Would you run away to find out where you've come from?
Twenty-five-year-old Chiara has always wished she knew her father, thought to have died in a tragic accident before she was born.
When she learns by chance that her biological father could in fact be a Frenchman living on the island of Groix, Chiara sets off for the summer of a lifetime, leaving behind only three letters in her wake.
Finding companions in Urielle, a young mother looking to get away from Paris, and Gabin, an attractive writer reluctant to discuss his past, Chiara becomes bewitched by the island and its community.
Under the guise of a letter carrier, Chiara slowly uncovers the secrets of her family, but can she find herself - and love - along the way?
Release date:
November 10, 2022
Publisher:
Hodder & Stoughton
Print pages:
272
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Rome, twenty-six years earlier and fifteen days later
Groix Island, twenty-six years earlier and three months later
Rome, the Verano Cemetery, today
Rome, Centro Storico
Rome, Piazza del Popolo
Groix Island, Kermarec
Groix Island, Port-Lay
Groix Island, Grands Sables beach
Groix Island, village centre
Music
Savoury rosemary cake recipe by Brigitte de Lomener
Acknowledgments
Rome, Piazza del Popolo, twenty-six years earlier
He glimpses her on the terrace of Caffe Rosati in the fierce summer-like April sun, sat there with just an espresso to keep her company. Since they got together, he can’t bear to fall asleep, can’t bear to be separated from her even when he dreams. She literally stole his heart. Today, she is wearing an orange dress, her favourite colour. He now sees life through an orange filter. Her hands are wrapped around her cup so sensually that he almost envies it.
The terrace is crowded; the other customers blur into insignificance alongside her beauty. Her legs are crossed, and her hair is tousled. He is the luckiest guy on earth: she loves him! He was brave enough to ask her to marry him, to dare to be happy together. They got married just last week and haven’t yet had a chance to open their wedding gifts. They still haven’t thanked Uncle Peppe for the ghastly lamp and Aunt Maria for that hideous picture they’ll have to hang up when she visits. From now on, he’ll wake up beside her every morning. How will he find the strength to tear himself away from her to go to work?
He is standing in front of the Chiesa degli Artisti, the artists’ church. She looks up, sees him and flashes him a big warm smile. He has butterflies in his stomach and feels like he’s lying on the beach basking in the glorious Mediterranean sun. Their life together promises to be just that, sunny and joyful. He can hardly believe his luck; she is his wife now; their initials are engraved on their wedding bands uniting them forever.
She waves to him, and her ring catches the light. Just a few more steps before he can take her in his arms. It’s too early for Prosecco, they’ll have some later on. It’s her birthday, he hopes she’ll like the surprise he has prepared for her. They are dining with friends tonight though he would rather spend the evening alone with her, between the sheets.
A song by Paolo Conte goes round and round in his head: “Via con me”. Come away with me. He can already feel the softness of her body. He craves her perfume; he is just crazy about her. He hums the lyrics, It’s wonderful, it’s wonderful, it’s wonderful, I dream of you. And doesn’t see the yellow Vespa coming . . .
Suddenly, his beloved’s face twists in sheer horror. She knocks over her cup as she jumps up. The coffee spills all over the table and onto the ground. In a fraction of a second, every detail flashes before his eyes. Just before the Vespa hits him and sends him flying. And he crashes to the ground of the eternal city.
He’s not in pain, he’s not scared, he’s not cold. He can’t feel a thing. He can’t hear the scream of the driver as he falls, nor the crash of the Vespa as it smashes into a car, nor the screams of his young wife. He is unaware that she is rushing towards him, cupping his face in her hands, her wedding band gleaming in the sun. He can’t smell or taste her tears. He has forgotten about her birthday present. The last words of the song spin round and round in his crushed brain, It’s wonderful, I dream of you . . .
Then there is silence. The silence ignores the young woman weeping in the street in the April sun, a young woman for whom it will now always be winter.
Rome, on the banks of the Tiber river
My name is Chiara Ferrari, I am twenty-five years old. My family is comprised of four people, two of whom are still alive. My mother, whom I call by her first name, Livia; my father, who stupidly got himself killed before I was born; my grandmother, nonna Ornella, who was reunited with her son in heaven just last year; and my godmother, Viola, who is my mother’s childhood friend. We never laugh at home; it would be disrespectful to my father who popped his clogs before I even came out of the womb.
What purpose does a father serve anyway? I didn’t lose mine, I just never found him. I grew up in Rome, surrounded by framed photos of a young, sporty, funny, charming dad with a gleaming white smile. Every September when the schools went back and I had to fill out the emergency contact form, I would invent a new job for him. Policeman, fireman, lawyer, frogman, and even Swiss Guard at the Vatican, which was foolish of me as they only take unmarried men! When parents had to sign my homework, I only ever had my mother’s initials. One year, I got sick of having a ghost for a father and wrote that my father raised me alone and that my mother was dead, which wasn’t a complete lie. It caused a ruckus, and my mother was summoned to the school by the headmaster. For me I had just wanted to give my father credit where credit was due, and show everyone how much he meant to me.
I was saved by my best friend. Alessio is warm and protective, and has a loving mother. He too lost his father, so we’ve always had a lot in common.
Frankly, I would have preferred to have been put in an orphanage. Livia was so cold, and never hugged me because she couldn’t hug her husband anymore. The only time she ever touched me was when she held my hand to cross the street. This was the only time we had any physical contact, though she immediately let go as soon as we got to the other side. She would back away if someone tried to kiss her. We were more like housemates than mother and daughter. She would drink grappa before going to bed alone. With a heavy heart and a twinge of guilt, I waited to grow up, leave home and console myself with grappa too.
Livia blamed me for not being sad about my father’s death. But how could I be sad? I only ever knew him dead. “You’re a wicked girl,” she once said to me when I lit a candle on Dad’s birthday and joyfully sang, Happy Birthday to you! It came from the heart. I had never heard him speak, never seen him move, all I knew of him was his silent, pearly white smile on glossy paper.
I can best describe his death as a blurred and melancholy presence, rather than an absence. Livia once told me she would have preferred to have him, rather than me. I don’t blame her. After all, a husband takes you on holidays, he parks the car, he brings you flowers after work. He is of more use than a little girl, who has to be taken to school, the doctor, the dentist, and helped with her homework. Deep down, I knew what she meant. Me too, I would rather have had him than her. He was amazing. A guy who made it all the way to heaven a week after his wedding, run over by a Vespa while crossing the Piazza del Popolo. Now that’s quite a feat. A record breaker; something to be proud of.
Being born in the country of close-knit, happy, loving families to a mother who won’t touch you, is an affliction worse than not liking pasta or tomato sauce; it’s simply unforgivable. Apart from my school photos, there isn’t a single picture of me as a child. Her husband’s portraits are the only ones that Livia lets us put up. I am surplus to requirements, no more no less.
This evening, twenty-six years and one day after the death of my father, we are celebrating Livia’s fiftieth birthday on the edge of the Tiber river, in my godmother Viola’s favourite restaurant. The magnificent absent one will be there too of course, between the glasses and plates, the anti pasti and the torta with the five candles.
In actual fact, Livia’s birthday was yesterday, but as her husband died on her birthday, she erased that date from the calendar. Every year on this fateful day, we keep our heads down, sulk, look miserable and avoid her. The next day, life resumes its normal course.
We start the evening with a Spritz and move on to Prosecco. Livia blows out her candles, Viola claps. Mattia, Viola’s married-lover-with-kids, calls to wish Livia happy birthday. My mother and godmother’s eyes take on a glazed look, they are drunk. Only a quarter of an hour to go, then I’ll be able to go home with a clear conscience.
Suddenly, Viola raises her glass and looks my mother in the eye. “It’s better for everyone.”
No one knows what she is talking about. So she goes in for the kill.
“It’s better for everyone, that’s what you decided twenty-six years ago, Livia. Don’t you remember?”
My mother frowns. She looks daggers at her friend.
Viola turns to me. “Livia has been lying to you since you were born. She is not the perfect grieving widow that everyone thinks. She doesn’t know who your father is.”
Feeling very uncomfortable, I grin stupidly.
“Don’t listen to her, Chiara,” my mother says sharply.
But Viola is relentless. “No, you must listen to me. You may be the daughter of a Frenchie. Livia decided at the time that it was better to pretend your father was her dead husband. In fact, there’s a one in two chance he is.”
After dropping her bombshell, my loving godmother smiles maliciously. Livia is reeling from the shock, and I am trembling. At that very second, our whole world comes tumbling down.
My father is French? Paralyzed with shock, I repeat Viola’s words over and over to myself. The waiter gets his timing wrong. He comes up to our table and asks if we want another bottle. No one answers him. Livia glares at her childhood friend. Viola has a spiteful look on her face, I don’t recognize her anymore. Their mutual hatred is palpable.
“You’re drunk!” shouts Livia.
“Like you were, the night you met your French friend!” screeches Viola. “A bit less limoncello and Chiara might never have been born!”
“How dare you say such a thing in front of her, have you no shame?”
“And you, you’re not ashamed about lying to your own daughter?”
“Why today of all days?” asks Livia.
Her voice trembles. My mother looks like a betrayed and wounded child. For the first time ever, she drops her guard.
“Revenge,” says Viola. “You told Mattia to dump me. He told me what you said, I didn’t believe him at first. When he called earlier, I could see from your face it was true.”
I hold my breath. Maybe I’ll wake up from this nightmare and find my father grinning in his photo frame, Livia and Viola thick as thieves, and Alessio calling for a chat. Everyone back in their rightful place.
“Mattia will never leave his wife,” croaks Livia.
“You’re a witch,” hisses Viola. “Strega! Puttana! ”
“He makes you suffer! He doesn’t deserve you! I just want what’s best for you. And you crucify me? I trusted you! Chiara, I can explain . . .”
“No,” I say bluntly.
In a stupor, I witness these two women tearing each other apart. The same two that raised me, both battered by life’s harsh realities.
“Viola is lying,” screams Livia as she grips my wrist. “Don’t believe what she says. Your father was wonderful, besides you’re the spitting image of him!”
My mother just deliberately touched me. For the first time in years. This shocks me as much as discovering that my mythical father may not be my real father.
“Livia is lying!” screeches Viola yet again, grabbing my other wrist. “I kept the letter she wrote to me saying that it was better for everyone. The Frenchman was from an island in Brittany. I think his surname had something to do with the weather.”
“I’ll never forgive you!” roars Livia.
She looks me straight in the eye to convince me.
“Your father was killed crossing Piazza del Popolo,” she pleads. “It was my fault because he was looking at me instead of watching where he was going. He died because of me. And I have to bear this cross for the rest of my life.”
She closes her eyes, she doesn’t see me anymore, she’s elsewhere; in that dark place she wakes up in every morning.
“Mattia is dumping me because of you!” shouts Viola with fury. “Ti odio! You are hateful! Believe me, Chiara, there’s a one in two chance your father is alive.”
Livia jumps up with a start and runs out of the restaurant in hysterics.
I’m too upset to go after her.
I look at my godmother. My whole life is in tatters.
“Why today, on her birthday of all days?” I ask.
“Her birthday was actually yesterday, not today. And I’m fifty years old too, you know. Your mother lost her husband, but in return she gained the esteem of the idiots who think that a woman has to be a wife and a mother to have made something of herself. I’ve got nothing, no husband, no bambini, all I had was Mattia a couple of afternoons a week. And she’s snatched that tiny crumb of happiness from me. All I did was give her a dose of her own medicine.”
“Yet I’m the one paying for it.”
“You’re what they call collateral damage. She should have told you the truth a long time ago. She ended up believing her own lies by blotting out the past.”
“What actually happened? Did the Frenchman rape her?” I ask, raising my voice in my distress.
At a nearby table, my words startle two priests about to tuck into a mountain of risotto alla parmigiana.
“Her husband had just died, she was sinking lower and lower,” says Viola. “I forced her to come away with me for a weekend to the island of Elba in Tuscany, to stay with my cousin. Your mother was very beautiful, you know, she had all the men at her feet. They never noticed me, they only had eyes for her . . .”
I think of that picture at home of the two friends on the beach in Ostia. They were the same age I am today. Livia was bewitching, Viola had a pleasant face, but they weren’t in the same league.
“Your mother couldn’t dance; she was in mourning. She was the only one dressed in black, and she sat watching us, sipping her limoncello. The previous day, some French fishermen returning from the port helped my cousin change her flat tyre. She had driven her Panda over a nail in the countryside, so she bought them a round of drinks to thank them. One of them came over and spoke to your mother, who burst into tears. I thought that was a good thing, as she needed to let go, cry, let it all out, instead of being holed up at home as if she was dead.”
“Did he console her?” I ask angrily.
“I danced the night away without giving her a second thought. I saw her again the next morning, as we were flying back to Rome. She didn’t tell me a thing. She had got drunk and was ashamed. The grieving widow who betrays her husband’s memory, just imagine what people would say! When she discovered that she was pregnant, she told only me, not even the gynaecologist. The Frenchman looked a lot like your father. You were a premature baby, the doubt persisted, you could have been the daughter of either of them.”
Livia, the model widow, went off the rails after his death with a passing stranger. I can hardly believe what I’m hearing.
“I’m the only one who knew, for twenty-six years,” concludes Viola.
“And you just decided to spit it out now,” I say in disgust.
“You’ll notice that I waited until your grandmother had passed!”
Nonna Ornella always looked for her son in my every word and gesture. But if my father is not my father, does that mean she’s not my grandmother? Yet I loved her more than Livia. I sigh.
“Revenge is clearly a dish best served cold. Do you feel better now?” I ask her.
Viola shakes her head, she doesn’t dare look me in the eye anymore. I get up and head towards the door. I came to this dinner full of good intentions and I’m leaving with my whole life in tatters, feeling even more unwanted than before. The crack has now become a chasm. Questions go round and round in my head. Outside, I take deep breaths to calm my nerves. But something is bothering me. I rewind. Viola is settling the bill. I go back inside.
“His name had something to do with the weather, but which island was it?”
Crossing from Lorient to Groix
I learned French at a French convent school in Rome where Livia insisted on sending me. Now I finally understand why . . . But I don’t speak Breton, which is spoken exclusively in Brittany. All the signs here are in both languages. I board the boat at Lorient and get off on Groix Island. This is the first time I have set foot in France.
The map of France is the shape of a hexagon. It also resembles . . .
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