remember things. She wanted everything to be clear.
She tried to order her thoughts, but with Tess looking at her in that probing way she had, it wasn’t easy. She steadied her breathing. So, Edward Westerman was dead. That in itself was not surprising. He must have been well into his nineties. He was the last. First Mama, then Papa, and then Maria, two years ago. She had lost touch with Santina; had no choice but to let her go. And now. Her last link with Sicily gone. She put her hand to her head. There were beads of sweat on her brow. The last link. She felt a wave of panic.
‘Are you all right, Muma?’ Suddenly Tess was all concern. She came over to where Flavia was sitting in the old wooden kitchen chair by the table, and bent forwards, a gentle hand on Flavia’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know it would upset you so much. Were the two of you close?’
Flavia shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not really.’ He hadbeen an Englishman – her employer. She was a young Sicilian girl. And it was so long ago. Though there had been a bond … Edward had been the first man to speak to her in English and he had made it possible for her to come to this country when she was twenty-three. Like her, Edward had felt an outsider in his homeland and so he’d gone to live in Sicily – though it was years before she understood why. Puzzles were like that – you could have all the pieces in front of you and yet still not see the overall picture.
‘What then?’ Tess said.
Flavia smoothed her apron with the palm of her hand.
Iron out all the creases and all will be well
… She couldn’t exactly say what had floored her. The mention of Edward perhaps, the memories, the fact of his death.
Then she realised with a jolt what it was. ‘Why did they contact
you
about his death?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t understand. What does it have to do with you?’
Tess stood next to her, all long legs and blonde-brown unruly hair, looking like the child she once was. ‘He’s left me his house, Muma.’
Flavia blinked, frowned. ‘What?’ She struggled to get her bearings. ‘Why would he do such a thing? He, of all people … ’ He’d understood how it was for Flavia. He himself had broken with England, hadn’t he? Well, hadn’t he …?
‘I don’t have the faintest idea,’ Tess said. She hooked her thumb into the belt loop of her blue jeans. ‘But I thought you might.’
Flavia rose slowly to her feet. There was supper to cook – a distraction. She was not too old to cook – never too old for that, though these days she stuck to the one course and the occasional
dolce
. She and Lenny now lived in a modern house on an English estate of identical houses, and it was very different from Sicily. But
la cucina
was still the most important room. Her kitchen, her food … That could always make everything safe again.
‘Well, now,’ she said. Every time in her life that she’d imagined herself free of Sicily, something from that place snapped at her heels. Now it was Edward and Villa Sirena, house of her childhood. Not that Flavia’s family had lived in the Grand Villa itself, of course, but … What could she say? ‘He had no children,’ Flavia began. ‘Perhaps he felt …’ What had he felt? Responsible? Had he left her daughter the villa to make up for some imagined wrongdoing? She shrugged, aware that this wouldn’t satisfy Tess. Tess had been born curious; she never let things go. Now this. It was as if Edward had known how Tess would be.
Sure enough … ‘But he must have had relatives, Muma.’ That innocent blue-eyed gaze …
‘Maybe not.’ His sister Bea had died some years ago and she too had been childless. Thanks to Bea, Flavia and Lenny had run the Azzurro restaurant in Pridehaven; run it until they retired just over ten years ago. She missed the place – but everyone had to slow down sometime.
‘Or friends?’
‘Who knows?’ Flavia began to slice the aubergines, theknife cutting
Robert Kirkman, Jay Bonansinga