If Only Read online

  She tries not to let the ‘we’ affect her, pondering whether it would be weirder to ask, or not to ask, who the ‘we’ is, since the word seems to hang in the air between them.

  Alf takes photographs, then puts away his phone, then gets it out again, unable to resist taking more as the sky becomes ever more spectacular.

  Eventually, and quite suddenly, darkness falls, and floodlights turn Rome’s golden stone as white as the monument.

  ‘Your turn to choose, tomorrow,’ he says, glancing again at his watch as they descend in the lift.

  ‘I’m going to Capri tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Well, in that case, there’s one more thing we have to do today.’

  They dodge the hectic traffic of Piazza Venezia and cross the bottom of Via Nazionale, running past the Palazzo Colonna and beyond, through the maze of pedestrian streets full of souvenir shops with colourful boards of fridge magnets and replica football shirts hanging outside. Then, quite unexpectedly, they’re in the square that contains the Trevi Fountain, its statues bathed in yellow light, its pools as turquoise as the tiny photo on her postcard. The sound of foaming water fills the air.

  Alf searches in his pockets for a coin.

  ‘So I know you’re coming back to Rome,’ he says.

  He watches her as she stands with her back to the fountain and throws the coin over her shoulder.

  ‘You too?’ she says.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere!’

  The streets are emptier now; workers have returned home, tourists are eating dinner. The Piazza San Silvestro is deserted, apart from a busker strumming a guitar.

  ‘Waltz?’ Letty says hopefully, but Alf seems preoccupied now.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘That’s a Viennese.’

  As the bus pulls up beside them and the doors open with a hydraulic hiss, he says, ‘Take care,’ very gently, and plants the quickest kiss on her cheek.

  She watches him getting out his phone as he walks away, the deep breath he takes before putting it to his ear, and how he’s already talking as the bus passes him and doesn’t look up at her. Elbow against the window, she cups her cheek against her palm, as if to hold his kiss there.

  11

  Friday

  ALF

  By now, she will be on the train, Alf thinks. He imagines her sitting on the Frecciarossa to Naples with the countryside rushing by.

  ‘Alf!’ the teacher interrupts him. ‘Come va?’

  ‘Bene grazie,’ he says automatically.

  The students laugh. He’s meant to say that he’s suffering from a medical complaint.

  Today the class is all about ailments. My stomach aches. My head aches. The doctor says it’s probably due to stress. Stress is the same word in Italian as it is in English, as if Italians didn’t have the concept before they heard the word.

  At break, the teacher keeps him back. What is his problem?

  Alf tells her that he slept badly, quoting the phrase they’ve just learned. She laughs, but when he tries to tell her that he feels the class is too slow, she says that the next class up would be too difficult for him. To learn a language you need to work hard, she says, making him regret slouching in his chair, which she has pulled him up on twice this session.

  Instead of going to the cafe in the basement with the other students, he goes for a run round the block – just enough to get the blood flowing in his veins and his mind thinking again.

  The school is expensive, and since he has been seeing Letty in the afternoons, he hasn’t earned any money. It occurs to him that he doesn’t really talk to her in class, so maybe that’s the thing he should drop. He could get in at least one tour in the mornings and meet her at lunchtime. On his way back to class, he informs the receptionist that he won’t be renewing. Unfortunately, it’s Olivia, the strict one, who deals with the paperwork and wants to know the reason to put on her form.

  ‘Non ho soldi!’ he says, hoping that’s the correct way of saying, ‘I don’t have the funds.’

  The nicer receptionist, Chiara, giggles.

  By now she’ll be on a ferry, motoring across the Bay of Naples. He wonders how long the journey takes and whether it’s calm or there’s a breeze blowing her hair around her face.

  Nobody seems interested in a tour of the Forum. Alf hangs out with a dumpy Romanian guy he’s talked to before, who’s on a cigarette break. He used to work in a fish-processing factory in Grimsby, but in Rome he makes his living dressing as Cupid in a short white dress with a golden bow and arrow, wings – the lot. With his hairy legs, five o’clock shadow and Marlboro Light hanging out of his mouth, he’s the most unlikely looking god of love. Incongruous, Alf thinks. He’s about to get a photo to Instagram, but changes his mind when the guy starts grumbling about the tourists who take pictures of him without paying the five euros that he demands.

  Alf scrolls through his Instagram feed. Cheryl has posted a picture of the Tower Ballroom with the caption: Home Sweet Home! #Blackpool #goodtobeback. They’ve returned from their cruise in time to be there for the birth of their grandchildren.

  His mother has posted a picture of Gary performing at an event that looks like it might be a wedding, with garlands of balloons around the stage, along with the hashtags #shelovesyou #yeahyeahyeah. Gary is Paul McCartney in a tribute band called the Stag Beetles. They sing pretty well, but they look like a bunch of electricians wearing floppy wigs. His mum always says it was Gary’s voice that attracted her, but Alf thinks it had a lot to do with him fixing the lights and glitter ball when she shorted the dance hall just before the annual Christmas party.

  Alf still hasn’t sent her a message, and if he waits any longer, she’s going to have had the babies. He crosses the Via dei Fori Imperiali and takes a photo of a bucket of pink flowers on a stall at the bottom of Via Cavour. Then he posts it, tagging both his mother and Cheryl and adding #thinkingofyou.

  Eventually, Alf’s approached by a British family with an overbearing father who bargains him down on the price. Alf much prefers Americans, who always tip. He knows that his patter will be interrupted constantly by the father telling his hyperactive son to get down from there, to be quiet and listen because he might learn something. Standing in front of the Arch of Septimius Severus, he tells them about the damnatio memoriae of Caracalla’s brother Geta, wishing that Letty were sitting on a nearby step smiling at the corrected Latin.

  Just about now, they should be disembarking, he thinks, imagining her and Heidi from the point of view of the tour guides and taxi drivers waiting on the quay.

  ‘Hey up! Who are these two beauties?’

  Capri is a playground of the rich. The sort of place that film stars and Formula 1 drivers go on holiday. Letty and Heidi will look like two models arriving for a photo shoot.

  Alf walks up onto the Palatine Hill, retracing their steps of a week ago, when she told him about the poem she liked.

  ‘I hate and I love.’

  She said that it said everything about love, and he wondered why she thought hate came first, but he still hasn’t found the words to ask her.

  Alf’s phone buzzes with a notification. His mum has replied to his photo with the simple message: Thanks, Alf #meansalot.

  Gina wants to see the new horror movie that everyone is talking about. Alf knows she won’t like it, but he’s quite glad to be doing something where they don’t have to talk for a few hours, instead of sitting across from each other at a dinner table.

  ‘Hi hon!’ She greets him outside the cinema, wearing the dress that he once told her was her sexiest outfit. She’s done her hair and make-up, so he feels underdressed in shorts and his work T-shirt.

  She’s standing in front of a poster advertising a live screening of a Royal Ballet performance in London. The ballerina has her back to the male ballet dancer, her arms stretched behind her. He is on his knees, gripping her hands, as if he is pleading with her to turn and recognize his love.

  About now, Letty and Heidi are probably being whisked off
to dinner by guys in Ferraris. Heidi will like that; Letty not so much. With Letty there’s a protective barrier, but once it’s stripped away, there’s a quality of innocence underneath. She doesn’t have the usual layers of flirtation in between. She gives nothing, or she gives everything, but only for such fleeting moments it’s like finding tiny diamonds in the sand that disappear when you reach to grab them.

  He realizes that Gina has asked him twice where he wants to sit and he hasn’t replied.

  This has to stop. Gina has done nothing wrong except love him.

  Maybe he should just stay away from Letty? Now that he has left the school, it will be possible. But when the trailer comes on for the live relay of the ballet, he straight away finds himself trying to think of a good excuse to be out the following Thursday evening.

  Usually, after they’ve seen a horror film, he does stupid things to make Gina jump. She’s pretty easy to tease. But this one was so disturbing they’re both silent on the way out.

  ‘Would you like a gelato?’ Alf asks, as they amble in the direction of the Spanish Steps.

  ‘After that, I need a drink,’ Gina says.

  She has a glass of Prosecco; he has a beer. Sitting at a table outside, it costs as much as a full bottle and a week’s supply of Nastro Azzurro.

  ‘It’s worth it though,’ says Gina. ‘Because when I’m somewhere like this, I really think I’m here, in Rome – you know?’

  By the fountain, the same busker who was in San Silvestro twenty-four hours ago is playing the same song: ‘Where Do You Go To My Lovely?’

  It was a hit in Alf’s grandparents’ youth. His grandad, Chris, once showed him the clip from Top of the Pops on YouTube. The singer looked like a comedy 1970s tribute with his long hair and moustache, but the song has the pure simplicity of a classic. Cheryl and Chris often do a demonstration Viennese to it towards the end of their fortnightly social. Last night, he was desperate to dance again with Letty, but he knew that if he did, they would end up kissing in that empty square. He didn’t want to kiss her then leave her; and he knew he couldn’t stay with her. But it took all the self-control he had in his body, because the connection was so strong between them you could almost see the sparks flying in the darkness.

  Now, she’ll be sitting on the terrace of an expensive restaurant, chinking champagne glasses with some smooth guy with a permanent tan, who’ll be telling her about his speedboat and how, in the morning, he’d like to take her to a secluded beach he knows . . .

  Gina is chatting about what she’d like to do this weekend, as a flower seller approaches their table with a bucket of roses. You can’t sit down for a minute in one of the tourist spots without it happening. Alf doesn’t know how they make their money, because the buckets always seem full and he’s never seen anyone buy one.

  Gina is determinedly ignoring the vendor, but Alf knows it would make her happy for a week if he bought her a rose. As he hands the guy the ten euros he demands, he realizes how they make a profit. It’s guilty men who buy roses for their partners, not men who are all loved up, which is what Gina calls it as she comes around to his side of the table so she can take a selfie with him and the rose to send to her father.

  ‘By the way, Dad’s coming to Rome!’ she suddenly remembers. ‘Arriving Sunday and staying someplace on the Via Veneto . . .’

  ‘Is this a holiday? Business?’ Alf enquires. ‘I thought he had Rome down as a pile of rubble?’

  ‘Think he just wants to see me,’ Gina says. ‘It’s been quite a long time . . . and you. He likes you.’

  ‘Mutual,’ says Alf.

  Unlike his own family, Stuart has always smiled on Alf’s relationship with Gina. Stuart idolizes his daughter and subsidizes her, although he’s always saying that he doesn’t believe in ‘the bank of Mum and Dad’ because he never got any help, and that made him get off his arse and make something of his life.

  Stuart left Gina’s mum when Gina was five, but he always saw Gina regularly, and paid for her to go to a posh private school in the South so he could spend weekends with her.

  When they stayed with Stuart on their way to Rome, he took Alf to see Arsenal play. Stuart had not just one but two season tickets for the Emirates Stadium – so that he could always take a mate, he’d said, smiling at Alf as if that was how he thought of him.

  That evening, the match they’d seen was first up on Match of the Day, so they watched the highlights in a room Stuart called his den, which was really a small cinema. And Gina had said, ‘Not more football!’

  But Alf could tell that she liked it that they were bonding so well.

  ‘I said we’d see him Monday,’ Gina is saying. ‘I’ll go over and spend the morning with him while you’re at school, and then we can all hook up for lunch at his hotel, maybe?’

  Alf knows that this is the moment to tell her that he’s given up school. If he leaves it any longer it will be too late, because she’ll start asking why he didn’t tell her before.

  But instead he says, ‘Sure,’ adding a quick ‘great’ too, in case he didn’t sound enthusiastic enough. Any other time, he’d be really happy that Stuart was coming. Just not now.

  Gina picks up her rose, twirling it between thumb and finger and smiling at him. The rose has bought him time to decide how he’s going to handle this, Alf thinks.

  And it’s not like he’s done anything wrong.

  12

  Saturday

  LETTY

  There’s a mist hanging over the Bay of Naples. The road is as precipitous as the guidebook says, but without the promised spectacular view. Letty thinks that Heidi probably made the right decision staying in the hotel for pampering, rather than accompanying her on her expedition. Anacapri is on the other side of a mountain. It’s a more modest town than Capri itself. The bus drops her at the bottom of a rickety lift of one-person chairs. It’s still early and the operator tells her she is the first person ascending. The journey to the top of Monte Solaro is an eleven-minute hoist, dangling precariously over the rocky mountainside.

  When she reaches the summit, the strength of the sun burns away the cloud, and the emerging panorama brings tears to her eyes. It feels like a privilege to witness such astonishing beauty. The sky is the purest aquamarine, the outline of Vesuvius a purply grey backdrop to the vast expanse of the inky blue Bay of Naples that is now glinting in the sunlight. Looking south, the rocky Italian coastline stretches away, past Positano and Amalfi and on towards Calabria.

  Though Letty rarely takes photos, the vista is so incredible she fears it might fade in her memory, unless she captures it. Turning slowly on the spot, she takes a 360-degree video on her phone, and finds herself wishing that Alf were here to experience it with her.

  She feels at ease with him, a sensation she’s never had before with someone outside her own family, and often not with them either. He has a completely different take to hers when they see new things, but if she tells him about something she knows, he doesn’t look at her as if she’s slightly peculiar; he seems genuinely interested, and that gives her the same buzz of excitement as discovering it for the first time.

  Up here in the dazzling sunlight, the mountain breeze blowing her hair back from her face, her body can still feel him dancing with her, the touch of his hand on her back, the delicious abandon of twirling again and again, trusting totally that he would not let her fall.

  Glancing around to make sure she’s the only person on the terrace, Letty takes a few tentative steps, arms by her sides, then bigger, bolder strides, pirouetting with her arms stretched out, hair flying as the view spins around her. Closing her eyes, she imagines him here with her, laughing with the immense good fortune of being in this heavenly place as they waltz around and around, then falling against each other, the warmth of his body on hers, staring into each other’s eyes, and—

  ‘Gee!’

  Letty stops abruptly, unsure whether the American tourists who have just arrived are exclaiming at the view or at her.

  �
�Che bella ballerina!’ The operator smiles at her as she sits on the chairlift and he closes the single bar across her lap.

  The hotel room smells of orange blossom and sandalwood. Heidi is lying on one of the twin beds in a white dressing gown, her hair wrapped in a towel.

  ‘How was your mountain?’ she asks.

  ‘So beautiful!’

  Letty takes off her shoes and flops onto the other bed. Her initial apprehension about sharing a room has disappeared. Heidi is good at chatting about nothing in particular – the facial she had that morning, and the colour of nail polish after her pedicure. She wiggles her toes backwards and forwards. She has chosen silver, but she’s not sure it’s a good colour without a deep tan. Letty assures her it is.

  ‘What is the story of your tattoo?’ Heidi asks, looking across at Letty’s bare feet.

  ‘My first proper boyfriend . . .’ she tells Heidi, hoping that will be enough explanation.

  Frances had stormed down to the tattoo parlour because you weren’t meant to tattoo minors without their parents’ consent, but they’d shown her the signed permission form that Letty had faked. Frances had threatened to make a complaint about Josh to the head teacher, but Ivo said what was done was done.

  Letty can still hear her mother’s comment in defeat: ‘Well, if you have to self-harm, at least it’s quite pretty.’

  It annoyed Letty beyond measure at the time, but later seemed strangely prescient.

  ‘Did he get one too?’ Heidi asks.

  ‘Yes,’ Letty says, adding, so that Heidi doesn’t get an impression of sweet, teenage romance, ‘Apparently, he got one for every girlfriend.’

  At fifteen, she thought the tattoo was a sign of everlasting love. Now she thinks of it as a brand Josh wanted to leave on her so that her shame would remain forever.

  Afterwards, there was a part of Letty that wanted to gouge the tattoo out of her foot, but she left it there so that she would never forget. The knife through the heart, with the tiny red dot of blood falling from its tip – which she had thought of as a symbol of the pain she was prepared to endure for him – became a metaphor for the cruelty of love.