Marisa’s bath was still warm as she got back in it, finding herself shaking. But she wasn’t shaking from panic or fear: she was just cold. That was all. A normal physiological reaction to the weather outside. Somehow, screaming into the air had tired her out – but a good tired, a proper full-blown tiredness, rather than the aimless, scrolling confusion of other times, when she was enervated but not exhausted.
The water had felt so good on her face; the wind far sharper and brisker than she remembered; the air bristling but sweet, the vistas so far and so dramatic; nothing to be seen ahead except the occasional brisk sweep of the lighthouse, warning sailors on a night like this to stay well away.
And inside herself, deep down, was a tiny fist of triumph. She had done it! She had gone out! She had broken the seal of the doorway; she had made her way through the desert of sandworms, through the abyss that lay beyond the lemon-painted steps, and she had survived. She had triumphed.
She hugged her knees close to herself in the cooling bath, marvelling that she had managed it, listening, but hearing no more music from next door. However, it had helped.
And then she got herself to bed, and she slept better than she had in months.
PART TWO
Chapter Thirty-one
It wasn’t like the dam inside Marisa had broken. It didn’t change immediately. It didn’t even change noticeably, but it was as if the storm had weakened the structures; had washed away some of the roots of the anxiety and fear that had got inside her so deeply – just as, even though she didn’t know it then, that a lot of water had buried itself deep inside the structures of the island, with results that would be worse than she could possibly have imagined.
But she managed. To walk a little every day.
Alexei had stopped talking to her completely. The night music stopped too. But she still heard that big bear growl as he cajoled his students and played along with them and then at night she would have to cope with her nonna saying what had happened to the boy who lived next door who she used to feed, what was his family like, why couldn’t he play them music any more, she loved music, and Marisa would hush her and turn on the television.
But she was happy to be able to tell Anita she was moving forwards. She hadn’t left her own road, to be sure, and she only went when she knew nobody would see her, i.e. when Alexei had a lesson. But it was definitely something. And she even got to enjoy the seasons changing; spring roaring in with extraordinary speed, flowers appearing between cracks in the rocks and an eruption of green which raised the heart beyond all sense. She would see a solitary dog walker from time to time, and she never ranged further than within sight of her front door – but it was something. It was out, as long as there were no people and no situations she might get herself into that would bring in that dreaded panic response.
The open air didn’t make her panic.
‘Slowly, slowly,’ said Anita, delighted. ‘Just keep breathing. Just keep moving on.’
‘But what about my job and my life and my friends and the world and—’
‘You can’t do anything about that until you get well,’ said Anita. ‘Listen to me. And your grandmother.’
‘All she does is shout at me for not slicing courgettes thinly enough,’ grumbled Marisa, who had indeed been on the end of a rather cranky Skype call the evening before as they had both tried to grill lemon courgettes with blackened garlic in olive oil and Nonna’s had been light and crisp and delicious-looking and Marisa’s had been soggy and fibrous.
‘Good,’ said Anita. ‘Do you know what you’re not thinking about when you’re slicing courgettes?’
‘Everything else?’
‘Correct. You’re not overthinking everything else.’
Chapter Thirty-two
One of Anita’s children had upended a chocolate milkshake on her computer screen, Marisa was informed by text one May morning, and therefore there was no therapy that day. She decided to take a book out onto the balcony instead which probably was therapy even if it wasn’t the type she’d been deliberately encouraged to take that week, which was leaving the house, going to a shop and buying something.
But she’d received another wonderful care package from her nonna – she decided to send back, by return, the best she could do, which was to copy out, painstakingly, her grandmother’s favourite Bible verses in her most beautiful writing. Her nonna had always loved her penmanship, and it was no hardship on a sunny afternoon to inscribe the words, even more beautiful in Italian than they were in English.
Perciocchè io son persuaso, che nè morte, nè vita, nè angeli, nè principati, nè podestà, nè cose presenti, nè cose future; nè altezza, nè profondità, nè alcuna altra creatura, non potrà separarci dall’amor di Dio, ch’è in Cristo Gesù, nostro Signore.
I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor lords, nor leaders, nor the present, nor the future, nor the heights, the depths and no other creature can separate you from the love of God, from Jesus Christ our Lord.
They were pretty verses, whatever you believed; and comforting too, the concept of a huge blanket of love that could never let you down.
She sat in the May sunshine, copying the lettering upside down – her work was always tidier and straighter when she thought in lines rather than the actual meaning of the words – and as the warmth shone on her shoulders, felt oddly content.
Alexei’s four o’clock came in: she was as used now to the timings as she was to the ticking of a clock. It was a young skinny nervous lad – she’d glimpsed him – with acne and a constant look of worry on his face which belied what a terrific player he was. You couldn’t tell by looking at people, was the one thing Marisa had learned. Very confident people would stride up with expensive-looking ‘special’ sheet-music bags, but then stumble and falter their way through everything. This young lad had . . . well. She didn’t know enough about music to know what it was. But when he played, she liked to listen.
He was working on something she wouldn’t have known, but it was a tuneful piece of music that seemed to work like a clock; one bit would start in one hand, then the next would click in somewhere else on the piano, then it would go back to the other side, but slightly changed, like the time had ticked over into somewhere else. She didn’t know the first thing about classical music but . . . she liked it. It was energising and fun.
Alexei, however, was much sterner with him than she heard him with other pupils, and he was certainly never remotely impatient with the children.
Here, though, even though it sounded fine to her – lovely, in fact, a pleasant accompaniment as she carefully scrolled, ‘nè cose presenti, nè cose future’ – nor the present, nor the future – in her black ink pen onto a piece of good paper she’d ordered. Her nonna framed them and put them up around her house, interspersed with the many, many photographs going back to the mists of time. Alexei stopped the music every few seconds, it seemed, to rap out a short command or a correction.
She supposed (correctly) that it was because the young lad was good, seriously good, and this was how he had to improve, but she wished he’d just let him play. She heard the bear growl ‘faster’, and the piece sped up, but badly, something went terribly wrong somewhere, the fingers fumbled and the whole thing came to a crashing halt.