Page 109 of Sunrise By the Sea

Chapter Sixty-six

It was astonishing how quickly a plan was put together. Everyone knew someone’s brother who could help with putting handles in the bathroom or take on shifts, and before the next day’s evening meal they were almost organised – by which time Marisa was almost dropping with exhaustion and the unfamiliar sense of interacting constantly, all the time, with other people. Although it gave her energy too, in its own way; everywhere she looked, people were chatting and gesticulating, shouting or laughing out loud.

She had missed this, she thought. All the parties skipped, the weddings postponed, the fun put on hold. How much time she had wasted in that little prison she had built, brick by brick, of sadness and fear, all by herself.

This was entirely different; this was a joint effort. It reminded her of the villagers in Mount Polbearne, all pulling together to repair the causeway and look after people’s homes. When one was needed, everyone was there.

And Marisa was all over it: joining in the cooking, helping the cousins with their English homework, debating whether to buy new sheets for Nonna’s bed (they decided against it in the end; she wanted familiarity and the ancient embroidered handed down family sheets, in a massive heavy linen nobody made any more, not new things she wouldn’t recognise that might annoy her, they figured). She was also drawn in to arguing with the senior clinician, who happened to be German, with excellent English, about the benefits of bringing their grandmother home, something he was adamantly set against, insistent that she would die. Lucia through her sobs pointed out that they’d told her she was going to die anyway and he had made a slightly stiff nod and said, ‘Well, this will be quicker’ and Lucia had said, ‘Good!’, and it had more or less deteriorated from there.

Marisa, used to being around grieving relatives, was able to calmly state their case, and her speaking English seemed to impress him, oddly, even if the old argument – we can free up one of your beds – didn’t have anything like the same power here as it would have done in the UK.

Her mother watched, drying her eyes, quietly proud that her unmarried daughter with the mental health issues that she found so hard to brag about was calmly negotiating in two languages in front of everyone, particularly her sister, Ann Angela, and found herself smiling a quiet smile of satisfaction to herself which she hid with her tear-stained handkerchief.

Finally it was arranged. Marisa made a decision. She called Polly and apologised and said that she didn’t know when she’d be back, and Polly said lots of people were complaining that the pizzas weren’t as good and Marisa said she was very sorry about that and Polly said that was okay, as even not quite as good pizza was still very good and popular pizza, so come back when she was ready.

Marisa was too tired – and her Italian was giving out, it had been a long day – when everyone announced they were going out to dinner at, of course, nine at night. She kissed them all fulsomely but announced she was going to have a quiet night. Tomorrow, with Nonna coming home, was going to be a very big day and she wanted to read her book in the bath and turn in early.

Chapter Sixty-seven

With everyone gone, the house was silent; the cicadas played their little creaky song outside, of course, but she had practically ceased to notice it. She went into the tiny garden and, taking in the warm scent of the lilacs and the herbs, stood under the warm sky.

Perhaps she should stay here always, she thought. Her family was here. The weather was good, it was beautiful, she could find something to do.

But even as she thought it, she realised that she was British; that there was too much about her home country she would always miss, from chocolate digestives toFleabagthat she wouldn’t have a hope of explaining here; that she missed her friends so, so much and was going to rectify that as soon as she got home; that she genuinely wanted to go dancing, to go to a party to eat food that wasn’t Italian, to laugh until she was sick. Italy was wonderful, but England was home.

And if she could have the best of both worlds; if she could find her freedom within herself, and only herself – well. That was the most healing thing she could think of, she thought, under the bright starry sky of an Italian summer.

A faint noise pulled at the edges of her consciousness and she frowned. Somebody must be playing the piano near here. How funny. It must follow her everywhere. She frowned and tried to figure out where it was coming from.

That was odd; it sounded like it was coming from inside the house.

Slightly nervously, she turned round again. What on earth was it?

Inside the little kitchen it was louder still; a great crashing epic of a piece, loud and bold, played on a piano . . . Had she left the television on?

Immediately she realised, and felt like a complete idiot. Of course. They’d been out the previous night, but of course – it was coming from the laptop, that was still connected to the flat.

She sat in front of it, even though there was nothing to see in the dark Cornish room. She could hear, though, the great swells of the playing. It sounded absurdly close; close enough to touch. So she simply sat, closed her eyes, opened her mind and listened. She hadn’t really listened before, being too irritated, or sad, or both. But now, here, far away, she let the music take her; music that felt like the rolling of a boat, like a great heavy-masted ship crashing through stormy seas, ploughing up and down through the waves. By the end of it, she felt like clapping, and did so. To her surprise she heard lots of other people too, through the walls, and a resumption of noisy chatter and laughter. Oh my God, he was having a party!

‘Alexei,’ she whispered through the computer. Of course he couldn’t hear her. Experimentally she tried a little louder. ‘ALEXEI?’

But nobody could hear her. She was torn between being insulted at him having a party and not inviting her, admiration for his consideration to wait for her to be gone – and an unexpected desire to be there too.

Chapter Sixty-eight

Marisa had seen lonely deaths in her job. Deaths from people in flats not discovered for months; deaths reported by social workers because there were no family members to love them enough to do it. She had made out death certificates for young drug deaths, and old solitary deaths, and she knew exactly what she was not going to do for her own family.

Nonna was not alone for a second. There was always someone by her side, encouraging her to eat just a littlezuppa del minestrone, the cure for all ills, or reading to her from the old illustrated Bible on the mantelpiece, or playing her favourite music; changing and washing her, briskly and without sentiment; or simply holding her hand or combing her hair.

For such a voluble woman who had talked and talked and talked, she didn’t insist, not any more, on having something to say, even in the few moments she was lucid and could talk. As if she’d told them all she wanted to say – and they repeated, sometimes in hushed tones, her many pointed lectures on the subjects of their fashion choices, their partner choices and their life choices, but in every way with affection.

‘Oh my goodness, thetroubleI got when I went to England with Stefano,’ said Lucia.

‘Well, she was right about Stefano,’ said Ann Angela, earning herself a very Nonna look from her sister.

‘Nonna only ever got a telephone so she could ring me internationally and tell me I’d made every single decision wrong in every conceivable way.’

Lucia smiled.

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