbling in his excitement, but I couldn’t hear him. Instead I watched my James walk away, turn around to give me a final glance, and then disappear from my life as quickly as he’d arrived.
Montefalco, Italy
19 December
My driver parked the Bentley in front of the villa and opened the rear door for me. I smiled at a housemaid whose name eluded me as she flirted with a handsome young handyman. I made my way to a patio that overlooked our valley of vineyards.
I searched the sky for an invisible crop duster, which was giving off a gentle buzz. The midday crickets chirped as they rubbed their wings together in the hope of finding a mate. The horizon I’d stared into so often with crystal clarity now mimicked a melted oil painting as the sun blended sky, field and lake into one.
‘This is your life, Simon. Not the one you walked away from,’ came a long-forgotten voice. ‘This is your reality.’ But my reality was vacant without Luciana.
Eight months had passed since James and I had breathed the same air, and he was still all I thought about. And no matter how many times I told myself his world was a worthier place while he was ignorant of my existence, I was beginning to crumple under the pressure of keeping myself a secret and a promise I’d made.
Everyone and everything I’d stored in secure boxes had escaped since that day. I was haunted by untethered memories that disorientated me. My darling had been right when she told me I had to find peace. Maybe then I’d feel more like my old self again.
I had to learn what had become of Catherine and our other two children. She deserved to know I was still alive and what she’d done to drive me away. And there were things I also needed her to understand.
Time was running out, as fate threatened to erase a life she had never known I’d lived. I was almost ready to face her.
CATHERINE
Northampton, one year earlier
3 February
I dreamed about Simon that night. I don’t know what prompted his reappearance, as he hadn’t visited me for years. But suddenly, there he was, every bit as youthful and as handsome as I remembered, standing in my garden, deadheading my pink rosebushes. Oscar was still a puppy and bounced excitedly around his bare feet.
‘Why are you here?’ I asked, neither upset nor delighted to see him.
He didn’t reply.
‘Simon,’ I repeated, firmly. ‘Why are you here?’
Again, nothing, and I felt a sudden urge to slap him across the face and beat my fists against his chest like wronged women do in black-and-white films. But the moment soon passed, and instead I put my arms around his shoulders and kissed his cheek.
‘Goodbye, Simon.’ I smiled before turning my back on him and walking away.
Then I heard his voice for the first time since he’d left me twenty-four years ago.
‘Kitty, where are you going?’ he asked, but I didn’t respond or turn around. I walked towards the kitchen and quietly closed the door behind me, on him and on us.
I woke up, disorientated, and just to be sure it was a dream, pulled back the curtains and glanced across an empty garden. I smiled to myself, then climbed back under the duvet, turned on my side and slid my arm across Edward’s chest.
‘Is everything all right?’ he mumbled.
‘It’s perfect,’ I replied. ‘Go back to sleep, Doctor.’
15 April