A Home in the Sun Read online

  He nodded again, coughing back his tears. ‘The helicopter take him.’

  Giorgio was alive. He’d reached medical help. That was what mattered. She began to cast around for shoes, her bag. ‘I must go to him.’

  Charlie climbed to his feet, his eyes enormous with apprehension. ‘They say no.’ Then, when Judith didn’t respond, ‘Judith, they say no.’

  Her movements slowed. Stilled. The world went quiet apart from a mosquito-like whine in her ears. She sank back down, bonelessly, into her chair. ‘Who does?’ she whispered. As if she didn’t know.

  ‘His wife. His mother. They ask the hospital to make sure you are kept out. You are not family, you not visit, they say.’

  ‘No!’ she cried. ‘They can’t do that.’

  But they could. That much became all-too-painfully obvious.

  Until the accident Judith hadn’t completely appreciated the strength of Giorgio’s family’s feelings. She’d told herself his parents were old stick-in-the-muds and it was their problem if they refused to acknowledge her; the relationship could go on without their approval. And her existence shouldn’t cause too much pain to Giorgio’s wife Johanna because it had been years since they’d lived together.

  But now the depth of the antipathy towards her became stark.

  The family refused to acknowledge that her place was with Giorgio and instructed the hospital not to let her visit and to refuse her calls.

  Judith’s pleas and demands for admittance to intensive care got her nothing but pleasant, firm blocking from medical staff. ‘I’m so sorry. Family only.’

  She called twice at his parents’ house in an attempt to negotiate, willing to do anything, say anything, to make them let her in to see him. But no one answered her knock at the front door.

  She went to Giorgio’s aunt Cass, relying on her gentle heart, but even she was unable to help this time. ‘I dare not. I cannot,’ she told Judith, compassion and grief mixing in her dark eyes. She smoothed Judith’s hair. ‘It’s too difficult at the moment. If Saviour found out I’d interfered he’d be furious. I’m sorry, Judith. But Maria and Agnello …’ She hesitated. ‘They’re adamant that it’s your fault. You introduced Giorgio to diving, then abandoned him to an inexperienced partner. You could have kept him safe. They say this over and over and tell Giorgio how you have let him down.’

  Judith couldn’t bring herself to protest because ever since Charlie had broken the news, the same thoughts had whirled through her head. She should have found a way to stop Giorgio diving with another novice. She could have shouted or screamed or cried. Made him wait.

  Damned well made him.

  Giorgio had only just been certified. Judith was qualified to divemaster status and was trained in first aid and rescue. She knew how to limit the damage in bad situations.

  Responsibility and guilt rose up in her throat to choke her. ‘Tell him I love him. Make sure you tell him, won’t you, Cass? And that I should never have let him dive without me. Try to make him listen.’

  ‘I’ll tell him,’ Cass promised. She hesitated. ‘But I don’t know if he will hear.’

  ‘Doesn’t he ask for me?’ Judith cried.

  Wordlessly, Cass shook her head. ‘He is too ill.’ Or he’d fallen for his family’s line that she was somehow responsible for him going diving without her steadying presence.

  Helpless, Judith went through the motions of her life, barely eating, hardly sleeping. Mechanically, she pinned on her professional smile each day while she showed people apartments and extolled the virtues of roof terraces.

  Richard proved to be her rock in a suddenly heaving world. ‘You take some time off if you need it,’ he said. But she took none because the agency was busy in the summer and what would she do with time? Go hospital visiting? Hardly.

  The Times of Malta printed the full story of the diving accident: the slow process of Charlie getting help, Giorgio being airlifted to hospital as time filtered away. Journalists explained about the first ‘Golden Hour’ when treatment to head injuries is most effective.

  Almost unbelievably, the jet skier responsible had raced away in the wake of the accident, obviously frightened of being brought to book, and nobody had got the name of his boat. There was a new outcry against jet skis in letters to the editor and diving clubs made statements both of caution and reassurance.

  Judith winced at a counter outcry about novice divers. Was it fair to blame only the jet skier? Had the diver had adequate instruction? How about supervision whilst experience was gained? Desperately sick in the heart, night after night in her silent flat she tortured herself by reading every letter and column inch. She didn’t tell her family back home in England what had happened. Her mum Wilma would worry herself sick in her retirement home, her sister Molly might offer to come out to ‘help’ – which would mean try to boss Judith about as she was eight years older and acted it. But Judith just wanted to be left alone to grieve. She couldn’t even make herself call Kieran and face his grief for Giorgio, who he’d plainly liked and admired.

  After four weeks, she began to realise that there were other things to worry about and, at Richard’s prodding, drove to where Sliema met Msida to see Giorgio’s business partners, Anton Dimech and Gordon Cassar. The small, over-filled office of Sliema Z Bus Tours was on the end of the large, low shed that housed the buses and she parked in the yard, conscious of an accelerated heartbeat. She barely knew Anton and Gordon but something told her they might not welcome a request for a business update. Her investment in Sliema Z had been an informal arrangement made between her and Giorgio to help buy two new buses to capitalise on ever-growing tourism in Malta.

  ‘Hello?’ Anton and Gordon said when she knocked on the office door and strode inside. They looked surprised, even astonished, to see her.

  She drew on her people skills and pasted on a smile. ‘Good morning.’ She sat down and gripped her bag to prevent her hands from shaking in the overheated office, where open windows did little to relieve the oppressive heat. ‘I’m sorry to bother you at this awful time. You must be busier than ever in Giorgio’s absence.’ She waited out the following silence, making it plain that she expected them to take part in a conversation.

  Gordon was the first to blink. He was a small man, the more pleasant of the two men, with black-framed glasses and coppery lights through untidy hair. He smiled. ‘Of course, we have plans to cope with the unexpected absence of a partner, you need not worry—’

  Anton made a shushing gesture and spoke much more formally. ‘Madam, what is your enquiry?’

  She swallowed, the steeliness of Anton’s gaze an uncomfortable reminder that he was used to being in control. He was the one the others deferred to, with his push and focus and faultless English. She cursed herself for not getting Gordon on his own. She might have steered him into giving her information. ‘As an investor, I thought it was reasonable to ask—’

  ‘Madam, we appreciate your investment. I can assure you that Giorgio’s absence will not affect it.’

  She was infuriated by such cold courtesy but, sacrificing the quest for business information, she got to the real reason she was there. ‘And how is Giorgio?’ She hated to hear herself ask, she who’d shared a bed with Giorgio every night and should now be beside him in the hospital.

  Anton cut off the reply Gordon had opened his mouth to make. ‘His family will have the most accurate news, madam. The business you can leave safely in our hands.’

  Her throat dried, making it impossible to do more than poke out her chin against the humiliation of her reception and nod her curtest goodbye.

  She returned to work, shuffling her car into a small parking space and walking the last part. Richard looked up as soon as she stepped into the air-conditioned interior. ‘How did you get on?’ His kind eyes were troubled.

  A lump leapt into Judith’s throat. ‘They blanked me. Told me to leave the business to them and approach the family for news about Giorgio.’ She half-fell into her chair to stare out at the
traffic and the creek beyond, feeling powerless.

  After a pause, Richard said, ‘Your investment should have been put on a proper footing.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed listlessly. ‘Thank goodness for my job at the agency.’ At least here, she had Richard, his quiet support preventing her from racing to St Luke’s Hospital and hurtling at the doors of the intensive care ward.

  She saw no option but to wait for Giorgio to contact her once he was well enough.

  The wait went on for weeks. At night she played every nightmare scenario in her head and during the day she called and visited the hospital in the hope of finding someone who wouldn’t block her enquiries.

  Eventually, after several attempts, she persuaded Cass to meet her in a café in St Julian’s, a tiny front room of a place where Cass seemed to feel tucked away from curious eyes. A bead fly-curtain clicked softly in the doorway and the serene young lady behind the little counter hummed under her breath as she put out trays of fresh arancini, balls of rice filled with cheese or bolognese sauce.

  On the pale-green table stood two glass cups of cappuccino. Cass lifted hers elegantly and pursed her lips to sip. Her dress was smart, her hair carefully done.

  ‘News?’ Judith poked her teaspoon into her froth, too strung-up to even stir properly. ‘I read in the paper that he’s out of intensive care.’ Judith leant closer, as if she could haul Cass’s knowledge, her feelings and impressions into herself by sheer proximity. ‘So how does he seem? When did you see him last? What are the changes? What do the doctors say? Hasn’t he asked for me?’

  Sipping again, Cass raised her pencil-arched tan eyebrows sadly into hennaed hair. ‘Everything about Giorgio is changed. There is no energy, no smile, no laugh, no joke to make you smile, no endless conversation. It is a completely different Giorgio.’

  Hope sank and settled low in Judith’s stomach. ‘But he no longer needs intensive care?’

  ‘He has stabilised,’ Cass acknowledged, sighing, and shaking her head.

  ‘And has he … has he asked for me?’ Judith persisted. It seemed fantastic to her that he was lying in bed only a few miles away and hadn’t got a message to her, even if his family had secreted his mobile phone.

  Another sigh. An aching silence. ‘He’s not going to.’ Cass’s voice was very kind. ‘If it had happened, don’t you think I would’ve found a way to let you know? To leave a message at your office? You’re torturing yourself, Judith.’

  Judith tried to lift her cup but her hand shook and her voice came out as a whine. ‘I must see him! I might not exist for his parents, but I can’t just suddenly stop existing for him.’

  Compassionate tears stood in Cass’s eyes. ‘I’m so sorry. But you do need to accept that Giorgio will never ask for you again. He’s too injured. Too changed.’

  Judith clenched her hands into fists, making her voice as urgent as she knew how. ‘But I must try.’

  Chapter Two

  OK. Cass had confirmed it: he was out of intensive care.

  Out from behind the locked doors.

  Judith demanded and pleaded for Cass’s help and finally they arranged a visit when siesta made the streets emptier, the Maltese summer sun blazing down on yellow limestone buildings. Cass told Judith a quiet way to Giorgio’s ward then stayed outside to keep watch. Judith was so thankful that the older woman had agreed to help her to see Giorgio that she pushed aside what it would mean for Cass if Maria and Agnello Zammit knew she was a closet Judith-sympathiser. Her whole attention was focused on hurrying in through the hospital entrance.

  Inside, the corridors were cool and quiet. Judith stole along, following Cass’s directions, avoiding nurse’s stations and trying to look as if she had every right to be where she was.

  She turned the final corner and there was his name hand-written onto a tile on a door.

  Giorgio Zammit.

  Her heart somersaulted.

  He had a room of his own. When she edged to one side of the open doorway she could see him! He lay on his side, his back to her. He was hooked up to a heartbreaking array of machines but she recognised the way his hair lay at his nape and the gold of his skin.

  The open window fluttered the yellow curtains, the bed a white island in the centre of the room. Two nurses and a woman in a white coat attended the bed, selecting dressings from a trolley, talking soothingly to Giorgio in gentle Maltese.

  Slowly, she stepped back. Giorgio was receiving necessary care. A seat stood a few yards up the corridor within sight of Giorgio’s door and she withdrew to wait.

  Ten minutes became twenty, then thirty before the nurses finally emerged, gliding the trolley up the corridor, passing Judith as she sat frozen, holding her breath in case they asked what she was doing there. Instead, they moved on to a different white room and another patient. With a soaring heart, Judith jumped up and hurried towards Giorgio’s room.

  But then she saw a Maltese couple barrelling towards his door from the other direction. The woman’s lips were set, eyes blazing. They’d only met once, but Judith had no trouble recognising Giorgio’s possessive, hostile parents. Maria and Agnello Zammit.

  She halted like a guilty child.

  Furious words began to stream from Maria Zammit in rapid fire, her chest heaving beneath her sedate navy belted dress, her voice a frustrated hiss as a concession to the hush of the wards. ‘No! Get away! Away! Not you here, you, no!’

  Judith pitched her own voice low. ‘Mrs Zammit, I was only—’

  Maria Zammit thrust her short body between Judith and the door to Giorgio’s room. ‘No! He not speak to you, you go. Leave.’ And then, as Judith hesitated. ‘Now! You never see my son. You English. Go England!’

  ‘I love him,’ Judith tried, struck by despair so intense that it seemed to suck away her oxygen. She glanced at Agnello Zammit, whose forehead was furrowed unhappily as he laid his hand on his wife’s arm and spoke to her in their own language.

  Mrs Zammit shook him off. ‘Go! I call for the ners.’

  The ridiculous notion that a mere nurse would scare her away returned Judith to reality. She was tempted to fold her arms and challenge, ‘Ha! You do that!’

  But she hesitated. Anger wasn’t the only emotion in Maria Zammit. A muscle was tugging at the older woman’s cheek and a tremor at her lip. ‘Go,’ she repeated, the tic jumping more fiercely. Judith was considerably the taller of the two but Giorgio’s mother didn’t give an inch, evidently a tiger when it came to doing what she believed protected her family.

  Family was important to Giorgio, too. Judith’s conscience twinged because she knew how he’d hate this confrontation. The parents he loved and respected were making his decisions for him, holding all the authority. If Judith wanted to get in to see him, she was going to have to think strategically.

  She made her voice calm, although her heartbeat was shaking her entire body. ‘I’ll go away – after you let me see him. On my own.’

  Mrs Zammit snorted. Her husband muttered something.

  Calmly, Judith added, ‘If not, I’ll just keep coming back.’

  A tear slowly escaped from one of Mrs Zammit’s dark eyes but she showed Judith gritted teeth. ‘You teach him to dive under the water. He nearly die. Is because of you! All know this.’

  Judith’s face drained. Fruitless to protest that Giorgio was an adult who had made all his own decisions about diving because Judith blamed herself every bit as much as the Zammits blamed her. ‘If I could change places with him, I would. Please, Mrs Zammit.’

  Silence.

  Judith dug her nails into her palms, staring at Giorgio’s mother, willing her to comply. See sense. Judge the long-term benefit against a five-minute concession.

  ‘You are not his wife,’ Mrs Zammit pointed out unnecessarily.

  ‘No. And I’ll bet his wife doesn’t visit him much, does she? I’ll bet she’s just signed what forms were necessary and left him here alone.’ Such a waste when all the time Judith herself was aching to be by Giorgio’s side.

>   Agnello Zammit made another remark to his wife, softly, palms up and shoulders shrugging. An older Giorgio. His voice went on, gentle, musical; Judith couldn’t make out enough words to know whether he was arguing for her or against.

  An angry glitter brightened Mrs Zammit’s eyes but finally she demanded, ‘You go away? Stay away?’

  Judith nodded, every muscle willing Giorgio’s mother to concede.

  Mrs Zammit’s lips thinned. ‘Five minute!’ she allowed eventually, folding her arms. ‘He not talk to you. I know this.’

  Tears spilled out onto Judith’s cheeks and she wiped them away with her palms. Her skin was dry and lined to the touch and she felt a pang that she hadn’t made more of an effort before coming to see Giorgio. Lately, she hadn’t been taking care of herself, not as she used to. Hand cream and moisturiser hadn’t figured in her routine. Her mirror this morning had shown her a woman who was usually reasonably attractive but was no longer bothering, her hair grown out of style and sliding over one eye like a Disney dog.

  Relief shook in her voice. ‘Five minutes.’ She almost ran the final few steps to Giorgio’s room and shot through the door before Mrs Zammit could think better of her decision. Then she paused, taking in the stillness of the sickroom.

  In the quiet, a machine hissed and peeped. Wires. Tubes. White bedlinen, yellow curtains. The combined smells of antiseptic and body odour. Outside, the distant sounds of a vehicle straining up the hill towards the hospital.

  Giorgio, still lying on his side, didn’t look up as she walked around the bed. She halted as she caught the peculiar expression on his face, the twist to his lips that wasn’t a smile. The dressing above his eyes – eyes that stared unseeing.

  For a moment she couldn’t speak, sickened by his appearance. Though she’d been warned, somehow she hadn’t let herself expect this level of change in him. His face had softened and sagged, although he’d lost weight. He had a jowly, loose look that sent him abruptly forward in years. Though the truth of what she was seeing hit her straight away she still tried to catch his dark gaze, willing him to focus on her face. ‘Giorgio?’ she whispered. ‘Giorgio!’