Page 4 of It's All Sun and Games

The way Tom is isn’t really much of anything, by the way. When it comes to style, Dad tends to wear whatever army shade combo Mum has bought for him, but Tom, on the other hand, is really into his clothes, and he spends a fortune on his trendy haircut, and it genuinely blows our dad’s mind. That’s just the way Tom is, though. He’s the ultimate cool guy, and he always has been – and he still manages to be the golden boy, even if Dad does find the fact that Tom likes a facemask confusing.

Tom makes friends wherever he goes and women fall at his feet because for some reason people just seem to instantly like him, before they know him. I wonder if that’s a male privilege or a confidence thing but, for me, it always feels like I have to put in the work to prove myself, to get people to notice me. I don’t know, maybe I’m talking rubbish, but it’s better than thinking that my awkward, quiet, kind of clumsy demeanour might just be putting people off. Confidence is one of those things that feeds itself. I have no idea how you get any to begin with but having people instantly like you, just because of your vibe, sounds like it would be one hell of a confidence boost.

‘Remind us why you lied,’ Dad pipes up.

I sigh. I can’t exactly tell him the truth – that it was a failed attempt to get the hottie from work to tear off my clothes and have his wicked way with me – but I’m in too deep not to explain now.

‘Because we’ve got this big client, in Italy, that we’re going to see, and they want to bring their brand to the UK, so – to seem valuable at work – I lied about how much I knew about Italy, and Italian culture, and…’

‘And you thought the Colosseum had a chimney,’ Tom adds.

‘That’s not a chimney, it’s the leaning tower of Pisa in the background, but I suppose that just proves your point,’ I say with a laugh. ‘Okay, Dad, you’re right, none of this shit is going to help me.’

‘Isn’t it nice to look through it, though?’ Mum says – seeing the bright side, as always.

‘Yeah, I guess it is,’ I say with a sigh.

‘It doesn’t make you feel old?’ Tom asks with a faux sincerity.

‘Piss off, I’m like three years older than you,’ I clap back.

‘Oh, Robin, look,’ Mum interrupts our bickering as she hands me a pile of letters.

‘Is this…’

‘Your letters from Andrea, your Italian pen pal,’ Mum reminds me. ‘Oh, she was such a lovely girl. Such a shame you never got to go on your foreign exchange holiday.’

Andrea was my school pen pal. We used to swap letters all the time, back when she was studying English, and I was taking Italian. Of course, she had been learning English since she was even younger, so her spelling and grammar were better than some of the kids in my class, and my Italian was terrible so we always swapped letters in English. I don’t really remember much Italian at all, just random little phrases, like ‘shut the door’ (which, I think, is chiuda la porta if you’re interested).

We were supposed to swap letters for a while, building up to a foreign exchange holiday that the school did every year, but as (bad) luck would have it, there wasn’t enough in the budget when it was my year.

‘It’s probably for the best,’ Dad points out. ‘Remember Tom’s German exchange kid?’

Tom laughs.

‘Good old Jonas,’ he says. ‘I wonder where he is now.’

‘Prison?’ Mum suggests.

‘You’re just saying that because he said your cooking was boring,’ I tease her.

‘No, it’s because he raided your dad’s drinks cabinet, and kept screaming German obscenities,’ she corrects me.

‘And he did keep stealing things, claiming they were souvenirs,’ Tom recalls. ‘Honestly, I think he was just bored, and messing with us. When I went to stay with his family they were so strict.’

‘Actually, didn’t he nearly burn the house down?’ I blurt as the memory comes back.

‘Right, that’s it, we said we’d never speak of that boy again,’ Mum insists. ‘But Andrea was lovely. So sweet. We would have loved to have her stay with us.’

‘Oh my gosh,’ I squawk as I look through the old letters, noting one detail in particular at the top of the page.

‘What? What is it?’ Mum asks in her usual mixture of excitement and nerves.

‘Nothing bad,’ I’m quick to reassure her. ‘It’s just a strange coincidence. Andrea is from Bari – that’s where I’m flying to with work. We’re staying at a resort in a nearby town.’

‘That’s not a coincidence, that’s fate,’ Mum corrects me. ‘You were always supposed to go there. This is the universe, course correcting, putting you back on the right track.’

‘All right, Derek Acorah,’ Tom jokes.

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