One Night in Italy Read online

  Well, then. High time she started swotting up, wasn’t it?

  In all the drama, Anna had completely forgotten about Pete and the roast she was meant to be cooking until the doorbell rang at six o’clock and she jumped, startled out of her daydreams. Oh shit. Dinner.

  Pete was not exactly the hunk of burning love Anna had always imagined herself with – it was more of a ‘he’ll do’ arrangement if she was brutally honest, a Cornish pasty of a man rather than pure beef steak. That said, he was a decent bloke who had never cheated on her, ripped her off for thousands of pounds, or turned out to be gay – all of which had happened to her friends. Okay, so he might not be the most dynamic or passionate man in the world – she had wondered in the past if he even knew the word ‘romance’ existed – but he was good enough. They had a laugh together. Not that he was laughing now, mind.

  ‘What do you mean, you forgot?’ he moaned plaintively as she let him in. ‘All the trimmings, you said. I’ve been looking forward to it since breakfast!’ His whole face drooped with dismay, like a bloodhound having a bad day.

  ‘Sorry, Pete, I lost track of time. Something really amazing happened, you see,’ she began, then blurted out what her grandmother had let slip, the tiny shining fragment of truth. ‘I’ve not been able to think about anything else all afternoon.’

  He gazed around the grubby, food-free kitchen area where no bronzed roast chicken sat waiting to be carved, no thick bread sauce bubbled volcanically on the hob, and no roast potatoes sizzled golden and crunchy in the oven. ‘Shall we go to the pub, then?’ he sighed, one hand on his belly. ‘My stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.’

  It was all right for him, Anna thought sourly. Pete knew exactly where he was from, with his china-cat-collecting mum and dad in their spotless semi (aptly named Wits’ End), and his two sisters, married with kids elsewhere in Sheffield, both of whom had lives as thrilling as a pair of socks. He had a family, roots, he was certain of his place in his world. He had no idea how lucky that made him.

  ‘Pete – here’s me telling you I’m on the verge of tracking down my dad, and all you can talk about is your stomach? Can you not show a bit more interest?’

  Her voice came out sharper than she’d intended and a look of bafflement crossed his face. ‘Love, with the greatest respect, you’ve hardly “tracked him down”, finding out his name and nationality,’ he pointed out with his usual annoying pedantry. ‘There’s probably quite a few blokes called Gino from Italy, don’t forget.’

  She gritted her teeth. ‘Yeah, you’re dead right there, Pete,’ she replied sarcastically. ‘Might as well give up already.’

  He nodded as if that was the end of it. ‘Shall we go, then?’

  Oh, what was the point? He didn’t have a clue. ‘I suppose so,’ she muttered, rolling her eyes.

  She wondered where her father would be having his Sunday dinner. You could bet your last penny it wouldn’t be in some noisy dive where the toilets didn’t flush properly and the landlord was always trying to look down your top. No way. He – Gino – would be holding court at a large outdoor table on a sunny Tuscan hillside, with olive trees shimmering in the fields below. There would be fat scarlet tomatoes, creamy mozzarella drizzled with olive oil, rustic red wine in a carafe. Bambinos scampering barefoot on the hot dusty ground, a dog lifting its head drowsily and barking at them from time to time …

  Did he know he had a daughter here in drizzly Sheffield? Had he ever even seen her before?

  ‘You’re not listening, are you?’ Pete said, sounding exasperated as she locked the flat and they traipsed downstairs. ‘You’ve not heard a single thing I’ve just said.’

  She was still in Italy. It was so much nicer there. ‘Sorry, no,’ she confessed. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I was asking if you saw the United result. I watched the match at my dad’s, you know he’s just got Sky Sports? Bloody amazing. That new striker is gold, I’m telling you …’

  ‘Great,’ she said, but she was already slipping away, flying back to her father and his sun-drenched life. She had to find him. She simply had to.

  Guilt for the roast dinner debacle along with most of a bottle of red wine meant that Anna didn’t protest when Pete pawed at her later that night back at her flat, despite feeling about as amorous as an oven glove. It was an in-out, in-out, breast squeeze, grunt and collapse sort of event, and she felt unsexy and distracted for the entire three minutes.

  ‘Cor,’ he said afterwards, rolling off her. ‘Reckon that was a seven and a half.’

  Anna had thought he was joking the first time he gave their sex sessions marks out of ten, but he was apparently deadly serious. Much to her horror she had then discovered that he actually charted the scores on a spreadsheet on his laptop. Seriously. She hadn’t been snooping but he’d left the page open accidentally one day and the title ‘Sex With Anna’ had leapt out at her. And there it was in black and white: the date, score and a brief description of each act.

  A on top, baby oil, light on – that had scored a ten. But A in strop, too pissed, bit of rush merited a measly six.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she’d said, aghast, eyes boggling. ‘Pete – what the hell is this?’

  ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ he’d replied, looking shifty. ‘I thought it was kind of sexy.’

  Kind of sexy? A bit nerdy, more like. It was hardly love letters on scented notepaper, or a passion-filled journal. She wished she’d never seen it, that she could erase it from her brain. ‘You’re not going to … show it to anyone else, are you?’

  ‘Course not, babe. This is private. Password protected. For our eyes only.’ He scrolled up the page. ‘Look, you got a ten here. Remember that night? Hell-o, Nurse.’

  And hell-o, Doctor Perv, Anna thought with a queasy lurch, but he seemed so boyishly pleased with himself that she didn’t have the heart to argue. From then on though, she couldn’t help wondering – often during the act itself – how he’d describe each sexual encounter. Talk about killing the moment.

  ‘Pete,’ she said to him now, ‘maybe keep the scoring thing in your head? Like, just in your head? It makes me feel under pressure, like I’m a performing seal or something.’

  He reached out and twiddled one of her nipples. It was extremely irritating. ‘I don’t want to have sex with a seal though, babe,’ he said, snuggling up to her. She could feel his warm alcoholic breath on her neck.

  ‘I know, but …’ And don’t call me babe, she wanted to say. That just made her feel like a pig. A bad-tempered pig who didn’t want to be marked out of ten each time she spread her trotters. ‘I just don’t like it, all right?’ she said after a few moments. ‘Pete?’

  But his hand had fallen slack on her chest, and a guttural snoring started up in his throat. Now who was the pig? she thought, turning away from him crossly and putting the pillow over her head.

  WOMAN SUFFOCATES CRAP BOYFRIEND spooled a new headline in her brain. But just then he rolled over and flung an arm across her. ‘Night, gorgeous,’ he murmured in his sleep, and she felt herself softening. He loved her really. She knew that. And being with him was a damn sight better than being on her own, surely?

  She shut her eyes, hoping she’d dream of Italy. Her quest would continue in the morning, she vowed. Whatever Pete said.

  Chapter Two

  Arrivederci – Goodbye

  Catherine Evans gazed out of the window as rain speckled the glass, and knew that a Chapter was closing.

  Matthew and Emily were down in the driveway with Mike, who was helping them load the car, cramming in all those student essentials like hair straighteners and iPod speakers. She’d come up here on the pretence of a last check around their bedrooms, but really so that she could gulp back her tears in private and delay the inevitable moment of parting. What would she do without them?

  Last night they’d had a takeaway from Hong Kong Garden and popped open a bottle of frothing cava. Like spokes in a wheel, they’d each stretched an arm in to clink glasses across the t
able, all giddy with excitement. Well, except for her. She’d barely tasted a mouthful of the food, the noodles slithering like cold worms down her throat, the smell of alcohol and soy sauce turning her stomach. I don’t want them to go. Mike had made a toast (‘To Matthew and Emily: happy times ahead. Thank goodness you inherited your father’s brains, eh?’) and it was all she could do to stop herself from bolting the doors and refusing to let them leave.

  Her heart was being ripped out. Her lungs felt as if they were contracting. I don’t want them to go.

  ‘Oi, sod off, that’s my charger,’ came an indignant voice from below just then. It was Emily, hands on hips, the furedged hood on her gilet pulled up to protect her long hair from frizzing in the rain. ‘I knew you’d try to sneak it in with your stuff, just because your one’s crap.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ retorted Matthew. He’d always been stubborn and steady in comparison with Emily’s more mercurial, volatile nature; the rock and the firework, the tortoise and the hare. ‘Yours is the crap charger. You were the one who spilled Coke on it, which means that—’

  ‘Let’s not have an argument, guys.’ There was Mike, doing his ‘Whoa’ hands at them. ‘What’s happened to your mum, anyway? Got herself lost upstairs or what?’

  ‘I think she went to sniff Matthew’s pillow for the last time,’ said Emily, trying to snatch the charger from her brother.

  ‘Don’t be unkind, Em. This is a big deal for her.’

  ‘I’m not being unkind! You’re the one who said—’

  ‘There she is, look, up in the window. Mum! We’re ready to go!’

  Misty-eyed, Catherine did her best to smile back at the three faces gazing up questioningly. ‘Just coming,’ she called. Sniffing Matthew’s pillow indeed. Honestly! As if she’d ever do such a thing.

  She straightened the bed covers before going out of the room; they’d never know.

  They were off to university – ‘We’re so proud,’ she’d been telling everyone, beaming fakely whenever the subject came up – Matthew to Manchester, Emily to Liverpool. Okay, so geographically speaking, neither was very far from Sheffield, but no map on earth could measure a mother’s missing-you feelings. They might as well be going to Venus.

  She’d been dreading this day. For the last eighteen years, they had been the epicentre of her world. They were her world. Both sandy-blonde like Mike, with laughing blue eyes and upturned noses, rather than red-haired and freckly like she was; they were taller than her now, and radiant with youth and beauty, spending hours in the bathroom and even longer on the phone, filling the house with music, hair styling products and friends with trousers hanging round their bums. But now they were leaving her and she could hardly bear it.

  ‘Let’s get this show on the road then,’ she said, emerging from the house with her best and bravest smile. ‘Everyone ready? Anyone need the loo before we go?’

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ Emily groaned, eyes to heaven.

  ‘Sorry,’ Catherine said, feeling like an idiot. She’d be trying to blow their noses for them in a minute.

  ‘Bye then, Dad,’ Matthew said.

  Mike gave him a matey slap on the back. ‘Bye, son,’ he said. ‘Go and show ’em what you’re made of.’ Mike wasn’t coming with them today, unfortunately. As the most senior GP in his practice, he had been on a number of conferences lately, and now had a ton of paperwork to tackle.

  ‘Come here, Em,’ he said next, grabbing her and kissing the top of her head. ‘Work hard, play hard, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Emily said good-naturedly, wriggling away. ‘Course I will.’

  Catherine dabbed her eyes. Daddy’s girl, that was Emily. She wouldn’t spoil it for either of them by telling Mike about the contraceptive pills she’d found in their daughter’s underwear drawer, or the small bag of grass she’d come across in her jeans’ pocket, and definitely not the times Emily had smuggled Rhys Blackwood up to her bedroom for who knows what. Catherine had dealt with these trespasses in her own quiet way each time; all hell would break loose if Mike discovered just how casually his countless lectures about drugs, alcohol and sexual health had been ignored.

  ‘See you later,’ he said to Catherine as she got into the driver’s seat. ‘Drive carefully, won’t you? Don’t dab your brakes on every ten seconds, you know it winds other people up.’ He pulled a long-suffering face at Matthew and Emily who both laughed.

  Catherine said nothing, but started the engine and reversed carefully out of the drive. She could see him waving in the rear-view mirror the whole way down the road. Then they turned right, heading for the motorway, and he was gone.

  Matthew’s new halls of residence was their first port of call an hour later. ‘This is it then,’ Catherine said faintly as she cut the engine and gazed up at the looming block of flats.

  ‘Awesome,’ said Matthew, first out of the car. He was six foot two now, her little boy, and his hair was shaggy and shoulder-length, much to Mike’s disapproval. He wore a snowboarding hoodie, battered jeans and his beloved Vans, as he stood gazing around at his new turf. Then he put his hands in the air and bellowed, ‘Hello, Manchester!’ as if he were on stage at his own stadium gig.

  Heads turned. A couple of girls with long hair and skinny jeans standing nearby grinned at him then giggled together conspiratorially. A dad unloading a clapped-out old Volvo in the next row of cars gave Catherine a wry smile of recognition. Teenagers, his eyes seemed to say. On another planet, aren’t they?

  In the short space of time it took to unload Matthew’s boxes from the Toyota and lug them up to his plain, rather utilitarian room, he’d already struck up an animated conversation with a Londoner in a BABE MAGNET T-shirt and a guy with dreadlocks and a pierced nose. The three of them were now arranging an imminent trip to the union bar. ‘I think I’m in with these girls I saw downstairs,’ Catherine heard Matthew tell them in a lofty, unrecognizable manner.

  Catherine cleared her throat in the background. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’ll leave you to it then.’

  She had imagined this moment endlessly over the last few weeks, dreamed about it even. Tears, hugs, a moment of recognition and gratitude for everything she’d done for him. Matthew’s lower lip might even tremble …

  ‘See you then, Mum,’ he said coolly.

  Wait … was that it? He was fobbing her off with a paltry ‘See you’? He could think again. She threw her arms around him and held him, but he felt wooden in her embrace. He was already looking over his shoulder, ready to move on as they pulled apart.

  Oh. That was it. Catherine felt as if she’d been stabbed as she shakily made it back to the car. Her heart ached and she put a hand to her chest, trying to breathe deeply.

  ‘Next stop, Liverpool!’ Emily cried, clambering into the front seat as her phone beeped with the hundredth text of the morning. She glanced at the screen and laughed.

  ‘Is it from Matthew?’ Catherine asked hopefully.

  ‘What? No. Just Flo mucking about. Are we off, then?’

  ‘We’re off,’ Catherine replied.

  Her daughter would be different, she consoled herself as they drove the extra thirty or so miles west to Liverpool. Girls were better at these situations, weren’t they? Emily would want her to linger for coffee and a chat; maybe they could find somewhere special for a goodbye lunch, just the two of them. Perhaps there’d be a repeat of the shyness she’d suffered from at infant school, where she’d clung to Catherine’s legs, one thumb jammed in her mouth, not daring to speak to another person. Well, okay, she probably wouldn’t go that far, but all the same. Em needed her more than Matthew, always had, always would.

  Emily’s new home was a bleach-smelling flat with heavy fire doors that slammed shut behind you. It was cold and bare, a far cry from her comfortable bedroom back home with its soft carpet and thick curtains, its ceiling still sporting the glow-in-the-dark stars and moons they’d stuck there for her as a little girl.

  Catherine was seized by the impulse to grab her by the shoulders and bund
le her back into the car, but Emily was already bonding with a girl wearing a blue Hollister sweatshirt and red jeans. ‘I love your boots,’ she said with a winning smile, ignoring Catherine hovering behind her.

  Catherine fetched and carried her daughter’s belongings, huffing and puffing up the stairs with boxes of shoes and binbags filled with clothes. When the car boot was finally empty save for a single forlorn pair of orange flip-flops (discarded at the last minute as being uncool), she lingered in the flat’s kitchen while Emily and her new flatmates discussed festivals and awful summer jobs, waiting to be offered a drink or even an introduction. ‘Anyone want a brew?’ she asked finally when neither seemed forthcoming.

  Emily’s head spun round, eyes accusing. Are you still here? they seemed to say as she hurried over. ‘Mum, you’re like totally cramping my style,’ she hissed, shooing her out. ‘I’ll ring you in a few days, all right?’

  ‘Oh,’ Catherine replied. ‘Sure, darling. Should I just help you unpack a bit, make your room more homely? We could put up some of your p—’

  ‘No, honest, Mum, it’s fine. I’ll do it later.’

  ‘Make sure you wear your thermals if it’s cold, won’t you? You know how chesty you get in winter. And keep up with your homework. Remember—’

  ‘Muuum!’ Emily glanced over her shoulder in fear of anyone eavesdropping. ‘I can look after myself now!’

  Catherine opened her mouth then shut it again. It seemed only yesterday that Emily would cry out in the night for her, scared of monsters lurking in dark corners of her bedroom. Mummy! Mumm-ee! Mummy wasn’t needed now, though, that much was clear. ‘Okay, then,’ she said at last, chastened. ‘Well … Bye then. I love you. Take care.’

  ‘Bye, Mum.’

  Catherine trudged back to the car and sat in the driver’s seat, feeling bruised and rejected, a visceral pain in her chest. Her children couldn’t wait to get away from her. They had cast her off like last season’s fashions, as unwanted as the orange flip-flops.