A Home in the Sun Read online

  But, as Mrs Zammit had forecast, Giorgio didn’t reply. Because he couldn’t. That’s what nobody had explicitly said. He was on some deep, unreachable level of unconsciousness. She took his bare arm, feeling the softness of the hair at his wrist. His flesh felt hot and unresponsive. Even when Judith increased her grip slightly, he remained silent, his face still. The silver that had brushed his hair lately glinted in the light. Surely he must react to her touch when such electricity used to crackle between them? Something? ‘Darling,’ she whispered. He twitched, as if to shrug her off.

  Aware of Maria Zammit gazing in balefully through the glass aperture, Judith stroked his hair. ‘I’m sorry you were so badly hurt,’ she murmured, her voice catching on her grief. ‘I should’ve stopped you diving without me, it was too soon for your level of experience. I can’t sleep for guilt. Forgive me.’ He twitched more violently, as if he really wished she’d remove her hand. Reluctantly, she dropped his wrist and backed off, her head flooding with images of their time together. His lips at her throat, his body over hers …

  Where had it all gone? All lost in Giorgio’s blank-eyed gaze.

  Mrs Zammit opened the door sharply and entered the room, breaking the spell.

  Unspeaking, feet dragging, Judith made her way from the room, passing silently between Giorgio’s parents. The door closed heavily behind her.

  Spinning, she fled. Through long corridors. Down stone staircases, treads worn with age. Striding out into the heat like the backwash from an open oven. Giorgio hadn’t known her. He didn’t know anything.

  Cass materialised from behind a couple of parked cars, her face lined with anxiety. ‘Judith! Maria and Agnello came early – I had no time to warn you in case they spotted me.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I didn’t tell them you were here.’ Sagging against the wall, her bones turning to mush, Judith closed her eyes. ‘I hadn’t realised quite how … You were right, I should’ve stayed away. I’m sorry I hounded you into this, Cass. He didn’t know me. He doesn’t know anybody, does he? He’s just … blank.’

  Cass patted her shoulder. ‘I told you, you expect something that can’t be there – the old Giorgio, his old feelings. Trust me. It would have been better to have just kept your memories.’

  Judith opened her eyes and gazed sightlessly at the china-blue sky. ‘But how could I have just written him off?’ When there was no reply, straightening slowly, she hugged Cass. ‘Thanks for helping me, even if it wasn’t any use.’ She choked out a sob. ‘At least I know now. There’s nothing left for me here.’

  Chapter Three

  In a very few days, Judith had her life all shut down ready to leave Malta. It wasn’t that she was keeping her promise to Maria Zammit to ‘Go England!’ but Malta just wasn’t bearable now that she no longer had Giorgio, his smile, his love, the feeling of being alive in his arms.

  Even though she’d loved her time here, adored the golden island set in the sparkling Mediterranean and the heat, the sea, the people, without Giorgio … it was no longer the same. Everywhere she looked held a painful memory.

  Richard had been incredibly kind, accommodating her frantic need to go home without a murmur. She’d called Molly last night, telling her that she was coming home and would explain when she got there.

  On the flight back to England she was silent, ignoring the seat in front pressing against her knees, unable to bring herself to chat with the red-skinned tourist couple next to her who loudly mourned the end of their holiday. Judith gazed out of the window, scarcely seeing the clouds, the sea, the mountains. Eventually, the aircraft descended towards the green and yellow fields of England and the jumbled grey buildings and roads that surrounded Gatwick airport.

  It had to be bloody Gatwick, she thought. Luton, Stansted, East Midlands and Birmingham airports were all within an hour or so of Brinham, but the travel shop had only been able to get her a reasonably priced flight to bloody Gatwick on the bloody wrong side of London, though the Maltese clerk’s dark eyes had been sympathetic. He knew, she’d supposed; half of Sliema knew Giorgio.

  A long journey to Northamptonshire was just another problem.

  She and Giorgio had always faced problems: Giorgio was younger than Judith. Giorgio was Maltese and Judith was English. Giorgio was Catholic, Judith was nothing in particular. Judith was divorced, Giorgio … well, Giorgio wasn’t.

  She closed her eyes as the plane descended, remembering his smile as he held her, kissed her, insisting that none of it mattered, it could all be managed, none of it was as important as they were.

  And, in the end, he’d been proved right, in a way. There was no longer a ‘they’ and, therefore, none of the rest mattered.

  She eased her seat belt over her sage trousers, chosen for the flight because they were loose and comfortable – although her entire wardrobe was fairly roomy, nowadays.

  The plane went through an unhappy landing, its engine note rising and falling and a crosswind rocking the fuselage. The tourist couple became white and sweaty instead of red and sweaty as the aircraft yawed its way through bumpy air.

  Watching England rushing up to meet her, Judith swallowed to equalise the pressure in her ears but felt no threat to her stomach contents because she hadn’t eaten. For the last two months, weight had dropped away and now her arms were like sticks on the blue plastic armrests.

  The plane eventually beat the crosswind and landed with a spine-jarring bump, engines howling into reverse. Finally, they were taxiing, stopping, passengers rising, jostling, talking, reaching up to empty their lockers.

  Judith dawdled over collecting her possessions so that the aisle was empty when she stepped from the aircraft, then shuffled along endless corridors and stairs to queue at passport control before moving into baggage reclaim, her jacket over one shoulder, passing the waiting-at-the-carousel time thinking about how it was going to be to live back in Brinham.

  In her mind’s eye, she conjured up the leafy, hilly market town in Northamptonshire, in the centre of England. She’d been brought up there and had been contentedly making a career of being a single woman until she met big, brusque, older but surprisingly ardent Tom McAllister. She’d fallen in love with Tom and with dear, sweet Kieran, his son. Tom’s first wife, Pamela, had died young and Kieran was delighted for Judith to step into her place. They’d been a happy family for nine years, until Judith had realised Tom couldn’t have been all that happy because he’d fallen for a woman she’d never met, someone Tom’s company had worked for: Liza. It had half-killed Judith to no longer live with Kieran but he’d been almost grown up and, despite his sorrow, he’d seen there was little option but a rapid divorce. By the time that was over he’d been at uni. Judith had quit England early in the new century, convinced of the need to strike out, to go. She wished she was now as convinced about coming home.

  Her elder sister Molly and her husband Frankie were waiting at the barriers when she battled out through the green channel dragging a stubborn trolley piled high with unmatched suitcases. Molly was much smaller than Judith and at fifty-two was becoming plump, her black hair sporting Morticia Addams-like streaks of silver as it spilled down the back of her red coat. Taller and skinnier, hairline receding, Frankie O’Malley waited at his wife’s side, hands on hips, eyes impatient under his dome of a forehead.

  ‘Here she is!’ Molly, although sounding pleased, still somehow managed to frown.

  Frankie fished out his car keys. ‘All right, Judith?’ he said laconically.

  ‘Fine, thanks,’ she answered just as briefly. Although Frankie took the trolley from her and Molly fell into step by her side, Judith noticed that there were no delighted smiles or hugs to welcome her home, no anxious enquiries. If she’d expected a demonstration of sisterly love, she was unlucky, but Molly wasn’t demonstrative by nature and had no way of knowing how much Judith needed hugs right now.

  They’d parked in the drab concrete block that was the short-stay car park. Once they’d settled in the car and Frankie had navigated th
em through the car park and the motorway approach, Molly twisted around within her seat belt. ‘So, you’re home for good?’

  ‘Whatever good is.’ From the rear seat, Judith craned back to look at the fat silver belly of a jet taking off over the M25.

  ‘Where are you going to live? And what on?’ Molly’s eyes were full of compassion but also a healthy elder-sister readiness to remedy Judith’s problems with a dose of good advice.

  The plane above banked steeply, white now as its topside came into view, and Judith fell into the younger-sister trap of self-justification. ‘I’ll live in my house, the one I bought after the divorce. Uncle Richard will be paying my dividends on the shares I own in Richard Elliot Estate, so that’ll get me by for a while. He’s also selling my car for me, subletting my flat and shipping the last of my stuff on.’

  Possessions. What did possessions matter? She’d lost Giorgio.

  Her heart clenched.

  Sudden, unanticipated doubts sent sweat bursting across her forehead. Should she have left? Perhaps if she’d persisted, sneaking in to see Giorgio, talking to him, forcing herself to his attention, perhaps she could’ve eventually made his eyes brighten beneath his thick brush of hair, regard her with their old love …

  Molly’s anxious voice sliced into Judith’s fantasising. Molly was good at what was known in Northamptonshire as ‘whittling’, which meant worrying too enthusiastically. ‘How can you live in your house? What about your tenant?’

  Judith shrugged impatiently, wishing Molly would stop making her think of practicalities. Time enough for that later. Time. Loads of time, now. ‘He’ll have to go, I suppose.’

  Molly glanced around again, looking sceptical. ‘Can you just get rid of him, on a whim?’

  Frankie flicked on the indicator and swung into the outside lane, rushing up behind an old Metro and flashing his lights. ‘I think she can if it’s for her own occupation,’ he put in. ‘With notice. Might depend on the tenancy agreement. I’ll find out if you want, Judith.’

  Judith yawned and wondered if they’d stop asking questions if she pretended to sleep. She didn’t need Frankie to find out the terms of a standard assured shorthold tenancy agreement for her; she’d just spent four years working in an estate agency, even if it wasn’t in the UK, and anyway was well aware of her rights and her responsibilities regarding her own tenant. Still, Frankie’s offer was well-meant, even if it did hint that he didn’t think Judith capable of knowing how to be a landlord. She answered calmly, ‘The law is that I have to give him two months’ notice, but I’m sure he’ll respond to a cash incentive to look for somewhere quicker than that. My friend Melanie found him for me when the last tenants left – he’s a mate of her husband. We’ve emailed – he seems a nice bloke.’ She didn’t bother mentioning that she vividly remembered Adam Leblond from school, being fifteen when he was seventeen or eighteen and trying to get him to notice her. Lots of girls had wanted to be noticed by Adam Leblond. Molly, like Frankie and Tom, was too old to have been at school at the same time as Judith and Adam.

  Frankie snorted. ‘Being a “nice bloke” don’t mean much if he’s in your house when you want to live there.’

  She let her head tilt sideways to rest against the window. ‘Pity he’s always been a good tenant. Bad tenants only get notice of two weeks.’

  Molly swung around in her seat yet again, aghast. ‘But you wouldn’t have wanted a bad tenant, Judith! Friends of ours let to students and they treated the house like a squat. Disgusting, honestly.’

  Judith felt her shoulders move in a silent laugh but didn’t risk offending Molly by pointing out that her remark had been an attempt at a grim joke. Molly took life seriously. Earnestly, she went on, ‘Judith, you wouldn’t have been there to take control if things had gone wrong and I wouldn’t have wanted to take it on. Frankie’s too busy. Tom might’ve been persuaded, of course, if he was in a good mood,’ she said reflectively. ‘But it would be a bit much to ask him now you and him aren’t married …’

  ‘I’d hardly ask Tom to deal with my tenant for me,’ Judith observed mildly. ‘You’re worrying about something that never happened, Molly.’

  Frankie swerved into the middle lane to overtake on the wrong side, making Judith’s head tap uncomfortably against the glass. She shifted her position.

  Molly grabbed the handle on the inside of the door as Frankie raced on to jink the car around a Land Rover. ‘Of course. Well, you’re welcome to our spare room for as long as it takes,’ she added. She didn’t sound exactly enthusiastic.

  Judith shut her eyes. Molly and Frankie’s spare room. She’d tried not to think about it too much until now. Leaving the Giorgio-pain behind and that last sight of him had been her priority. But now she made herself envision the not-quite-a-double room with a single bed and a wardrobe full of the overspill from their son Edwin’s old room, tennis rackets and one-man tents, remnants and reminders of his childhood that Molly refused to throw out. Edwin was thirty-three now and lived in Scotland with a girl his parents scarcely knew because he didn’t seem family minded. It was doubtful that he’d be back to claim his tent and go camping with the scouts any time soon.

  Frankie, like Tom, was a builder. Their house was one he had built himself in the mid-eighties, steeply gabled and the window frames painted forest green. It always looked to Judith like part of a Tesco supermarket. A good big property, roomy, it had four bedrooms. Of these, Molly and Frankie’s enormous bedroom was the most impressive, with an en suite bathroom plus a dressing room. The other big room, over the double garage, was Frankie’s office, permanently strewn with paper and drawings of extensions. And then there was ‘Edwin’s room’, which Molly kept as it had been when he left it to go to university in 1989, the bed covered with a marbled blue quilt and the grey carpet vacuumed every week. Judith would’ve liked to be offered Edwin’s room because it was pleasant and spacious and had an en suite bathroom, but it seemed the modest spare room was as good an offer as she was going to get.

  Maybe she ought to have booked into a B&B. The prospect gained in appeal as she mulled it over and the car swayed and swerved with Frankie’s aggressive driving style. Would Molly be offended? Or relieved? She tried to envisage her life as a guest. Was Molly still grumpy in the mornings? Would Frankie feel he couldn’t relax and be himself with Judith there? Or, worse still, that he could? He might wear a gaping dressing gown and scratch sweaty bits of himself.

  However, against expectations, when they arrived, Judith was pleasantly surprised to discover that Molly had emptied the wardrobe in the spare room. The furniture smelled of lemon Pledge and the fresh peach bed linen of fabric conditioner. By the time all Judith’s bags were in the room – carried ultra-carefully up the stairs so as not to mark the new wallpaper – the floor area had shrunk dramatically. Hemmed in by her possessions, she felt a massive heave of homesickness for her own place. The comfortable rooms of her flat on The Strand, the balcony scorched by the sun and overlooking the rippling blue of Sliema Creek and across the harbour to the curtain walls of Valletta rising from the sea. The double bed in the shaded bedroom at the back.

  Bit late for those thoughts. Uncle Richard or one of her capable cousins would have her flat sublet in days. She yanked her thoughts away from Sliema and made an effort not to be ungracious. ‘Sorry to put you out like this, Moll. I’m disrupting your life, aren’t I?’

  ‘Oh well,’ shrugged Molly. But her curranty black eyes sharpened. ‘Of course, it’s been a bit of a bombshell, I’ll be honest with you. A phone call yesterday – then today, you’re here, bag and baggage.’

  She waited, her eyebrows raised. At Judith’s silence, she reached behind herself and pushed the door closed to signify that Judith could speak in confidence. Or that neither of them would be leaving the room until a bucket of guts had been spilled.

  With a sigh of resignation, Judith sank down on the bed. Some degree of explanation was due to her sister for Judith turning up, leaving her life, her job, the place that h
ad been home for the past four years to dump herself on Molly. It was just that talking about it was going to make it all the more raw.

  Molly folded her arms and her face settled into lines that said, ‘I could’ve told you something like this was going to happen.’ She edged closer. ‘Is it that man you’ve been mixed up with? Gino?’ Molly hadn’t approved of Judith living with a man so much her junior and so Judith had never invited her to meet him, or brought him to the UK.

  ‘Giorgio.’

  ‘Jaw-joe, then. Has it all ended?’

  Judith tried to explain her snap decision to flee. ‘There didn’t seem to be much future for us because …’ Her voice dried in her throat.

  Molly sighed – in exasperation rather than sympathy. ‘All that business with his family you told me about, I suppose? Or did he find someone more his own age? I know you’ve never quite lost that angular, schoolgirl look that means you don’t look your age but a gap always seems more when it’s the woman who’s the oldest, doesn’t it?’

  Judith winced. ‘Neither of those things. I don’t really want to talk about it right now.’

  Molly’s expression softened. ‘Well, don’t blame yourself—’

  ‘But I think I am to blame. Look, Moll darling.’ Judith scrambled to her feet and slid a sisterly arm around the other woman, whether Molly would appreciate it or not. ‘I feel as if I’m putting you out enormously, why don’t I book into a B&B for now, then perhaps rent somewhere for a few weeks until I can get my tenant out? I’ll see him tomorrow and give him notice.’ She squeezed her sister’s cushiony shoulders. ‘I shouldn’t have just dropped myself on you like this – you have your own life to get on with. I’m a disgrace, aren’t I?’ She tried to make it a joke.

  Molly hunched a shoulder. ‘You’re welcome here! I’ll let you settle in.’ She swung out of the room, leaving Judith to flop back down onto the bed. Welcome? She automatically translated the word into Maltese. Merhba. She didn’t feel welcome. She felt as if she were presuming upon her sister’s hospitality. But, with their mother ensconced in a care home now, an automatic return-to-family reflex had sent her to Molly.