Page 59 of Never Tear Us Apart
‘Hey there, kid,’ I say, glancing back at Sal, who follows me over. ‘Would you like me to hold the baby for a moment?’
‘She is my sister – my responsibility,’ the little boy tells me with huge solemn eyes. I get the feeling that he is repeating something he has heard a hundred times.
‘Where is Vittoria today?’
‘Sick.’ The kid struggles with the restless baby. ‘Mama sent her home.’
‘Here, let me hold Eugenie for a minute. You can keep an eye on me.’
He lets me take her with a look of relief.
‘Such a pretty girl,’ I say, hefting her onto my hip. She sticks a plump fist in my hair.
The kid looks at me like I’m crazy. ‘She looks like a great big potato,’ he exclaims. ‘I get thinner every day, but the baby gets fatter. Sometimes I think she eats me while I’m sleeping.’
‘More likely it’s your mum feeding her,’ I say, wondering how the doctor stays on her feet while trying to care for the island and nurse a baby. ‘Don’t think you need to worry about your sis eating you, Qalbi.’
‘Why do you call me that?’ The boy giggles. ‘Only Mama calls me that.’
‘Isn’t it your name?’ I ask.
‘No – it’s a thing that mamas say. It means “my heart”. You keep calling meyour heart!’
The kid and Sal break into delighted laughter.
‘Oh!’ I laugh, too. ‘Well, I am quite fond of you. That will teach me to think I’m clever. So, whatisyour name then, kid?’
‘David Simon Saviour Michael Jeremy Borg,’ he tells me proudly, finishing with a flourish.
My blood stops dead in my veins. That overlong, grandiose name that I have been familiar with all my life. All I can think to say is: ‘Jeremy?’
‘My father liked the name Jeremy – it was his best friend’s name. He’s dead now. And so is Papa. My mama is called Stella, like a star. What’s your name?’
My mouth opens, but no words sound.
The proud, impressively terrifying doctor is Stella Borg. She is my grandmother – the woman who, Kathryn told me, will die the evening before the siege is broken.
And this sweet, funny little boy will grow up without her and go on to become my father.
Chapter Forty-Two
‘This changes everything,’ I say the moment Sal and I are alone. ‘I was starting to believe this, when Kathryn told me her stories, and there was Dr Gresch and her microtubules.’
‘What stories, what microtubules?’ Sal asks me. ‘You haven’t had a chance to tell me what you’ve found out, Maia. And what difference does a little boy’s name make?’
‘That little boy is myfather,’ I tell him. ‘And now it all makes sense. You, the island at war, Danny, Stella, all of it – it’s just my poor broken brain trying to find a way to fix all the shattered pieces of my life. It’s all an illusion, one made for mebyme.’
‘That’s not what’s happening here,’ Sal tells me urgently. ‘I have lived thirty hard years in a time that doesn’t belong to me, Maia. I know what is real. I know that I am flesh and blood.’
His words swirl around me, but none of them strike home. All I can think of is how I am lost in a delusion of my own making, and I can’t find a way out.
‘My father has always rejected me. Something is so broken in him that he can’t find it in himself to truly love anyone: not my mum, not even his current wife, but especially not me, the kid he never wanted.’ Even though I have known this to be true my whole life, saying it still slices like a knife through my tender heart. ‘So I dreamt up you, Sal – a man who is the epitome of what I think of as an ideal father.’
‘Really?’ Sal’s face softens as he smiles, but I’m too wrapped up in what I’m saying to acknowledge it further.
‘All of my relationships – if you can call them that – have been brief and detached. I’ve never fallen in love. I’ve never known how to until . . . I meet a perfect hero pilot with the sweetest smile and hope in his eyes. And then I start to think maybe . . . maybe I do have a heart after all.’
‘It’s not a good idea to fall in love with a pilot, as Christina said . . .’
