In Another Life, page 16
37
1984 – Sicily
Annette had been right about the impact of Nonna’s presence at Casa Barbieri – the food improved immeasurably. The woman never seemed to leave the kitchen, from the moment the cicadas started singing in the morning until the sun dropped down behind the villa at the end of the day. A constant stream of delicious aromas wafted through the house and garden. There was bread first thing, round sweet buns that the children filled with lemon-sharp granita for breakfast, tomato-based ragùs, which simmered down to the richest sauces Natalie had ever tasted, and golden arancini stuffed with oozing mozzarella.
For all that Nonna seemed intimidating, she always acknowledged Natalie as she passed through the kitchen, often offering her a spoonful of something delicious to taste. Natalie would close her eyes so she could savour the flavours and when she opened them again she would find Nonna staring at her intently.
‘Buono?’ she’d ask.
‘Molto buono,’ Natalie would reply, and she meant it. She had never tasted food as incredible as Nonna’s, food that made you want to cease all conversation just so you didn’t miss any part of the enjoyment. It was all a far cry from Findus Crispy Pancakes and she longed for Etta to be there to experience it for herself.
She would try to explain what she had eaten in her long letters home. ‘It’s pasta but it doesn’t go all soggy in the pan like it does when we make it. It stays firm but it’s not hard. It’s like if you bit into an earlobe. I don’t know what it’s like to bite an earlobe but you get what I mean.’ Or, ‘The lemons here taste so much more lemony than at home, like thousands of little needles all spiking your tongue at once so that it’s almost too intense to bear but you still want more.’
But she knew she wasn’t adequately getting across what she wanted to say. The only way Etta was really going to appreciate everything was for her to come and see for herself, and as Natalie had only been there a few weeks, it felt too soon to ask Stella if she could have a guest to stay.
Etta was the only thing Natalie missed about England. The rest of her former life had just drifted away. It was almost as if it had happened to someone else. Now if she thought about the time since her parents died, she couldn’t believe she had wasted so much of it in dead-end jobs when she could have been in Sicily, but she knew she wasn’t being fair on herself. How was she to have known what kind of life awaited her and anyway, she’d had to wait for the stars to align. Any earlier and she wouldn’t have found her way here, to this family, to this house.
It was also hard to explain in her letters to Etta just how much she was enjoying herself. Her job really didn’t feel like work. The children were fun to be with. Even Enzo with all his dark brooding already had a soft spot in her affections. Cleaning up after them at the end of each day never felt like a chore because all she had to do was look around and she’d feel almost overwhelmed by how lucky she was to have landed there.
It wasn’t just the children she liked. The rest of the household were equally lovely. Annette was quickly becoming someone she could see as a best friend. They seemed to share an outlook on life and had a similar sense of humour. Stella, despite being absent in both mind and body much of the time, was a fair boss. Salvatore was an unknown quantity, not giving much away – it was easy to see where Enzo got his aloofness from – and Natalie hadn’t yet worked him out and was a little wary, but he seemed perfectly pleasant.
And then there was Danny.
Natalie was twenty-one and reasonably pretty, she thought, so there had always been boys around her and she’d shown interest in her fair share of them. She’d even had the occasional relationship, and had lost her virginity to a guy in the year above her at school in a heady rush of hormones and cider. Since the accident, however, her interest hadn’t been piqued by anyone. She just hadn’t had the energy.
But Danny was something different. Danny made her heart bang against her ribs each time she caught sight of him. Everything he said was beyond fascinating to her. If he came into a room she was in, she would rack her brain for topics of conversation that might be enough to make him stay for a while.
She stored up her questions about life in Sicily for when she saw him, even though Annette could answer them just as well. Sometimes, she actually asked the question of both of them. That way she could get the answer from Annette when she needed it, but then had the sheer joy of watching the way Danny’s lips moved as he talked, the way he pushed his hair away from his forehead, that tiny dimple by his eye.
It was like an addiction. If she knew he was in the house somewhere, she could barely concentrate until she knew exactly where. Having never been particularly interested in the shapes her body made, she found herself sitting and standing in ways that she hoped showed it off to its best. When the sun burnt her forehead one day whilst she was playing in the pool with the kids, she was mortified. There was no hiding the beacon-like glow that radiated from her face at dinner that night and even in the dim dusk light she had never felt more self-conscious. She caught herself joking about it at her own expense before anyone else had a chance to comment on it.
She thought she was hiding her growing feelings for Danny well, but of course Annette noticed. They were tidying up Gianni’s bedroom together and as she moved closer to the window, Natalie chanced a quick look outside to see if she could locate him.
‘He’s gone to Catania for Salvatore,’ said Annette without her having to ask. ‘I saw him leaving first thing. He’ll be back for dinner.’
Natalie’s shoulders slumped and she felt a blush rise up her throat.
‘Is it that obvious?’ she sighed.
‘Only to a blind man in a dark room,’ laughed Annette.
Natalie closed her eyes and screwed up her nose.
‘Do you think he knows?’ she asked.
‘That’s a trickier question. He is a man, after all. They haven’t got a clue of what’s going on most of the time. But yes. I think he knows.’
Natalie dropped down on the bed and hid her face in her hands.
‘Oh God,’ she groaned.
‘What? That’s okay. There’s no law against fancying someone.’
Natalie looked up and met Annette’s eyes.
‘Ah,’ said Annette as the light dawned on her. ‘This is more than that.’
Natalie nodded.
‘I can’t help it. I think about him all day long—’
‘And all night,’ chipped in Annette, smirking lasciviously.
‘Yeah, that too,’ admitted Natalie and grinned back. ‘But it’s horrible. I don’t know what to do with myself most of the time. Whoever said that being in love is one of life’s greatest pleasures has clearly never experienced it themselves.’
She stood up and straightened Gianni’s sheets, which had got themselves into an impossible tangle as he slept.
‘Well, there are worse things,’ said Annette with a quick raise of her eyebrows. ‘You need to stop complaining and buckle up for the ride of your life.’
Voicing her feelings for Danny was the first time Natalie had opened up to Annette about anything personal but it felt good to have a confidante, someone who was on the spot and who might understand her a little. She wasn’t a replacement for Etta. That would never happen. But it would be good not to have to carry everything on her own.
Before she’d had a chance to weigh this in her head, she was talking.
‘The thing is,’ she began, ‘I’m not really used to having strong feelings.’
Annette looked at her doubtfully.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked. ‘Never been in love before? Or in lust, at least. I find that hard to believe.’
Natalie swallowed hard before she took the next step out into the unknown.
‘It’s not that. It’s more that I haven’t felt anything, not for years. No emotion at all, just a deep kind of emptiness . . . It’s hard to explain.’
Annette eyed Natalie contemplatively for a moment and then sat down on the newly straightened bed and patted the sheet next to her. Natalie obliged.
‘That must have been tough,’ Annette said.
‘Yep.’
Having started this conversation, Natalie wasn’t sure where to take it. Talking about how she felt, or didn’t feel, rendered her far more vulnerable than she ever wanted to be. But Annette wasn’t asking difficult questions. She seemed content just to listen.
‘The thing is,’ Natalie continued, ‘I hit a bit of a low spot after my parents died. But then I couldn’t seem to get myself out of it. It’s been a dark few years.’
Annette nodded as if she understood precisely what Natalie was talking about.
‘So this thing with Danny,’ Natalie said. ‘It’s . . . well, imagine that you’ve been living in the corner of a very dark cave for a very long time and then suddenly someone appears with lights in all the colours of the rainbow and a massive orchestra playing your favourite music. It’s incredible and you love it, but it’s a lot to take in all at once. After the cave, I mean. It feels a bit like that.’
‘I did wonder if there was something,’ replied Annette. ‘You’re so bright and smart but you seemed to have a gap. None of your stories are recent. I noticed that. And you mainly talk about your sister rather than your friends, but I couldn’t see why you wouldn’t have any friends. You’re lovely. You should have loads.’
Natalie raised her eyebrows.
‘Ta. And you’re spot on. I did have friends before but I let them all drift away.’
‘I bet it’s been tough,’ replied Annette.
Natalie just shrugged.
They sat side by side for a moment. Natalie was relieved that Annette seemed to have understood what she was trying to say instinctively without asking the endless questions that she had come to dread. It felt like one of the shrouds that she’d been wearing for so long had been lifted off her shoulders. Then Annette nudged her.
‘So fancying the pants off Danny has come as a bit of a shock to the system,’ she said. Her smile was all-knowing and Natalie could tell that her own dark truth had been recognised and accepted.
‘Yeah. Just a bit,’ she replied, relieved that they could move the conversation back on to a lighter footing. ‘Do you think I’m in with a chance? Is he still seeing that girl, the one who went back home to go to uni?’
Annette wrinkled her nose.
‘I’m not sure. He plays his cards pretty close to his chest. But she left almost a year ago and he’s only been home once in that time and he never talks about her any more. I think it might be over. Why don’t you ask him?’
Natalie’s stomach flipped.
Whether it was at the idea of asking the question or excitement at what the answer might be she couldn’t say, but she was going to have to do something. This level of unrequited passion was more than she could bear in her newly emotional world.
38
Natalie didn’t get a chance to quiz Danny about his mysterious love life until the following day. He breezed into the kitchen when she was organising a tray of drinks for the children, and with her equilibrium immediately disturbed, she had to focus hard to make sure she didn’t spill anything or trip up over her own feet.
‘Good day in Catania?’ she asked him.
His eyes narrowed warily and Natalie worried that she’d been told his whereabouts in confidence and shouldn’t have let on that she knew. But then the darkness lifted from his face and he answered.
‘Yeah. I just had to drop some stuff off at the accountant’s. Salvatore doesn’t like using the post. It’s not the most reliable.’ He rolled his eyes as if this was something everyone knew and joked about, a bit like British Rail.
Natalie was nervous of criticising the Italian postal system, not being sure how much English Nonna understood, but Danny had no such qualms.
‘It’s like everything around here,’ he continued. ‘It either doesn’t work or it doesn’t work unless someone else is pulling the strings.’
Natalie had no idea what he was getting at but she nodded as if she understood.
Nonna had put a mound of flour on the tabletop and was forming it into a volcano with lumpy arthritic hands. She picked up an egg and thrust it at Natalie.
‘Fallo tu,’ she said.
Natalie wasn’t sure what she meant and hesitated, looking first at Nonna and then at Danny.
‘She wants you to help,’ he explained.
‘Okay,’ she replied slowly.
Nonna nodded at the sink.
‘Better wash your hands first,’ said Danny. ‘I’ll take that tray out to the kids if you like.’
He picked it up and headed out into the garden with it before Natalie could object. Nonna was talking to her and she gathered that she was expected to crack the egg into the centre of the flour as Nonna had just done. Natalie did and then watched as the old woman began to fold the egg in without letting any of it escape. She passed the fork to Natalie and nodded at her to have a try. Natalie soon got into a rhythm. It was therapeutic, getting the egg to absorb the flour within the confines of the steadily decreasing volcano, and she did it without mishap.
‘Bene,’ said Nonna, nodding approvingly. Then she showed Natalie how to knead the dough until it was smooth. Finally, she pressed a stubby forefinger into the ball to test its resistance and then wrapped it in a damp cloth and put it in the fridge.
Natalie seemed to have done a good job and she was feeling momentarily pleased with herself when a cry rose up from the garden. Gianni.
‘Mi scusi,’ she said to Nonna and raced out of the kitchen to find what the trouble was.
She found Gianni underneath Enzo on the grass. Enzo was sitting on his chest and had his knees on Gianni’s arms so he couldn’t struggle. Gianni shouted and squirmed but he couldn’t get himself free.
Natalie put her hands under Enzo’s armpits and lifted him up. He shouted too and kicked out at her with his legs but she managed to hold him so he couldn’t hurt her.
‘Isn’t it annoying when someone bigger than you stops you from doing what you want?’ she asked him, eyebrow raised.
Gianni, seeing his chance to escape, was up and away like a mouse escaping from a cat and then Natalie put Enzo down. Enzo scowled at her, and then he glanced across to where his brother had gone, anxious to give chase but well brought up enough to know that he should listen to the adult first.
‘Don’t bully him,’ she said gently. ‘You’re better than that. Use your brain to get what you want, not your body.’
Enzo didn’t respond or appear to take any notice of her advice and when she had finished giving it he set off at full pelt after his brother. Natalie smiled to herself fondly. Then, seeing the tray of drinks sitting untouched on a nearby wall, she sat down and helped herself to one. As if out of nowhere, Danny came and sat next to her. Had he been there all the time? If so, why hadn’t he broken up the fight?
He reached for a cup of squash for himself.
‘Nicely done,’ he said.
Natalie shrugged. ‘I hate it when they fight,’ she said. ‘I only have a sister and we never fought like that.’
‘It’s different for boys,’ said Danny. ‘More primitive. A battle for supremacy.’
‘But it’s not a fair contest. Gianni is tiny next to Enzo.’
‘Maybe, but he won’t always be. Enzo is marking his territory as the elder brother before it’s too late.’
Natalie eyed him curiously.
‘Are you sure? They couldn’t just be arguing over who gets the biggest cup of squash?’
‘It’s all the same,’ said Danny. ‘Today it’s cups of squash, tomorrow it will be money, women, you name it. There’ll always be something, no matter how big they are.’
‘I don’t get why they can’t share, or just work together?’ she asked.
‘They can. But only when they trust each other entirely. That comes later. Just now they are testing the ground.’
‘You’re quite the psychologist, aren’t you?’ she said.
‘I have two brothers. I know what I’m talking about.’
This was the first piece of information that Danny had shared about himself and Natalie quickly slotted it in to her understanding of who he was.
‘Do you get on?’ she asked.
‘With my brothers? I suppose so. Better when I’m over here.’ He grinned and his little dimple winked at her.
‘Have you been home much since you arrived here?’ she asked innocently, but conscious that this was her chance to find out about his love life.
‘Not really. My mum wanted me back at Christmas so I went, but that’s the only time.’
Natalie pressed on.
‘But haven’t you got a girlfriend?’ she asked, hoping that her body didn’t give her away with its infernal blushing. ‘Annette said you were going out with the girl who used to do my job.’
‘I did for a bit, but that’s all over now,’ he said, and Natalie had to work really hard not to smile.
‘Young, free and single then,’ she said with what she hoped was an alluring look.
‘Yep.’
They held each other’s gaze for a moment. If this were a film, Natalie thought, she would lean in and kiss him. She held her breath, let the thoughts in her head show on her face.
But this wasn’t a film and she was supposed to be working, and as if to remind her of this Paola arrived and plonked herself down next to her.
‘Is that my drink?’ she asked and lifted a cup carefully so as not to spill any. ‘What are you two talking about?’
‘Brothers,’ replied Natalie.
Paola gave a huge sigh and rolled her eyes. She really was six going on sixteen.
39
‘Have you seen the news?’ Annette asked Natalie as they passed one another in the corridor later that day.
It seemed like an extraordinary question. Natalie had been living in a bubble since she arrived in Sicily and had no interest in what was going on elsewhere. On top of that, she had been looking after the children all day, had no access to a television and her Italian wasn’t yet good enough to work out what they were saying anyway. She shook her head.
