Chapter 25
The next couple of days were completely bonkers. Derbyshire had snow. Only a sprinkling but even so, it was almost May! The peaks looked postcard-perfect and when the sun came out, everywhere looked so beautiful that we forgot to moan about the cold and the damage it was doing to everyone’s gardens and just enjoyed the scenery instead. I even spotted Noah playing with his new friends on the village green after school one day, trying to make snowballs and miniature snowmen while Gabe stood in the middle of a crowd of mums. I was pleased to see him making friends, but nevertheless spent a long time wiping down tables so I could keep an eye on him from a distance. I wondered which one, if any, he’d be taking out on Friday night.
I was massively grateful to him for being the one to help me unlock the memories of what happened with Callum, but before he’d left to pick up Noah from school, I’d made him promise – again – never to breathe a word of it to anyone, even Verity. I decided that no one in my family would ever find out that my relationship with Callum had ended so badly. Nonna’s story was enough for everyone to cope with and now that I’d confided in Gabe, I felt as if I had everything I needed inside me to cope with it myself. Just having one person validate my feelings about that night was all it took and the fact that Gabe had been so lovely and supportive about it made me like him even more.
I did tell a small white lie to Verity.
I sent her a text saying that Nonna had not only lost a baby, but had been raped too and that I’d been so shocked at hearing the news that I’d got a bit flustered and that I’d fill her in properly soon. Maybe one day I would tell her, but for the moment my story could wait; right now, Nonna needed me.
Because suddenly, after more than fifty years, Maria Benedetto couldn’t wait to go back to Italy and none of us had the heart to argue. What mattered more than anything, to all of us, was to readjust to our new family tree and what better way to help Nonna lay her ghosts to rest than by going back to where it had all begun. To visit her family’s graves, to be certain that the Signore Benedetto we’d found on the internet really was her husband and for Nonna to reconnect with the country that ran as strongly through her veins now as it had always done.
Nonna had asked me to go with her. I was honoured, but at the same time worried that the rest of the family would feel left out. But it was fine. Mum might have wanted to go with her but she still didn’t have a valid passport. Dad didn’t want to leave Mum, Lia couldn’t leave Arlo and as Nonna was too impatient to wait any longer than she had to, it made sense for me to accompany her. I booked us flights and a hotel and three days later, on Friday evening, we were making a flying visit to Sorrento.
‘Please ensure your tray tables are in the upright position, window blinds are fully raised and stow all loose items under the seat in front of you.’
I glanced at Nonna. After discovering that the cabin crew on the flight from Luton to Naples couldn’t supply her with a glass of limoncello to calm her nerves, she had opted for a double brandy instead. She had knocked it back in one and had been snoring softly for the last hour. Her chin was tucked into her chest and her hands clasped tightly across the front of her new lilac dress and matching jacket.
‘I wanna look my best when I go back to Italy,’ she had said firmly, ignoring Mum’s suggestion that the most important thing when travelling was comfort.
She was a remarkable woman, I thought, watching her soft puffs of breath and the rise and fall of her chest. She was taking her first flight at seventy-five years of age to return to a period of her life she had been trying to forget for more than fifty years and even though I knew she was nervous at what, or who, she might find in Italy, she was determined to face the consequences.
The brandy had really knocked her out; despite the various bongs telling us to fasten our seat belts in readiness for our descent, and the pilot’s announcement that the weather in southern Italy this evening was a balmy sixteen degrees, she still didn’t move a muscle. I did up her seat belt and then my own before pulling the bus timetable from my bag to check it for the umpteenth time. Nonna had assured me that the best way to get to Sorrento from Naples was by bus. Privately I’d thought that her travel tips were possibly out of date so I’d looked it up on TripAdvisor only to find that she was right. I’d bought tickets online for the last bus of the day and we’d be arriving in Sorrento at just before eleven tonight.
Looking at her faded features, slack now in sleep, it was almost impossible to reconcile this dear time-worn face with the feisty young woman who I’d learned about ever since Stanley’s proposal.
My eyes pricked with tears and I blinked them away as the plane dipped its nose and began its descent. Nonna stirred and I took her hand in mine.
Hers was a story that, even now, I was still coming to terms with. And I wasn’t the only one. The entire family had been shell-shocked by Nonna’s revelations.
I looked at Nonna’s hand and twirled the worn gold band around her finger. Her wedding ring. Signora Maria Benedetto. Married to Marco and not to her first love, Lorenzo Carloni, as she’d led us to believe all these years. Although if I’d been married to a man like Marco, I’d have been tempted to erase it from my memory banks too.
I looked out of the window as the aeroplane swooped low across the water. The sinking sun had set the sky alight with pink and orange stripes and the sea below shone like liquid gold. Now and then a light winked from a tiny boat and then suddenly the plane banked, we turned and the coastline appeared, its jagged edges of burnt-orange rocks glittering with lights.
My stomach flipped; in a matter of minutes Nonna would be back in Italy and together we’d be heading to Sorrento to face her past and say her final goodbyes.
For the first hour of the flight, Nonna had been as excitable as a child. She’d read every word on the safety card tucked in the seat pocket in front of us, she’d checked that both she and I really did have a lifejacket under our seats, she’d visited the loo twice and had even knocked on the door of the cockpit and asked to see the pilot. She had been escorted back to her seat after that.
‘I like aeroplanes. Last time I make this long journey, with your mamma,’ she chuckled, choosing an espresso and chocolate muffin from the menu when the trolley passed by for the first time, ‘I was on train with hundreds of others. Nothing like this.’
‘Tell me,’ I urged, handing her an extra sugar packet, which she tore open and tipped into her cup. ‘Mum told me the bones of the story, but tell me how you ended up with Marco. And how you managed to escape.’
Nonna frowned, stirring her coffee for ages before meeting my gaze.
‘I’m ashamed.’
‘Don’t be.’ I swallowed and covered her hand with mine. Understanding completely how she felt, but knowing now, thanks to Gabe, that shame had no place in what had happened. ‘I have always loved you. Always. And now I know what you’ve been through, I’m even more proud.’
‘Okey cokey.’ She glanced across at the passengers on the other side of the aisle. Nobody was paying us any attention and the seat next to me was empty. It was just her and me, thirty thousand feet up in the air somewhere above Europe …
‘If my days with Lorenzo are like being in heaven,’ she began, ‘then life with Marco is the worst kind of hell …’
For a couple of years after Lorenzo died, it was obvious that she was simply not interested in men and Maria’s mother was worried about her. Her brother Sav and his wife Sofia had moved their two children into the apartment above the bar and now Maria and her mother were sharing a room. It was cramped and Sofia was making it very clear that Maria was not welcome.
One day Marco Benedetto came into the bar and asked Maria to go to a dance with him. She didn’t want to go, but Sav and her mother told Marco that she would. Everyone knew Marco. He ran his family’s ice-cream business and made lots of money selling gelato to the tourists in the Marina Piccola at the water’s edge.
He came to collect her on his motorbike and they rode to Piano, a town just along the coast road. The dance was full of young girls trying to attract men and men showing off to the girls. Maria hated every minute of it and detested Marco. Where Lorenzo had been full of life, he was just full of himself. His breath smelled of Turkish cigarettes and garlic and his skin smelled so strongly of aftershave that it made her choke. He had hooded eyes and a square jaw. She knew others found him handsome, but his looks left her cold; she could see only steel in his heart and couldn’t wait for the night to be over. He threw her round the dance floor, laughing when he spun her so fast that she stumbled.
She told him that he had bad manners, which made him laugh more.
‘Foreign girls find me irresistible,’ he’d said with a grin. ‘I have to fight them off down at the beach.’
‘And yet you are still single?’ she’d replied feistily.
Maria asked to go home, but he made her wait until the end of the night. Outside he walked her back to where they had left the motorbike and under the streetlight, he had grabbed her around the waist.
‘Just a little kiss. I deserve that?’ His eyes had glinted menacingly under the sodium light.
She should have just kissed him, but Maria had never despised someone so much in her life and couldn’t bring herself to do it.
‘You have the manners of a filthy street dog and you deserve nothing from me,’ she’d said proudly and turned her head so that his harsh lips had only found her jaw.
‘A dog?’ he’d snarled.
Enraged, he dragged her into a stone passageway hidden from view. He tore away every bit of her dignity along with the hem of her dress and she was powerless to stop him. Afterwards he pressed his hard mouth against hers, every touch of his skin on hers a torture after the tender, innocent caresses of Lorenzo. He took her home and as he left her at the door, he gripped her face in his hand until her eyes watered in pain.
‘You see,’ he’d laughed, ‘you’re just like the other girls. You want Marco too.’
She bit his finger and ran inside, his laughter ringing in her ears, mocking her for her tears. After that he kept coming round and Maria kept trying to avoid him until three months later when her mother spotted her swollen stomach.
The priest and Maria’s mum scared her into marriage, telling her that her baby would be taken from her if she didn’t comply. Marco’s family were keen to see him marry, thinking that becoming a father would be the change he needed to make him settle down and Marco, deciding at his age that he should have a wife, flippantly agreed to make an honest woman of her.
Maria’s wedding day dragged by like a bad dream. If only Lorenzo had not been killed, none of this would have happened, she told herself. She thought her life couldn’t get worse. Her family were relieved to see her get married and her mother told her she was only emotional because of being pregnant. No one was listening to her.
When the midwife heard two heartbeats Maria suddenly found her strength. This wasn’t just about her any more; she had two extra lives to take care of. Marco was more full of himself than ever, insistent that fathering twins proved what a man he was. He wouldn’t leave her alone, wanted to go everywhere with her, convinced that she was cheating on him. But who would want her now? Her legs were swollen, her body was bloated, she was always tired and sick. Some women bloom like a flower when they are with child. Not Maria; she faded and faded until all the colour was bleached from her skin. Her stomach grew and the day the babies were due to be born got closer. As time went on, the air between Marco and her got more and more heated, like the approach of a thunderstorm. Then one day he came home to take her to the hospital for an appointment.
Before they left, Marco lost his wallet and blamed her for moving it. By the time he found it in his jacket pocket, they were running late. As he locked the door to their apartment Maria told him to hurry. His fury burst to the surface and he hit her jaw so hard she thought it had cracked. She stumbled sideways and slipped down the stairs, screaming with fear that she was going to hurt the babies. Marco tried to grab her back but it was too late. She broke her wrist trying to save herself and the unborn twins, but she landed heavily on her stomach. Marco pulled her to her feet and shoved her in the car. She was speechless with pain as he drove to the hospital. Gennaro and Luisa were born eight hours later. Luisa screeched the place down, but Gennaro was still and blue.
A doctor was called but nothing could be done. A piece of Maria died with her son.
She could never prove that Marco caused the death of their baby boy, but until that moment there had been nothing wrong with the babies. After the funeral she was silent, she looked after Luisa and she kept them both away from the monster as much as she could. He said that if she told anyone what had happened he would call her a liar and say that she was mentally ill. When Luisa was only two weeks old, Marco forced himself on Maria again in the night while the baby cried in the crib at the end of the bed.
And that was the moment Maria knew she would rather die than carry on living like this.
It took her a month to plan their escape. A friend from her school days, Edoardo, knew someone who could help her disappear. He arranged everything for her: a fake passport, transport to Milan and from there a passage on a train full of brick workers on their way to a new life in England.
This was what she and Lorenzo had dreamed of all those years ago. Edoardo asked her to give him a name for the false documents.
Suddenly she could see a way to be the person she’d hoped to be. Being Lorenzo’s widow was a million times better than being Marco’s wife. So she decided: from now on she would live life the way she wanted. She couldn’t have Lorenzo, but she could take his name.
Leaving her mother was the hardest thing she had ever done and travelling across Europe by train with one tiny baby, still grieving for the other, wasn’t easy either. But as the distance between her and Marco widened, she gradually began to breathe and knew in her heart she had done the right thing.
As soon as she arrived in England she went to a women’s charity for help. Scared that Marco would come after her, she had changed her surname officially and the charity helped to ensure that he would never discover her whereabouts. She and Luisa moved around for a while before finally settling in Derbyshire. Even though she had never left England, she had always kept her passport up to date, just in case she ever needed to get away again.
‘The first year was hardest,’ she said, shaking her head now at the memory. ‘I miss the sunshine and the sea, the smell of lemon blossom in the air and my mamma, most of all I miss Mamma. For one year, I don’t dare write to her. Then a member of Italian community is travelling back home to Salerno. I give him a letter for Mamma. After that we keep in touch secretly and she send me money to help me buy our first home. But I never see her again, she die in nineteen seventy-five. Now, I not know what family I have any more.’
My heart ached for her. She must have felt so alone in a strange country with no one to turn to for support. And yet she had survived.
‘You are the bravest woman I have ever met,’ I said softly, squeezing her hand.
The cabin crew came past at that moment with the trolley for a second time and Nonna winked at me.
‘Brave or not I think I have a limoncello to calm the nerves, eh?’
I shook my head as she accepted the brandy instead of limoncello and I held her hand, stroking my thumb against the wrinkled skin on the back of her hand until she slipped into sleep.
The plane touched down at Naples International Airport and passengers clapped as the engines roared and the force of the brakes thrust us back in our seats.
I turned to Nonna to wake her up, but her dark anxious eyes were already trained on me. She blinked blearily from behind her thick glasses.
‘O mio Dio.’ She stared out at the dusky evening as the aeroplane taxied along the runway and came to a jerky stop. ‘We here. No turning back.’
‘Welcome to Naples International Airport, ladies and gentleman, where the local time is eight thirty and I’m pleased to inform you that you may now disembark from the front and rear doors.’
Around us our fellow passengers began scrabbling for their belongings, unsnapping seat belts and reaching into the overhead lockers. Nonna and I stayed seated, and I leaned across and pressed a kiss to her soft cheek.
‘Once you face your past,’ I reassured her, ‘you’ll be free to move forward. It’s the right thing to do.’
She nodded. ‘I have Stanley Pigeon to thank for this. If he not propose, I not be here now.’
‘Stanley is the bomb,’ I said with a grin.
She chuckled and then looked at her hands.
‘I never thought I love again. I think I am too old. But I love Stanley, and I wish I’d told him. Being with him, these last few weeks, make me realize how much I miss out on. Someone to kiss goodnight, someone there when I open my eyes in the morning. Someone to share little things with.’
My stomach fizzed.
‘I know what you mean,’ I said truthfully; I often woke up and felt the same.
Her eyes searched mine. ‘But I break his heart. Do you think he ever talk to me again?’
Stanley had been incommunicado all week; Nonna had been round to see him, but either he had not been there or he had not wanted to speak to her. In the end she had popped a note through his door to let him know she was going to Italy to sort out her affairs. His lack of contact bothered her, but my theory was that his ego was still a bit bruised; I was sure that by the time we got home, he’d be ready to see her again.
‘Stanley Pigeon adores you,’ I said confidently. ‘And after you find out once and for all what happened to Marco you can go tell him exactly how you feel about him.’
‘It’s time to go, ladies!’ A tall blonde member of the cabin crew beamed at us.
‘It is time,’ I agreed, realizing that we were the last ones on board. I stood up and helped Nonna up from her seat. ‘Italy awaits.’