about it, Lucy.’ Her voice softens. ‘Since this thing happened, you’ve been desperate to get away. You haven’t stopped talking about it, how you can’t stay here. Look,’ she says, standing, ‘I want to show you something.’ She steers me to the mirror in the hall. ‘Tell me what you see,’ she says. ‘Honestly.’
It doesn’t help that strewn across the wall are pictures from the days before. Nights out with Bill, holidays with friends, a bungee jump I did on my twenty-fifth birthday, after I finally broke free from home and started building a future for myself. That’s how I see it, this looming punctuation mark in the story of my life, isolating the years preceding him and the lonely days after, creeping into weeks, and I was a different girl then: bright, hopeful, lucky, alive. What do I see now? A dull ache in my eyes, my skin wan with nights spent thinking and wondering and turning over what ifs, hollowness in my cheeks, and sadness, mostly sadness.
‘I don’t want to do this,’ I say, shrugging free.
‘You’re not you, Lucy. This isn’t you.’
‘What do you expect?’ I round on her, not keen on starting a fight but unable to help it. I need to shout at someone, to be angry, because I’m sick of being angry with myself. ‘Her funeral was today – did you know that? And I’m supposed to leave everything behind, the mess I’ve made, and swan off to Italy for a holiday?’
‘It’s not a holiday,’ says Bill, ‘it’s a job. And, let’s face it, you need one.’
‘I’ll manage.’
‘What about the press?’ She’s silenced me now. ‘What about when they’re blowing up your phone, or when they’re smashing down the door and you’re afraid to go outside? Do you think he’s going to defend you, then? He doesn’t care, Lucy – he doesn’t give a crap about you. He’ll put it all on you and then how’s it going to look?’
‘Don’t say those things about him.’
‘Fine, we won’t go there. You know how I feel. My point is: this is your chance. I mean, talk about timing! You could leave it all, come back once it’s settled.’
‘How’s it getting settled?’
‘It will. Everything fades eventually.’
I snort. But my back is to her, so she can’t see my face.
‘What’s the alternative?’ Bill asks.
I think about the alternative. Fronting the world, my family, my face splashed across the nation’s papers, quotes taken out of context, painted to be someone I’m not.
Would he break his silence then? Would he reach to help me; would he stand at my side? Bill’s words sting: He doesn’t care. He doesn’t give a crap about you.
Her question hangs unanswered. It’s all I can do to turn to my friend, the fight gone out of me. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, meaning it, and she shakes her head like it doesn’t matter. ‘I just…’ A well swims up my chest, threatening to spill over, and my voice goes funny. ‘I’m just not coping.’
‘I know.’ Bill hugs me. ‘Please promise me you’ll consider it?’
In bed that night, I do. Lying awake, pretending to myself that I’m not waiting for my phone to light up, I listen to the passing hum of traffic that gradually dwindles to quiet, before, at around two, I finally fall asleep. The last thing I think of, for the first time in months, isn’t him. It’s a house, surrounded by cypress trees, deep in the middle of the Italian hills. As I walk towards dreams, I’m in a tangled rose garden. Something unseen beckons me, a shadow slipping in and out of sunlight.
I come to a fountain, quiet and glittering silver.
I look in the pool at my reflection.
It takes a moment to recognise myself. For a heartbeat, it’s not me I see.
Italy
My train arrives in Florence three weeks later. It’s happened quickly – the best way, Bill tells me, to counter my usual inclination to overthink everything – and back in London I barely had time to make my decision, take a short phone interview with the owner of the house, renew my passport and get my papers sorted before Bill was yanking my suitcase from the top of the wardrobe and encouraging me to fill it.
I suspect she’s right. Without getting caught up in momentum, there would have been too many opportunities to stall, to opt out, to say that something this reckless and ill thought through really wasn’t me. Then again, what was? What made Lucy Whittaker? I had forgotten. I had lost her – and I wasn’t going to find her hanging around in our Camden flat, jobless and trapped in the past.
‘Go.’ Bill held me by the shoulders when she said goodbye. ‘Don’t think about anything here. Be happy, Lucy. Let go. Fall in love with Italy.’
My first impressions of the city aren’t great. Santa Maria Novella station is hot and crowded; I’m on the receiving end of a wave of distrustful glances when I kneel to sort through my bag because a bottle of shampoo leaked over my clothes on the flight to Pisa, and, as I’m trying to fathom the bus timetable to get me into the centre, a guy falls into me from behind, apologises – ‘Mi scusi, signora…’ – and seconds later I realise fifty euros are missing from the back pocket of my jeans. But when we enter the streets that I recognise, see the bronzed, proud hood of the Duomo with its decorative Campanile, all that marble shimmering pink and white in the sunshine, I forget my plight for a moment and succumb to Florence’s spell. Locals speed past on mopeds, exploding dust on cobbled streets; pizzerias open their shutters for lunch, red and white checked tablecloths being laid on a baking-hot terrace while waiters smoke idly, breaking before service; tourists wander past in sunhats, licking pink gelato from cornets; a dog drinks from a pipe on the Via del Corso. We said we’d come together, once, he and I. He wanted to bring me, promised we’d take a boat out on the Arno, eat spaghetti and drink wine; we’d stroll around the Uffizi, fall asleep in the afternoon in the Boboli Gardens. ‘Forget Paris – Florence is the most romantic city in the world.’
The bus stops and I have to move, as if physical distance might stow the memories away, as if I can leave him here in the empty seat next to mine.
It’s a quick change to take the bus to Fiesole. I’m ready to get there now, see the house and meet its proprietor, fill my hours with tasks that have nothing to do with him or my life at home. My dad wanted to know what on earth I was doing. ‘Italy?’ he interrogated. ‘Why? What about work? You left your job, Lucy? What happened?’
My sisters were the same. Sophie called from a fashion shoot to tell me I was walking away from the best role I’d ever have. Helen emailed from the luxury of her Thamesside apartment to brag about her lawyer fiancé being made partner at his firm, then saying as an afterthought that my ‘mini-break’ in Florence should be fun, but why wasn’t I going with a boyfriend? As for Tilda, I haven’t heard from her in weeks. She’s scuba diving in Barbados, with a surfer named Marc. Unlike the others, Tilda didn’t go to university. That was probably my biggest battle, as the eldest, trying to run my own life while taking the place of our mum: the endless months of Tilda stalemate, attempting to convince her that I knew better when maybe I didn’t.
The
