Prologue

       July

      ‘Don’t mope, Sofia. Non frignare.’

      Sofia jumped out of her reverie. She hadn’t realised her dad, Aldo, was awake. His eyes had been closed for ages, the steady hiss of oxygen a contrast to his ragged breathing.

      She edged her chair closer, glad to see a twinkle in Aldo’s dark eyes. ‘I’m not moping. I’m a bit worried about you, that’s all. We worry about each other, don’t we? That’s how it works.’

      He met her smile with one of his own. Aldo had a beautiful, mischievous smile, spoiled now by the odd colour of his lips as his heart failed. ‘I don’t mean now. I want you to promise you won’t mope when I’m not here.’ His voice still sang with the rhythms of Italy, but his English was fluent after living in the UK for more than thirty years. Sofia was so used to hearing both languages from him that she sometimes scarcely noticed which he was speaking. It had brought him comfort in these last few years to roll Italian lovingly around his mouth, as well as allowing her to practise her grasp of one half of her family’s mother tongue. Not that she’d met any of her family, on either side, apart from her parents.

      The smile she’d summoned up for him wavered.

      ‘Promise,’ he insisted gently.

      It was obviously so important to him that she nodded. ‘I’ll try.’

      ‘No. You must promise. You’ve given up so many years to being my carer. I don’t want you to be trapped in this house any more.’

      She swallowed the fruitless urge to demand that he live for ever. ‘OK. I promise.’ Leaving the house in Bedford, the only home she’d ever known, would be taken out of her hands anyway. She hadn’t stressed Aldo by telling him about the builder who’d inspected the big crack running up the dining-room wall and into Sofia’s bedroom above. The builder had recommended an engineer’s report. He thought the house had subsidence, and Sofia already knew that it needed a new roof and had woodworm. When Aldo’s health had taken this recent grave turn, she’d been nerving herself to reveal that they needed to put the house on the market in the hope that a developer would buy it as a project and she and Aldo would receive only a proportion of what they considered its worth. Money had become the least of her worries.

      He gave a slow, satisfied nod, his gaze unwavering. ‘And promise me you’ll get out and do all the things young single women do. Travel. You’ve always wanted to travel and instead you’ve stayed to help me. Go and have fun.’

      ‘Dad, I don’t want you to feel—’

      ‘I don’t feel anything you don’t want me to feel,’ he assured her with a dismissive wave. He made a mock reproving face. ‘But this is the dying wish of your papà. You must promise.’

      She’d often shared with him her fantasy of getting on the plane from Stansted Airport for breakfast and arriving at a pavement café in Italy in time for lunch, even before his health had made such an adventure impossible. Sofia grinned, though her eyes swam. Half her life he’d cared for her and half her life she’d cared for him, latterly in his hospital-style bed in the front room with the oxygen cylinders located behind it. ‘OK, if you’ll stoop to emotional blackmail, you old fox, I promise.’

      Aldo’s laugh creaked out into his oxygen mask, fogging it up. ‘Promise me you’ll visit Montelibertà. As you have no family in England I’d like you to see the town where I was born. Lay flowers for your grandparents.’ He sighed. His breathing hitched. Faltered. Began again.

      A tear leaked onto Sofia’s cheek but she fell back on black humour, their coping mechanism through all the operations and treatments that had bought them time. Till now. ‘Just how many dying wishes does one papà get?’

      His eyes closed but his smile flickered. ‘Molti, molti. I wish you could have met your Italian family.’

      Despite Aldo’s condition, Sofia’s interest stirred. He was always happy to talk about Italy but much less forthcoming on the subject of his family. ‘I wish that too. I wish I knew more about them,’ she said.

      Aldo’s forehead puckered. ‘It was all such a mess. I thought I was doing the right thing, coming here. But my parents … they were in the middle. There were many emotional letters and phone calls between us when you were young. “Come to England to visit us,” I said. But they would always reply, “Come home to visit us.” They were convinced we could patch things up if I went home. It would only make things worse. I told them, “How can I take Dawn and Sofia to Montelibertà? It will be so painful.”’

      Sofia leaned forward intently, the blood thudding in her ears. ‘Why, Dad? Why wouldn’t you take Mum and me? Or me, after Mum died? What did you need to patch up? What were they in the middle of?’ Was Aldo at long last ready to tell her the story that had intrigued her, growing up, of how and why he’d abandoned his homeland? Till now he’d avoided revealing more than the bare facts: that he’d left his parents and brother behind in Italy thirty-two years ago to marry Sofia’s mother, Dawn. His Italian family hadn’t been at the wedding. Dawn had died when Sofia was five, and his parents, in a road accident, two years later. He’d always parried Sofia’s eager quest for more information with It’s all too sad to talk about. I don’t want to make you sad. Then he’d stroke her hair and change the subject.

      Now Aldo opened his eyes and continued as if he hadn’t heard her questions. ‘Go to Montelibertà and drink Orvieto Classico as it’s meant to be drunk – designed for the Italian palate, not the British one.’ He paused. His breathing paused, too. Restarted. ‘If you see your Uncle Gianni, tell him I’m sorry.’

      She used the heels of her hands to wipe her tears away. It was frustrating that her father was dodging her questions once again, but he was so gravely ill now that it would be unkind to press him on why he wanted to apologise to the brother he’d been estranged from for decades. ‘I will.’ She took his hand.

      Aldo’s smile was so faint she almost missed it. ‘The last promise then. Be happy, Sofia. Be happy.’

      ‘I promise,’ she whispered.