Page 47 of The Lost Story of Sofia Castello

46

PORTUGAL, 2000

Sofia gestures at the tape recorder, and I press stop.

‘Wow,’ is all I’m able to say. Her account of London during the Blitz was so raw and so real, I felt as if I was there in the middle of the dust and the debris and the devastation. And her description of her interactions with Trafalgar were so tender and heartfelt. He can’t have been one of the demons she spoke about exorcising before. She must have been talking about the Germans.

‘Wow indeed,’ she says crisply, and at first I think she’s being sarcastic, but then I look closer and I see that her face is ashen and her eyes shiny with tears.

‘I’m so sorry you experienced that.’

She waves her hand dismissively, as if batting away a fly. ‘It was nothing compared to what those poor Londoners endured for years.’

‘I can’t believe Queen’s Hall was destroyed.’

She nods sadly. ‘At least it was empty when they bombed it, so no one was killed there.’

‘But still, it must have been really traumatic.’

She sighs. ‘The concept of trauma wasn’t a thing back then. We just had to pick ourselves back up and get on with it.’

‘Even so, it’s a lot to keep stored inside you for so long.’

‘Trust me, I’m the queen of storing things up. I’m like a… a giant bank vault, I’ve got so much stored up inside of me!’

She reaches for the bottle of wine on the coffee table and tops up her glass. Mine is still full as I was too gripped to even think about drinking while she was speaking.

Sofia raises her glass before taking a sip. ‘I have to say it felt a hell of a lot easier keeping it in than letting it out.’

‘Hopefully in the end it will feel cathartic,’ I reply, reaching for my drink and praying that she doesn’t want to finish for the day. I have to know what happened with Trafalgar.

‘I very much doubt it,’ she says glumly. ‘But my sense of justice is currently outweighing my common sense. Although only marginally.’

‘What do you mean?’ I ask cautiously, aware that any wrong move on my part could cause her to clam up again.

‘I have to put right the wrongs,’ she says ominously. ‘I need to set the record straight.’

But this only confuses me more. What ‘record’ could she be talking about? In all my research on Sofia prior to coming to Portugal, I didn’t find a single negative thing written about her. Surely she can’t be talking about idiots like Bing claiming to have been her first love, or the made-up story about her childhood. She helped perpetuate that myth after all, and it hardly seems serious enough to warrant such ominous insinuations.

‘How about we take a break from talking about me and you tell me some more about yourself?’ she says before lighting a cigarette.

I laugh. ‘Are you sure? I’ve had a very dull life compared to you.’

‘I already know enough about you to know that that isn’t the case.’ She takes a long drag on her cigarette and looks at me intently. ‘Why don’t you tell me some more about your childhood and what it was like being fostered?’

I feel a little unsettled by this sudden change of tack combined with the directness of her question, but if it helps to get her settled again, then so be it. ‘Well, if I had to sum it up in a word, I suppose I would say that it was disappointing.’

‘How so?’ She looks genuinely fascinated, although I really don’t understand why someone with a life as dramatic and interesting as hers would be. I’m guessing she’s feigning interest to shift the attention from her.

‘It was difficult, seeing the other kids in school with their proper parents and normal families. I used to fantasise about having a proper family of my own – when I wasn’t daydreaming about being with my real parents in heaven,’ I add with a wry laugh.

Sofia’s eyes widen. ‘What do you mean?’ She leans closer. ‘Are your real parents dead?’

‘I have no idea. A social worker once told me that my mum was a drug addict, and I don’t have a clue about my dad or who he was as he wasn’t named on my birth certificate.’

‘And you’ve never felt the desire to try to find out about him?’

I shake my head. Just the idea makes me uncomfortable and always has. ‘I honestly don’t want to. Why bother looking for someone who clearly doesn’t want to be found.’

‘But what if he doesn’t know you exist? Your mother might have never told him she was pregnant.’

‘I suppose I’m scared of what I might find. I don’t think I could take any more disappointment in the parental department,’ I attempt to joke, but it falls flat, and Sofia keeps staring at me, her expression deadly serious.

‘But he might be really nice.’

My discomfort grows. I get that she wants a break from talking about herself, but why the fascination with my birth father? Thankfully, at that moment the phone starts to ring from its side table in the corner.

‘Hold that thought,’ Sofia says cheerily before going over to answer it. ‘ Ola !’ she cries cheerily into the receiver.

Almost immediately, her face clouds over.

‘ N?o, n?o, n?o ,’ she says firmly, looking at me.

I wonder who she’s saying no to and why. Maybe it’s Gabriel, reiterating what he said in his note about urgently needing to talk about me. My skin starts to prickle as Sofia starts talking rapidly in Portuguese. There’s an almost panicked tone to her voice, a sense that she’s pleading with the caller. Then she falls silent and listens.

‘ Adeus ,’ she says curtly before replacing the receiver on the rest with a heavy clunk.

‘Everything OK?’ I ask casually as she returns to the sofa.

‘Yes, it was just my gardener, Rosária, telling me that she – uh – she wants to plant some more flowers.’

This is such a blatant lie, it would be laughable if I weren’t the one being lied to. There’s no way Sofia would react so vehemently against having more flowers in her garden, and the way she keeps blinking and biting her bottom lip is a textbook giveaway, which I know from a book I ghostwrote for a body language expert. One of the unexpected perks of being a ghostwriter is that you become an unlikely expert in the most random things.

‘Anyway, I’m sorry about before,’ she quickly continues. ‘I didn’t mean to pry about your father and I’m sorry if it made you feel uncomfortable. Why don’t you tell me some more about your work instead? I guess you must have met some very interesting people.’

I nod, grateful that she’s finally changed the subject but also aware that suddenly changing the subject is another textbook tactic of a liar. ‘I have – although they’ve been a little less interesting recently – until you of course.’

She laughs. ‘Glad to hear it! But why so?’

‘The last couple of clients couldn’t have been less interested in their books, which made it slightly challenging.’

She frowns. ‘Why would a person not be interested in their own book?’

‘When their manager has negotiated a book deal on their behalf, purely in order to make them more money,’ I reply, although I realise that I no longer feel bitter about my previous two jobs. Working with Sofia, as challenging as it might be at times, has changed everything. As has coming to Portugal. I already know that whatever happens, I’m never going to return to the life I found myself in last year. Just like a butterfly trying to squeeze itself back into a cocoon, it would be physically impossible.

‘I see.’ Sofia takes a sip of wine. ‘So, who would you say was the most interesting person you’ve worked with – until me?’ She grins.

‘Hmm, well, Joyce Daniel, the Olympic runner, was very inspiring, but I guess the most interesting and well known is the actor Sir Lawrence Bourne – have you heard of him?’

She nods. ‘Yes, of course – who hasn’t?’ She stubs out her cigarette and clears her throat. ‘So, shall we crack on with the book then?’

‘Oh, yes, absolutely!’ I exclaim. ‘I need to know what happens with Trafalgar.’

Her face instantly clouds over, and she tops up her glass to the brim. Then she looks at me. ‘Before we continue, can I just say that I think you’re a wonderful woman, and you mustn’t let what happened with your real parents affect your confidence. And you’re absolutely right: if you did get to meet your real father, you could discover that you were way better off without him.’

‘Yes, exactly.’ I smile, but as I get my recorder and notepad ready, I can’t help feeling uneasy. I’m not sure if all of Sofia’s weird secretiveness is making me paranoid, but I can’t shake the feeling that she knows something I don’t. Something about me. But how can she?