Page 22 of Far from Home
‘He left it to me in his will.’
‘So you must have known him well?’
Amy shook her head. ‘No, that’s the thing – I never met him. I have no idea why this man I’ve never even heard of should have decided to leave me this gorgeous house.’
‘That sounds strange. Are you sure you’ve no idea?’
Amy hesitated. The idea that she might be Martin Slater’s daughter was still little more than conjecture and she didn’t feel like sharing it for now, particularly with somebody she barely knew. However, what Adam said next shook her to the core.
‘You want to know what I think, Amy? I think he might have been your father.’
Amy was stunned. ‘Whatever makes you think that? Did he say something?’
‘Yes, in fact, he did.’ Amy sat up and took notice as he continued. ‘You see, he and I got to know each other pretty well. When I first arrived here four years ago, I only knew Danny. Then I met Mart and we just clicked. We were both sort of on our own over here, both outsiders, and we both used to live in Canada. I was born in Canada but I left Vancouver for the States when I was twenty-one and I lived in LA for ten years. I suppose that, and living here in Italy, has knocked the corners off my Canadian accent.’
Amy found herself wondering what he meant by ‘sort of on our own’. If he was living with Danny, why would he say that? Doing a quick bit of calculation, she tried to work out his age. He looked as though he was a bit older than Danny, maybe four or five years or so. He’d told her he’d been in Tuscany for four years so that would make him…
He must have read her mind because he helped her out. ‘I’m thirty-five.’ His smile broadened. ‘Which makes me a whole lot older than you, but, don’t worry, I’m not going to ask your age. We Canadians are brought up to be polite.’
She found herself smiling back at him. ‘I’ve just turned thirty-one but thank you for your tact.’
‘I had you pegged for twenty-five. Anyway, Mart and I used to play tennis together most weeks. The fact that we have floodlights on the courts was down to him. He was very generous. Even though he was twenty-five years older than me, he was red-hot, and he beat me more times than I beat him. By the way, the tennis club courts are on the far side of town if you ever want to play. I’d be delighted to give you a game.’
‘Thanks, but I haven’t played since school. So, go on. What did he say about me?’
‘It was only once. It was winter of last year, maybe eighteen months ago now, and he’d just been diagnosed with the degenerative heart condition that killed him. I took him out to dinner at the Vecchia Cantina – that’s a great little restaurant about ten k’s from here – and let him pour his heart out.’ His tone softened. ‘He didn’t have anybody, you see. I suppose I was just about his closest friend. It’s sad, really.’
Amy could feel the tears welling up for this unknown man, but she was powerless to do anything about them. She just nodded and Adam carried on.
‘When we came back to his place after the meal, he brought out a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and we both drank far too much. That was the one and only time he ever mentioned he had a daughter, but he’d never seen her. I remember telling him he was crazy and he should try to make contact with what would have been a grown woman by that time, but he wouldn’t hear of it.’ He caught her eye. ‘That’s something else about us Canadians. To us – at least, most of us – a promise is a promise.’
‘A promise made to whom?’
‘To the mother of his child. I never got any more out of him but it sounded as though she’d made him swear to stay away from her and her child.’
Amy felt a tear run down her face and she didn’t reply for quite a while. The sofa beside her creaked and for a moment the thought crossed her mind that Adam might be coming to comfort her, but it was a more familiar and less fragrant body that tried to climb onto her lap. She looked down into a pair of worried brown eyes and couldn’t help smiling.
‘Thanks, Max, but it’s all right.’ She persuaded him to sit back down again and as he settled onto the floor at her feet she ran the back of her hand across her face and looked up at the Canadian. ‘Sorry about that, Adam. It’s sad to think of anybody having to go through the last months of a terminal diagnosis on their own. I’ve just been through pretty much the same thing with my mum, and hearing you talk about it brought it all back to me.’ She pulled a tissue out of her pocket and wiped her eyes. ‘Sorry about that. Maybe we should talk business.’
He must have seen that she needed to change the subject as he got up without a word and went back to his desk, returning with a sheaf of papers. He sat down alongside her and passed them across. Glad to have something else to take her mind off the possible significance of what he had just told her, she shuffled through the sheets. Most were on Italian Ministry of Cultural Affairs headed paper, or from the tax authorities, and all were convoluted and verbose. After her experience over the past few days, she was no stranger to Italian bureaucracy, so after a minute or two she turned towards him to offer reassurance.
‘This is mostly just boilerplate stuff. If you can give me or email me copies of everything, I should be able to get through them pretty fast. I’ll fill in what I can and I’ll highlight where you need to add stuff. The good news is that I don’t see any threats to close you down or make you pay exorbitant sums of money so, like I say, it’s just a series of bureaucratic hoops to jump through. Nothing unusual there – we are in Italy after all, and they’re legendary for their bureaucracy. I’ll be happy to help you with it.’
An expression of considerable relief crossed his face and for a moment she got the impression he might even be about to lean over and kiss her. She caught her breath but, instead, he just gave her a broad smile.
‘That’s great to hear. Thank you so much. Give me your contact details and I’ll send it all across to you.’
On her way back home later on, her mind was filled with two main thoughts – could it be that Martin Slater had been her father, and how would she have reacted if Adam really had tried to kiss her?
Chapter 13
Back at the hotel, Amy quickly completed translations of the papers Adam had given her and sent them back to him with a note confirming her initial impression that he didn’t need to be too concerned about the contents. Some follow-up action was needed for some of them and she repeated that she would be happy to help out if required. She spent a lot of the evening thinking about Adam and what he had said. As far as Martin Slater was concerned, it was looking more and more likely that he and her mother must have had an affair, but without proof she was unwilling to entertain the thought that everything her mother had told her had been a lie. Could it really be that her real father hadn’t been an officer in the Marines, tragically killed on active service as told by her mum, but a totally different man? It would, of course, explain the amazing bequest, but until she could get concrete proof, she refused to let herself believe it.
She also allowed herself a few minutes to think about Adam. She couldn’t deny the frisson that had gone through her when she’d seen him up close in his office, but she knew deep down that she would do well to dismiss any romantic ideas. First, he appeared to already be in a relationship, and second – and most importantly – she was already in a relationship herself, however precarious, with Gavin.
Although the farmers were crying out for rain, it was unseasonably hot – no doubt to the delight of people on the beaches down on the coast – over the next couple of days and nights. The hotel didn’t have air conditioning but she was pleased to find it was still cool enough in her room with the window open, for her to be able to sleep all through the night, albeit just covered by a single sheet. What was interesting was that she fell asleep both nights thinking not of Gavin, but of Adam.
On Saturday morning, after taking Max for a walk in the fields, she plucked up enough courage to venture down to the cellar to take a better look around. All went well at first, but not for long. She was sifting through a pile of old junk and lifted an old china chamber pot when there was a sudden movement beneath it. She found herself confronted by a black and yellow snake, barely a foot long, clearly annoyed at losing the roof over its head. She dropped the pot, which smashed on the ground, before she scampered back up the stairs as fast as she could.
