As we’re crossing Campo de’ Fiori towards San Georgio, Leonie hooks her arm through mine and pulls me against her.
‘Look at the sky!’
I look up. It’s bright blue, the sun so dazzling it hurts my eyes.
‘Ow,’ I say, shoving at her. ‘Thanks for that.’
‘What are those flowers?’ she says. ‘The big pink ones?’
She pulls at my arm and I yank myself away. ‘Stop being weird! You’re hurting me!’ I push her away from me and as I do I see Luke. Further down the square, in front of the gelateria. With a girl.
‘I was trying not to let you see,’ Leonie says, tugging on my arm again.
‘No,’ I say. ‘It’s okay.’
He looks gorgeous. As always. Tanned and relaxed and confident and just utterly suited to Rome. I feel sweaty and slightly stressed and my shoe has rubbed the skin off the back of my heel. I need to go inside before he sees me. But I can’t seem to look away.
‘Is that the same girl?’ Elyse asks, squinting from behind her sunglasses.
The girl is standing astride a moped. She’s wearing tiny shorts and wedge-heeled sandals and her legs look impossibly long. The vest top she’s wearing has a drapey neck and low armholes and I hope she’s wearing a bra otherwise she’ll be flashing everyone as she drives. Maybe that’s what she wants.
Luke laughs, ducking his head – I don’t know if I can hear it or if I just know how it sounds – and she reaches out and touches his forearm. Exactly where I noticed the burn earlier. Why didn’t I touch it? I wanted to. But I didn’t. Why is it so easy for other people to flirt and I just can’t make myself do it? She tips her head back to laugh, her hair falling back like a silky curtain.
‘Oh, she’s good,’ Leonie says. ‘A+ flirt skills.’
For a moment I think maybe he won’t fall for it. Maybe it’s too obvious. But then she’s stepping off the moped, one long, slim leg swinging over the seat, and Luke’s moving round so that he can climb on.
‘Can we go in now?’ I say, looking down at my hands. I put my thumb to my mouth and gnaw on a hangnail.
‘I want to see what happens,’ Leonie says. So much for protecting me from the sight.
‘It feels weird,’ I say. ‘Like we’re spying on him.’
‘We are spying on him,’ Elyse says. She holds her phone up in front of my face. ‘Would you live here?’ The photo is of a tiny studio flat with what looks like a shower cubicle next to the cooker.
‘No,’ I say instantly.
The girl is climbing onto the moped behind Luke, scooting her hips forward until she’s pressed right up against his arse. I feel that throb in my crotch again. I wonder if it does actually turn you on, riding a moped? Surely the vibrations of the road must travel up and –
‘I’d have made him get on behind me,’ Leonie says. ‘It’s her bike.’
‘Weight distribution,’ Elyse says. ‘Safer for him to be in front. And now she can fondle him and grind up against him. She’s smart.’
I groan. ‘Seriously. Why are we still watching this?’
‘Cheap thrills?’ Elyse says. ‘What about this one?’
She shows me a photo of what looks like a garage, but with a sofa and beanbag chair.
‘Are you joking?’ I say. ‘That looks like where you’d keep someone you kidnapped.’
‘It might come to that,’ Elyse says, half smiling. ‘They’re all so shit, I just need to find the least shit. And they’ve all started to blur into one.’
Luke has started the moped now. I can hear the low buzz of the engine. The girl has her arms wrapped around his waist, her chin hooked over his shoulder. He’s grinning and they just look so perfect together that it makes me want to throw up.
That night, I can’t sleep. I lie for a while listening to Leonie snoring and making this grunting sound she’s done since she was a kid – she says it’s to itch the inside of her ear and it sounds really weird. I don’t mind it though. It means I don’t need to check she’s still breathing.
The room is mostly dark, but every now and then a pattern of lights sweeps across the ceiling from cars passing the square. I think about Luke and the girl on the moped and wonder where they went and what they did when they got there. I reach down and pick up my phone, propping one of my pillows up to shelter Leonie from the light from the screen.
I scroll through Twitter and Instagram, liking stuff randomly, and then click over to Facebook. My friend Jules has posted a few memes, but nothing personal. I click over to her photos, even though I know it’s going to hurt.
The top photo is of the band, but it’s a selfie: Jake is holding the camera and Jules, Amy and Liv are doing duck faces. I should be there. I should be crouching down at the front, totally failing to do a duck face, as usual. The next photo is a Timehop from two years ago, taken in the cafe in the park after we’d been messing about there all day, playing football, racing each other on a circuit of the play area, just lying around and talking and laughing. It was a good day.
We’d all drawn moustaches on our fingers – I can’t remember why now – and in the photo, we’re holding them to our top lips. I stare at myself on the photo. Dad was alive then. I was in the band then. We’d been arguing that day about which songs to do if we got to play at this local festival thing Jake was trying to get us into. Jules wanted to do ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’, but she kept getting wound up cos Jake would sing ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ over it every time. I wanted to sing something by Sia: ‘Chandelier’ or ‘Titanium’. Jake wanted to do ‘Mr Brightside’. We argued about it all day, but still couldn’t agree.
I remember Jake grabbing my finger and holding it up to his lip, pouting. And how I wanted to touch his mouth when I’d never really thought about it before. How I wanted to grab his moustache finger and put it in my mouth. Right there, in front of everyone. And how I saw his eyes go wide and thought he must’ve known what I was thinking, must’ve seen it on my face. And I pretended I was late and had to go. And I left.
Everything was different and I had no idea what was coming. I touch the screen, covering my face with my thumb. I wonder what songs they do now, without me. I wonder if Jules sings everything or if Jake sings sometimes too – he had a nice voice, but he wasn’t really confident enough to sing on his own.
I think about posting a status, but all I want to say is ‘I miss everyone’ so I don’t.
I swing my legs out of bed and sit for a second trying to work out whether I’m awake enough to get up or tired enough to try to go back to sleep. Leonie does the grinding thing again, so I get up and slip out of the room, taking Leonie’s hoodie that she’s left on the floor just inside the door. The stairs are dark, but the lights are on in the restaurant, so I head towards the terrace, pulling Leonie’s hoodie on as I go. It smells like her Daisy perfume.
I open one of the double doors to the terrace and jump, letting out an embarrassing squeal, when I see that Luke’s already out there.
‘Hey,’ he says, looking up from his own phone, his hair falling down over his eyes.
‘Sorry,’ I say, blushing. ‘I didn’t expect anyone else to be up.’
He’s sitting at the last table on the terrace. He’s wearing red-and-white checked pyjama bottoms and a white T-shirt and his feet are bare. It’s like seeing someone you’ve had a dream about. Only worse. Because I think about him all the time when I’m awake.
I stand awkwardly in the middle of the terrace, wondering whether I should just go straight back to bed. But Luke looks so good like this, soft and sleepy in the half-dark, that I can’t make myself leave.
He pushes a hand back through his hair, but the strands fall straight back down again. ‘Couldn’t sleep, huh?’
I shake my head. ‘You?’
‘I’ve got into this weird habit of waking up at, like, five. And just being wide awake. It’s annoying.’
He’s fiddling with something on the table and I step closer.
‘What’s that?’
He holds it up to show me. ‘Amaretti biscuit. I made hot chocolate and I couldn’t resist. Want some?’
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘No. It’s yours.’
‘I didn’t mean this.’ He gestures at the large mug pushed to one side of the table. ‘There’s more.’ He stands up, actually lifting his chair so it doesn’t make a scraping sound and says, ‘Sit down. I’ll get some for you.’
‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘I can just get a glass of water …’
‘Sit,’ he says, lifting the opposite chair away from the table. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
I sit down and wince – the metal is cold on the back of my legs and the tile floor is cold under my feet. I put one foot on top of the other and lean my elbows on the table, looking out into the garden.
It’s still night, but I can tell it’s on the way to being morning. It’s dark, but there’s something about the darkness, something hazy, as if it’s already drifting away. It’s probably no more than half an hour until sunrise. I already know I’m not going back to bed. Dad once told me never to miss a chance to watch a sunrise or a sunset, and I never have. He loved the moon too. I stand up and walk down onto the grass to see if I can see it.
The grass is cold and damp, but feels good under my feet. I turn in a circle, looking up, but the moon isn’t visible, even though the sky is clear enough that I can see stars scattered like sugar on a countertop.
‘No moon tonight,’ Luke says and I jump again.
‘God,’ I say. ‘I’m a nervous wreck. Stars though,’ I say, pointing up.
He just smiles at me. ‘Do you want this out there?’ He’s holding another bowl of hot chocolate. I can see tendrils of steam curling up from between his hands.
‘No, I’ll come back,’ I say. But I’ve only taken a couple of steps when I realise I don’t want to. ‘Actually, I think I will stay,’ I say. I turn and point to the table over in the corner of the garden.
Luke walks over, carrying the hot chocolate and wincing as he steps onto the cold grass.
‘Do you know what time it is?’ I ask him, as we cross the garden to the table. ‘I want to watch the sunrise.’
‘It’s 5.15,’ he says. ‘So you shouldn’t have long to wait. Won’t see much from here though.’
‘That’s okay,’ I tell him, sitting down and realising too late that the chair is wet.
‘Careful!’ I say, but it’s too late for him too. We grin at each other as he slides the hot chocolate across the table to me.
‘I just like seeing the sky get brighter,’ I tell him, wrapping my cold hands around the bowl.
He nods. ‘The start of a new day.’
When who knew what might happen, I think, but don’t say.
‘Hey,’ he says. ‘You okay?’
I shake my head. ‘Yeah. Sorry. I just thought of something. Something about my dad.’
‘You miss him a lot,’ Luke says.
I don’t look up at him. ‘Yeah. I just thought … He used to say a new day was like a blank page and you could write whatever you wanted.’ I glance up. He’s looking straight at me, his face serious. ‘But now I think of it differently. When I think “anything could happen” I think of the bad things. I think, like, today could be the day Mum dies too. Leonie could get run over. Elyse could get mugged.’ I point back at the restaurant. ‘There could be a gas leak and the whole place is gone.’
‘Shit,’ Luke says. ‘Rough day.’
I laugh out loud and then cover my mouth, glancing up at the windows above the garden. ‘I know. I know it’s ridiculous.’
He smiles. ‘It’s not. It makes sense. After what happened.’
‘Do you do it?’ I ask him, leaning forward so the steam from the hot chocolate dampens my skin. ‘Do you think of the worst case scenario? For everything?’
He frowns and looks as though he’s really thinking about it. ‘Sometimes. But I don’t really … It’s hard to describe.’ He picks up the biscuit and fiddles with the wrapper. ‘I don’t really even think about it. It’s like a bad thought kind of skids through my mind, but doesn’t stop. And I’ve always been stupidly optimistic. I’ve always thought everything will work out. I’ve been told it’s annoying.’
I smile, turning the bowl in my hands. ‘Thinking the worst is annoying too. Ask my sisters.’
‘Leonie’s like me, right?’ Luke says.
I picture Leonie - her bright face grinning at me, laughing, taking the piss. ‘Yeah. And the weird thing is that she’s more like that since Dad died. She’s more confident. And more positive. And she just … she loves life.’
‘And you don’t?’
‘I …’ I pick up the hot chocolate and blow over the surface, watching the liquid ripple away from me. ‘I do. But I’m scared all the time.’
‘I think everyone is,’ Luke says. ‘But they try to hide it.’
‘Do you think so? Really?’
‘Yeah. I mean … My dad, right? He and my mum had me. And everything was great for a while. And then he met someone else. And he left. And they had a kid. And then he left them too. And for a while I thought … he just likes the start. The easy part. The falling in love. The excitement of a new life, a new family, a new baby.’ He twists the plain silver ring he wears on his middle finger. ‘And then he leaves and does it again. But that’s because he’s shitting himself, you know? The responsibility of it. He doesn’t mean to do it, he just gets scared.’
‘Do you see him?’
Luke looks up at the sky and then back down at the table. ‘Yeah. Not, like, a lot. But he’s all right. He got back with the woman he left us for. She’s nice. And the baby’s great – he’s not even a baby any more, he’s three. But it’s like … he used to be my family. He and my mum were the most important people in my world. And now he has this new family and when I go and see them, I’m like a guest. I mean, I am a guest. And we all know it. So it’s different.’ He shuffles in his seat. ‘And then my mum got married again and it’s sort of the same at home too. They’re a new family. That’s why I’m here. I just needed to get away. It’s like my family doesn’t exist any more.’
I can’t speak. I try to blink away the tears that are threatening to spill, but they fall anyway. I wipe them quickly.
‘Oh, shit,’ Luke says. ‘Milly. I’m sorry. That was really fucking tactless. Again. I –’
‘No,’ I say. ‘Don’t. It’s fine. It’s just … that’s what I keep thinking about. It’s hard to think about. That the family that we were is over. And we’re never going to be that family again. But it sort of makes me feel better that it’s not just us, you know? God, that sounds awful, like I’m glad you’re having a shit time too. I don’t mean that.’
Luke smiles. ‘I know what you mean.’
‘I mean … this terrible thing happened to us. But terrible things happen all the time and people survive. They go on. It’s fine.’
‘And it’ll get easier,’ Luke says. ‘I know that sounds like shit and everyone always says it, but it really will.’
‘I know. But I’m sort of scared of that too. Like, when it gets easier it’s because I don’t miss him so much or I start to forget. I don’t want to not miss him.’
‘I don’t think you forget. I think you adjust.’
I stare down at the surface of my hot chocolate and pick at the peeling paint on the metal seat under my thighs.
‘Do you think …’ I glance up at him. ‘Maybe that’s why Mum’s been the way she’s been since Dad died.’
Luke just looks at me intently, waiting for me to go on.
‘She works all the time. And she doesn’t really talk to us any more. We were so close – the five of us, you know?’
‘I remember,’ he says, quietly.
‘And since Dad … It’s like we lost her too. She works all the time. And it’s like she keeps herself from us. Does that make sense?’
‘Have you asked her?’
I shake my head. ‘We don’t really talk about that kind of thing. But I think … I’ve been telling myself it doesn’t make sense. That she should want to be with us more now that it’s just the four of us, and we’re all …’ I can’t think of the right word and my eyes fill again.
‘Grieving,’ Luke supplies.
I nod and swallow, trying to calm my breathing before speaking again. ‘But maybe she’s scared. Of doing it all alone. Of losing us.’
‘You are,’ Luke says, gently. ‘So why do you think she wouldn’t be?’
I nod and quickly wipe at my eyes. ‘I guess because she’s an adult. But, I mean, I am too. Theoretically.’ I glance at him and see him smiling back at me.
‘Theoretically,’ he repeats. ‘But don’t you think everyone’s just pretending?’
I laugh. ‘I don’t know if that’s comforting or terrifying.’
‘Both?’ he says.
I stare at him for a couple of seconds and I want to kiss him. I want to tell him that I’ve wanted him since the first time I saw him. That I think about him all the time. That it scares me how much I think about him. That I remember the way his hands felt on my skin. That it scares me to think he might not want me, but it scares me even more to think he might.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ he says, still looking straight at me. I can only look at his eyes for a second before I have to look away. ‘The funeral?’
‘God,’ I say. I want to stand up and run straight back inside. ‘No. I really don’t. Is that okay?’
He smiles up at me quickly, before looking back down at the biscuit. ‘That’s fine. But … I just wanted you to know that it was good. I –’
‘Please don’t,’ I say, my face heating.
‘Sorry,’ he says, glancing up at me again. I look away.
For a few seconds we’re both quiet and I can hear one of the street-sweeping vans rumbling through the square. I’m about to get up and go back inside when Luke says, ‘Want to see something cool?’
I nod.
‘Wait here,’ he says, stands up and jogs across the wet grass, back into the restaurant.
I watch him go and then look up at the sky. So many stars, but they won’t stay still. As soon as I feel like I’ve focussed on one, it zooms away, leaving a trail of silver. I can’t tell if they’re actually shooting stars or if it’s my eyes.
I hear the door bang and look up to see Luke crossing the grass towards me.
‘Oops,’ he says, as he sits down. ‘Let the door go.’ His mouth pulls to one side and he looks so young and guilty that it makes me laugh.
‘Ready for the cool thing?’
I nod. I am. I think.
He unwraps the biscuit and pushes it across the table to me, before smoothing the wrapper out and rolling it into a tube. He stands it up on one end, then strikes a match on one of the San Georgio matchbooks Stefano keeps in a bowl on the counter near the till. He lights the top of the wrapper and it immediately starts to burn down, like a sped-up candle. We both watch as the flame flickers and leaps. Just before it burns out altogether, the wrapper tips over on its side on the table and turns to ash.
‘Shit,’ Luke says. ‘That’s not what’s meant to happen.’
I laugh. ‘No.’
‘You’ve seen it before,’ he says.
I nod. ‘My dad used to do it.’
‘Sorry,’ he says. He looks confused. It makes him look younger.
I shake my head. ‘That’s okay.’
‘I don’t know why it didn’t work,’ he says.
‘Maybe there’s too much breeze? Or not enough?’
‘Maybe it’s a metaphor,’ he says, the corner of his mouth quirking up.
I laugh so suddenly that I actually snort. ‘It’s not a fucking metaphor!’
He grins at me. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard you swear before.’
‘What’s the metaphor?’ I say. ‘It’s like life. I thought I could fly, but instead I just fell over sideways.’
‘And turned to ash,’ Luke adds, poking at the remains of the wrapper.
‘Oh, shit,’ I say. ‘That is a fucking metaphor.’
Luke laughs. ‘I knew it!’
I stare at the little pile of ash on the table and wonder if it would be too weird to mention the little pot of my dad’s ashes upstairs. I look up at Luke and find he’s just staring at me, his eyes serious. There’s a small, brown birthmark just above his collarbone that I’ve never noticed before, and my fingers itch to touch it. I move my right hand out from its position tucked under my leg and flex my fingers to get some feeling back. As I reach across the table, I can see the red ridges where the metal of the chair has pressed into my hand. Or where my hand was pressed into the chair. Luke doesn’t move as I reach out until my fingers are just in front of him, when he dips his head, his hair falling forward and brushing the back of my hand.
I hear myself gasp, but I bite down on my lip and keep moving until I’m touching the birthmark. His skin is warm against my cold fingertips and I want to touch him more. Touch more of him.
‘Milly,’ he says, under his breath, looking up at me.
I want to slide my hand around the back of his neck and lean across the table and press my mouth to his. I still remember how it tastes, although it probably tastes of chocolate right now. I want to push the table out of the way and climb into his lap. Instead, I trail my fingers over his skin before tucking my hand back under my leg.
‘Sorry,’ I say, looking down at the table.
I hear him sort of huff out a laugh. ‘You don’t have to say sorry,’ he says. ‘That was –’
‘Morning!’
I look up and my eyes skitter over Luke before looking past him to Toby who is standing on the edge of the terrace and stretching, the Arsenal football shirt he’s wearing riding up to show his belly. He wanders across the grass – not bothered by the wetness because he’s wearing shower shoes – and flops down onto the bench near the table Luke and I are sitting at.
He stretches again, yawning, and says, ‘I thought I heard something. Thought I’d better come and check it out.’
‘It was me,’ Luke said. ‘I let the door slam. Sorry, mate.’
‘Y’all right,’ Toby said. ‘I’m always saying I’ll get up and watch the sunrise.’ He tips his head back and closes his eyes. ‘Wake me up when it’s all beautiful and shit.’
‘I think I’m going to go back to bed,’ I say.
As soon as I say it I feel overwhelmingly tired. Like I won’t even be able to get up the stairs and instead I’ll have to curl up on the bench next to Toby.
‘Maybe wait a few minutes,’ Luke says.
He points up. I look up. The sky is lighter blue, but striped with wispy pink and purple clouds. I take a photo on my phone. At least I’ve got something to post to Instagram now.