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‘Of course. I’m not sure how we’ve managed to miss this area out of our tours,’ Marco said. ‘We spent some time in the east of the sestieri, but somehow we haven’t wandered here.’
‘That’s because we were meant to come here today. It’s been waiting for me all week, an old friend I haven’t met yet.’
‘That’s exactly what this area is, an old friend. If I ever lived back in Venice full-time, I wouldn’t want to live in the palazzo. I’d prefer a little house tucked away in the back streets here. Something smaller than the London house, overlooking a canal.’
No one Sophie had ever met who lived in London had ever wanted something smaller. Curiosity got the better of her manners. ‘How big is your house in London?’
Marco shrugged. ‘Four bedrooms. It’s just a terrace, round the back of the King’s Road. Three floors and a basement, courtyard garden.’
Sophie managed to keep walking somehow. Just a terrace. Just round the back of the King’s Road. She often walked those streets, picking out her favourites from the ivy-covered, white and pastel painted houses, knowing that houses like that, lifestyles like that, were as beyond her dreams as living on Mars.
She’d known that Marco’s family was rich, knew he had enough money to buy handmade suits and frequent expensive bars, but somehow she hadn’t realised that Marco was rich—really rich, not merely well off—in his own right.
It made everything infinitely worse.
It took two to make a baby, she reminded herself. This wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t trying to trap him, to enrich herself at his expense. But it was what people would think. It might be what he would think and she couldn’t blame him. It would all be so much easier if he were a little more normal, if his family hadn’t made the idea of fatherhood, marriage and settling down into his worst nightmare. If she thought he’d be happy with her news, not horrified...
Preoccupied, she hadn’t noticed where they were walking, barely taking in that Marco had turned out of the narrow road to lead her through an arched gate and onto a rough floor made of wooden slats, leading down to the canal. Wooden, balconied buildings took up two sides of the square, the open canals the other two, and upturned gondolas lined up on the floor in neat rows.
‘Marco!’ A man dressed in overalls, wiping his hands on a rag, just as if this were a normal garage in a normal town, straightened and strode over, embracing Marco in a warm hug. Marco returned the embrace and the two men began to talk in loud, voluble Italian. Sophie didn’t even try to follow the conversation, even when she heard her name mentioned; instead she pulled out her camera and began to take pictures of two young men bending over a gondola, faces intent as they applied varnish to the curved hull. It was the closest she’d got to a gondola in all the time she’d been here; Marco owned his own boat, of course, and had made it clear that gondola rides were only for tourists. She’d not argued but couldn’t help feeling a little cheated out of the quintessential Venetian experience.
‘Sì...sì, grazie.’ Marco embraced the man again and Sophie whipped the camera round to capture the moment, his body completely relaxed, his smile open and wide in a way it never was at the palazzo. His family were only a small part of his world here. He had his business contacts, yes, family obligations and friends—but also this whole other life. His own friends and interests, left behind when he started a new life in London, and yet still obviously important. This was what he would be returning to when he started to spend more time here. Leaving behind the network of business friends he spent his time with in London for people who really knew him. Sophie swallowed. She could go back to Manchester tomorrow and not meet one person who would make her smile the way Marco was smiling now.
‘Ready?’ He stepped over an oar and re-joined Sophie.
‘For what?’
‘I thought you wanted to go shopping and I have a few things I need to buy. Arrivederci,’ he called over his shoulder as they exited the yard as speedily as they had entered it.
Sophie looked back, wishing they’d had more time for her to take in every detail. ‘Is that where gondolas go to die?’
His mouth curved into the rare genuine smile she loved to see, the smile she liked to draw out of him. ‘No, it’s where they go to get better. Tonio’s family have been fixing them for generations. When we were boys he swore it wouldn’t be for him, swore that he would travel the world, be his own man...’
‘What happened?’
Marco shrugged. ‘He travelled the world and realised that all he wanted was to come home and run the yard. Now he’s the most respected gondola maker and fixer in all of Venice.’
