Page 26 of The Lost Story of Sofia Castello

25

PORTUGAL, 2000

On my second day at Sofia’s, I wake with a start. Once she’d told me about the expo, Sofia requested a pause, and after a delicious dinner of fresh fish and potatoes sautéed in paprika and garlic, she’d declared the day over and retired to bed. It had taken me ages to fall asleep, I had so many questions going round and round in my head. In an attempt at emptying my mind, I’d written them down in my notebook. I reach across to the bedside table and pick it up, squinting at the words.

Why was Sofia ‘forced’ to pretend to be dead?

What happened to Judith?

What happened to the diamond?!

Was the plane crash that supposedly killed her linked to the diamond?

What is ‘the secret’ and ‘the truth’ that Gabriel spoke about?

As I reread the page now, another question comes to me, and I scribble it down at the bottom of the list…

Why do they seem to keep arguing about me?

‘Lily!’ I jump as I hear Sofia calling me and shove my notebook under the pillow. ‘Lily! Are you awake?’ she calls again, and I realise that her voice is coming from outside, in the garden.

I go over to the window and peer out. Sofia is standing on the footpath with her gardener. A rusty old bike is propped up between them.

‘ Bom dia !’ Sofia cries as soon as she sees me. ‘I asked Rosária to bring you this, so you can get into town easily to buy some new clothes.’

Rosária tips her straw sunhat back and grins up at me.

‘ Obrigada ,’ I call back. ‘I’ll be right down.’

Before going to bed, I’d told Sofia that I needed to buy some new clothes, a need that was even more urgent than before given that my new dress had been swept out to sea. I’m not sure how much easier the bike will make it though, as it looks ancient.

I have a quick shower and get dressed and head down to find Sofia sitting at the kitchen table, sipping a cup of coffee. A jug of juice and a bowl of boiled eggs and a rack of toast have been placed at the centre of the gingham tablecloth.

‘Is Rosária not joining us?’ I ask as I sit down.

‘Oh – no – she had some work to be getting on with.’

‘Shame, I wanted to congratulate her on the garden. The flowers are so beautiful.’

‘Like the earth laughing,’ Sofia murmurs.

‘The earth is laughing a lot in your garden!’ I joke, helping myself to some toast.

As soon as we’ve finished eating, we go outside to the bike, which is now leaning against the wall of the cottage.

‘Are you sure it’s safe to ride?’ I ask as Sofia blows a cobweb from the handlebars.

‘Of course!’ She gives the bike a loving gaze. ‘Amália was my main mode of transport until last year.’

‘Amália?’

‘Her name,’ she says indignantly, as if naming one’s bike is a perfectly reasonable thing for a grown adult to do. ‘Named after Amália Rodrigues, the Queen of Fado,’ she adds.

‘I see. So what made you stop riding her last year?’ I ask, eyeing the scuffed saddle.

‘A tree got in my way and I ended up in a heap.’ Sofia gives a mournful sigh. ‘Gabriel banned me from riding after that – he said that if I broke my hip at my age, I might never recover.’

Gabriel needs to mind his own business , I automatically think, but on the other hand, I suppose he did have a point. Sofia is eighty. Her bones are bound to be more fragile by now.

‘How long has it been since you rode a bike?’ she asks.

‘Not since I was a kid.’

She looks at me as if I’m insane. ‘Don’t people ride bikes in London?’

‘They do, but it’s a little too daunting for me. The traffic is horrendous,’ I add when she looks at me questioningly.

‘Ah, well you won’t have that problem here.’ She grins. ‘Apart from the occasional tractor or truck going to and from the vineyards, the road into town is pretty deserted.’ She blows the remaining cobweb from the handlebars and starts pushing the bike around the side of the cottage. ‘All you have to do is take a left at the end of the track and follow it for about twenty minutes.’ She looks me up and down and frowns. ‘Maybe closer to thirty, given that you haven’t cycled in years. And I did cycle like a maniac – according to Gabriel anyway.’

I nod. ‘I’ll definitely be taking it slow at first.’

‘When you get to the crossroads, take the road to the left, and you should reach the high street about five minutes later. It’s not the biggest town, but there are a couple of clothes stores. My personal favourite is a boutique called Borboleta. I get most of my clothes there.’

‘OK, great.’ I take the bike from her, hoping she’ll disappear into the house before I set off, but to my dismay she stands there, arms folded, clearly wanting to watch me go.

‘OK then,’ I say nervously as I swing one leg over and prop myself onto the saddle. What if I’ve forgotten how to do it? I panic. What if I’m about to make a total idiot of myself? I take a breath to try to calm myself. Of course I’ll be able to do it. Riding a bike is famous for being impossible to forget after all. ‘Bye then.’ My voice comes out like a squeak as I put one foot on the pedal and push myself off.

‘Good luck,’ Sofia says, and I can hear the amusement in her voice. But it’s just the motivation I need, and, determined not to look stupid in front of her, I push myself off and, after an initial wobble, start cycling down the bumpy track.

‘Stop off at the bakery while you’re there,’ she calls after me. ‘They do the best pastel de nata in all of Portugal. The custard filling is orgasmic.’

‘Will do!’ I call back gaily, trying not to laugh at her description and narrowly avoiding a pothole.

Once I reach the end of the track and I’m on the road, the smoother surface makes things a lot easier, and it’s not long before I’m sailing along, the warm breeze whistling through my hair.

I have a sudden flashback to my third foster family, which I went to when I was eleven. They lived close to an abandoned railway track where you could cycle for miles without having to stop for traffic. I loved taking off on my own along that track, pedalling as fast as I could, dreaming that if I went fast enough, my bike might magically sprout a pair of wings and I’d be able to fly away. Sometimes I’d dream that I’d flown right up to heaven, where my birth parents were. I had no idea if they were dead or not, but it felt strangely comforting to imagine that they were – that they’d been taken from me tragically rather than chosen to abandon me.

Immersed in the memory, I cycle faster and faster along the narrow, winding road. After about ten minutes, I see a sign for a vineyard and suddenly the landscape changes and all I can see are neat rows and rows of waist-high vines, stretching all the way to the horizon. I tilt my head back and drink in the thin wisps of white cloud drifting across the cornflower-blue sky. I feel so light and free it’s as if I’m made of cloud too, a wisp of a woman drifting through the air. It occurs to me that I never once felt like this in all the time I was with Robin. When we were together, I felt all too solid and weighted down. Of course, that’s what I’d wanted at first. Back when we met, I craved security and to feel grounded.

The words of his email flicker back into my mind, but this time his patronising tone doesn’t infuriate me; it’s more like an irritating niggle. I pedal faster and harder and feel a huge wave of gratitude for Sofia and how our chat yesterday helped me see things more hopefully and maybe just maybe I’m now free to move on to something better.

It takes me precisely twenty-three minutes to get into town, which I make a mental note of to tell Sofia as a point of pride. I padlock the bike to a lamp post and take a moment to catch my breath. I feel hot and sweaty from the ride but blissfully free from caring. I look up and down the main street and see a higgledy-piggledy row of old buildings in beautiful pastel shades of pink, green and blue, with terracotta-tiled roofs. As I stroll along, I feel nervous about the language barrier – surely in this more rural area people won’t be as fluent in English, but then I remind myself that I’ve managed OK so far.

I spot a sign with a butterfly painted on it, and as I get closer, I see a beautiful array of clothes in the window and the word BORBOLETA stencilled in gold on the glass. Sofia’s favourite store. I push open the door and step inside.

Fifteen minutes later, I leave the store, the proud owner of three new dresses and a bathing suit in shocking pink. Buoyed by my purchases, I make my way to the bakery and order a bag of tarts to take back with me. I’m so happy as I head back to the bike, I catch myself whistling. But then I see a toy store and I fall silent. Maybe it’s because it’s the most beautiful toyshop I’ve ever seen, its window crammed with wonderful brightly painted wooden toys, or maybe it’s a delayed reaction to Robin’s email, but suddenly an apparition of my dream daughter appears right there in the window, laughing as she pushes the wooden train around the track. Damn. Why did she have to appear now, just when I was feeling so happy?

Because I don’t want you to let me go , I imagine her calling at me from inside the shop.

I quickly look away, tears burning in my eyes.

No matter how hard I try, on the ride back to Sofia’s I can’t quite recapture the feeling of euphoria I’d experienced on the way into town. The sun feels too bright and the air too humid.

I arrive at the cottage to find Sofia sitting on the living-room floor, an old brown leather trunk open in front of her.

‘Lily, my dear, how did you get on?’ she asks, but she looks distracted.

‘Very well, thanks,’ I say breezily as I perch on the edge of the chaise longue. There’s no way I can tell her I’m being haunted by the ghost of my dream daughter. ‘What’s this?’ I ask, pointing to the trunk.

She sighs. ‘ This is my Pandora’s box.’

‘Oh dear.’ I give a nervous laugh. ‘Hopefully you aren’t about to unleash a load of evils upon the world.’

She stares down into the case. ‘I’m afraid that I am. Or, rather, we are.’

‘We?’

She glances over her shoulder at me. ‘By writing this book.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘No, but you will,’ she murmurs.

‘How can you telling your story be evil?’

She looks away. ‘Trust me, there’s going to be plenty of evil in those pages.’

I try to reassure myself that she must be talking about the Gestapo, but why doesn’t she just come out and say this? Why do I get the feeling that she’s sitting on a shocking plot twist I won’t see coming?

I lean closer and peer into the case. I can see a newspaper, yellowed with age, a small tin box, some neatly folded clothes and a gas mask with a snout-like nose that I recognise instantly from school history lessons. ‘You have a gas mask?’ I gaze at it transfixed. It’s so strange to see one for real, rather than in a picture.

‘What?’ she says, clearly still distracted. ‘Oh – uh – yes.’

‘Why? Surely you didn’t need them in Lisbon. Or did they issue them as a precautionary measure?’

She shakes her head. ‘No. I got it in London.’

‘You went to London?’ I stare at her, wondering why she’s never mentioned this before, given that it’s my home city and has come up in conversation several times.

‘Yes, for my sins.’

I wonder what she means by this, but before I can ask, she slams the lid of the trunk shut and gets to her feet.

‘Did you get the pastel de natas?’ she asks.

‘I did.’

Her expression brightens. ‘Excellent! I’ll go and get some plates and make some coffee.’

I watch her go, my head once again filling with questions. Why did she say ‘for my sins’? Previously, she seemed so positive about Britain and our quaint sayings. What could have happened to have prompted this change in her mood?

I glance at the trunk feeling certain that the reason must be lurking inside. My gaze drifts around the room, falling on the mantelpiece, and I do a double take. The framed photograph of Judith is nowhere to be seen.