One Night in Italy Read online

‘And we’re ready for take-off,’ the pilot said over the loudspeakers as the engines roared. ‘Cabin crew to positions, please.’

  Goodbye Italy, Sophie thought to herself, sucking on her boiled sweet and staring out of the window as the land tilted and swung away beneath her. Arrivederci. I hope it’s not too long before I’m back …

  ‘Here he is,’ the nurse said, opening the curtains around the bed. ‘Okay?’

  ‘Thanks,’ Sophie stammered, not feeling remotely okay. There was her father, lying in a hospital bed, eyes shut, grey hair at his temples. When had he got those wrinkles? she wondered in shock. When had he got so old?

  Monitors attached to him narrated the passage of time with regular bleeping and whirring. Through the narrow window, Sophie could see heavy rain falling, as it had done constantly since the plane had landed in Manchester. Sorrento seemed a million miles away already, a colourful dream from which she’d just woken. I don’t want to be here, she thought unhappily.

  She hesitated, her backpack sodden on her shoulders, wet jeans sticking to her legs. It was so strange being back here. All those Yorkshire accents. The flat grey look of the place. And the assault of memories that had battered her as the coach navigated the Sheffield streets: rehearsals in a dusty school hall, drinking cider underage in the Gladstone, the satisfying slam of the front door the day she left home …

  ‘Hi, Dad,’ she whispered, still not moving any closer. There was an empty chair beside the bed, pulled up companionably as if awaiting her presence. A short film played in her head, of her slinging down the heavy backpack, walking the few steps to the chair, lowering herself into it and taking her father’s hand in hers. Do it, she urged herself. Do it! But she couldn’t.

  She watched his face as he slept, noted every new line around his eyes, the silvering of his hair. His jutting eyebrows and proud nose still gave him the air of a statesman, but he looked old and weary, a different man from the one who’d taught her to play chess and hardly ever let her win; who’d taught her to ride her bike, one big hand holding the back of her T-shirt as she pedalled; who’d given her her love of Elvis and loud guitar.

  ‘Dad?’ she said, a little louder. ‘It’s me, Soph. It’s …’ She blinked, stopping herself at the last moment from saying It’s Sophie-pops, his old nickname for her. She wondered if she’d ever hear him say it again, and her throat tightened. Just how ill was he, anyway? Were they talking not-gonna-pull-through ill, or two-weeks-off-work ill? Samantha had only given her the basics on the phone, and when Sophie had plucked up the nerve to ring her mum to ask for details later that evening, there had been no answer. She’d imagined the ringtone echoing through the empty house while her mum sat keeping vigil at her dad’s bedside and felt very far away.

  Her heart sped up. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know details any more. What if the truth was too painful to swallow? Maybe she should just go; retreat to blissful ignorance. She could turn around, head back to the airport, jump on a plane to somewhere new, drown her sorrows in cheap foreign whisky and—

  ‘Oh! Sophie. Goodness.’

  Too late. There was her mother, almost cannoning into her as she appeared. Three words spoken and already it felt like the start of a row. Sophie braced herself for the ruck.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ she said. Those words hadn’t passed her lips since Christmas Day last year, when she’d been in a phone booth in Rome, incoherently drunk. Eight years since they’d been in the same room together, and just look at them now: one bedraggled and soggy, the other groomed to within an inch of her life with perfect make-up, a smart blouse, not a single hair daring to fly out of place. It was important to maintain one’s standards, Sophie imagined her saying to herself as she dusted on her face powder that morning. ‘How is he?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s stable,’ her mum replied crisply. She walked over to the bed and put her hand on her husband’s. ‘Jim, love, it’s me.’

  And there it was, the old power-dynamic reasserting itself: Mum siding physically with Dad, ganging up and leaving her out in the cold. Well, in the warm, she should say. It was stifling in there. She let her backpack slip off her shoulders and dumped it by the wall. ‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘With the heart attack, I mean.’

  ‘We were in Meadowhall,’ her mum replied. ‘Looking at luggage in Hanleys. We’re meant to be going to the Canaries in February, thought we’d splash out on some new cases for the occasion. Your dad found one he liked, this smart, brown … Well, anyway. All of a sudden, he couldn’t breathe, he just keeled over, collapsed in agony right there on the shop floor.’ Her lips tightened, reliving the moment. ‘The girl behind the till had to call an ambulance because I’d forgotten to charge my phone.’ She breathed in sharply, her knuckles blanching as she clutched her handbag. ‘We were rushed here, sirens blaring. He’s been in ever since.’

  ‘Oh, Mum.’ Sophie could feel her pain, how awful it must have been, but still couldn’t bring herself to move a step closer. Her mum would probably only shove her away if she attempted a hug. ‘Samantha said it was quite a big heart attack,’ she ventured wretchedly after a moment.

  ‘Yes. Cardiac arrest.’ There was a pause. ‘Samantha’s been very good to us. Visiting all the time, even though she’s so busy with the little ones. Tracking you down to the depths of … wherever you were.’

  Sophie’s skin prickled with the implicit criticism. Samantha the golden girl, Sophie the drop-out; she’d heard it a million times before. She kept her eyes on the motionless figure in the bed. ‘He has come round, since, hasn’t he?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. He was unconscious for a few hours, and they had to put a vent in his heart – a sort of balloon thing to help it work properly,’ her mum said. ‘His coronary artery was completely blocked, so he needed stents in that and two others. He’s …’ A tear trembled on her lower lashes. ‘He’s doing okay, though. Better.’

  ‘It must have been terrifying,’ Sophie said.

  Down rattled the shutters on her mum’s face, as if the flicker of emotion had been a momentary error. ‘We’ll be fine,’ she said briskly.

  Ahh, the royal we, that tiny little word that said so much. Sophie stiffened as the atmosphere changed. ‘So … what happens now? How long will he have to …?’

  She broke off as her dad moved under the covers, frowning in his sleep. ‘How long will he have to stay here?’ she whispered, not wanting to wake him. She was scared she wouldn’t know how to respond to him when his eyes opened.

  ‘Hopefully not much longer,’ her mum replied. ‘They’re pleased with his progress, but it all depends.’

  Jim moved again, and this time his eyes did open and he blinked. Then he saw Sophie and his face changed from discomfort to surprise. ‘Soph! Hello, love. I was just dreaming about you.’

  She went over to him – the other side of the bed from where her mum was standing – and tentatively took his hand. His fingers looked pale and crumpled like those of an old man. ‘Dad. How are you?’

  ‘Oh, you know,’ he said. ‘On the mend now. Soon be up and about, back to normal.’

  ‘Not quite, Jim,’ muttered his wife, lips pinched.

  ‘Were the prices in Hanleys really that bad?’ Sophie asked, trying to make light of the situation. Pathetic coping strategy or what. ‘I know they say Yorkshiremen are tight, but really, Dad …’

  ‘There are probably better ways of getting a discount,’ he admitted with a laugh, then squeezed her hand. ‘It’s good to see you, Soph. Really good. Almost worth having a heart attack to see you again.’

  ‘Oh, Dad. Don’t say that.’

  ‘Seriously, though. You look well. How’s life?’

  She hesitated. Somehow they seemed to have leapfrogged all the big stuff into an ordinary conversation. ‘Um … great,’ she said cagily. ‘I’ve been living in Sorrento – met some lovely people, really got into the Italian lifestyle, you know …’

  ‘Good for you, love. That’s a cracking tan you’ve got there.’

  ‘Yeah.
Sunshine every day.’ She raised an eyebrow in the direction of the rain-spattered window and he smiled.

  ‘Jim, I’ve just spoken to the doctor who has given me an update,’ her mum announced then, and Sophie tried to listen as she talked about medication and test results. The world seemed to be tilting dizzily though; she felt giddy and off-balance all of a sudden.

  ‘Are you okay?’ her dad asked, noticing. ‘You’ve gone a bit green beneath that tan.’

  ‘I’m fine. Honestly.’ She hadn’t had any breakfast in the rush to catch the airport bus, and then the prices on board the plane had been so extortionate (four quid for a sandwich – as if !) she hadn’t been able to bring herself to shell out for anything. Then, once she’d landed, her mind had been taken up with catching a coach here, and Dad, and …

  ‘I’ll just nip out and get a coffee,’ she decided. ‘Anyone want anything?’

  Her dad eyed her. ‘Only for you to come back again,’ he replied. ‘You are going to stay a while now you’re here, aren’t you?’

  ‘Um,’ she said, caught off-guard. She had nowhere to stay, she realized, hadn’t even thought about what she’d do once here.

  ‘You can have your old room. Can’t she, Trish? Be like old times.’

  Old times? Not likely. She didn’t want to go back to ‘old times’. And there was Trish, mouth already pursing up like a cat’s bum; it was clear that the words ‘Over my dead body’ were just lining up to be spoken. She didn’t want to revisit old times either.

  ‘I’ll stay with a mate,’ Sophie said quickly, to let them both off the hook. ‘Back in a minute.’

  She left the room, her legs trembly, her heart seeming to buck and stutter just like her dad’s had done. Stay with her parents? Never again. She would rather sleep on the streets.

  She walked down the corridor, trying to think who to phone first. Er … nobody. She’d lost touch with all her school friends years ago. Sod it, she’d stay in a hostel if she had to. The airfare had eaten up most of her savings, but she could scrape enough cash for a night or two somewhere cheap. Keep your distance, she reminded herself. That way she’d avoid getting hurt again.

  Chapter Four

  Il segreto – The secret

  Catherine didn’t have a clue where she was going as she accelerated away from the house, tears pouring down her cheeks. She just had to get away, far from her husband, and … her. That woman. How could Mike have done such a thing? In their bed!

  She couldn’t concentrate on the road, barely saw the junctions and bends as she hurtled along, adrenalin roaring. The woman’s face kept slamming into her mind, the casual way she’d said ‘Oops,’ like she thought the situation was funny. To think she’d had the nerve to look Catherine in the eye and smirk, actually smirk, while she was lying on Catherine’s Marks and Spencer sheets with Catherine’s husband sticking his traitorous cock in her.

  How had it happened? She didn’t understand. What about the paperwork Mike was meant to be doing? Had it all been a lie? Had he thought, Great, the wife and kids are out of the house all day, I’ll shag someone else?

  No. Not Mike. No way.

  She was already starting to doubt her own eyes, her own brain. She must have made a mistake somewhere during that bizarre two minutes up in their bedroom. Mike always did say she was about as observant as Stevie Wonder. He was right. What was more, he was not the sort of man who had sex with strange women in broad daylight on a Sunday afternoon. He just wasn’t. ‘You muppet,’ she imagined him saying when she came back. ‘Did you seriously think I’d do the dirty on you? Even for you, that’s ridiculous.’

  Maybe it was some weird hallucination. Some terrible feverish brain strain, brought on by the stress of the children going. But …

  She gulped loudly and snottily. Wise up, Catherine. Deep down, she knew there had been no hallucination, no mistake. She had seen them, however much she wanted to pretend otherwise. Mike and the blonde woman. The blonde, nubile, pert-boobed, definitely younger, definitely sexier woman. Naked. On their marital bed, the goose-feather duvet kicked off onto the carpet. She had seen them.

  Overcome with shock and grief, she pulled into a layby and sat with her head on the steering wheel, hazard lights flashing, and burst into tears.

  Nearly nineteen years earlier, Catherine had marched into hospital fully braced to say, ‘I don’t want it.’ She planned to book herself in for an abortion as soon as possible to get rid of the interloper in her womb – the mistake – and that would be the end of it. Well, she was only twenty, wasn’t she? Two years into her degree and accidentally pregnant from a holiday fling – it wasn’t like she could possibly go through with it.

  She lay there on the hard paper-towel-covered bed, waiting as the sonographer rubbed the cold blue jelly on her tummy then started moving the transducer around. ‘Don’t even look,’ her friend Zoe had advised. ‘It’s only a blob, not a baby.’ But then the sonographer announced ‘Twins!’ in an excited sort of way, and Catherine found herself unexpectedly transfixed by the monitor, showing the two bulbous heads and bodies. Twins! Not blobs of cells but two actual babies growing inside her. Tiny little people. Whoa.

  Their heads were close together as if they were having a private conversation in the shared dark intimacy. In fact … ‘They’re holding hands,’ she whispered, eyes wide in shocked delight.

  ‘It does look like it, doesn’t it,’ the sonographer said. ‘Sweet.’

  It was sweet. It was the sweetest thing Catherine had ever seen. And in the next moment, a force had taken over her, something primitive and rushing and fierce, and she knew, just like that, that an abortion was out of the question. ‘Thank you,’ she said faintly as the sonographer wiped the goo off her belly with professional briskness.

  After a sleepless night, she got on a train to Sheffield the next day, carrying herself with a new sense of wonder, still shocked by her own momentous decision. The evening before, she’d sat in the science section of the university library, poring over everything she could find on the subject of babies and childbirth. Her body felt like a ticking clock, a precious vessel, rich with mystery.

  Clutching the bit of paper with Mike’s address, she knocked tremulously on his door and waited there in her parka and fingerless gloves, the grainy scan photos tucked carefully in her pocket.

  Mike’s mum Shirley answered, a pewter-haired woman in a grey wool dress, a small silver cross around her neck. ‘Yes, dear?’ she asked.

  ‘Is Mike there? Mike Evans?’

  The woman looked at her with curiosity. ‘No, dear, he’s at university down in Nottingham. Won’t be back for another few weeks.’ She hesitated. Clearly something in Catherine’s face signified that this wasn’t a casual popping-round visit. ‘Can I give him a message?’

  Catherine’s hands stole instinctively to her belly. She had recently felt the babies moving inside her for the first time and the strange fluttering sensation had returned. ‘I …’

  Shirley noted the positioning of the girl’s hands, the pinched look on her face, the urgency with which she’d asked after Mike. She was a practical woman who could recognize disaster when it appeared on her doorstep. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said.

  It was nearly six o’clock in the evening now and Catherine had been sitting in the layby for hours. The sun had slipped behind the hills without her even noticing; the other cars had their headlights on as they zoomed through the thickening darkness. She didn’t know what to do. Her brain wouldn’t function properly. What if she went home and that woman was still there? What if she walked in and Mike and that woman were still having sex, both laughing at her?

  Oops, the woman might say again cattily. She’s back, Mike. Take a hint, can’t you, love?

  Feeling cold, she put her arms around herself, tucking her hands in her armpits for warmth. She still couldn’t believe it. The whole thing felt like a bad dream, a joke. If only she hadn’t hurried home so quickly! If the twins hadn’t been so keen to see the back of her and the mo
torway traffic hadn’t been so light, she might never have interrupted Mike and her. Who was she, anyway? And how long had she been stripping off and having sex with Catherine’s husband?

  Oh God. It was so awful, like something from a soap opera. The mistress in the bedroom while the wife was out of the house. Talk about tacky. And talk about out of character. Was Mike ill? Having a breakdown? Maybe he was in some kind of fugue state where you didn’t know what you were doing. She’d seen it once on TV. There must be some explanation because he loved her, didn’t he? She was his wife!

  Unless … A cold fear pierced her. Unless he wasn’t ill. Unless he knew exactly what he was doing. Unless he didn’t love her at all.

  Her phone was ringing, she realized after a while. It was past seven o’clock now and becoming darker by the minute. Another whole hour had slid silently by without her even noticing. Maybe she was having a breakdown?

  Her fingers were numb with cold as she reached into her handbag to retrieve the phone. ‘Hello?’ she said hoarsely, her throat aching from crying.

  ‘Catherine,’ said Mike. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m …’ She blinked and stared out of the window. She could see nothing. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted.

  Pathetic. She knew that was what he was thinking. Pathetic. How could anyone drive somewhere and not know where they were? Sometimes he spoke to her with such scorn it made her want to shrink out of sight.

  ‘Don’t make a scene, Catherine,’ he said eventually. ‘Just come home and we’ll talk.’

  Then her phone must have lost connection because all of a sudden the dial tone buzzed in her ear.

  She leaned back against the moulded head rest and heaved a long, juddering sigh. He wanted to talk. He’d said, ‘Come home.’ Those were good things, weren’t they? Practically an apology. He must be feeling terrible about this.

  Yes. She would go home and he would explain that it had been a stupid mistake, never to happen again. A moment of madness, he would tell her. Then she would forgive him, cry a bit probably, and pop one of her sleeping pills to blot the whole thing out. Tomorrow, they would carry on as before. They never need mention it again.