Sunrise By the Sea by Jenny Colgan

Chapter Nineteen

It was the easiest place, she figured, hiding out in the little windowless bathroom. It was tiled in a very bland hotel style that she liked, as if she was on holiday somewhere – which she guessed was the point – and the towel rail heated up the entire room. Having no windows made it feel cosy and cocoon-like and cut off from the rest of the world. It felt safe. She lit a candle as the hot water filled the tub and she put far too much bubble bath in it. She took her book, but didn’t read it. Instead she got into the water – even though it was far too hot, the pain felt cleansing somehow, sat with her hands around her knees and let big salty tears run down her face.

She was trembling. He had been so angry with her! It had been a reasonable request. Okay, maybe she should have done it in person but . . . well. She couldn’t. A polite note was perfectly reasonable. Well. Reasonable-ish.

She thought of his face, so animated and cheerful when he thought she was introducing herself to the neighbourhood. She put her head in her hands. She should have done that. She should have found a way to say hello. Baked a cake perhaps. But it had been so long since she’d done anything in the kitchen.

Cooking for friends used to be one of her greatest pleasures. Now she could barely keep herself fed wholesomely. Why must everything be so hard? Everything was hard – she found herself slapping the bubbles with her hand – and nobody understood. And what kind of an idiot thought it was okay to play crunching music all night when you had neighbours anyway?

She remembered belatedly that he hadn’t even realised she’d been there. She’d been so successful at hiding herself away that he hadn’t even realised she was there.

She turned on the tap so he couldn’t hear her sobbing through the paper-thin walls.

All that night, as she tried to follow something on Netflix, she was also keeping an ear out for next door. Part of her desperately wanted him to keep playing – to play louder, if anything. Then he could be the bad guy in this scenario and she could cheerfully reclaim the moral high ground and know she was right in what she did and he was a pig. It wouldn’t solve her next problem but it would make her feel better right now.

Instead, there was no piano playing at all. What there was, all clearly audible, was:

1.stomping up and down the woodenfloors

2.occasional sighs

3.the squeaking open of the balcony door

4.more sighing

5.the lighting of something – a cigarillo? Not a cigarette, but a faint scent of liquorice and cloves drifted over from the balcony – which was puffed noisily for a couple of moments, then extinguished crossly.

6.more muttering

This pattern then repeated. Marisa grew more and more alarmed. What if he was actually insane and was plotting to murder her in her bed? Just because she was in the middle of nowhere, at an address that didn’t appear on Google Maps, on an island that didn’t always connect to the mainland, with very few people knowing she was there, next door to a very grumpy giant whom she had angered . . .

Marisa took her laptop and retired to bed.

She looked at Skype sadly. There was only one person she was interested in hearing from. And he wasn’t around any more. And her grandmother would almost certainly tell her she was an idiot.

On the other hand, she would almost certainly be home.

‘Well, I did tell you.’

Being told off by her grandmother wasn’t much of an improvement on being alone – but it was a bit.

‘I know. But I just . . . I just couldn’t in the end.’

Her grandmother sniffed.

‘Next you’ll be telling me you didn’t go to mass on Sunday.’

Marisa slid past that one as quickly as she could.

‘So now I live next to an angry giant who hates me,’ she said.

‘Is he married?’

‘Nonna! Seriously, aren’t you listening?’

‘I’m just saying. Who else are you meeting?’

‘Okay, thanks, Nonna.’

‘Your mother agrees with me. Says you’re having a big sulk at the world.’

‘You’ve been discussing me?’

‘Of course,’ said her nonna serenely. ‘What else do you think happens to me that I have to talk about? Also, we are both worried about whether you’re eating.’

‘Of course I’m eating.’

‘Well, I can see you’re eating. Are you eating well?’

Marisa had hoped it didn’t show, but obviously it did. Everything seemed so much effort, and cooking had fallen by the wayside.

‘I’m fine, Nonna.’

‘Good. Go talk to your neighbour. He is musician! Oh, I love music. I think you are very lucky.’

‘This isn’t . . . It’s not the kind of stuff you like.’

Nonna had started singing to herself.

‘Not like that.’

‘Ask him if he knows “Voglio Te”.’

‘He doesn’t,’ said Marisa shortly. ‘He knows “Bang Smash Piss Off Marisa”.’

But despite the fractious conversation, Marisa still felt a little better when she finally fell asleep.

Also, something rather odd happened. Her nonna forgot to hang up the Skype. She just wandered off. When Marisa woke up the next morning, she found they were still connected; she could see the kitchen, with the hot morning sunlight pouring in from the back door, and her nonna listening to the radio as she put coffee on the stove.

‘Nonna?’

But the old woman didn’t hear her, just carried on. Marisa found she didn’t mind at all; having the computer connected to Italy was somehow rather nice, like she could just glance through a window and find her there. Even when she finally got Nonna’s attention, she simply shrugged and smiled and said, well, that was nice but she had to get on with her day and took her little checkered shopping trolley and headed out to the market, as Marisa threw some bread in the toaster.

And over the days, they both pretended that it was nothing, really, that the Skype was left on, and that they could swap the odd word here and there when Marisa wasn’t working, about what Father Giacamo had been saying or what the fishmonger had tried to pass off at the market and how she had told him a thing or two, and Marisa would tell her some old stories from the registrar’s, and they would talk about her grandfather and gradually, as the days went by, they fell into an odd sort of pattern – at least, after the microwave lasagne fight, that neither of them referred to again.

Marisa started to lean in to the rhythms of her grandmother’s life. She rose early, even with the one-hour time difference, and was always dressed and busy before Marisa hit her first coffee of the day. She took her old much battered shopping trolley out into the blinding sunshine of the Imperia morning, headed down to the market at the old port to discuss fish and fruit with the sellers, and came back and started preparing herself a little lunch – fresh sardines, perhaps, and salad, while Marisa toasted herself yet another sandwich. Then Nonna would take her siesta and wake at five, ready for a chat, just as Marisa was winding down her day, and Marisa would go to bed long before her grandmother, who would play her old opera records; a more comforting kind of music, and so quiet as to be practically imperceptible.

It was surprisingly companionable. Not, of course, that either of them would admit, in a million years, over a thousand miles, and two generations, that they were . . . lonely.

Eventually, in the evening, her nonna started squinting at Marisa’s television and demanding that Marisa put on the Italian subtitles to whatever she was watching, and even when Marisa suggested that she could get Netflix herself and watch alongside, she shook her head at that completely outlandish suggestion and preferred to squint through the bad camera on Marisa’s laptop and watch that way, so Marisa would stick the laptop next to her on the sofa, feeling slightly ridiculous, as if she had a robot friend, and they would watch together.

The noisy music had stopped at night. Now she never heard him play at all, only his students throughout the day, and some growled phone calls. Apart from that, nothing.

Marisa felt terrible about this. It wasn’t fair. They should have found a time when he could play and she would just put up with it.

‘Well, you discuss it, you build a compromise,’ Nonna pointed out, but of course saying things was easier than doing them, and Marisa couldn’t bear to make the first move.

‘No more notes,’ said Anita, at their next session. ‘But you got out?’

‘I stood on the steps! For a bit.’

‘Okay. Bottom of the steps next week. And, ideally, a sensible conversation with your next-door neighbour, but I realise that’s a lot to ask.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘How did it feel, when you went out?’

Marisa thought about it.

‘You know that film Beetlejuice? The really old one.’

‘Where Winona Ryder has really cool hair?’

‘Really cool hair.’

Both Anita and Marisa were pleased that, for once, they appeared to have landed on something they both agreed upon.

‘Well. That’s what it’s like,’ said Marisa more quietly.

‘Stripy ghosts?’

‘No . . . you know. When she tries to leave the house. The mother.’

‘Geena Davis! God, she was gorgeous. What happened to her?’

‘That’s not really the—’

‘Do you remember Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise?’

They both went quiet for a moment.

‘Cor,’ said Marisa at the memory.

‘I mean, I don’t care how old he is.’

‘Why isn’t he living next door?’

They both smiled rather soppily at each other.

‘Sorry,’ said Anita, snapping out of it and becoming professional again.

‘No, don’t worry. I think thinking about Brad Pitt might be the best therapy I’ve ever had.’

‘I’m going to write that down.’

A ball soared over Anita’s head and her face furrowed.

‘I bet Brad Pitt’s nine hundred kids don’t do that.’

‘I bet they do.’

‘I bet they do too.’

Marisa grinned, feeling a little better.

‘Okay, so, tell me,’ said Anita, returning to business, her dark gaze penetrating even through the screen.

‘Well, when she tries to leave the house, it turns out to be perched on a desert, surrounded by vast sandworms.’

‘I remember,’ said Anita.

‘That’s what it feels like to me. Like everything out there is a different world. That everything out there is not safe.’

‘But you know rationally that the world outside isn’t really sandworms?’

‘But so does Geena Davis. It doesn’t make any difference to whether or not she can get out of the house.’

‘So leaving the house for you . . .’

‘Is like braving sandworms.’

‘I get it,’ said Anita. ‘I do.’

There was a long pause.

‘Oh God, it’s just so stupid.’

‘Don’t. Don’t be ashamed. Don’t feel ashamed. You have nothing to be ashamed of.’

Marisa thought back to what she’d done to her neighbour.

‘I think I do.’

‘Can you make it better?’

‘He got so angry and upset.’

‘Well. Okay. Well. Start small. Sit on your step when the weather is nice. Wave at the worms.’

Marisa half-smiled at that. ‘I can try.’

‘You can.’

Marisa glanced at the time. It was almost up. A paper aeroplane soared above Anita’s head.

‘Creative,’ she said.

‘I think it’s made out of my passport application,’ said Anita. She smiled ruefully. ‘Okay, until next time. And Marisa . . .’

‘Uh-huh?’

‘Remember please – I know I keep telling you this. But remember this is an illness. And illnesses – many of them – they pass. Even without treatment. Bodies don’t stay sick for ever. Ask any doctor to tell you the truth, and they will; a lot of the time, they’re just waiting for bodies to heal themselves. And all it takes is time.’