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Her lips had pressed together and a surge of hurt, or perhaps covetousness, had risen in her chest as it had dawned on her that the bats residing there were actually wings of forbidden desire.
Beatrice had hurriedly looked away from the church, but the feeling had not abated.
Instead it had remained.
More accurately, it had grown.
It was so unexpected.
So unfamiliar that she would have done anything to speak with a friend.
It was so disquieting that on her birthday she returned to the place where she’d been born—hoping for what, Beatrice didn’t quite know.
Trebordi hadn’t changed much in a decade.
Standing on the headland, she held on to her straw hat to stop it from flying away. Until that moment, Beatrice had thought she’d changed. She had changed her surname, her identity, built a career, conversed mainly in English...yet deep down, Beatrice knew she hadn’t changed at all.
Here she stood, on her twenty-ninth birthday, staring at the convent in which she’d been raised and she was still as scared and as lonely as the little girl who had grown up there.
More so, even.
She’d had Alicia then.
And now she was more desperate than ever to find her.
Beatrice yearned for advice from her friend. But she didn’t know where to start looking, or the reception she might receive even if she found Alicia.
After all, it had been Beatrice who had changed her name from Festa to Taylor. It was she who had broken off all hope of making contact. And she was still bitterly ashamed of the reason she had done so.
Beatrice stood watching the nuns starting to file out of the convent, heading towards the village for Saturday night gelati.
They had a better social life than she!
She stiffened as two particular nuns walked out through the convent gates. Sister Josephine had aged, and walked a little more slowly now, but it was Sister Catherine at her side who caught Beatrice’s attention.
She watched as they passed the baby door, where she’d been left, naked and unwrapped, with the umbilical cord still attached.
They were so deep in conversation that they passed it without so much as a glance. Certainly Sister Catherine didn’t notice the slight woman who was watching them, almost willing her to linger, to acknowledge the box, to cast a glance around and see if her daughter was here on her birthday.
Nothing.
‘What the hell are you even doing here, Beatrice?’ she asked herself, and headed straight back to the rental car that had brought her there.
Beatrice would not be heading into the village.
She was done.
And on the flight back to Bellanisiá Beatrice made a private vow that next year, for her thirtieth, she would go somewhere wonderful. She would make friends and drink Birthday Girl Martinis, which she’d heard about but never tried. She would kiss someone and make love, even if the thought terrified her. She would do anything not to be as cold and as unfeeling as the woman who had birthed her.
Beatrice could feel the snap of her own thawing, and it hurt, but she was determined to do it.
She’d hire a gigolo if she had to.
It was when she arrived back at her little flat on the marina that she broke down.
Oh, she hadn’t gone to Trebordi hoping for words of wisdom from her mother—that was a joke—but she ached for a friend, a true friend, to give her some gentle advice.
And yet she had fled.
