she cried. ‘I knew you would come.’
Hilde?
Elena’s blood stopped flowing.
Dimly she was aware of Gabriele and Loretta exchanging glances.
‘I’ve made a room up for you,’ Silvia continued. ‘And Ginny... Jenny... Oh, what’s her name? She has made us meatballs. Italian, not Swedish,’ she added with a cackle.
With a start Elena understood.
Hadn’t Gabriele said their mothers had been good friends?
Silvia thought she was her mother.
Having only photographs to go on, Elena knew she had a strong resemblance to her mother. She hadn’t realised how stark the resemblance actually was.
Silvia now seemed to notice Gabriele. ‘Hilde, you’ve brought a friend.’
What did she do? Did she tell this elderly woman who thought she was living in a time over two decades before that she was wrong?
But looking in those large brown eyes, so like her son’s, and the happiness emanating from them, she knew to tell the truth would be a cruelty she couldn’t inflict.
Elena swallowed before reaching out to take Silvia’s hand.
‘This is Gabriele,’ she said quietly. ‘Do you remember him?’
Silvia scrunched her eyes to peer closely at him. ‘No.’ Something clouded in her eyes and she dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘Does Ignazio know you’ve brought a man here?’
Something in her tone set Elena’s heart thumping. ‘He knows.’
‘Good.’ Silvia’s fingers closed around her hand. She could feel the tremors in them.
‘Shall we sit down?’ Elena suggested. ‘I’m very tired from the drive here.’
‘I’ll get us refreshments. Wine? I’ve got a bottle of that...oh, what’s it called?...that red wine you like?’
‘Coffee will be fine.’
‘I’ll sort refreshments out,’ Loretta cut in with a smile.
Silvia peered at the nurse. ‘Do I know you?’
Between them, they got Silvia back in her seat and pulled an armchair close to her for Elena to sit on.
Gabriele sat on the sofa, elbows on his knees, watching them.
‘Alfredo never said you were coming,’ Silvia now said, leaning towards Elena.
‘It must have slipped his mind.’
Somehow they managed to talk, not an easy task what with Elena pretending to be her long-dead mother and Silvia forgetting words and losing threads of the conversation.
Loretta had brought coffee and biscuits in to them and then disappeared.
Gabriele made no attempt to join in their muddled talk but she could feel him sitting there, observing them.
She could only imagine how he must feel, his mother talking animatedly to a complete stranger while failing to recognise her own son.
The only moment when Elena thought she might crack was when Silvia suddenly said, ‘They told me you were dead.’
She swallowed back the shock and answered weakly, ‘I was ill.’
‘What was it again? Not the breast thing?’
‘No. Not cancer. Septicaemia.’ Her mother had cut her finger while gardening. The wound had become infected. After five days in hospital being pumped with every antibiotic known to man, her organs had failed and she’d died.
‘I told Alfredo; Hilde would never be dead. She wouldn’t leave her boys and that little girl. What’s her name again?’
‘Elena.’
‘That’s it. Elena. Such a pretty name. Did you get the dress we sent to her?’
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said by way of an answer.
‘Oh, yes. You sent a picture.’ She craned her neck around the room before fixing on Gabriele. ‘Alfredo, can you get the book for me? Hilde wants to see the pictures.’
Not by a word or expression did he react to being addressed by his dead father’s name, quietly leaving the room as she’d asked.
When he returned it was with a thick, old-fashioned leather-bound photo album.
‘Here’s the book you wanted,’ he said gently, placing it on the small table beside her.
‘Did I? We wanted wine, didn’t we, Hilde? That nice red wine you like.’
‘I’ll see if I can find a bottle.’ He threw a quick wink at Elena that was tinged with sadness.
Elena gave him a sympathetic smile, then looked at the album. Her heart thumped. ‘May I?’
He nodded.
With Silvia now off on a tangent discussing swimming pools, Elena opened the album.
It looked as if the photos had been taken shortly after the Mantegnas emigrated. Gabriele couldn’t have been much older than ten in them. There he was, sitting on an old sofa with his father in this very room. Identical grins beamed for the camera.
She went through it all discreetly, still keeping up the conversation with Silvia, who had now moved on to talking about a programme Elena had never heard of but which she tried her hardest to pretend was a favourite.
More pictures. A summer barbecue. Gabriele’s eleventh birthday.
And then she turned the page and her heart stopped.
That was her father, sitting next to Alfredo, arms around each other, at a large dining table strewn with empty wine bottles.
There were her three older brothers, all sitting under a Christmas tree opening presents. Gabriele was sitting with them. All four were wearing oversized Santa hats.
And there was her mother, laughing. A white-blonde toddler sat upon her lap with her own oversized Santa hat covering half her face.
Another of her mother, this time with a woman who had to be Silvia. They were in the kitchen, glasses of wine in hand.
A group picture of the five Mantegna and Ricci children huddled together on the sofa. She peered even harder. That was Gabriele whose lap she had been sat upon...
Elena thought she might faint.
She had been in this house before. She had eaten and slept under this roof.
When she could finally tear her eyes away from the pictures, Gabriele
