Page 10 of The Final Beat

“Hmm, and you’re still in trouble for doing that without asking.”

I stifled the groan of irritation. “It was over twelve years ago. I don’t think you can still hold it against me. I need to get going, anyway, I’ve got stuff to do.”

Hopefully she’d forgotten her line of questioning and would let me go.

No such luck. “So, Italy, baba. What do you think?”

“Nothing. I don’t think anything about Italy.” I took a deep breath. “We went, we performed, and we came back.”

“You could have go?—”

“Mum, stop it. I could not have gone to Lucca. I did not want to go to Lucca. I will not be going to Lucca.” My blood pressure was building quickly and if I didn’t get off the call I’d end uphaving a heart attack or something. “I need to go. I’ll talk to you before we go back on tour.”

“Joey,” she snapped. “He’s dying and I think you should go and see him.”

Her words shouldn’t have shook me, but they did. My heart stalled as I desperately fought to keep the air rushing from my lungs. The emotion of instant grief hit me, and I hated it. It was wrapped up with hatred and abandonment and it was suffocating. It was alien. It made me want to pump some shit into my veins and lose myself in the oblivion of the colours and the sounds of my personal hell.

“Why would I care?” I managed to push out.

“He’s your dad, Joey.”

Grabbing the back of my neck, I shook my head. “No. No. No. He hasn’t been my dad since I was four years old. Since he walked out on me. Onus.”

“It was hard for him. He couldn’t get a job and his father wanted him back home and?—”

“I really don’t give a shit, Mum. He could have taken us with him. And we both know that’s a load of bullshit he made up as an excuse.”

I always tried hard not to think of Aldo Esposito, the man that I was apparently the image of. How I had his eyes and his nose. The same dimples when I smiled. Most days he didn’t enter my brain space. I avoided wondering what he looked like, what his voice sounded like or whether he ever thought about me. Then every now and then my mum would pull fucking shit like mentioning his name… and telling me he was dying.

“You need to let it go, baba.” She sighed heavily, like I was the one who’d fucked off back to sunny Lucca, left my girlfriend and four-year-old son behind, and never contacted them again.

“I don’t need to let anything go because he’s not on my radar. That means I don’t care what’s happening to him. He could havehis head axed off and his kids use it for a pumpkin lantern for all I care,” I hissed. “No, in fact, I don’t care if that’s what they’ve done. I have no fucking feelings for him or about it.”

It was a lie. I did have feelings. I hated him.

Oh, and yes, he had more kids. Those he lived with. How fucking big of him.

“Wouldn’t you rather see him before he dies?” Mum asked.

What the hell didn’t she get about the situation? Why was she so dense and so selfish? Why couldn’t she see that him leaving had put us both onto a path of destruction.

“You really don’t get my side of things, do you? You honestly don’t understand why I don’t want to talk or think about him, do you?”

“If anyone should be mad at him, it should be me,” she protested.

“And I don’t get why you’re not. You bloody mourned him leaving for years, you drink to forget him, you have shit relationships to help you forget him, so why the fuck don’t you hate him?”

“I don’t drink because of him,” she protested. “I was in a bad place when I started. It wasn’t because of Aldo leaving.”

“Oh, for god’s sake, Mum. Do you really think you’d have got addicted to booze if you’d been happy in a good relationship? You have man after man trying to replacehimbut none of them ever do, because they’re either wankers or you push them away because they’re nothim.”

“I won’t have you talking to me like that,” she said.

Her voice cracked with emotion, and I knew I’d gone too far. Maybe he wouldn’t have left if we’d been enough for him. Maybe it wasourfault.Iwas the one who he left.Shewas why he abandoned us.

“I’m sorry, Mum, but I can’t talk about this.” My skin itched and my veins throbbed with need.

“He’s got a couple of months at most, Jo?—”

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