Read The Soul Room for Free Online Page B

again.
     

Brighton
2006
     
    Just a week
after our lunch with Nonna I returned home to Hove on a sparkling October day.
I leant my head against the window of the train and watched daggers of sunlight
move across the rolling downland of Haywards Heath. I was still in a kind of
dream-state. England felt alien and ethereal. I’d had a call from my Dad saying
they still hadn’t heard anything from Dan. He was trying to sound like he
wasn’t distressed, but I knew all of his vocal ticks and mannerisms too well to
be fooled. Dad was still trying to hope Dan’s absence was no different to all
the other times, but although he had taken a small suitcase, his laptop and
some clothes, on this occasion he hadn’t had a row with his boyfriend,
Nicholas, and that was often the catalyst of his short disappearances. On top
of that, his thirtieth birthday was coming up and he wasn’t one to miss out on
a birthday, especially a big one. After a few days of no contact Dad had called
the police.
    I felt nauseous with worry for my brother, but also resentful at being
dragged away from Sergio and beautiful Terranima; and that made me feel guilty.
The only consolation was that I seemed to have come back to a clear, sunny
Autumn.
    Walking into my flat heightened the disorientation. I wandered through
the vaguely familiar rooms, trying to suppress the sensation that I was
trespassing on somebody else’s life, like a detective inspecting a crime scene.
At times like these necessity is your salvation. The need to restock your
fridge, to unpack, to open windows, to sort through your mail and messages. I
busied myself for a few hours, then made myself a cup of coffee and remembered
that I had promised to call Sergio as soon as I was settled.
    My flat was on the third floor of a huge detached Regency mansion house
on a grand but now slightly shabby avenue. They had managed to get 12 generous
flats out of the one house, and I often marvelled at what on earth even a very
wealthy early 19 th century family could have done with all these
rooms. The lucky people on the ground and first floors had squares of garden,
but the extent of my outside space was a small ledge above a bay window from
which, if you sat out and craned your neck, you could see the sea. I sat there
now, next to a charming roof Gargoyle, my coffee sending little puffs of steam
out into the rapidly cooling evening air. It was strange to hear Sergio’s rich
warm voice in the one ear, and feel the cold English October air on the other.
    ‘Already I miss you.’
    ‘I miss you too little prince.’
    ‘You are going to come back to me Maddie?’
    ‘Of course, as soon as we find out where Dan is, and can be sure that
he’s ok.’
    ‘Because I’ve been thinking about it mio Tsoro , you love
Terranima, we love each other, and we can have a future.’
    ‘But what would I do Sergio? I couldn’t stay in the big house with your
family, it wouldn’t feel right, and your father will be renting out the
farmhouse soon.’
    ‘This is part of what I’ve been thinking about. We could rent a little
house in the village, there are some beautiful ones.’
    ‘Owned by your father?’
    ‘Well yes, but my famiglia really.’
    ‘But what would I do with myself, my time? Now I feel better I want to be
useful, no more moping around, I want to make a difference, to do things.’
    ‘And you could. The garden you do at the farmhouse is so wonderful,
people will want you to do their gardens. We would just need to advertise.’
    ‘But my Italian is still awful.’
    ‘I can help you with that, you will soon learn.’
    ‘But what about, you know, what I told you about myself. What if I can
never give you a child?’
    ‘And I told you, I don’t care. Perche ti amo, Maddie, that is all
that matters.’
    ‘Well I care, even if you don’t.’ I put my coffee cup down and pressed my
fingers to my eyes, I felt like I might cry. It was so confusing to be home, I
was almost afraid of it, of what it