By the time Leonie and I meet Mum and Elyse downstairs in the bar, the dinner service is in full swing. Italians eat late, and take a long time over their meals, so the earlier service is mainly tourists. Since we had a late lunch, we’re going for a walk first and then coming back to eat after the rush is over. Mum and Elyse have both got glasses of wine and so Leonie and I get a Coke between us while they finish.
‘Did you sleep this afternoon?’ I ask Mum.
She nods. ‘A little. Feel better for it though. Did you?’
I shake my head. ‘I just read.’
‘Or something,’ Leonie says and I give her the finger, quickly. Not quick enough though.
‘Milly …’ Mum warns.
‘Sorry.’
Leonie sticks her tongue out at me.
‘You look lovely,’ Leonie tells Mum.
And she does. She’s more dressed up than I’ve seen her for a while, in baggy white trousers, a black top and sparkly sandals – plus, she’s wearing make-up and she’s put her hair up. She always has her hair up in a bun or a ponytail for work, but she’s done it in a nice piled-up style with bits falling down.
‘Thanks,’ Mum smiles. ‘You too. Apart from the T-shirt.’
It’s an Iron Maiden Eddie T-shirt Leonie found in a charity shop and cut up so it’s cropped and sleeveless. It’s her favourite.
‘Where are we going to go?’ Elyse asks without looking up from her phone.
‘Has Robbie called?’ Leonie says, in an annoying swoony voice.
Elyse swats at her. ‘He’s texted, yes.’
‘Missing you?’
Elyse smiles. ‘Of course.’
‘And are you missing him?’ I ask her.
Elyse actually gets a soppy look on her face. ‘I am, actually. More than I expected.’
‘That’s nice,’ Mum says. ‘I like him.’
I notice Elyse’s eyebrows flicker in annoyance, but I’m not really sure why. It’s good that Mum likes Robbie, surely? Unless Elyse is thinking if Mum likes him he must be too nice. She’s done that before, when she went through the whole bad-boy-the-parents-won’t-approve-of phase, but I thought she was past that.
Elyse drains her wine, stands up, smoothing her shirt-dress down over her hips and says, ‘Are we ready?’
‘Oh, I don’t think I’m going to come,’ Mum says.
The three of us – Elyse, Leonie and me – all stare at her, but she’s looking out towards the garden.
‘Why not?’ Elyse says.
Mum glances up without actually properly looking at any of us and then says, ‘I said I’d help Alice out with some wedding stuff. You three go, though. Have a good time.’
The passeggiata is an Italian evening tradition. It’s a stroll before dinner, I suppose is the simplest explanation. The first time we came and we saw people just walking around, we kept asking Mum and Dad where everyone was going, but they weren’t going anywhere, they were just walking and chatting and hanging out. Some of the older people sit outside restaurants and bars drinking and chatting; people stop and join in the conversations, children run about and any babies get passed around. And the Italians get quite dressed up for it. I absolutely love it. It’s so much nicer than coming home from school or work and flopping out in front of the TV. Although at home, that’s all I ever seem to have the energy to do. It’s different here. I feel different here.
‘Alice is working,’ Leonie says, once we’re out on the square.
The market is closing – men are taking down and packing up the stalls, a street-sweeping van, driven by a woman, I notice, is turning in circles around the statue in the middle of the square. On one side of the steps to the statue, a woman is playing an accordion and on the other side, a group of teenagers seem to be setting a small fire while laughing hysterically.
‘That doesn’t mean she couldn’t be doing something for her,’ I say.
We dodge out of the way of a small boy who is throwing a tiny blue and purple light-up helicopter toy into the air and catching it again, and head towards Leonie’s favourite gelato shop.
‘She just didn’t want to come with us,’ Elyse says.
There’s a huge queue at the gelateria, so we turn down one of the side streets. Fairy lights loop from one side to the other. There’s a mix of shops, from tourist gifts to designer clothes, to shops selling sausages and cheese – and at the end, the street opens out into a small square, on one side of which is a beautiful white building. The top of it is sort of shaped like a cello – big curves and then smaller curves – and I can hear Dad’s voice in my head describing the architecture. Not that we ever really took any of it in, but I loved hearing him talk about it.
Rome is so amazing for this. The most normal looking little streets – streets lined with mopeds and with washing strung between the buildings – and then the most incredible ancient and beautiful buildings. Dad had a name for it.
‘What did Dad used to call this?’ I blurt out.
‘What?’ Leonie says.
‘The beautiful buildings in the middle of normal streets?’
‘Oh!’ She frowns. ‘I can’t remember.’
‘I can’t either,’ Elyse says. ‘I’m not even sure it was a real word. I think he made it up.’
‘Like “nuzzery”,’ I say and we all laugh.
Dad told us that when you drive down a road and the trees on either side have met in the middle to form an arch, it’s called a nuzzery. We were all impressed with him for knowing it, I think, and I’m sure we all used it at some time or another. And then one day we were talking about it and he admitted he’d made it up. He didn’t even admit it, actually – he thought we all knew.
‘I used that stupid word in an essay,’ Leonie says and we all laugh again.
‘I miss him so much,’ Elyse says, sitting down on the steps.
‘I can feel him here,’ Leonie says.
I sit next to Elyse and dig my fingers into the cool stone underneath my thighs and Leonie drops down on my other side and rests her head on my shoulder.
We sit there for a while watching the people outside the bar opposite. There are two men having what looks like a heated argument, but is probably just a standard passionate Italian conversation. I think about how Dad would have been over there, chatting, buying drinks and getting drinks bought for him, speaking bad Italian, laughing and making everyone laugh. Dad was the person everyone was waiting for when you went out – or even stayed in. He was the one who got everything going, who made everything fun.
I know what Leonie means about feeling him here, though. He loved Rome. He originally came when he had a year out and he and Mum stayed the whole time, working in a hotel. Dad sang there in the evenings. It was his place. And I can just imagine him walking around a corner to join us. It’s harder to imagine that he won’t.
I used to be able to imagine it at home too. As I walked towards the kitchen or the living room, I’d picture him sitting there and I could do it so well that I’d really expect him to be there. Sometimes I thought I could smell him. But then I’d open the door on an empty room and it was just like a punch in the stomach. I couldn’t stop doing it. It was like I was rehearsing him being alive again, the same way I used to rehearse him being dead. And then when he did die, I learned that rehearsing it hadn’t helped at all.
‘We should get back,’ Elyse says, standing and reaching her hands back to pull Leonie and me up too. We walk back a different way and on the next street we approach a doorway where a couple are pressed up against the wall, kissing enthusiastically. He’s mouthing at her neck and she has her head tipped back, resting against the wall. Her eyes are closed, long eyelashes fanned out over her cheeks, and her red lips are parted. He’s got one hand pushed under her strappy white top. I can see his knuckles pushing out the fabric, his hand moving slowly, and I feel a pulse between my legs. And then he lifts his head from her neck and I realise it’s Luke.
My feet stutter on the pavement and Leonie links her arm with mine and sort of hugs me against her.
‘Keep walking,’ she says, her voice low, her mouth close to my ear.
I keep walking, but I’m breathing so quickly I’m surprised Luke and the girl don’t hear it. Or feel it. I feel like I’m vibrating with embarrassment and shame. Again.