Toni couldn’t help stopping to collect an impressive pine cone the size of her hand. The zip on her backpack was loud as she tucked it inside.
‘What will you use it for? A bird feeder?’ Gabri asked, his voice still hushed. ‘The fresher, closed ones are better for the scent.’
‘Honestly, no idea,’ she answered, brushing her fingers over the irregular matrix of ridges that formed the thick bark on a nearby trunk. ‘I think I only picked it up because Cillian’s not here to do it. I suppose we humans are wired to collect things.’
His silence was clearly assent as they continued along the path, under the speckled canopy. The sun was already scorching.
‘Here, this rosemary can be foraged all over the island, but I have enough at home. It’s an invasive species,’ he said, running his hand over the fragrant bush, not flowering as much as the plant by his terrace. ‘That one’s borage – the cucumber plant. It’s delicious in ravioli, or even fresh in salads. We can take a plant or two – not too much, when you’re in the wild.’
He pulled up two stubby plants with heads of star-shaped blue wild flowers and fleshy leaves at the base. The tangy scent reached her nose as he dropped them into the mesh bag she held out for him.
Farther along the path, he tracked into the undergrowth to a cluster of bushes with plump, dark berries.
‘Blackcurrants. I prefer redcurrants, but these are good when cooked.’
‘There’s so much choice, you can be a picky eater like my son?’ she teased as she followed his lead, gently detaching the small bunches of berries and dropping them into the bag with everything else. ‘Although he’d like your garden. I call him a potatotarian, since that’s the only vegetable he willingly eats.’
The pause before Gabri’s next question was long enough to remind Toni that he didn’t like children.
‘Is he looking forward to coming here?’
‘He loves the water, so yes, but I don’t think he really understands how different this will be from our usual holidays – especially because I’ll be working,’ she said with a grimace. ‘I’m glad to have this new challenge, but it does pull me in a few different directions. Two weeks away would have been too long – for me, I mean. Cilli would probably be fine.’
‘You can take him to collect pine cones,’ Gabri commented, obviously not knowing what else to say about the conflicts of motherhood and career.
‘Usually, I’m frustrated by the mouldy conkers and Cilli’s moss samples,’ she replied. Perhaps she talked about him too often, but Gabri would have to live with that – only for the next few days. ‘He has a whole box of treasures under his bed that he’ll never let me throw away.’
‘Yes,’ Gabri replied after a moment. ‘As satisfying as it is to collect things, it’s never easy to let them go.’
She doubted he was obliquely referring to his ex-wife and his old life, but his comment made her wonder about it anyway. ‘Is that some of the wisdom you learned from the island? Where did you live before?’ she asked as they walked on.
‘Absolutely. I lived in Milano. A big contrast.’
‘I suppose you can’t go foraging in Milan – or there, it would be called “shopping”.’
He responded only with a quick smile as he moved slowly, his gaze darting from one side of the path to the other, into the undergrowth of ferns and bushes that Toni couldn’t hope to identify.
‘The only thing I’ve ever foraged at home is brambles from beside the football field,’ she commented.
‘Many of these plants I think also grow in England, but you need to know what to look for and how to prepare it,’ he murmured, his eyes still alert. ‘Look,’ he said, his voice kept carefully soft as he pointed to a flash of colour to her right.
He was still – unimaginably still – and in a flutter of delicate yellow, a creature perched on his sleeve, the wings making delicate movements.
‘A Cleopatra butterfly,’ he said under his breath. ‘This is why we’re here.’
‘On this earth?’ she asked, studying tones of yellow and the two tiny, orange dots on the lower wings.
He chuckled and the elegant butterfly took flight again, lost in the many greens of the surrounding foliage almost instantly.‘No, although perhaps a philosopher would agree with you. I meant this area has an abundance of butterflies and I thought we might see some.’
They continued on with slow steps.
‘Aha,’ Gabri said a moment later, heading off into the brush and gesturing wildly for her to follow. ‘This is exactly what I was hoping to find.’
Toni peered at the ground, but didn’t see anything she’d like to touch, much less eat: thick, woody groundcover, ferns, dry grass and a large thistle that reached Gabri’s thigh. It took her a moment to realise he meant the thistle. It had huge, leathery leaves, the ones near the ground longer than Gabri’s feet in his scuffed boots, and clusters of spiny, round flowers, some of them with tufts of pink petals on top like the hair of a cartoon character.
‘You’re going to make another bouquet?’
‘This isn’t the same flower I used in the bouquet. That was a thistle.’
