“Great idea. We need a toast! A toast to Nicky,” Roger says.
While Sofia is gone, Roger slides a large leather photo album across the table toward me. “The summer Nicky and I finished a stint cooking on a yacht, an absolute dream job. And some photos from your parents’ first trip here. And this one is from the summer of 1996, when you were four or five.”
“Oh, how cool,” I say, sliding down onto the floor so I’m closer to the coffee table. I touch the first album, the one from my own visit. “Can I?”
“Go ahead, just shout if you have any questions!”
I flick through several pages of a thirty-something Roger, who looks like a young Jude Law, and Sofia with a pixie cut, looking as chic as she does today. There are snaps next to cars, outside heritage buildings. A photo of Roger with a Vespa.
“He crashed it into a tree,” says Sofia, returning with the champagne.
“Have the pin in my leg to prove it,” says Roger, wincing. Another popped cork. Another sweet smile between Sofia and Roger.
Then there are some photos of Dad and Roger on the huge yacht, arms around each other in swimming trunks. A Polaroid of Dad in a kitchen somewhere.
“Couple of singles, taking on Italy,” Roger says, laughing. I look across at him, savoring the thought of the two of them up to no good, cooking for millionaires, along the Italian coast.
And then I see Dad and Mum.
“There’s Nicky and Jean,” says Sofia, pointing at the photo of the two of them sitting inside Nicky’s. Wineglasses, empty plates, a lit cigarette trailing smoke from a ceramic ashtray. Mum in a wide-brimmed straw hat, Dad with his arm around her, smiling like the cat that got the cream.
“You look so much like your mum there,” Leo says, leaning in almost as close as me. I can feel his warm breath on my neck and touch the spot with my fingers.
“I wish,” I say, turning the page. A photo of Mum in a bikini on the back of a boat, smiling at the camera. A photo of Dad behind a barbecue, two fish smoking away on the grill.
“Well, it’s great you never got to look like that old bastard,” he says, pointing to a particularly unflattering photo of my sunburned dad, reclined on a seat at a dinner table that has recently been savaged, sticking his stomach out and pointing at it.
Sofia pours the wine, and Roger raises a glass in the air.
“To Nicky,” says Sofia. “May he be eating all the best kinds of pasta.”
“To Nicky,” Roger says. “A great friend.”
“To Nicky,” Leo says, “A great boss and mentor.Mostly.”
Everyone laughs and then their eyes turn to me and I clam up immediately. Holding my glass in the air, I shake my head furiously.
“I can do yours, Olive,” says Leo quickly, but before he has a chance, Roger clinks his glass with mine.
“For taking you on as his very own,” he says.
I frown. “Pardon?” I say, leaning into Roger. “What did you say?
“For adopting you,” he says, looking over at Leo and then Sofia as his face slowly starts to fall and his eyes widen.
“Oh my god, Olive,” he says, his voice tight and panicked. “I assumed you knew. Oh my god. Sofia?”
“Darling,” Sofia says, gliding across the room, putting her hands on my shoulders.
“What are you saying?” I mumble, my voice cracking, as the glass slides out of my hand and Leo manages to scoop it up just before it hits the floor.
I shrug Sofia’s hands off my shoulders and look back to Roger. “He’s not my father?”
My entire world shrinks to this thought, this feeling, this truth.
I cannot see, suddenly, and I’m swimming through the room.
“I need a moment...,” I say, walking backward a couple of paces, looking at Leo for help.Help me. Make this stop.
