Page 29 of The Dolce Vita Divas
I didn’t react when I found them together, cooking in the kitchen, Ellen standing behind him with her arms around his waist, her cheek against his back, looking across at me with a slightly challenging, proud stare.
And yes, I had been horribly jealous. My own subsequent boyfriends who drifted into my life and then left just didn’t compare on any level with Paulo. He was an unattainable, wonderful man who treated me like an occasionally irritating sister. Nothing more, and I had learned to live with it.
We had all gone to their summer wedding in Devon where there had been a barn decorated with wildflowers and hay bales. Susie and I had thrown a party for her the week before, with cheap sparkling wine and paper bunting I had made from old magazines; that’s how well I had dealt with it.
At the evening reception I had wanted to find someone to partner off with. It had felt wrong to be alone, and I met Greg, who was a friend of someone’s friend, and he had seemed like a safe haven. Which in the end, of course, he wasn’t.
My parents loved him. He was a financial advisor, doing well and about to start his own firm. My father had urged me to marry him.
You’re not getting any younger, and he seems a decent sort.
And so, I had.
‘It’s lovely here,’ I said, forcing myself back from those far off days. ‘I wish I had come back here before now.’
‘I wish you had too,’ Paulo said. ‘Ellen talked about you a great deal in her last months.’
‘She was due to come over to stay with me, and then she said something had come up and she would rearrange everything. She never told me what. I would have visited her, if I had known she was so ill,’ I said.
Paulo shook his head. ‘She didn’t want that, for people to fuss, to see her so fragile.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘It must have been difficult.’
Paulo nodded. ‘She was only unwell for a short time. And she died very peacefully. But yes, it was a very sad few weeks.’
Raleigh, on the other side of our group, was talking about a Chinese therapist she had been seeing and complaining how bad the teas he provided tasted.
‘But I’m sure it’s doing me good,’ she said at last. ‘My inner tranquillity and sense of self is recovering. My inner child is blossoming again.’
Strange, I thought, looking at her, that someone so young and beautiful could have problems with her sense of self, whatever that was. Maybe I had the same sort of issues, but I doubted they would be cured by any herbal tea. I’d tried some rooibos and strawberry once and it had not improved my tranquillity at all. In fact, I’d had a bar of chocolate afterwards to take the taste away.
Did I have an inner child too? It was more likely I had an inner old cat, who was a bit antisocial, didn’t like being cold and wet, liked going to bed early and occasionally hissed at things.
‘Your grandson Eric is quite a character,’ I said.
Paulo sighed. ‘Children these days are different, aren’t they? Constantly praised and rewarded for the smallest things. I’m not sure it’s a good thing, but it’s not my place to interfere. Do you have grandchildren?’
‘Two granddaughters, Violet who is four and Maud who is three.’
‘So, we are both grandparents.Mio Dio.Where did the years go?’ he said, shaking his head.
‘I have no idea. One minute I am young, and life is a game, the next I am an old woman?—’
I stopped, feeling awkward. I knew I was an old woman – one glance in the mirror every morning confirmed that – but perhaps I should have had enough pride to avoid voicing it.
Paulo laughed quietly.
‘You haven’t changed at all, Joanna,’ he said, ‘not to me.’
It was the first time since we had met up again that he had said my name properly, and a tingle went down my spine.
It sounded just the same as it had in the old days. Somehow different from the way anyone else said it. Softer, warmer and unmistakeable. I had wondered about this, how no one else in the world said my name as he did.
This was the moment when normally my nerves would get the better of me and I would allow myself to spout a lot of jumpy nonsense. I would say something self-deprecating and crass, pointing out my grey hair and wrinkles. The way my neck had started to sag, the beginnings of bingo wings which meant I never wore sleeveless tops, and T-shirts had to have proper length sleeves. I had often wished the person who invented cap sleeves could be put up against a wall and pelted with tomatoes.
Instead, just for once I didn’t. If he wanted to remember me as a twenty something, then I wouldn’t argue.
I looked across at him.
