Read A Funeral in Fiesole for Free Online Page B

silver. Silver tree, silver ornaments, silver tinsel … you know.’
    ‘You loved it.’
    ‘Yes. Paola didn’t. She thought Christmas was a waste of time and she hated the cold. She hated the church thing.’
    ‘Church!’
    I laughed. ‘Mama liked the traditional, the festive … I don’t know … the ceremonial thing about Christmas. She didn’t go to church otherwise, we were never religious or anything, but we’d all jump into our best gear and go to a Christmas service and sing.’
    Grant’s eyes showed something like pleasure, or like envy. ‘My childhood was nothing like yours.’
    ‘We didn’t all want it. We didn’t all enjoy it every year. We had nuts and oranges and this huge pudding Papa would set aflame when we were quite little. Nigel wanted to do it when he died, but the job fell to me because I was older.’
    Grant dug his chin into my shoulder. ‘You set a pudding aflame.’
    ‘Mm.’
    ‘Such a jolly family. Didn’t you ever fight or anything?’
    I had to laugh again. ‘Continually. I always wanted what Paola had. She was secretive and cagey. Selfish. I stole comics and books from her room, and she would chase me down the stairs flicking a wet towel at my legs.’
    ‘Girls’ comics. How very Brod.’
    ‘Yes. Well, the stories made more sense than Dennis the Menace and Desperate Dan.’



 
 
Paola
     
     
    A mistake to look backward
     
     
    The funeral was on the coming Saturday, which meant many more unsettling nights in my old room. I always had the same dreams in this house, identical to the ones I had as a teenager. Brod and Grant did the right thing by staying in town. Who wanted to lie awake waiting for drops from the ceiling to ding and splash into a zinc bucket on the rug?
    I didn’t want to gaze at Neptune on the wall, on the way up. He would squint at me, to say, ‘You’ll never have it your way. You’ll never persuade anyone about anything.’
    And yet, and yet, I wanted the house more than I wanted anything. No – there was one more thing, which might be impossible to find – lost forever. Everything was lost.
    Last night, I sat up, startled by the sound of rain against my window panes, and wished for the thick insulating curtains and shutters on my wonderful Melbourne house. My dream-come-true house. I made sure everything in it was perfect before John and I moved there from our first home, and we undertook two thorough renovations through the years. I promised myself the perfect office, to write in. When the contract and advance for my third series came in, I was fortunate enough to get it. More time has been spent in my office than in any other room.
    Living close to the sea in Melbourne was not unlike Cornwall used to be, John would insist. We had spent enough time in the Newquay cottage for him to make a good comparison. It was different for me of course. He did not have a childhood like mine, with Mama insisting on a traditional Christmas dinner, and a traditional this and a traditional that. I would resent it as a thirteen year-old. Now, I saw how it had shaped and formed me. Could it be I was starting to take on Mama’s conventional ways?
    John grew up in Australia, where everything was pleasantly back-to-front, with scorching Christmases and large platters of prawns, and bodysurfing on white beaches until his skin was pink and wrinkly. The surfing was why he liked Newquay. The fact it had a nice square tower, like the one in Fiesole, meant little to him. He didn’t have three siblings. He could not know how competitive the oldest sibling can get. How sullen, envious, introverted, how desirous of peace and solitude. I was glad he didn’t meet me as a teenager. He would have hated me.
    I remembered Mama marching us all to get new winter outfits, and I would never know what to choose. Indecisive about colours and styles until someone else chose something, and then I would envy it. Suzanna was an easier child to please. She liked boots and scarves and