Page 62 of A Place in the Sun
‘He didn’t,’
A heavy weight has just lifted off me. ‘Please don’t say it to save my feelings. If anyone should be having their feelings saved, it’s you. You thought you’d been abandoned and now you find out the father you’d only just met is dead.’
‘Really, I promise. I’m not bullshitting you. Sorry.’
‘It’s fine.’ I smile as we try to navigate the situation as best we can. We’re like a couple of rookie dodgem drivers, bumping into each other.
‘My mother told me. She was totally into him. They met at a festival. She was in a band. He was cheffing for the acts. She thought he was the one. But then, after the festival, he went to London. He arranged to meet her. She thought he was going to propose, and she planned to tell him she was pregnant. Instead, he told her he’d met someone else, the love of his life, and he couldn’t see her any more. He was honest about it. He never strung her along. But she wanted a clean break. So she never told him she was pregnant. She never badmouthed him. Just said they’d split before I was born and he had found happiness. Just like she did eventually with my stepdad before she died. When I was sixteen. She stayed here. She’d got into a bad crowd and Giovanni helped her when she was trying to stay clean. But she couldn’t stop living the life she lived, on the road, with people she knew. This village became a safe place for me. Giovanni has been here for me. And I looked up Marco online when I was old enough. Facebook is a great thing!’
‘That’s debatable!’
‘He wanted to tell you. But he said he wanted to meet me first. Take things carefully. He had a family to think of. He came here to meet me, and saw the house. He told me he was going to buy it, and wanted to bring you here, for us to meet in person.’
‘That’s what he said in the emails …’ Tears fill my eyes. ‘And now we have.’
‘Just without him.’
‘What about you? Where did you go when you didn’t hear from him?’
‘Here and there, staying in Casa Luna when I was in the area. It felt the closest thing to a home I’d had.’
‘You were staying in the house! So that’s why it wasn’t in as bad a state as I was expecting.’
‘I tried to keep it nice for when he finally came back.’
‘Oh, Stella.’ This time I can’t help but put my hand over hers, and she lets me.
‘But he didn’t come back. His family did. A family I wasn’t a part of. And he wasn’t here.’
‘But,’ it catches in my throat, ‘a little piece of him is here, in you, Aimee, Luca … in this place, where he had a dream of us all getting to know each other.’
She drops her head again.
‘And we can still do that …’
She rubs her nose. Her hard mask has all but gone, leaving in its place a vulnerable young woman, who looks exactly like the man I loved. ‘You mean you don’t hate me?’
‘Why would I?’
‘It seemed that way when I told you,’ she says quietly.
I put out my hand, wanting to make this better. ‘I’m sorry. I was in shock.’
She looks up at me. ‘And I wasn’t exactly making it easy for you!’
I shake my head and we smile.
‘No … but that’s what teenagers do. And I have all this to come with Aimee and Luca.’
She laughs. ‘They’re lovely children. I’d like to stay in touch if I can.’
I nod firmly. ‘Of course!’
‘And, again, I’m sorry about the kitten. I’ll find a way of looking after it and letting Aimee know.’
I pat her hand. ‘If Marco’s death has taught me one thing, it’s about living for today. And we have today. And … there’s no reason why we can’t do what Marco intended, for us all to get to know each other. It’s taken me a long time to stop thinking about him every minute of every day. It was all so sad. Anniversaries, birthdays, first days of school … I tried to carry on for the children’s sake, but since I’ve been here, I’ve felt different. Not so sad. I’m still thinking about him, but I also feel lighter. He’s part of the family, even if he’s not here any more, but it’s not all sad. It’s okay to be happy too …’
‘Giovanni once told me, when I’d got into some sort of trouble,’ Stella says, ‘that that’s why cars have bigger windows at the front and smaller ones at the back. It’s so you can look forward and see the future and not look back so much.’
