The Last Concerto. Sara Alexander

can read, Alba, I’m asking you to tell me the truth.’

      Alba’s swallow felt hollow. ‘Signora Elias taught me.’

      Her father’s smile was crooked. ‘Took pity on the poor town mute, did she?’

      Alba took a breath, but her stomach clasped tight.

      ‘And you sit here, telling me you’ve spent all these years studying music, wasting your time at the old woman’s when your father has been building a business that will take care of you and your unborn children? Is that what you’re saying? Are you actually telling me you think it’s a good idea to run to Rome and play an instrument? Now I’ve heard it all. You are even crazier than they tell me. What do you have to say about this, Giovanna? You sitting there wringing your hands? You going to sit there mute as well?’

      The corners of Giovanna’s lips stretched as if she were clamping whatever words were fighting their way out.

      ‘This is all your fault, you know that, don’t you? I said so when she nearly killed that boy! And did you listen? You both sit there with no words! You’re the most stupid women I know! My own family, imbeciles! What happened to this family? Everything I do, and this is how you thank me. Selfish, stupid little women.’

      ‘I had no idea!’ Giovanna blurted.

      ‘Even worse!’ His voice rose, a crescendo, sweeping treble notes that ascended into a painful octave. ‘The girl’s mother not knowing what’s going on under her eyes! How did that feel? Watching that old woman shame you like that?’

      Giovanna took a breath to speak, but Bruno swung his hand across her face. She cried out. Alba stood up. Bruno grabbed her chin.

      ‘See what you did? That’s all you. You and your surly little game. Over my dead body you go. You’re not going to make a mockery of me like that.’

      He pushed her down. The wood thwacked the crease between her calves and the back of her thigh.

      ‘I won’t hear another word of it.’ He scuffed his chair back, swung his sweater over his shoulder, and slammed the door shut.

      The silence could not suffocate Giovanna’s swallowed sobs.

7

       Piu mosso

      a directive to a performer that the music of the indicated passage should have more motion, it should move more quickly

      Rena Majore was a small town tucked inland of a blustery, rocky coast and a winding drive north of Ozieri. Alba and her family had visited many of the smaller sheltered coves along the eastern coast before Bruno and his brothers had settled on this place for their shared second home. The sea was rough, unpredictable and uninviting. The town was sleepy and woke up, groggy, during the summer months with a half-forgotten piazza that whispered the promise of a town centre. It was a town that attracted those in search of shelter from holiday crowds. Alba hated the place, more so now, because it was where her parents had decided to celebrate Alba and Raffaele’s engagement and graduation.

      ‘Go on, Alba!’ Giovanna called from the kitchen window that opened out onto the terrace. ‘Go and have fun! You’ve worked hard enough! This is your day too, you know!’

      The words were ridiculous droplets of forced maternal altruism, an impeccable performance enjoyed by everyone, it seemed, apart from the person to whom it was directed. Her mother’s gushing happiness held the same violent edge as the woman’s disappointment. Since her parents put a definitive end to her visits to Signora Elias, the offer of her place at the accademia had not been mentioned again, and Alba couldn’t help feeling that the whole experience was a warped dream, or a memory she had been taught to remember. But her fingers ached. They hadn’t played since the letter was torn up in her kitchen. The deeper she sank into the numbness, the more alive her mother became; her own fading life force was feeding her. The music had spun out of Alba and into her mother; she sang of summer and love and weddings and feasts. Her pans and pots and ladles and spoons percussed joy and hope.

      A towel landed on Alba’s face. She looked across at Raffaele, who was grinning, performing on her behalf. A wan smile threatened her lips. Marcellino took the helm in Bruno’s newly acquired British jeep, delivered from England by one of his cousin’s foreign husbands. The teenagers crammed into the back, some on the metal benches that lined the sides, others on the space between them. Mario’s sister sat on his lap, Alba sat cross-legged on the metal floor by Raffaele. Lucia, clutching her protruding belly, yelled at Marcellino as he bombed down the white roads oblivious to the bumps and his wife’s discomfort. After passing the scant smattering of shops, edging open for the season, onwards through the pineta, they arrived at the beach at last. Tall white dunes rose into view as the party negotiated the steep incline and skidded down towards the coast. As always, the wind whipped, and the fine sand prickled Alba’s calves as it flew across the beach. The other people on the beach had long since given up on their umbrellas and laid them down, closed, beside themselves as they worshipped the glaring sun above. Nothing about this section of the coast was an alluring invite. The others in the group yelled in the water now, dashing towards the edge and diving into the deep. Lucia planted herself onto the sand, propping herself up on her elbows.

      ‘I’m surprised your mother let you out for once, Alba.’

      She looked down at Lucia beneath her huge sunglasses. Two miniature concave Albas reflected back to her on the glass.

      ‘Enjoy your freedom while you can, no? Soon you’ll be making babies like me and then all this jumping around will feel like a story your grandma would tell you at bedtime.’

      A blank space formed where the image of a kind grandmother ought to materialize. Alba nodded, to close the start of a conversation she could not relate to, if nothing else. The older women in Alba’s family shared whispered gossip, dabbled in magic and superstition in equal measure. They did not weave soporific fairy tales.

      ‘For heaven’s sake, Alba, go and have a swim. You stand there like the world’s ending already. I’d do anything to have just graduated from school again!’

      And with that Lucia let out a breathy laugh and eased herself down onto the warm sand beneath her towel.

      Alba peeled off her T-shirt and shorts and let them fall to the ground. She slipped out of her flip-flops and felt the grainy heat under her soles. The white sand slid away underfoot till she reached the water, waves rushing up to her, white foam curling into clear. She dived in, feeling the cool envelop her, head racing to the bottom, desperate to drown the noise around her. Her body rushed to the surface for air and then her arms beat through the surface without pause. Three strokes, one breath, repeat. The turquoise rose into view for a snatched intake of air, then down into the sloshing blue, pounding a beat in her ears. Her arms wouldn’t stop. All these weeks without her music had built up an avalanche of physical frustration, more than she could bear. Her hand cupped like the shape of a pianist’s diving into the water, pulling it away from her. The repetition was the closest way to reach her scales, to sense the symmetry of those exercises in her muscles, to feel the pulse that had greeted her every morning and now lay buried in a not so distant past.

      She may have heard voices, which she chose to ignore; the shouts of her brothers, their cousins, Raffaele, Mario, all unnecessary interruptions. The ache for the solitude and complicit dance of music burned. With each stroke, each tension and relaxation of her muscles, her body fought to drive the feeling out further like a tide. She reached the first curve of rocks and pulled herself up onto them, the sun pounding down, drying her salty skin. Raffaele swam over to join her.

      ‘Need company?’ he said, hauling his dripping body beside her. ‘Well, you don’t have the choice right now, sorry. I’ve had just about as much as I can take of your cousin’s ball throwing. Mario’s swum out to catch squid so at least I don’t have to listen to him for a bit.’

      Raffaele stopped mid-flow. ‘Alba?’ he