AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I put my mug down. ‘You phoned me?’
‘Yes. I couldn’t get through to your mobile – it wouldn’t even connect. I suppose the signal isn’t great up there in the Highlands.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘The house is in a bit of a dead spot.’
Angie nods. ‘I can imagine. Anyway, I phoned your landline and your husband answered. Duncan, is it? I told him all about the vigil, and he said that he was sure you’d love to be there, and that he’d ask you about it and get back to me. Then he phoned about half an hour later and said that you’d talked about it and you weren’t feeling up to coming. Losing your granny had been a terrible shock and you wouldn’t be able to cope. He sounded completely convincing.’ She grimaces. ‘From the way he talked, I didn’t expect to see you at the funeral, either.’
For a moment I don’t know how to respond. All I can think about is how I had to argue with Duncan to be allowed to come here at all. He said that funerals were for the living, and attending wouldn’t bring Granny back. He said the train tickets would be extortionate, the plane too much of a fiddle, a hotel room an indulgence we couldn’t afford. He said the estate couldn’t spare me and I’d be selfish to go. He said I’d only get angry with my mother and come back and take it out on him. He said I’d only get upset. He said I wouldn’t cope. He said I wouldn’t cope.
‘Tori?’ Angie prompts me.
I stare at her. ‘That bastard,’ I say. ‘That absolute fuckingbastard.’
*
Angie doesn’t tell me what to do. She doesn’t tell me what Jesus would do, either. She just listens as I rant and cry and try to piece things together, supplying more tea and biscuits and, finally, a large whisky from the bottle she keeps in her study. Only when she’s giving me a lift to the station in her ancient Range Rover does she finally say: ‘Tori, if you’re ever in a situation where you need somewhere to stay, there’s a room at the vicarage for however long you need it. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘That’s really kind, thank you.’
‘It’s no problem. And here we are.’ She pulls to a stop in front of the station building. It’s picturesque like the rest of the village, with immaculate whitewash and pots of purple cyclamen. ‘Now, before you go – I meant to give you this earlier, but we had more urgent things to discuss.’ She rummages in her bag and passes me an envelope in thick, heavy cream paper, withTo Victoriawritten on it in Granny’s perfect copperplate.
For a moment I just look at it, there in my hands. This last thing from Granny. ‘Is this…’ I have to clear my throat. ‘Did she write it in hospital?’
‘No. She gave it to me last year, when she was updating her will. She said…’ Angie gives a sort of choked half-laugh. ‘You know, I didn’t really understand at the time. She was worried that if she took ill, she wouldn’t get to say goodbye to you before she died. Not your sister or your mother, specifically you. I remember thinking that she was probably just having a fuss, like people do when they think about mortality. Fixating on something to take away the really big fear.’ She shakes her head. ‘But now… look, she never talked about your husband, or not badly. But I’ve got to wonder if she had him figured out.’
Now I laugh – hiccupy, tearful laughter. ‘Maybe,’ I say, wiping my eyes. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me. Granny’s bullshit-o-meter was always better than mine. I mean, she only met him, what, a handful of times? But maybe…’ I trail off as it dawns on me just how rarely Granny and Duncan had actually met – how often I’d had to choose between him and her. How many trips south got cancelled because of some last-minute problem on the farm? How many times did I cut short one of our phone calls because Duncan needed something?
‘I think you’ve got a lot of processing ahead,’ Angie says gently. ‘If there’s anything you need to talk over…’
There’s the distant, tinny sound of a voiceover announcement and I look up to see a train – my train – already approaching the station. ‘Oh God,’ I say. ‘I’ve got to go. Thanks so much again.’ I’m half-panicked, half relieved. I lean over and give Angie a quick hug before getting out of the car and grabbing my overnight bag from the back seat.
‘No problem,’ she calls after me as I bolt for the entrance. ‘Here any time!’
I make it onto the train just in time. I flop into my seat, put my bag at my feet and look at the envelope, wondering what to do. Of course, I’m desperately curious to know what’s inside. But once I open the envelope, once I read whatever Granny has to say to me, I’ll never have that moment of discovery again. All the words will be finished.
Curiosity wins out as the train approaches Bristol Temple Meads. I rip open the envelope and find a single sheet of paper.
Dearest Tori,
In case I don’t see you, I want to tell you that I have left you and your sister a gift of £30,000 each. You may use it for whatever purpose you think best. My only condition is that you do not spend any part of it on anyone else. This money is for you and you alone. What you do with it isn’t up to me.
But if it were up to me, my darling, I should tell you to go back to Florence. I have such wonderful memories of my time there. With you, of course – but also as a young woman, quite free, with the means to do as I pleased. I can’t give you that freedom, though I’ve often wished you’d take it for yourself. Perhaps I can give you the means.
I love you.
Nonna
2
Stella
Romituzzo, Tuscany, Italy
February 1944
My friend Berta Gallurì was a hero of the Resistance. If she had lived, I think she would have been one of those great twentieth-century women, an intellectual and a fighter – like Lidia Menapace, Ada Gobetti, Tina Anselmi, Carla Capponi, Rossana Rossanda. If she had lived.
Berta was nineteen when the Nazi occupation began in September 1943. She was a bright young woman from a family of anti-Fascists, the daughter of our local pharmacist, and she was studying literature at the University of Florence. The day she opened her shutters and saw a column of German soldiers marching up the via Romana, her first thought was to find a way home, to Romituzzo, because she knew that we would need her. Not as a courier like me, or a combatant like her brother Davide – although there were women combatants, more than you think – but as an organiser.
