Coming Home

‘I know exactly what you mean.’ Maria threw up her hands and nodded; her eyes dark. ‘My own family in Sicily were once lost to me. I married an Englishman and my father disowned me. And then almost two years ago my mother begged my father to allow me to return for a brief visit. Until then my parents had never even met their grandson! Now I am on my own with Michael and they want me to return permanently, but I am not so sure it would be a good thing for Michael. His life is here and he goes to visit with his father one weekend a month, which would not be possible if we moved back to my home country.’

Maria pushed a bowl of salad towards me. ‘And family is so important,’ she sighed. ‘At home in Sicily, the firstborn son of each generation of our family is always called Michael.’ She reached out and patted her son’s hand proudly. ‘I have kept the tradition although my husband had wanted only British names; but Michael is a British name also, no? More wine, Vincenzo?’ Maria paused to replenish our glasses before we could refuse. ‘Please, help yourselves to the salad. In Sicily we always have the salad first, but it is so cold outside I thought you would like to start with the hot dish.’ She turned to her son. ‘Michael, stop playing with your food and put some of it in your belly; you are so thin.’ She turned to me. ‘The youngsters today don’t eat enough, do they? I blame the film stars; they are all like stick insects.’

I glanced at Vincent, but he was keeping his head down, piling salad onto his plate next to the pasta and meatballs and tucking in. Michael seemed content to let his mother do all the talking and we ate while Maria prattled on about one thing and another, all the time plying us with wine. After the main course and salad she placed the cheese platter in front of us. I nibbled at a slice of Roquefort on a cream cracker—and almost gagged. The cheeses had looked so enticing, but now I had a piece in my mouth I realised I didn’t like the taste of it at all.

Swallowing with difficulty, the significance of what had just happened suddenly hit me. A tiny bit of the person I really was had revealed itself to me. I wanted to shout for joy.

‘I don’t like cheese,’ I whispered triumphantly to Vincent as Maria went off to fetch coffee. ‘I don’t like cheese!’

He raised an eyebrow.

‘It’s the first thing I’ve found out about the real me,’ I explained. ‘Whoever I am and wherever I came from—I don’t like cheese.’

Vincent smiled as the significance of my discovery dawned on him. ‘Thank goodness you liked the meatballs then, and didn’t turn out to be a vegetarian! I told you Maria was an excellent cook.’

‘You were right,’ I groaned. ‘And I’ve overindulged big time. I don’t think I’ll ever need to eat again.’

‘Unless the roads clear soon we shall none of us eat again,’ Maria proclaimed as she set the coffee tray on the table. ‘The only shop within a reasonable walking distance is the newsagent’s and I don’t think we can survive the winter on crisps and sweets.’

I blanched, horrified that we had cleared Maria’s stock of food just when she should have been rationing it.

‘Don’t look so guilty!’ she laughed, patting my hand. ‘The snow will be gone before we starve. I was only jesting with you.’

She poured the thick black coffee into tiny cups and placed them on coasters in front of us. Michael, who had remained the archetypal monosyllabic teenager throughout the meal, got up and began clearing the rest of the table. Although I offered to help, Maria would have none of it. Soon the table was empty of everything, including the tablecloth, leaving a polished walnut surface on which Michael placed a couple of coasters for our wine glasses, coffee cups and a large white candle in a silver holder.

Maria leaned forward, her eyes shining. ‘Have you ever felt the presence of a ghost in this great shared house of ours, Vincenzo?’

Vincent gripped his glass of wine tightly as he stared at the candle and I regarded our hostess suspiciously as she gave a tinkly laugh.

‘What makes you ask such a thing?’ Vincent’s voice held a tremor of alarm, though his eyes never left the candle.

‘I thought that while we were cut off from the outside world and feeling mellow after the wine, we could tell ghost stories and frighten one another,’ she said easily. ‘There is nothing like a good ghost story as after-dinner entertainment, I think.’ She turned back to the sideboard and brought out an incense stick, which she lit with a theatrical flourish before sitting back, smiling round at us.

Determined not to be dragged into it all, I drained my cup quickly and gave Vincent a pointed stare, expecting him to take the hint. ‘We shouldn’t keep Tara waiting too much longer, I suppose?’

Vincent took another mouthful of his wine, his eyes now fixed on Maria’s. ‘Tara’s probably turned in by now. I’d like to hear what Maria has to say.’

He rested his wine glass on the table. I could feel the anxiety emanating from him as he sat back in his chair. It was almost as if he had resigned himself to the inevitable and didn’t have the energy to fight it. I watched as Maria smiled knowingly, refilled his wine glass and poured more coffee into my cup.

‘I’ve got homework, Mum.’ Michael got up from the table. I had the impression he’d heard his mother’s stories many times before. He left the room, turning off the main light as he went, which left only two wall lights glowing dimly. Maria didn’t even seem to register his absence but sat staring at Vincent in a room that looked suddenly eerie and menacing in the flickering candlelight.

‘Cheryl and I often used to share a bottle of wine together in the evenings when you were late home from work or away on business,’ Maria said into the silence. ‘She was a good friend to me. I still miss her, you know.’

‘What has this to do with your ghost story?’

‘Oh, we used to tell one another stories, Cheryl and I. I think she was glad to leave the little girls with the housekeeper once in a while and remind herself she was something other than the mother of two sick children.’ She narrowed her eyes at Vincent and I wondered if I detected a hint of accusation behind the easy chatter. ‘Cheryl was good company. Sometimes we speculated about the house being haunted, the way the floorboards creak and the pipes groan when they settle. We fancied we could imagine a lonely spirit walking from one house to the other, passing through the dividing walls as if they were nothing more than thin air. And recently,’ Maria continued, ‘it seems that things have begun to vanish when I put them down and later turn up somewhere else. But Cheryl is no longer here to speculate on these things.’

I thought immediately of the previous night when I’d suffered such bad dreams and found myself wondering what these two residences had been like when they had been one big house.

‘I didn’t know Cheryl believed in ghosts.’ Vincent’s voice sounded hollow and nervous.

‘Perhaps there were things you did not know about her.’ Maria’s dark eyes glittered in the candlelight. ‘In my experience men never listen to what their wives are truly saying.’

I felt Vincent stiffen beside me but he remained silent. I could hear the accusation plainly in her voice now and wondered why Vincent was still sitting here listening to this woman inferring that he had not been a good husband. I nudged Vincent’s arm, wishing we could go back to his own half of the old house. I was tired, my head had begun to throb, and I didn’t want to be drawn into some strange quarrel between people I hardly knew. I suddenly felt more lost and alone than ever. This was not my world and these people were virtual strangers. I wished I could simply get up and leave.

Vincent at last seemed to sense my unease and started to push back his chair. ‘I don’t want to talk about my wife and daughter. It was all a long time ago. I don’t see any point in dragging up the past.’

Maria seemed unperturbed by Vincent’s reproof. ‘Sometimes the past has to be properly addressed before you can make a future.’ She reached out and laid her darkly taloned fingers on his arm. I felt a degree of embarrassment as she peered into his eyes, as though I was witnessing something private and meaningful pass between them; something in which I was not included.

Vincent stilled and I found I was holding my breath as they stared one another down. The candle sputtered suddenly as if a gust of air had entered the room and at that same moment the wall lights seemed magically to switch themselves off, breaking the spell between them. The room was plunged into momentary blackness and I gave a small yelp of fright. But the candle recovered, the flame burned bright once more and I watched as Maria removed her hand from Vincent’s arm in a room that was now dark save for the flickering candle.

‘I think we’ve had a power cut.’ Vincent seemed to come to his senses as he pushed his chair all the way back. He motioned to the pitch-black hall beyond the dining room. ‘The lights are out there too.’

Maria also appeared to give herself a mental shake. She flicked the wall switches up and down to no avail, then moved to the sideboard and returned with another candle, which she lit from the one in the centre of the table. ‘I will take this up to Michael,’ she said as his voice called and footsteps sounded on the stairs in the hallway.

Vincent and I followed Maria out into the hallway, waited while she reassured her son and handed him the candle to take back upstairs. Shivering, I pulled on the cardigan Maria then held out for me. As I buttoned it I wondered again what trick of fate had brought me to this place where so many unseen currents ran just below the surface.

‘The strange thing is,’ Maria announced, her sultry voice echoing in the darkness as she walked us to the door and fumbled for the latch as if nothing untoward had happened, ‘that Cheryl used to confide in me all the time, but she didn’t even tell me she was thinking of leaving you.’

Chapter Eleven (#ulink_37788061-ab9f-589a-bcd3-19fc977e6c6e)

Vincent and I walked back across the snowy front lawn, our arms linked together as we staggered rather unsteadily through the slippery snow towards his front door. As my boots sought a sound foothold I wondered quite how much wine I’d actually drunk and how much bearing it had had on what I had just experienced.

‘The lights are out here too.’ Vincent frowned as we approached the shadowy darkness of his front door, our breath clouding the air. ‘We left the porch light on, didn’t we?’

I nodded, waiting while he groped for the key. I wasn’t sure how much of his fumbling was due to the lack of light and the cold, and how much to the quantity of good Italian wine he’d consumed, but he soon had the door open and I entered the dark house behind him with trepidation.

‘Tara?’ he called softly. ‘Tara, we’re back.’

There was a red flickering light coming from the dying embers of the fire and in that light a shadowy shape loomed up from the sofa, making me step closer to Vincent in fright as I remembered Maria’s talk of ghosts.

‘You’re back then?’ Tara’s voice cut through the gloom.

‘I wish we’d never gone,’ Vincent mumbled as he made his way unsteadily to the sofa.

‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’ Tara picked up a small candle and a box of matches from the coffee table, lit the candle and handed them to me. ‘You know what Maria’s like. She’s been trying to get you over there since her husband left. Now you’ve fallen straight into her clutches.’ She smirked quietly to herself, obviously pleased she’d been right about the inadvisability of us going next door.

‘Maria is a good cook, but she did seem to have some sort of agenda,’ I admitted.

‘I don’t doubt it for a moment. That woman’s agenda has been obvious for some time.’ Tara shot a glance towards Vincent. ‘I’d suggest a nightcap but I expect you’ve had enough for one evening.’

‘I wouldn’t mind a stiff brandy as it happens,’ Vincent said, peeling off his coat and throwing it over the back of the sofa.

I looked at him as he flopped down wearily onto the couch. Maybe it was the glow from the dying fire or the shadows thrown by my flickering candle, but he looked tired and drawn. Tara obviously thought so too, because she quickly poured and handed him a glass of brandy without further comment.

‘Well, I’m off to bed.’ Her teasing tone had been swiftly replaced by quiet concern. ‘I’ll see you in the morning; hopefully the electricity will be on again by then.’

‘I’ll come up too,’ I said hastily. ‘It’ll be easier to see the way with both of our candles.’ I didn’t want to admit it was because my nerves were still jangling and I didn’t want to go upstairs alone in the still unfamiliar house in the dark.