AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Jamie loaded the other pizza bases with toppings. ‘If we lived in Italy, could we eat this all the time? I bet you made loads of pizzas with your parents when you were little, Dino.’
Dino thought about the atmosphere of his parents’ home. On the rare occasions he’d been allowed to join his parents for dinner, it had been an excruciatingly formal occasion with no concession to the presence of children. His sister and he had endured countless long, boring evenings when he would rather have been playing or asleep.
‘I didn’t make pizza, but I always wanted to.’ At the time he hadn’t imagined that kids did that sort of thing with their parents, but clearly he was wrong.
Jamie pushed a base across to him. ‘Go on, then. The cheese and tomato is the hard part and I’ve done that for you. You just have to choose what else you want.’
Smiling, Dino sprinkled olives, pepperoni and mushrooms and Meg slid the pizzas into the oven.
Jamie jumped down from his stool. ‘I’m going to watch TV until it’s ready. Don’t let them burn, Mum.’ He vanished from the room and Meg gave Dino an apologetic glance.
‘Sorry.’ She started clearing the various bowls from the table. ‘Not what you’re used to, I’m sure.’
‘No. It’s better.’
‘Don’t patronise us, Dino.’
‘Is that what you think I’m doing?’
‘You just admitted you didn’t eat pizza when you were a child.’
‘Not because I didn’t want to. Usually my sister and I ate alone in the kitchen with one of the nannies while my parents entertained in the dining room.’ He looked around her kitchen. ‘And the kitchen was nothing like this one.’
‘You mean messy.’
‘I mean homely.’ He picked up one of Jamie’s paintings that had been tidied to one side of the table. ‘He’s such an important part of your life. The evidence is everywhere.’
‘That’s because I don’t spend enough time cleaning the place.’ She blew the strands of hair away from her eyes. ‘I’m not a natural housekeeper.’
‘You’re proud of him. It shows. And the place looks fine to me. No kid wants to live in a mausoleum.’
Startled by the sudden abruptness in Dino’s voice, Meg risked asking a personal question. ‘Is that how your house felt when you were growing up?’
Dino pushed his chair away from the table and stretched out his legs. ‘We had paintings wired to alarm systems that connected straight through to the police station. Once I brought half the Rome police force round to the house by kicking a football indoors.’
‘Ah.’
‘My parents’ child-care strategy was that children shouldn’t be seen or heard. Which meant that basically we lived separate lives.’
A tiny frown creased her brow. ‘I admit that doesn’t sound great.’
‘It wasn’t.’ Dino spoke quietly, not wanting to disturb too many of the memories. ‘So perhaps now you’ll believe me when I say I’m enjoying pizza night.’
‘Oh, well—good.’
‘You do this every Friday?’
‘Yes. Unless I’m working.’ She washed her hands and removed her apron. ‘I wanted to thank you again for what you did yesterday. It’s made all the difference to Jamie. And to me. It was such a relief to see him bouncing out of school today instead of slinking along. I can always tell what sort of day he’s had by the way he walks out of the building.’
‘It was tough not intervening. I wanted to pick Freddie up by the collar and give him a talking to.’
‘I think you found a more effective way of silencing him. Hopefully it will all calm down now.’ Reaching up, she closed the blind in the kitchen. ‘It’s snowing again. Did you hear that they’ve issued an avalanche warning? Can you believe that in the Lake District?’
‘We have had half a metre of snow in some places. Add to that a high wind and you end up with drifts that are only loosely attached to the mountainside. The snow pack needs time to consolidate.’
‘I suppose you’re used to it, having been brought up in the Alps. Apparently it’s lethal underfoot. Some of the edges are literally breaking away and if you’re standing underneath at the time, you’re in trouble. They’re warning people not to venture out. But people will, of course. There’s always someone who thinks they’re cleverer than the weather.’ The conversation was light, skating over the surface of the personal, but he felt the undercurrent of tension and he knew she felt it, too.
Since that moment in the tent on the mountain, everything had changed.
