The Last Concerto. Sara Alexander

      Not all of them, Alba thought.

      ‘I don’t think there’s a soul out there I could trust like I do you. And it terrifies me.’

      Alba held her friend’s cheek in her hand. His skin was soft where he had shaved. She took a breath to tell him about her offer from the accademia. Mario’s sneer interrupted before she could. ‘People normally go someplace private to do that shit.’

      The pair twisted round to him as he threw a cigarette into his mouth and lit it.

      ‘People normally don’t interrupt conversations they’re not part of,’ Alba snapped.

      ‘Planning on swinging for round two, Alba? Your papà would love that. At your brother’s wedding of the year and all.’

      Alba pinned him with a stare. Mario flicked his ash down onto the dusty earth by her shoes. ‘Don’t know what you see in her, Raffaele,’ he jeered.

      Raffaele didn’t return his glance.

      ‘Your dad’s pissed as a fart, Alba,’ Mario said, flicking her a diagonal grin.

      She watched Mario take a deep drag on his cigarette, the orange-ruby light dipping his skin a richer olive, the thick mass of eyelashes potent shades for his jeering eyes.

      ‘Anyway, get back to your necking. Your dads will be organizing your big day in no time.’ He scuffed the dirt. ‘What?’ he asked, taking another drag. ‘Frustrating to have to hear it as it is and not be able to throw a bottle at me?’

      He turned back to the hangar, which hummed with song now, a call-and-response chant, each verse interrupted by the throng in unison.

      ‘He likes you,’ Raffaele said.

      Alba shot him a look.

      ‘I know you’d like me to say he’s straight out terrified of you. But when you’re a stupid boy choked by the feelings you have for someone you behave like him. Pretty much how I deal with Claudio on a daily basis. Either that or I act like I’m totally indifferent.’

      Raffaele’s smile was fringed with sadness.

      ‘The next few months are going to be intense. I know it. Dad’s got big plans for me. I’ll do anything to take the heat off.’

      ‘I need to talk to you.’

      ‘That’s what we’re doing,’ he replied, just as Salvatore came bounding out of the hangar.

      ‘Alba, Raffaele! Babbo says to come in, they’re about to toast you!’

      Alba couldn’t get her response out before they were dragged inside to deafening applause.

      ‘Please God, these two will be the next!’ Bruno shouted. The crowd stood, gleaming eyes that Alba felt were seeming to wish imprisonment on them both. Her bones felt brittle, as if they’d never felt the response of a piano’s song beneath them, calling out all that was hers to utter in secret, filling the air with melodic freedom, nor never would again.

      She tried to swallow, but her mouth remained dry.

6

       Fuoco

      a directive to perform a certain passage with energy and passion. Con fuoco means with fire, instruction to play in a fiery manner

      A few days later, Signora Elias dropped by to speak with Giovanna and offer a cordial invitation to come to hers for coffee, an official thank-you for all the time she and Alba had worked for her, she’d said, in a way that Giovanna was left with no power to refuse. The date was set. During the weekend, after school had reached its end, Alba and her parents would come to her house. Never had five days felt so close and far away.

      Now, at the beginning of the week, all of Ozieri crowded around the huge bonfire in Piazza Cantareddu to celebrate St John the Baptist. Beside the fire, people sat upon wooden benches drinking wine and carving slabs of cheese from enormous pieces, wrapping them into blankets of bread and toasting the feast. Applause began from one end of the square and rippled up to where Alba sat with her mother and Grazietta.

      ‘Abaida!’ Grazietta called above the din. ‘Isn’t that Gigi’s boy? I didn’t know he was singing with the men now!’

      Alba shot a look across to where a group of men were tightening into a circle intoning a chord before their song. She scanned the familiar faces and there, beside his father, was Mario. His flat black hat flopped over one ear, his white shirt billowing out from beneath a black tunic. Their voices vibrated with a warm, burnished sound, glistening copper tones. Then they stopped, took a breath in unison, and began to sing. She listened as Mario’s voice lifted up above the group, the purest column of sound she’d ever heard. His timbre woody yet crisp, golden and bright, full of yearning. It was impossible to match this voice with the imbecile she loathed. This couldn’t be the arrogant boy flicking ash towards her feet. Where was his snarl, the sideways grimace, the unattractive swagger? He took a deeper breath and his voice rose higher still, enhanced by the earthy bass chord beneath, the crowd hushed at the sound. The other men’s voices glowed blood red and ochre, and above, the sky blue of his love song. Alba felt the tears in her eyes but stopped them from falling. Her mother mopped her own with a frenetic hand. Grazietta wound an arm around her.

      ‘People are born with this gift, Giovanna,’ Grazietta whispered, thrilled. ‘You can’t teach someone that. God bless him. What a voice. From God I say. What a sound.’

      His eyes lowered from his upward gaze and found hers. She watched, her stare impenetrable. It was her turn to gaze through a crack and he knew it.

      The crowd burst into cheers. Gigi’s friends patted him on the back. Some of the boys in their class knocked Mario’s hat off his head and whacked him with it. Then the group merged towards the other end of the piazza where a smaller fire edged towards embers. The children lined up on one side. One of the parents belted out instructions most wouldn’t hear above the noise. The first child burst into a sprint, then leaped over the flames. The crowd cheered.

      Raffaele slipped in behind Alba. ‘We have to do it, you know, it’s our last year.’

      ‘I think we need more than a leap over flames to get us out of our mess.’

      ‘Now who is being dramatic?’

      ‘Pragmatic.’

      ‘We’re officially not kids next year, Alba. Besides, you want Mario to think you don’t have the guts?’

      ‘Why would I care what he thought?’

      ‘Saw you watch him singing.’

      Alba thwacked an elbow into his side. He grabbed her wrist and ran them on, pulling her behind, Alba laughing in spite of herself, till they fell into line. Mario and his mates were coercing one another with shoves and pelted insults. One of the parents screamed to the younger child ahead of them, stay away from the embers and impervious to the kerfuffle behind them.

      The music from the other side of the square was louder now, belting through the speakers. Alba thought she caught sight of her parents waltzing. All of a sudden, she was at the front of the line. Raffaele’s voice hummed in her ear. ‘Remember, you’ve got to think of stuff you want rid of! St John will sort it. Take away the bad.’

      ‘You don’t believe that shit and I know it,’ she screamed back.

      ‘And you love it more than you’d know, pagangirl.’

      He knew her better than she’d like to admit. Besides, there were only a few days between now and her parents discovering her daughter had received the most prestigious invitation they could have ever dreamed up. A marriage to a local wealthy boy was nothing compared to that. And yet. She brushed off her unease, losing herself for a breath in the fire as it burned, insistent, free.

      A