Matching her tone, Jade replied, ‘I’m sure Mary explained that Gran kept you a secret at Joey’s insistence. Didyouknow you had two half-sisters?’
‘No.’ Erin shrugged one shoulder. ‘All I’ve ever known is that my father was called Giovanni Beretta, who went by the name of Joey. He had a Scottish mother, an Italian father, was good-looking and irresponsible. Apparently I saw him once when I was a wee one, but Mum’s fiercely independent and didn’t want him in our lives. She told me she was blowing off steam when she had a thing with him.’ Absently, she traced the rim of her tea mug with a finger. Then she smiled faintly. ‘Probably Mum had allocated space on her timetable for “healthy sex to decompress” as part of a holistic approach to achieving. The pregnancy was an unintended consequence.’
Jade’s attention was caught. She’d known the bones of this story from Gran’s letter, but now Erin was adding flesh. ‘But she brought you up? Or were her family around to help?’
Erin pursed her lips. ‘She didn’t rate her parents and brother. I’ve not met them. Apparently, they lived somewhere in Edinburgh by benefit-cheating and other crimes. She said every time the police came to the door for her dad, or her brother brought home a dodgy friend, she promised herself she’d get out at the first opportunity. And she did. She wanted to be better than her upbringing and aim higher than her roots.’
Jade didn’t know whether to be impressed at Lisa Ferguson’s focus or shocked at Erin’s calm recitation of her family – or lack of family – situation. But Jade hadn’t wanted contact with Joey, a relative she didn’t approve of, so how could she judge Erin and her mother for doing the same?
‘What’s your mum’s name?’ Rosalie’s English accent sounded flat compared to Erin’s Scottish lilt.
‘Lisa Ferguson. She still lives in Dundee. She’s a high achiever and brought me up the same way.’ With a note of pride, Erin added, ‘School, uni, work... it’s always been about performance.’
Jade worked hard herself, but rather than a high achiever she thought she was more of a get-on-with-it person. She worked long hours in summer but valued having part of most evenings to please herself, and periods in the winter when she could ease up considerably, seeing to maintenance around the pensione. ‘Do you have siblings? I mean... via your mum,’ she added awkwardly, in case it sounded as if she’d forgotten that Erin and Rosalie were her half-sisters. They’d also be business partners as soon as the formalities were complete... until she could buy them out, anyway.
Erin shook her head, making her hair dance. ‘No. Do you? Do you see your mother?’
‘No to both. Geneva, my mother, went off, like Joey.’ Jade wasn’t embarrassed. As a child she had been, but adult Jade knew these facts didn’t reflect shortcomings on her part. ‘I wouldn’t know her if she walked into this room. And possibly not Joey, though I’ve seen photos of him as a child and a teenager. Gran and Nonno – our grandfather,’ she said, in case Erin and Rosalie didn’t know the Italian term, ‘they brought me up. Nonno died when I was fourteen. Since then, it’s been Gran and me. Was, I mean.’ She faltered. For a second, she’d forgotten Gran was gone. Reality was a knee in the stomach.
Gathering herself, with an effort she turned to Rosalie, who was silently turning her glass of water on the tabletop. ‘You were brought up by Joey?’
Rosalie nodded. ‘Mainly. Mum was alive till I was four, but she had kidney disease. While she was alive, we lived inDevon, where she came from. Handsome, Devon was,’ she said, assuming a West Country accent. ‘Mum and Dad met when she was twenty. She was called Donna Anning.’ She looked wistful. ‘After Mum died, I lived with Dad.’
Jade couldn’t help flinch. Joey couldn’t have cared less about her or Erin, but had raised Rosalie. And Rosalie called him ‘Dad’. She glanced at Erin and saw her face was carefully expressionless. Politely, she said to Rosalie, ‘Sorry about your mum.’
‘Thanks.’ Rosalie shifted her gaze to the window that overlooked the tiny outdoor space behind the apartment, with the two garden chairs Jade hadn’t had much motivation to use without Gran beside her. ‘Dad was cut up. I was a kid. It was like... well, she’d always been ill and then suddenly she wasn’t there at all. I clung to him. We began moving about. Dad would get work on a farm or a building site, or in a pub. Any job that made him enough money to rent a house or a flat for us, and where he could find me a school. When I got into Sheffield University, I was happy to have my living arrangements in my own hands so Dad could go back into nomad mode. He deserved that.’ Then, perhaps reading non-comprehension on their faces, added, ‘Because he wasn’t really the single-dad type, but he made himself be one for fourteen years for my sake. Anyway, I didn’t like uni, so I ditched it.’
Rosalie’s recitation was so calm that Jade found it hard to sense how her upbringing had affected her. ‘What about your mum’s parents?’
‘Lost touch.’ Rosalie shrugged. ‘Grandma and Grandpa ran a village shop. I did go there once, before uni. There was a handwritten notice taped to the inside of the door.Back in a few minutes. Sorry.After I’d hung around for an hour, some woman came by and said it had been like that for a couple of years. TheAnnings had left suddenly and people thought the shop must have gone bust.’
This seemed a full-stop to the grandparents angle and Jade’s heart softened, picturing a young Rosalie waiting hopefully outside the shop. She must have wanted to find her grandparents if she’d made a special journey, but they weren’t Jade’s focus. It was the man who’d ‘made’ himself into a single dad... for the sake ofoneof his daughters. ‘So, what’s Joey like?’ She noticed one of Erin’s eyebrows quirk, as if she was surprised at Jade’s forthrightness, but Jade didn’t see why she shouldn’t ask. Refusing contact with Joey didn’t mean she hadn’t wondered about him. And here was Rosalie – the only one of his carelessly strewn offspring who’d lived with him until she was eighteen... as Gran had lived with Joey untilhewas eighteen.
Judging by the tilt of Rosalie’s chin, Jade’s bluntness wasn’t well received. ‘Last time I saw him, he had long, dark hair with grey streaks and a plaited beard. He’s never materialistic or mean. Enjoys his own company but when he does mix, people seem to like him.’
Stiffly, Jade said, ‘I’m sure you love him. He brought you up. But Gran brought me up, so your experience of him and mine are poles apart. Did he tell you about Erin and me?’
‘Of course I love him.’ Rosalie cast down her light-brown eyes and shook her head. ‘He didn’t say much about his backstory.’
Backstory.Both Jade and Erin were dismissed in that one word. It made Jade feel as if she bristled all over, like a hedgehog.
For several moments, they sipped their drinks without making eye contact. The air felt heavy with unexpressed emotion. Finally, Erin cleared her throat. ‘Rosalie, what did you do during uni holidays? Go to wherever Joey was?’
Jade was absurdly reassured that Erin didn’t call Joey ‘Dad’, as if that aligned Jade and Erin – notagainstRosalie, but with each other.
Rosalie looked surprised. ‘I shared a house in Sheffield, so I stayed there. I got holiday jobs.’ She grinned and her whole face lit up as if a shaft of sunlight had fallen on her. ‘At the end of the first year I decided to travel for the summer. I hooked up with a good crowd in Paris and didn’t go back to uni. Me and a Spanish girl, Oleda, got on the books of an agency with great casual work. We house-sat a boat on the Seine, then moved south and crossed into Switzerland to be dogwalkers in a boarding kennel. After that, we looked after two ponies because the kids who owned them didn’t like to ride in cold weather. We lived in a caravan in the paddock and I think it was as cold as the ponies’ stable.’ When she laughed, her eyes shone like wet pebbles.
‘Wow.’ Erin looked fascinated. ‘Colourful.’
Jade added, ‘Adventurous.’ Evidently, Rosalie wasn’t as quiet and cautious as she’d first appeared when she’d paused inside the door and regarded everyone. Jade tried to imagine embarking on such an uncertain life and failed. At nineteen or twenty, as Rosalie must have been, Jade had been working here at Pensione Three Sisters as she had ever since.
‘Where did you shower and use the loo? Do caravans in pony fields come equipped?’ Erin asked curiously.
Simultaneously, Jade demanded, ‘Do you know where Joey is now?’
Again, Rosalie firmed her chin. She met Jade’s eyes. ‘No.’
As if Jade’s question had illuminated the deficiencies of the father who’d contributed their common DNA, silence fell but for guests’ voices on the stairs, probably on their way back to their rooms to relax for an hour before getting ready to go out. Two female voices and one male. The man laughed.
