‘Thank you,’ she shouted out, but got no reply. The croissant was hard; he must have fetched it from Polly’s hours ago.
Nonetheless, she gnawed on it and made herself a coffee, glancing at the empty room, now bathed in sunlight, and calling her mother, who was, understandably, perpetually engaged.
Lucia was packing, and Gino was heading down from Switzerland.
‘She won’t need you,’ Lucia was saying, trying to sound positive, but coming over as brisk and making assumptions about Marisa that made her bristle. ‘She might not even recognise us.’
Her mother sounded nervous, of all things.
‘Are you . . . ? I mean . . . Are you better?’
Marisa was surprised. That her mother would even acknowledge her illness.
‘I . . . I am definitely getting better,’ she said.
‘You don’t have to come,’ said Lucia. ‘If it’s too hard. It’s not like you’re close.’
‘We are quite close actually,’ said Marisa. ‘We’ve been talking on Skype.’
‘Your grandmother on Skype?’ said Lucia. ‘Darling, are you absolutely sure? She thinks women priests are sent by the devil. God knows what she’d make of Skype.’
‘Mum, that’s how we found her, remember?’
‘I thought she’d just got startled by the ringing noise of her big square telephone.’
‘Well no, that’s not what happened.’
Her mother sighed. ‘Well, I’m flying out of Bristol today to Genoa,’ she said. ‘If you can make that flight? It’s in two hours.’
‘You didn’t even ask me,’ said Marisa.
‘Darling, she’s a grandmother you haven’t seen for ages, never particularly got along with and barely mention, and you, as you keep telling me, have a serious disease which means you can’t leave the house or be with your family! You can hardly blame me for this one!’
‘No,’ said Marisa. ‘You’re right, I can’t. Have a safe trip. Call me as soon as you’re there.’
She hung up and looked at the computer thoughtfully.
Even the airport website made her feel terribly anxious. The thought of all those people . . . the queues, the anxiety you could always taste in the air at airports, of panic and mislaid documents and screaming children and worry and . . .
She felt her breathing speed up. What if she got there and Nonna was dead? What if she didn’t leave now and was too late? But if she went now, what if she had a panic attack on the plane and they had to land it halfway over or not take off and everyone would be so furious and scream at her and she wouldn’t get there anyway, she’d have such a meltdown it would be impossible to continue . . .
She found it hard to breathe and went back out onto the balcony again, trying to take in big gulps of air, trying to think of her happy place. But then her happy place was on the other end of a plane and that was blocking everything else out.
She put her head between her knees like Anita had told her; concentrated on her breaths, in through the nose, hold, out through the mouth, on taking her brain somewhere else, but she couldn’t get a grip, could feel her throat tighten and gulp, her leg jerk pointlessly outwards, because this wasn’t a step, it wasn’t a step that had taken her outside, and down the hill, and into the village and into a job. Getting on a plane by herself to go to another country was a crazy idea, a huge enormous leap, an impossible concept.
As she did so, the door next door opened and closed and she could tell by the pacing across the floor that it was young Edin and, suddenly, scales were ringing out, solid and identical, up and down the keyboard, rigid and unchanging, in a tight clear rhythm, and as they went – doh ray me fah so lah te doh, she remembered that much from The Sound of Music – and back again, she felt herself starting to breathe in time with the notes, an in-breath on doh ray me fah so, then holding it, then the same as it came down again.
Slowly, gradually, following the music tightly, she found herself bringing it back and calming down. He started to play something light and quiet, as if all of his fingers were dancing of their own accord, with a sweet joy. It sounded so incredibly easy, and yet it could not be: the idea that ten separate fingers were doing ten separate things made her head explode.
She could even hear Alexei humming along almost despite himself, in a gentle rhythm that mirrored the beating of her own heart as it gradually slowed and refound its natural equilibrium, and if she had been able to think further she would wonder if Alexei had asked Edin to play exactly this piece for exactly this reason, and she would have been right, for Alexei believed in the sacred power of Bach in the way that her grandmother believed in the sacred power of the Virgin Mary.
Chapter Sixty
An excellent solution struck Marisa forcibly. She had money now: everything she was earning from the pizzeria she was just salting away; she had nothing to spend it on but rent and food and nowhere she wanted to go, not really, except for next door. So she could buy the plane ticket.
And it was nearly the summer holidays; he could take time off.
And, assuming everything went well – and she couldn’t for a second allow herself to believe otherwise – she could tend to her grandmother but also show him her Imperia, show him the long walkways where the boats came in, and the little playground where the children played, and the funicular railway that had so enchanted them when they were young. They could sit in the beachside cafés, under striped umbrellas, and eat fritto misto and drink Prosecco. It would be . . . it would be lovely. It was a bold ask, but there were spare rooms in her grandmother’s house; she wouldn’t be suggesting anything untoward, of course. Just friends. They could be friends going. She thought again of the feeling of his large body against hers the previous evening.
And he could lead her through the airport, through the crowds; he could be with her, at her back as she stood in the queues and fussed through the vast wide-open white spaces of the airport, filled with people and panic and fuss and personnel and loading on to the flight and the anxiety of the flight and if she was on the right one and if she was going to the right place . . .
He would be there for all of that, solid, unflappable, kind. And it wouldn’t be so bad. And when they got there, and everything was fine – everything would be fine, she told herself. Fine – then . . . then . . . then it would be lovely.
She had to choose her moment. She checked her messages, called her brother who was taking a train from Switzerland. He sounded concerned, but not distraught; he was going to comfort their mother, she discerned, more than being desperately concerned for Nonna herself. There would Gino assured her, be a million-billion cousins and second cousins descending on the sleepy rural hospital.
‘I’ll just call everyone Anna-Maria,’ he said ‘It’s bound to be one or the other.’
‘I’m not sure that’s helpful,’ said Marisa.
‘You sound much better,’ said her brother cheerily. They hadn’t seen each other since that awful Christmas, when he’d come to hers for a couple of days on his way up to their mother’s and she’d sat in her room watching TV and not paying him much attention and he’d felt bad for her, but couldn’t cheer her up in any way and couldn’t get her to go to her mum’s for Christmas so he’d gone himself. Given it was her mother’s first Christmas without her own father, and she was having it without her only daughter as well, Marisa winced now to think how much she had ruined everything. But Gino was an airy, laid-back personality and didn’t bear a grudge.