I still recall, as if through a faded photograph, the summer of my youth when I first set foot in the bustling fair at Whitby. A fortuneteller, her eyes as dark as a cavern, seized my wrist and sang in a lilting tone:
Fair maiden, your destiny lies in a sunkissed land where the air tastes of sea and ripe grapes.
I laughed, the sound bright as a bell.
Nonsense! I shall never leave my own town.
Life slipped on, as steady as the tide. I married for love, welcomed my little daughter Ethel, and dreamed of a second child. Yet I kept my place at the mill, thinking, A few years work, perhaps five or six, and then I might think of a boy.
Then a work trip turned my plans upside down. My neighbour, Nurse Margaret, called in a breathless whisper:
Ethel, theyve just brought your husband, Thomas, to hospital! The ambulance came from an unfamiliar address on the other side of the lane.
Family secrets, Ive learned, have a way of surfacing when you least expect them.
The evening I returned home felt like the opening of a grim thriller. Thomas staggered in, pale, his arm bound, avoiding my gaze.
From which address did they take you? I asked softly.
His silence said more than any answer. It soon emerged that a solitary woman, a colleague of Thomas, had been sharing his friendship for over a year.
People are of varied temperaments. Some turn a blind eye, some raise a storm, then, clenching their teeth, set a plate of soup before the betrayer. I was of a different mould. I did not wait for Thomas at the ward; there was a wounded soul to tend.
Packing the essentials into an old suitcase, I took trembling Ethel by the hand and left our shared flat without a backward glance.
We start anew, my love, I whispered, clasping her tiny palm.
My mother took us in at first. Soon after, I divorced, split the square footage with Thomas, and mortgaged a modest cottage on a modest £12,000 loan. I lived on autopilot, striving to secure a future for my daughter.
Years later, wearied by toil and solitude, I boarded a modest bus to the Cotswolds, to the welcoming home of my old friend Olivia, a stones throw from Oxford. I had long postponed the trip, fretting over every penny, but the pressure became unbearable. I hoped the English sunshine would melt the ice around my heart.
Olivia, listening to my bitter confessions Ill never learn to trust again, Love is a phantom to me could bear it no longer. She slipped a call to a man she knew, the proprietor of a nearby vineyard:
Giovanni, I need a rider named Liam. Tell him I have a bride waiting.
My thoughts were far from romance. I was already in my nightgown, a book in hand, trying to push away the gloom of the endless southern night.
A knock at the door startled me. Within a minute, Olivia burst into my bedroom, eyes alight.
Ethel, get up! Your fiancé has arrived!
I chuckled at the absurdity, but slipped on my gown and followed her to the sitting room.
There he stood: tall, a touch of silver at his temples, eyes twinkling with mischief. Liam. In his arms he cradled a battered leather helmet; beside him rested a weatherworn motorcycle, its chrome dulled by miles. He had ridden twenty kilometres up a winding hill, under a canopy of stars, just to see a stranger.
Olivia told me youre a proper English lady? he asked in halting English, his accent a strange melody.
I, stunned, extended a hand. He closed it around mine, warm and firm, and we never let go. We settled on the sofa, hands locked, speaking a language of gestures, smiles, and glances, for I knew little Italian and he scarcely any English. Yet the conversation surged, vivid and urgent, as Olivia, smiling, slipped away, leaving us alone with the birth of something unexpected.
At dawn he departed again, mounting his iron steed. Later I learned his life had been a series of setbacks: two failed marriages, no children, no home, a cramped flat above his brothers garage, and a heart that had nearly given up on happiness.
Ten days before his next departure we agreed on everything.
Ill return, I said simply to his proposal. We shall live together.
The months that followed back home were a whirlwind: losing my job, packing, strained talks with relatives who could not comprehend my madness. My phone rang constantly.
My sunshine, how are you? I miss you. Liam.
Our new window looks onto an olive grove. Your room awaits. Your Liam.
The sevenyear age gap (I was the elder) and the twelveyearold Ethel he would have to love mattered not to him.
One afternoon, seated on the sundrenched terrace of our new cottage overlooking rolling hills, I asked, arm around his shoulders:
Liam, why did you trust us so quickly? Why werent you afraid?
He turned, his eyes reflecting the whole of the Tuscanlike countryside.
An old winemaker once told me Id meet a woman from the east, a soul stormy yet seeking peace, who would bring the luck Ive been cultivating in my vines but never finding. Thats you, Ethel.
And? I whispered, tears welling. Did you find that luck?
He gave no answer, only drew me close and kissed me as if it were both our first and last kiss. Then, with a bright smile, he said:
She found me herself. I am endlessly happy.
And indeed, life fell into a better rhythm. A good job came, we secured a mortgage on a modest house with a view of the hills. Liam grew fond of our stepdaughter Ethel, now eager to master the language of the land. Each morning he brings me coffee spiced with cinnamon, each evening the house fills with the scent of his divine pasta. His love is evident in the wildflowers he places on the table, the tender touches, the caring glance he offers as I rise.
Ethel blossomed. I can no longer deny that I once thought joint happiness a myth. Now I know: happiness is real, it wanders the world and stubbornly seeks its other half. When it finds it, it binds them together with such force that no storm can ever frighten them again.
