collapsed a few days ago. She wants me to take you to see her in the hospital.’
She thought of the big bustling woman who had always ruled her family, except for Sonia, who wouldn’t let herself be ruled. To Giovanna, every detail of their lives was her domain. The others accepted it as natural and laughed, shrugging it off. But to Sonia, who’d lived alone since she was sixteen, and kept her own counsel even before that, it was intolerable.
Now Giovanna’s inexhaustible heart was wearing out. It was like the end of the world.
‘You don’t mean she’s dying?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen her as tired as this before. It’s as though all the fight’s gone out of her.’
‘Your mother—not fighting?’
‘Yes,’ he said heavily. ‘I can’t remember a time when she wasn’t squaring up to somebody about something. Now she just lies there, and all she wants is to see you.’
‘Why? She never liked me.’
‘You never liked her.’
‘She never wanted me to like her. Oh, look, we can’t have this argument again.’
‘No, we had it so many times before, didn’t we?’
‘And it never got us anywhere.’
The fight had carried them through the first few awkward minutes, but now, with round one over, they retired to their corners, and regarded each other warily.
The six months since their last meeting had made him a little heavier and there was a weary look in his eyes that was new, and which hurt her to see. His eyes had always danced—with mischief, with delight. And they had made her too feel like dancing. Now the dancing had stopped and the sun had gone in, and everywhere was cold.
‘Where is she?’ Sonia asked.
‘In the hospital of San Domenico. It’s not far.’
In any other city they would have gone by car, but there were no cars in this place where the streets were water, so when they left the hotel they strolled across the piazza before plunging into a maze of tiny alleys.
Sonia pulled her coat about her, shivering. A heavy mist had appeared and in the darkness of the narrow lanes it was hard to see far ahead. All she could make out clearly were the coloured lamps that had been hung up for Christmas, and the lights glowing from the windows of homes. People scurried up and down, carrying parcels, wearing smiles. It was Christmas, and despite the gloomy weather the Venetians were set on celebrating.
A turn brought them out beside a narrow canal, the water’s surface pitted by raindrops. Here there were no lights, no people, just a dank chill.
Suddenly she became aware of their direction. ‘Not this way,’ she said sharply.
‘This is the quickest route to the hospital.’
As he spoke they turned another corner and there was the place she hadn’t wanted to see, the Ristorante Giminola, looking just the same as when she’d seen it for the first time. Francesco saw her face.
‘So you’re not as hard-hearted as you would like me to believe,’ he said.
If only he knew, she thought, how far from hard-hearted she was. She should never have come back. It hurt too much. She drew a sharp breath. No weakening. She managed to shrug.
‘As you say, it’s the quickest route to the hospital. Let’s go.’
But she walked past the restaurant without looking at it. She didn’t want to remember the night when he’d taken her to it for the first time, and they’d fallen in love. That had been two and a half years ago, in another world, where the sun had shone and everything had been possible.
The simple white dress was as perfect on her as he had predicted. She tried on three sets of accessories before settling for a necklace of turquoises mounted in silver.
Then more decisions. Her hair. It was light brown and grew in wavy profusion halfway down her back. Up or down? Of course, he’d already seen it down, that afternoon. Not that he’d been looking at her hair, she recalled with a smile. Up, then.
She studied her face closely, wanting him to see it at its best. She’d been a professional woman ever since she’d first braved the world alone three days after her sixteenth birthday, with no family to help or hinder. She was used to applying make-up to emphasise the assets nature had given her, the lovely skin, regular features and large blue, expressive eyes. But, studying herself in this way, she missed the signs that warned of trouble ahead. Her mouth was curved and lovely, but a touch too resolute, the mouth of a woman who’d had to fight too much, too hard, too young. If she was unlucky it might become stubborn and unyielding, driving away the very thing for which she most yearned.
But right now the warnings were faint. She was in a city she’d dreamed of visiting, full of happy excitement, and her mouth was ready for laughter and—she considered thoughtfully—and whatever else the evening might bring.
At five minutes to the hour there was a knock on her door. Opening it, she found nobody there, just one perfect red rose, lying at her feet. She managed to fix it in her hair, just before the second knock.
This time it was him, and his eyes went straight to the rose.
‘Thank you,’ he said simply.
She didn’t ask where they were going. What did it matter? When they were downstairs he took her hand and led her out into the sunlight, and it was as though she’d never known sunlight in her life before. Across the piazza and into an alley so tiny that the sun was blotted out, around corners, down more alleys, each one looking just like the last.
‘How do you ever remember your way?’ she asked in wonder.
‘I’ve known the calles all my life.’
‘Calles?’ She savoured the word.
‘You would call them “alleys”, the tiny streets where we can walk and talk to our neighbours.’
Something in his voice made her ask, ‘And you love them, don’t you?’
‘Every brick and stone.’
When they burst out of the last calle she had to stand and blink at the flashing of the sunshine on the Grand Canal. Francesco grasped her hand more firmly and drew her to some sheltered tables beside the water. While he ordered coffee she gazed out on the bustle of the canal. Every boat in Venice seemed to be there, and arching over them a wide bridge, with buildings on both sides.
‘That’s the Rialto Bridge,’ Francesco told her. ‘Do you remember your Shakespeare? Shylock in The Merchant of Venice?’
‘He asked, “What news on the Rialto?’” Sonia recalled.
‘Because in those days it was a great commercial centre, where all the money deals were done. Now it’s mostly trinket shops and a food market.’
‘All those boats!’ she exclaimed. ‘Gondolas, motor boats,
