Lou shuddered. This was worse than she’d thought. She hoped that Lillian had been drinking wine on the beach and had blindly fallen into Angelo’s arms.
‘She was distraught,’ Angelo said. ‘They were different times. Different rules. You cannot imagine it because you live in a world of contraception and choice but then – I said I would come to her, but she wrote to tell me no, that your father would be your father. I was not to come near her.’
Lou could quite easily imagine her mother making such a final decision: once Bob was on her side, Angelo could go.
‘I left Ireland because I fell into a long depression,’ Angelo went on. ‘In those days, treatment was limited. The cure was not easy. It is better now—’
‘You have depression?’ asked Lou quietly.
He nodded. ‘You know it?’
‘Yes. Yes.’ For the first time ever, Lou laughed at the thought of her depression. ‘I thought it was just me, that there was something inherently wrong with me because nobody else in the family has this, but you do too!’
Strangely, it felt a joyful realisation in that moment. Finally, a family where she wasn’t the strange or different one.
‘I have friends who have nobody in their family with this,’ said Angelo. ‘It is not like hair colour or the shape of your nose. It is mysterious but, yes, it runs in my family.’
Lou sat on the stone seat so she was leaning beside him, her discovered birth father. The man she seemed to share so much with.
‘Where did you go then?’ she asked. ‘What happened?’
‘I came here. You know,’ he smiled wryly at her, ‘how it doesn’t matter how much the sun shines when you are sinking into the depths? Great art often comes from depression. Michelangelo suffered this way: “I live wearied by stupendous labours and beset by a thousand anxieties”,’ he said.
‘A thousand anxieties,’ Lou repeated. ‘I can relate to that.’
‘It’s not an easy thing to carry, but I have found that a good listener helps. Not your family. A therapist. To know you are not alone helps, too.’
‘I felt that I was different, broken really, by having depression,’ Lou said. ‘Nobody else in my family has it.’
‘They do now,’ said Angelo simply. ‘I see it as an extra something. Not broken. It’s like a scar that pains us sometimes. There’s no point in wishing that the scar was gone because we cannot wish away such things, but we take care of the scar. We rub it with oils to heal it. You’re not broken when you are depressed. You need to find the oil that will heal you. Be it talking or swimming or ...’ he gestured around him, ‘living here. And we come out of the depths, I find. Always.’
Sometimes, Lou had felt her heart physically hurt her chest: Dr Google explained that anxiety could give one chest pains caused by stress-related contracting muscles. As Angelo talked, she felt those self-same muscles soften a little, as if in a hot bath.
‘Thank you for this,’ she said earnestly. Her hands found his again and they sat quietly holding hands. ‘Thank you for all this.’
‘Let’s walk a little,’ he said, letting go and patting her hand. ‘My old hips seize up if I do not move and we have a lot to talk about.’
An hour later, they went back inside and Angelo asked would they like to go to a little restaurant he knew nearby.
‘I want to bring some of my friends,’ he said, happily.
Lou, feeling serene after her walk on the beach, calm after the most amazing discussion with Angelo, nodded.
‘I want them to meet you,’ Angelo was saying. ‘My precious new family. Please. Who knows when we will see each other again.’
‘Yes,’ said Renata, ‘Please come. And you know you’re always welcome here.’
‘I want to give you a painting too,’ said Angelo. ‘You must pick.’
‘I don’t know if I could bring one home on the plane,’ said Lou.
‘No,’ Angelo said, smiling, ‘I will send it, but you must pick. And you too,’ he said to Toni. ‘You can be my little step-daughter, as well as you,’ he added to Trinity.
He patted her affectionately on the cheek. ‘You’re glowing, child.’
She blushed. ‘I can’t take anything,’ she said hurriedly. ‘It would be wrong. I’m not related—’
‘Tish,’ said Angelo. ‘Think of it as Irish and Sicilian generosity.’
