Mafia Princess. Marisa Merico
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going nowhere, she had the fare to Milan.
‘Our Gracie’, her Nan’s favourite old-time singer Gracie Fields, who’d been born over a fish ’n’ chip shop in Rochdale, Lancashire, now lived in Capri. That was Italian! It was all very well to go to America, she thought, but at least with Europe it would be easier to get back home if she hated it. She arrived at Milan’s Malpensa Airport with thirty pounds, not one word of Italian, and the astonishing high hopes and optimism of a twenty-one-year-old Lancashire lass.
She was a sensation. In 1967, blonde English girls were still something of a novelty. And she had an instant friend, Ada Omodie, who was eighteen years old and the eldest of the four children she’d been hired to look after. They were soon in a bartering relationship: Pat helped Ada with her English and Ada taught Pat Italian.
It was La Dolce Vita. Pat and Ada would go shopping together, and she went on holiday with the Omodie family to Rimini where they had their own villa. Guests included Giovanni ‘Gianni’ Rivera, a star of AC Milan and the Italian national soccer team. And Pat attracted as much attention as the celebrities at the swimming pool parties. It was something she was getting used to. The Omodie family lived in central Milan and there would be lots of wolf whistles as she walked the kids to school each day, even more when she wandered home on her own. She looked straight ahead, ignored everyone.
Except Alessandro.
He was the lot, the Trinity, tall, dark and handsome: he had an angelic face, like a Renaissance painting from her art books. Pat fell head over heels when she spotted him standing in the doorway of the barber’s shop where he worked. She saw him, and he watched her every school day. But they didn’t speak to each other until one day when Pat was struggling with some brown paper sacks of shopping and Alessandro offered to help her home.
The romance began, her first true love, her first lover. She spent every moment she could with Alessandro: he filled her days, her thoughts and her life. It was that unbearable first love, the one that catches your breath, that’s so intense, so overflowing with energy, it’s a surprise you don’t explode.
They talked in Italian all the time; Pat had learned her lessons. They spent days off and holidays travelling around to Rome, Naples, and most often to nearby Lake Como where they would picnic by the water and he would whisper her name and they’d make love.
When the Omodie family said they were leaving Milan she didn’t go with them but searched desperately for a job close to her man, near Alessandro’s barber’s. She rejected nanny and au pair positions all over the city until one location worked for her. The kids were a nightmare but that wasn’t going to ruin her dream. Alessandro, a young twenty-three years old, was going to do that all by himself.
They were on one of their regular Sunday afternoon trips out to the Lakes. Alessandro was quiet and thoughtful as he laid out their blankets. They’d been together for more than a year and Pat thought he might be going to propose to her.
Instead, she shivered in the sun as he said: ‘Patti, I love you, but I can’t ever marry you. My family have arranged for me to marry someone else. I have no choice, no choice at all.’
Pat couldn’t believe it. It was absurd. Alessandro was from southern Italy, where the culture could be as strict as Islam, but an arranged marriage? In April 1969? She couldn’t, couldn’t understand.
Alessandro tried to explain how serious it was. His parents had discovered he was seeing an English girl. His father was so indignant he took a knife to his son’s throat and hissed, ‘You stay with this English girl over my dead body.’
Alessandro said they had to end their affair then and there. It was over, for ever.
‘I’m so sorry, Patti, but there is no other way. I have no control over it. I have to do what my father is asking me.’
She begged him to change his mind. He could run back to England with her. They could hide in Italy. Go to France. America. It did no good. They were both crying as Alessandro drove them back to Milan. He gave her one final kiss when he dropped her off. It felt cold.
Pat sobbed and sobbed for weeks. She only slept when she was utterly worn out with exhaustion because her mind was spinning, asking questions around the clock. It was really just one question: why?
The only thing keeping her sane was the hope that it was all a mistake: Alessandro would come back to her, the arranged wedding would be abandoned and all would be well.
That was a fantasy; the reality meant more heartache. Friends told her Alessandro had met his future wife and the wedding date had been set. She snapped. The crying stopped. With no more tears left in her, she went to see Alessandro at his barber’s shop. Hysterical, she screamed for her lover to come out.
‘You’ll get me killed, Patti!’ Alessandro shouted back. ‘You’ll get me killed if you do this! Go away before someone sees us.’
He slammed the door in Pat’s face. With a loud crack he threw back the heavy bolt. It went into her heart.
She found the tears again. They flooded out as she limped off down the street. She was sobbing so much she could hardly see the two young guys asking if she was OK, if she wanted a lift home.
Love had turned into frustrated anger and Alessandro, the man she wanted so terribly, was the only one she could take it out on; cursing him, she was thinking in a mixture of English and Italian: ‘Right! I’ll show him what’s what. Vivi il presente.’
Without a thought about what she was doing, she got into the back of what she soon realised was a very smart car. It seemed brand new. She could smell the leather.
The driver, who introduced himself as Luca, said: ‘Momento!’ They had to wait for another friend, just a couple of minutes and they would be on their way. They would look after her, take her home. She mustn’t worry, must stop crying. The other guy, Franco, got in the back of the car with her.
Pat didn’t care as the moments ticked on. She sat silently all wrapped up in her aching upset. It was the end of her world, of her life. She was traumatised. She felt dead inside.
Suddenly, the driver was talking to someone. There was a clunk and a pull at the front passenger door. A short, wiry young man with a flowing flop of black hair climbed in beside the driver.
He twisted, whirled around, and stared at Pat with a naughty grin: ‘Ciao, bella! Ciao, tesora.’ [‘Hi, lovely! Hi, beautiful!]
His name was Emilio. Emilio Di Giovine.
‘To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.’
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
HAMLET
Luca, the driver, invited Pat to a nightclub and she agreed. She wanted to forget Alessandro. She put on a yellow dress to brighten her spirits and went out intending to have some harmless fun.
That evening Luca’s best pal Emilio Di Giovine once again magically materialised in his tight shirt and tighter pants. He arrived late at the noisy, smoke-filled nightclub, explaining that he’d crashed a borrowed car and the owner was not amused. Emilio was not bothered. As his friends jabbered questions about the accident, he shrugged: ‘It happens.’
His eyes were watching Pat dancing and he was soon making his way across the crowded dance floor to talk to her. It was as if Luca didn’t exist.
‘Do you want me to take you home? Why don’t you go out with me?’ He said he would take her out the following night.
‘You’d better not take me home,’ she said. ‘I came here with Luca.’
But Emilio came round the next night and the two of them went to a funfair. From then on, he kept coming to pick her up, each time driving a different