‘It always tastes better by the Mediterranean. The salt and rosemary is all around you.’
‘That doesn’t help me,’ she reminded him drily. ‘Not all of us can escape to Elba and live off peaches and flatbread and leaves from the forest.’
‘What time do you have to go in the morning?’ he asked after a pause.
‘Early. I have to collect the hire car from Portoferraio and then I have a meeting with the hotel manager in Capoliveri just before midday. Then it’s back to Portoferraio to collect Mum and Cilli at three, before the arrival dinner at seven back at the hotel.’
‘Busy day.’
‘No busier than normal life. I don’t have to pack a lunchbox, supervise basic hygiene or check that Cilli’s done his homework and his reading, so it’s still a bit of a holiday.’
He didn’t respond for a moment.
‘I don’t mean to complain,’ she added.
‘You’re obviously looking forward to seeing him,’ Gabri replied carefully.
‘I’m so glad he’s coming. When Mum suggested she could bring him, I wasn’t sure it was a good idea while I’m working, but I can’t imagine not showing him this, the island. He’s going to love it. It’s worth the extra running around and this way, we still get to spend the first week of the school holidays together – some of the time anyway.’
He gave her leg a quick squeeze, a gesture that felt artificially casual, although she couldn’t make out the real feelings behind it. She’d told him a lot about her own life, perhaps more than he’d wanted to hear. But he hadn’t reciprocated. He’d only reluctantly mentioned his ex-wife’s miscarriages, his job that he’d explained in vague terms. He’d held himself back and she had to accept that.
‘It was a good week,’ he said finally.
‘Thank you,’ she responded earnestly, leaning her elbows on her knees so she was closer to him, ‘for everything this week. So much good food, rest, exercise… I mean the walking and windsurfing,’ she explained as other forms of rest and exercise occurred to her at the twinkle in his eye. ‘It’s all been so suggestive,’ she added, giving him a nudge.
He traced her jaw with a finger and brushed his thumb over her chin – another casual touch that nonetheless felt weighted with meaning he hadn’t expressed in any other way. ‘And some sunshine. I hope not too many more freckles, although I like these ones.’
‘I’m not resistant to the sun like you.’ She’d never once seen him put on sunscreen, but she’d also rarely seen anyone as deeply tanned as he was – as tanned as the local children who played in the rocks at Sant’Andrea, near his workshop. ‘Thanks for sharing your island.’
For several moments, he said nothing as the words gathered on his lips. She watched patiently, enjoying the glances from his bright eyes and the play of emotion over his features. ‘Thanks for bringing fresh air to my house – laughter, beauty. I?—’
He didn’t seem able to continue, so Toni put him out of his misery with an impulsive kiss, memorising the feel of his hair under her fingertips, warmed by the evening sun. His palm on the back of her neck, slipping up into her hair, left an impression she would wear on her soul like a tattoo after she was gone.
She had to wonder whether he’d have a similar mark and whether it would haunt him like the shadow of his failed marriage. Surely not. He was light and free and she’d never try to keep him away from his island.
That thought brought its own sadness that she wasn’t supposed to feel.
As they ate their picnic dinner on the stones, the wind picked up, sending waves crashing into their secluded cove, and she nestled close to him. The sun cast its last burnt-orange rays over the water, the disc melting into the horizon, and under the grey-blue dusk sky, they picked their way back to the car.
Arriving back at Gabri’s little house in the cover of dark, he kissed her with all the doubtful passion of the first time, clinging tight enough that she could imagine he didn’t want her to go, even as he said nothing in words. He came alive under her hands and lips, every touch proof of the existence of the soul.
Tucked up next to him under the fan as they drifted reluctantly to sleep, Toni’s thoughts slipped. Her heart might be permanently damaged, a piece missing and another donated toa little life that was just beginning, but her soul was apparently alive and well.
‘Ready to go?’
Toni glanced up from the mantlepiece in the main room of the house, where she’d been stroking the shiny, irregular object that had never looked at home amongst the driftwood and trinkets of nature.
‘Yes,’ she insisted, although the answer was the opposite.
‘It’s called an oloid,’ he said, picking up the object she’d been admiring. ‘It was a gift from my old company. Look.’
Placing it on the table, he set it rolling. It didn’t move like a sphere or a cylinder, but in a complex cyclical motion – forward, right, forward, left, over and over again.
‘It was invented by an artist and mathematician for its kinetic properties.’
Occasionally, she caught these glimpses of another Gabri, in his impeccable English and effortless explanations of complex topics.
‘Your old company must miss you a lot.’
