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‘Anything, Nonno,’ Natalia said, using the name she’d called him since she was a little girl.
Giovanni gave her a whimsical smile as he shook his head. ‘You are so quick to agree, Talia, yet you do not know what I am going to ask.’
‘You know I’d do anything for you.’ Giovanni had raised Talia and her siblings after her parents had died in a car accident when she, as the youngest of seven, had been little more than a baby. He was father, mother and grandfather rolled into one, and since she’d been living on the Di Sione estate with him for the last seven years, he was also the closest thing she had to a confidant and best friend.
She knew some of her older siblings had retained a little distance from their hardworking and sometimes remote grandfather, but in the last seven years Talia had embraced him wholly. He’d offered her refuge when she’d crawled back here, wounded in both body and mind. He’d been her salvation.
‘Anything, Talia?’ Giovanni asked, arching one eyebrow in wry challenge. ‘Even, perhaps, leave the estate?’
She laughed lightly. ‘Surely you wouldn’t ask me to do something as terrible as that.’ She pretended to shudder, although the truth was just the prospect of stepping foot outside the lavish gated estate made her insides clench in fear. She liked her ivory tower, the security of knowing she was protected, behind gates, safe. Because she knew what it was like not to feel safe, to feel as if your very life hung by a single, slender thread, and she refused ever to feel that way again...even if it meant living like a prisoner.
She left the villa at most only a few times a year, usually to visit one of her siblings or attend a private viewing at the occasional art exhibition nearby. She avoided cities and even Long Island’s Gold Coast’s small, well-heeled towns, and restricted travel to short jaunts in a chauffeured car.
When Giovanni suggested Talia get out more, she insisted she preferred a quiet life on the estate, with its sprawling villa, rolling manicured lawns and the winking blue of the Long Island Sound in the distance. Why, she teased her grandfather, did she need to go anywhere else?
Giovanni was kind enough not to push. Yet Talia knew he was concerned about her isolation, even if he never said it. She saw how worry often shadowed his eyes or drew his bushy eyebrows together as he watched her pottering about the villa.
‘You know I do not have long left, Talia,’ Giovanni said now, and she merely nodded, not trusting her voice. A few months ago Giovanni had been given a year to live. Considering he was ninety-eight years old and had already beaten cancer once, nearly twenty years ago, a year was a long time. But it wasn’t long enough for Talia.
She couldn’t imagine the villa without Giovanni, his gentle smiles and wise words, his often silent yet steady presence. The huge, elegant rooms would seem emptier than ever, the estate yawning in all directions, inhabited only by her and its skeleton staff. She hated the thought, and so her mind skittered away from it.
‘So what would you like me to do?’ Talia asked. ‘Paint your portrait?’ For the last few years she had built up a small but thriving career painting portraits. For her twenty-first birthday Giovanni had given her a studio on the grounds of the estate, a small, shingled building with a glorious view of the Sound. Clients came to her studio to sit for their portraits, and she enjoyed the social interaction as well as the creative work, all in the secure environment she craved.
‘A portrait?’ Giovanni chuckled. ‘Who would like to see an old man such as me? No, cara, I’d like something else. I’d like you to find something for me.’ He sat back in his chair, his gnarled hands folded in his lap, and watched her, waiting.
‘Find something?’ Talia leaned forward, surprised and curious, as well as more than a little apprehensive. She recognised that knowing gleam in her grandfather’s eyes, the way he went silent, content to let her be the one to ask. ‘Have you lost something, Nonno?’
‘I have lost many things over the years,’ Giovanni answered. Talia heard a touch of sad whimsy in his voice, saw how his face took on a faraway look. A faint smile curved his mouth, as if he was remembering something sweet or perhaps poignant. Then he turned back to Talia. ‘I want you to find one of them. One of my Lost Mistresses.’
Talia knew about Giovanni’s Lost Mistresses; it was a tale cloaked in mystery that she’d grown up on: a collection of precious objects that Giovanni had carried with him into the new world, when he’d emigrated from Italy as a young man. He’d been forced to sell them off one by one to survive, although he’d loved them all dearly. He’d always refused to say any more than that, claiming an old man must have some secrets. Talia suspected Giovanni had many secrets, and now, with a flicker of curiosity, she wondered if he would tell her at least one of them.
‘One of your Lost Mistresses?’ she repeated. ‘But you’ve never actually said what they are. Which one is it?’
‘A book, a very special book, and one that will be very difficult to find.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘And you think I can find it?’
‘Yes, I do. I trust your intelligence and ingenuity, Talia. Your creativity. It shines from your soul.’
She laughed and shook her head, embarrassed and touched. Her grandfather did not often speak so sentimentally, but she knew that the years weighed on him now and she suspected he felt the need to say things he’d kept hidden for so long.
‘What kind of book?’ she asked.
‘A book of love poems, written by an anonymous poet from the Mediterranean. It is called Il Libro d’Amore.’
‘The Book of Love,’ Talia translated. ‘Are there many copies of it available?’
‘A handful perhaps, but the one I possessed was unlike any other, a first edition with a cover of hand-tooled leather. It is truly unique.’
‘And yet you think I can find it?’ Talia said, doubt creeping into her voice. She’d been envisioning doing a quick Internet search, maybe tracking the book down through a used book dealer. But of course Giovanni could do that himself. He’d bought a tablet years ago, and innovative entrepreneur that he’d always been, he regularly surfed the Internet.
But of course he wanted her to do something far more difficult. Something far more important. And she knew she didn’t want to let him down.
Her grandfather hadn’t asked much of her over the years; he’d graciously given her her own private living quarters on his estate when she’d been just nineteen years old and barely able to cope. He’d never pushed her too hard to get out or to try new things, and he’d made her career as an artist possible without ever having to leave the villa. She owed a lot to her nonno.
‘Yes, I want you to find that particular book,’ he said, smiling sadly. ‘There is an inscription on the inside cover: “Dearest Lucia, For ever in my heart, always. B.A.”’ His voice choked a little and he looked down, blinking rapidly, before he gazed back up at Talia with his usual whimsical smile. ‘That is how you will know it is the right one.’
‘Who is Lucia?’ Talia felt oddly moved by the inscription, as well as her grandfather’s obvious and unusual emotion. ‘And who is B.A.? Were they friends of yours?’
‘You could say that, yes. They were very dear to me, and they loved each other very much.’ Giovanni sat back, adjusting the blanket over his legs, his face pale. Talia had been noticing how easily he tired lately; clearly their conversation had worn him out. ‘But that,’ Giovanni said, a note of finality in his voice, ‘is a story for another time.’
‘But what happened to the book?’ Talia asked. ‘Did you sell it when you reached America?’
‘No, I never took it to America. I left it behind, and that is why it will be difficult to find. But I think you are capable, Talia. Even if finding it may take you on a journey in more ways than one.’