‘Do you think I ought to?’
‘Wasn’t that what Grandpa wanted to do today?’
‘Not like this… Not without him. It’s not fair.’
‘It’s not fair, love, that it isn’t… now let’s go down and sit with your mum. That tea will be stewed to the colour of gravy if it’s left much longer.’
She followed him down the stairs. Mum was in the living room. She’d poured out the tea.
‘Grandpa put this tin of Ceylon Blend in my stocking a few years ago. I never opened it. It seemed such a bother when it’s so easy to chuck in a teabag. Stupid, isn’t it?’ Mum took a sip. ‘It’s well gone past the use-by date, but it still tastes so much nicer than the supermarket stuff. Wish I could tell him.’
‘Amy’s brought down that memory box, Eileen.’
‘I found it this morning fallen on the floor by his slippers. He must have been looking at it before he nodded off last night. I wonder what he kept for you and your brother.’
‘Oh!’ Amy clamped her hand to her mouth. ‘What about Jack? Have you told him?’
‘We haven’t got hold of him yet,’ Mum said. ‘New Zealand’s hours ahead of us. He’s probably out in some noisy bar somewhere.’
‘He’ll be gutted. And he’ll be so upset he wasn’t here yesterday.’
‘What’s done is done. I don’t want him brooding on that.’ Dad picked up the box of drawing pins and gave it a rattle. ‘Our Jack’s trip was Lance’s last adventure. I’ll remind your brother of that.’
‘Sit down, Amy, love. Drink your tea, then you can open that box,’ Mum said.
Amy balanced the box on the arm of the sofa and sat on the end sipping her tea. She wanted to open her gift from Grandpa alone, in the shed. The place where he’d taught her how to shape her first pot from wet clay, where she’d daubed their creations with a paintbrush in her six-year-old hands.
Dad’s eyes shifted towards where Mum sat staring vacantly at Lance’s wallchart.
Amy took the hint. She opened the box’s hinged lid. Lying on top of a black and white postcard was a coin she didn’t recognise strung on a leather thong. ‘This is foreign, but it’s not a euro.’
‘Let’s see.’ Dad took it from her. ‘A one-lira piece – it’s Italian, the currency they used before Italy joined the EU. That’s Vittorio Emanuele, their old king, on the back. And on the front, this eagle is a fascist symbol, this must be from Mussolini’s day. What else is in the box – a couple of postcards?’
Amy took the coin necklace from her dad and laid it on her lap, one hand playing with the leather cord. She studied the first postcard: a long expanse of beach, a small stone chapel, swifts circling overhead. She passed it to her mum. ‘Look, do you recognise it?’
‘Oh, yes. This is Alassio, on the Italian Riviera in Liguria; that’s the seafarers’ chapel at the end of the seafront. It’s where Grandpa grew up. His dad, your great-grandfather, was advised by his doctor to move to a warmer climate for the sake of his health. It was quite a fashionable thing for the English to do, back in those days.’
Amy held out the second postcard, cracked with deep fold marks as though someone had kept it in their pocket. ‘This one’s a little village.’ The place looked like something out of a fairytale, all tiled roofs and a clocktower nestled higgledy-piggledy amongst olive groves and dark wooded hills.
Mum frowned. ‘I don’t recognise this but I suppose this could be Liguria too. I don’t think the family travelled around all that much. I expect it says where it is on the back.’ She turned it over. ‘Oh, there’s a message! Something in Italian, I think… it’s not your grandpa’s writing. I’ll need my reading glasses.’
‘Let me see.’ Dad took the card before Amy could. ‘It is in Italian but I know what it means.’
‘What?’ Amy longed to snatch it back.
‘Baci e abbracci dall’ Italia. It means kisses and hugs from Italy – it’s their equivalent of saying “love from Italy”.’
‘But who’s it from?’ Mum, now with her glasses on, peered over Dad’s shoulder.
‘It doesn’t say. And the name of the place was printed in the top corner but someone’s struck through it with a thick black pen.’
‘Must be somewhere Lance visited as a boy.’
‘Love from Italy – do you think these things were from a girl? Maybe a teenage sweetheart?’ Amy said.
Dad took the necklace back from her. He ran his thumb along the coin’s reeded edge. ‘There’s something etched into the back. Hard to tell what it is. A letter C or J perhaps but it’s a love token for sure. I’ve seen these before made from an old farthing.’
‘That’s so sweet,’ Amy said.
