Page 43 of Slow Burn

Once my father’s funeral was over, I could start to breathe again.

Everything before that had been a whirlwind of emotions – dropping out of the show, saying goodbye to the team, to Lira, especially.

Returning to Italy. To my family home, but without my dad in it.

To Mama, who was numb with grief and who I’d had to care for like a child since I had arrived.

I felt my responsibility very strongly now.

I was the part-owner of this house, this farm, this wine business.

There was no more putting it off, no easiness now about signing up for another dance show or pursuing a TV opportunity.

In her current state of mind, my mother needed me more than ever, and I wanted to help her heal.

And so, I had packed away all the emotions I had about my dad dying – all the regret and guilt and sadness and feelings of abandonment.

I stopped asking how he could leave me, how he could do this to us, why he didn’t look after himself more like we’d all asked him to.

And I focused on just getting through; on organizing, planning, troubleshooting and comforting Mama.

I had kept half an eye on what was happening with Slow Burn , but it had been too painful for me to see pictures of Lira and Tomas dancing together.

The reviews were good, but not as unanimously great as they had been with Lira and me taking to the stage together.

In some ways, it pleased me to know that they did not share the same sizzling chemistry that we did, but it also made me sad that this was how the show should end for her, after such an exciting start.

I felt bad for Carlos, bad for Lira, for Tomas, for how insensitive I had been with Luca, for my mother and for everyone except myself.

Somehow, I did not have the headspace to think about my own place in all of this, to acknowledge how I felt.

I just had to carry on for now, and to hope that, at some point, I would start to feel better again.

Just as I had begun to feel hopeful about the future, about what Lira and I were beginning to build, I had been set back not a few steps, but what felt like several hundred thousand of them.

I prepared some breakfast for my mother and I, something I had been doing since I arrived in Italy nearly three weeks ago.

She spent her days – and many of her nights – sitting out on the veranda, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, staring into space.

I would bring her enticing-looking food on a tray, but sometimes she would not even touch it, or she would pick at it, not managing more than a couple of mouthfuls. I tried to joke her out of it.

‘Is it my cooking, Mama? Am I putting too much salt in your food? Or does it have no flavour at all?’

She tried to smile, but it never quite reached her eyes.

Lira and I had been texting regularly. She was heading down to Florence today, with a day off before the show opened in the city that was closest to my family home.

It had been the performance I had been looking forward to most, and tears stabbed at the back of my eyes when I thought of the tickets I had reserved for my parents; two seats that would now remain empty, in the centre of the fifth row back, the perfect spot for my mama and papa to see me perform.

In my imagination, it would have been the moment at which my father would admit he had been wrong to try to stop me dancing, that he could see now that it was what I was born to do.

That he was proud of me. Now, he would never get to see me and I would never know what he might have said.

I was clearing up the breakfast things, with plans to make a start on the copious amount of emails that seemed to come through for the vineyard every hour of every day, when I heard a car pulling up outside.

I sincerely hoped it was not someone else come to pay their respects.

Many locals wanted to see us – well, Mama, mainly, but me, too – to tell us how sorry they were, how much they had loved my father, how dearly they would miss him.

They brought us bottles of wine, which I had been working my way through worryingly quickly, and lovely home-cooked meals, although since Mama had no appetite, I had mainly polished them off myself.

When the doorbell rang, I walked down the hallway with a feeling of trepidation, because it meant I would have to make polite conversation with whoever had arrived unannounced, and would also have to overcompensate for the fact that my mother was not talking much at all.

Steeling myself, I opened the door and instinctively stepped back, shocked by who was on the doorstep of my parents’ house in the Tuscan hills, all the way out in the middle of nowhere.

Once I had pulled myself together, I felt an altogether different sensation in my body – relief, perhaps. Happiness.

Lira was here, and my world was already infinitely better than it had been a few moments before.

‘This is a surprise,’ I said, thinking that was a woefully inadequate way to describe how I was feeling.

‘I wanted to see how you are,’ she said. ‘And I was in the area, so…’

I laughed lightly, and she joined in. We both knew she had not been in the area; nobody ever was. This was rural Tuscany, a village in the middle of green hills and vineyards, miles and miles from the nearest station; even the closest bus stop was over a half-hour walk away.

‘How did you get here?’ I asked. ‘I could have picked you up from the city if I had known you would like to visit.’

She shrugged. ‘It was easy enough to get a taxi.’

Easy, perhaps, but also expensive. I was touched that she had made the decision to come all the way out here for me.

I suddenly realized that I had left her on the doorstep for no good reason, possibly making her think she was not welcome when she most certainly was, more than she would ever know, more than I could even admit to myself.

I had not really known how I was going to get through the next few days, weeks, months, stuck here in the middle of nowhere alone with my mother, who I worried about constantly, and my thoughts and the aching hole my father had left in every single part of this house, this land.

I stood aside.

‘Sorry! Come in!’

She had a large shoulder bag with her, but no luggage. With a thud of disappointment, I assumed this meant she was not planning to spend the night. Perhaps I could drive her back into Florence later – that way I could spend an extra hour with her, and some time away from the house might do me good.

Lira stepped over the threshold, looking around in what seemed like awe.

It probably was impressive when you saw it for the first time.

A typically Italian country house, whitewashed on the outside with bursts of lilac and pink bougainvillea hanging from baskets around the doors and windows.

My parents were both keen gardeners. Papa had done the practical – the vegetables, the fruits, obviously the wine – and Mama took care of the flowers.

Inside, my mother had decorated the house in a farmhouse style, making use of natural materials like wood and hessian and painting the walls in muted shades of forest green and ochre and mustard.

Lira followed me into the kitchen, which opened up into a huge yet inviting space.

It was the heart of the house, my mother’s favourite place to be. Or at least it used to be.

‘What a beautiful home,’ said Lira.

She sounded breathy and unsure of herself and I wanted her to feel comfortable, so I threw caution to the wind and wrapped my arms around her, burying my face in her shoulder.

It took a few seconds for her to react. She was probably caught off guard; it was not like me to initiate touch.

Sex, obviously, was different – I took the lead on that most of the time, but not this.

Not the slower, sweeter stuff. That was what it felt like when she found the small of my back, running her hands up my spine, stroking me softly.

‘I missed you,’ I said.

I waited to regret saying it, but somehow I did not, perhaps because I refused to not say things anymore. After all, sometimes you did not get a chance to say them at all. Sometimes it was too late.

‘Same,’ she said. ‘And I’ve been worried about you. Wondering how you are.’

‘Have you?’ I asked.

She took my head in her hands and kissed me tenderly on the lips.

I had wanted to do the same thing to her, ever since I had seen her standing on my doorstep.

I hesitated, though, before kissing her back, willing myself not to overthink the fact it felt like she was the only good thing in my life right now.

The last thing I wanted to become was needy, or dependent on somebody.

I had never been that; I had been on my own for most of my life, or at least it had felt that way.

Of course, my mother would have been there for me if I had asked, but I had never wanted her worrying about me.

I saw how stressed she got about what everybody else was doing as it was – her sisters, my father, the employees they had, young men from the village who she stressed about more than ever now, since they relied on the salary they earned here at the farm.

What will they do? Who will run the vineyard now Papa is gone? Will it be you, Gabi? Please don’t leave me alone with this. I don’t know what to do without him.

I had placated her with soothing noises and reassurances that I was not just going to leave her, that I would be here, too, by her side, for as long as she needed me.

Throwing caution to the wind, I swung Lira around so that she was pressed up against one of the myriad worktops that my mother liked to prepare food on under normal circumstances.

‘It is so good to see you,’ I said, peeling off her jacket and throwing it over a nearby stool.