Miss You Read Free Page B

have stirred himself in these circumstances? I pictured him in
the pub milking the self-pity, with his mates buying him pints. Dad was always moaning about the hand life had dealt him.
    I found a can of Heinz spaghetti in the cupboard and put a slice of bread in the toaster.
    Hope was staring at me, but my mind was so full with trying to take it all in, I couldn’t think of anything to say to her.
    The spaghetti began to bubble on the stove.
    I slopped it onto the piece of toast, recalling the bowl of perfectly al-dente pasta we’d eaten in Fiesole the day before, with a sauce that tasted of a thousand tomatoes in one spoonful,
and Florence in the distance, the backdrop to a Leonardo painting, so far away now, it felt like another life.
    The dictionary confirmed that ‘plangent’ means resonant and mournful. It comes from the Latin
plangere
: to beat the breast in grief.

2
August 1997
GUS
    I took up distance running after my brother died because it was an acceptable way of being alone. Other people’s concern was almost the most difficult thing to deal with.
If I said I was OK, they looked at me as if I was in denial; if I admitted I was finding things pretty difficult, there was no way for them to make it better. When I said I was training for a
charity half-marathon to raise money for people with sports injuries, people nodded, satisfied, because Ross had been killed in a skiing accident, so it made sense.
    At optimum speed, the rhythmic pounding of shoe on road delivered a kind of oblivion that had become addictive. It was what made me get out of bed every morning, even on holiday, although in
Florence, the uneven cobbles and sudden, astonishing encounters with beauty, made it difficult to maintain a pace that made me forget where or who I was.
    On the last day of the holiday, I ran along the Arno at dawn, crossing the river in alternate directions at each bridge, then looping back on myself to mirror the route, with the pale gleam of
the sun in my eyes one way and its warmth on my back the other. With only an occasional road-sweeper for company, it felt as if I owned the place, or, perhaps, that it owned me. At the level of
cardiovascular exertion that freed ideas to float across my mind, it occurred to me that I could come back to Florence one day, even live here, if I wanted. In this historic city, I could be a
person with no history, the person I wanted to be, whoever that was. At eighteen, the thought was a revelation.
    On my third crossing of the Ponte Vecchio, I slowed to a walking pace to cool down. There was no one else around. The glittering goldsmiths’ wares were hidden behind sturdy wooden boards.
There was nothing to indicate that I hadn’t been transported back in time five hundred years. Yet somehow it felt less real than it had the previous evening, heaving with tourists. Like a
deserted film set.
    I suppose I’d hoped to find the girl there again. Not that I’d have known what to say to her any more than I had on the first two occasions. Handing back the camera, I hadn’t
even been brave enough to make eye contact, then, given a third chance, I’d blown that too.
    Standing in the queue for ice cream beside the bridge, I’d felt a tap on my shoulder, and there she was again, smiling as if we’d known each other all our lives and were about to go
on some amazing adventure together.
    ‘There’s this brilliant
gelato
place just down Via dei Neri where you can get about six for the price of one here!’ she informed me.
    ‘I don’t think I could manage six!’
    My attempt at wit had come out sounding pompous and dismissive. I wasn’t very practised at talking to girls.
    ‘Honest to God, you would from this place!’
    Why don’t you show me where it is? Great! Let’s go there! None of the responses I’d like to have given had been available with my parents standing right beside me. Instead,
I’d stared at her like a moron, with sentences jostling for position in my head as