Page 82 of Sunrise By the Sea

‘Uh, I live just there,’ reminded Marisa.

She looked around desperately.

‘I am sorry,’ said Alexei

‘Why? I mean thank you! I mean . . .’

They both stood, far apart.

‘I will get . . .’ She was looking for her bowl but he misunderstood and rushed to open the door for her, as if desperate to show he wasn’t about to trap her there or that he even wanted her there, which made her feel worse than ever.

‘Of course, good night, good night. Thank you for dinner.’

Too flustered to bother about her dish, Marisa turned on her heel and fled. Just as she set foot on the steps to go next door, she turned quickly around to see if he was looking at her, but he wasn’t, his dark eyes trained on the piano, and she turned back feeling ridiculous, and half stumbled down the steps, just as his eyes now turned to her and watched her go.

Chapter Forty-nine

‘So. Good family?’

Marisa was suffering from her first hangover in six months, and the weather was dreary and raining and she was in absolutely no mood for an interrogation from her grandmother, bathed in sunshine and shelling peas in her little kitchen. Who? Marisa thought through her foggy head. Who even shelled peas any more?

‘Why are you shelling peas?’

Nonna held them up.

‘The brighter, the sweeter,’ she said. ‘Lilies of the field who do not weave or spin.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Marisa, who was exhausted. Nonna brought her near-sighted little black button eyes up closer to the screen.

‘You look tired. What time did you get home?’

‘Um, not too late,’ lied Marisa through her teeth. She hadn’t even noticed what time it was.

‘You didn’tdrink?’

Hernonna’s face was stern.

‘Noooo . . . A little bit. HeisRussian.’

Nonna sniffed.

‘Nonna! Things are different these days.’

‘You go to a man’s house, you take him food, you drink with him, you come home and you look terrible. Is this what you had hoped for the evening?’

Everything had seemed even worse in the cold light of the morning. Hernonnawas right: she had offered herself up on a plate, and he had patiently explained how he much he missed his ex. And oh my God, of course, all the old ladies of the village who came up to practise Celine Dion songs for him. She was absolutely in that category too. She groaned. How could she have made such an idiot of herself?

But the worse thing was, when she put that to one side, she had felt the evening was . . . it was wonderful. She had liked him. Laughing together and drinking vodka, and how touchingly he had taken her into his confidence, talked about his life; it had been a real conversation, not idle chit-chat or the desperate flotsam of Tinder dates, where you talked about other dates you’d been on, or whether you liked dogs or pudding. It had been a real sharing of their lives.

And then when he showed her how to play . . . her fingers still tingled at the memory of it, of feeling engulfed by the music.

And then she’d gone and spoiled it all.

‘Do you like this boy?’ said hernonna.

Marisa shrugged her shoulders. ‘It’s been such a long time.’

‘I think that says yes.’

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