father that Sunday afternoon. Neither features nor voice were familiar. ‘It’s really you!’ the man said.
Bewildered, Deborah shook her head.
‘I’m Oliver,’ Oliver said. ‘Your father.’
They sat outside, at the nearest cafe. She didn’t take off her sunglasses. She’d spoken to the girls she’d been with and they’d walked on. She had a class at two, she’d said.
‘Time at least for a coffee,’ Oliver said.
She had a look of him, even though she was more like Angelica. It had been a disappointment, the deduction that she hadn’t come here to seek him out. A disappointment that it was no more than a coincidence, her presence in Perugia.
‘You knew of course?’ he said. ‘You did have my address?’
She shook her head. She’d had no idea. She hadn’t even been aware that he was not in England.
‘But, Deborah, surely Angelica –’
‘No, she never did.’
Their coffee came. The waiter was young and unshaven, not neatly in a uniform like the girls at the cafe by the hotel. He glanced at Deborah with interest. Oliver thought he heard him making a sound with his lips, but he could not be sure.
‘I often think of you and your mother in that flat.’
Deborah realized he didn’t know Angelica had died, and found it difficult to break the news. She did so clumsily, or so she thought.
‘My God!’ he said.
Deborah dipped a finger into the foam of her coffee. She didn’t like the encounter; she wished it hadn’t taken place. She didn’t like sitting here with a man she didn’t know and didn’t want to know. ‘Apparently he’s my father,’ she’d said to her companions, momentarily enjoying the sophistication; but later, of course, all that would have to be explained.
‘Poor Angelica!’ he said.
Deborah wondered why nobody had warned her. Why hadn’t her grey-suited uncle or one of Angelica’s friends advised against this particular Italian city? Why hadn’t her mother mentioned it?
Presumably they hadn’t warned her because they didn’t know. Her mother hadn’t ever wanted to mention him; it wasn’t Angelica’s way to warn people against people.
‘She used to send me a photograph of you every summer,’ he said. ‘I wondered why none came these last two years. I never guessed.’
She nodded meaninglessly.
‘Why are you learning Italian, Deborah?’
‘I took my degree in the history of art. It’s necessary to improve my Italian now.’
‘You’re taking it up? The history of art?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘It’s lovely you’re here.’
‘Yes.’
She had chosen Perugia rather than Florence or Rome because the course was better. But if she’d known she wouldn’t have.
‘Not really a coincidence,’ he was saying, very softly. ‘These things never are.’
Just for a moment Deborah felt irritated. What had been the use of Angelica’s being generous, unwilling to malign, bending over backwards to be decent, when this could happen as a result? What was the good of calling a marriage a mistake, and leaving it at that? But the moment passed; irritation with the dead was shameful.
‘Is it far from here, where you live?’ she asked, hoping that it was.
Oliver tore a cheque-stub from his cheque-book and wrote his address on it, then tore out another and drew a map. He wrote down the number of the Betona bus.
‘It’s lovely you’re here,’ he said again, giving his daughter the cheque-stubs. An excitement had begun in him. If he hadn’t been outside the hotel that morning he’d never even have known she was in Perugia. She might have come and gone and he’d have been none the wiser. Angelica had died, the two of them were left; he wouldn’t have known that, either.
‘If you don’t mind,’ he heard his daughter saying and felt she was repeating something he hadn’t heard the first time, ‘I don’t think I’ll visit you.’
‘You’ve been told unpleasant things, Deborah.’
‘No, not at all.’
‘We can be frank, you know.’
Angelica had been like that, he knew it to his cost. In his own case, she had laid down harsh conditions, believing that to be his due. The half-converted house and the monthly transfer of money carried the proviso that he should not come to the flat ever again, that he should not live in England. That wasn’t pleasant, but since it was what she wanted he’d agreed. At least the money hadn’t ceased when the woman died. Oliver smiled, feeling that to be a triumph.
‘Angelica was always jealous. It was jealousy that spoilt things.’
‘I never noticed that in her.’
He smiled again, knowing better. Heaven alone knew what this girl had been told about him, but today, now
