The Last Concerto. Sara Alexander

a glimmer of hope in the dark, no?’

      He reached his arms around her wet shoulders.

      ‘You can tell me. Right? Of all the people here today, you can talk to me. If I actually shut up, that is.’

      He smiled at her second laugh. Her sobs ebbed.

      ‘They’re killing me,’ she whispered.

      Raffaele held the silence. It caught Alba off guard. She took a deeper breath.

      ‘Mamma. Papà. This insane wedding talk.’

      Raffaele interlinked his fingers in hers. ‘Only until we get to do what we want with our lives. We don’t have to stay here, do we? We get to be who we really are if we’re together.’

      He lifted her chin with a gentle finger of his other hand.

      ‘I love you, Alba. I don’t want you to be that wife in the kitchen. We know that. Our marriage is a refuge. From all the things they’ll force on us if we don’t stick together.’

      ‘I don’t want to be a wife. I want to be a pianist.’

      Alba withdrew her fingers from inside his hand.

      Her words splatted out in starts, competing with tears. ‘Signora Elias taught me more than I can describe. She passed on magic, in secret. Mamma and Babbo found out after the Accademia di Santa Cecilia’s in Rome offered me a full scholarship. They burned the letter. I’m still not out of their sight for a minute. I’ve started full-time at the officina, but you knew that already. I haven’t played for weeks.’

      Raffaele held her. Alba caught the slosh of turquoise water rise up towards their feet upon the ochre rock.

      ‘I feel like I’m disappearing,’ she said, shuddering.

      ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’

      ‘It was my hidden life. I’m dead without it. Can you understand that?’

      His smile was a silver streak of grief.

      ‘The only person who can help me now is you, Raffaele.’

      ‘How?’

      ‘Help me get to Rome.’

      Raffaele’s face was struck with disbelief.

      ‘I need to buy a ticket for the boat. Once I’m there I’ll be OK.’

      ‘You want me to help you escape?’

      ‘This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance, Raffaele. We can’t stay here and wither away. Is that what you really want? For yourself? For me? I love you, Raffaele. I don’t want to destroy your life with a fake marriage. I want you to be free. I want us to set me free too.’

      Raffaele dropped his head onto his hands. Alba’s chest creased with spidering panic and the intoxicating liberation of unburdening her secret.

      Mario’s head appeared around the rocks. He pulled his snorkel mask up to the top of his head, his eyes reflecting the glint of the sun-kissed water. He pedalled water and reached his full net of squirming squid overhead.

      ‘Full catch!’ he yelled, triumphant.

      Alba watched him register the tears drying on her face, Raffaele ashen.

      ‘Don’t look so sad! They didn’t feel a thing, si?’

      Raffaele offered a half-hearted laugh, to make Mario go away if nothing else.

      ‘Your ma’s going to be happy, no?’ Mario asked, flicking his mask back onto his face and racing back to the shore to show off his hunt.

      Raffaele and Alba waited for him to be out of earshot.

      ‘Your parents are one of the wealthiest families in Ozieri, Alba. You’ve been working for Signora Elias for years – you can’t find the money?’

      ‘Mamma took everything. There’s no way she’ll give me a single lira towards this. You’re crazy to even suggest me asking them.’

      ‘How much do you need?’

      ‘About two hundred thousand lire. That will be enough for the fare and my first week. Just till I find a job. Signora Elias and her friend told me my accommodation and tuition is all covered by the scholarship. If I don’t go now, I will never play again. I can’t live like that.’

      Alba watched Raffaele’s expression spin through a spectrum of colours: uncertain blues, doubtful greys, flecks of amber hope.

      ‘You’re my last hope, Ra’. If we love each other then let’s do the right thing for each other.’

      He held her. She could feel his heart pulsing beneath the thin skin of his chest.

      ‘So you’re asking me to raise a load of money, in secret, without rousing suspicion, so that you can live your dream and I’ll never see you again?’

      Alba looked at him square. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Ra’.’

      ‘You are.’

      When the party returned to the beach house, salt-crusted, sun-toasted, the table was laid with ramekins of gherkins and tiny pickled onions, olives, trays of sausage and cheese, piles of pane carasau, thin crisp bread, drizzled with olive oil and a sprinkling of coarse sea salt. Mammas shooed their overgrown offspring towards the outdoor showers, hurrying them up. Fathers put their worlds to rights around the fire, passing around bottomless glasses of wine, clinking towards the embers whilst Bruno eased the flesh off the skewers and onto large trays of cork, with stems of wild myrtle upon it, letting the tender meat and its juices soak onto the fragrant platter. Ceramic troughs of culurgiones were paraded towards the hungry guests once everyone sat, at long last. The little pasta parcels, pinched-together dough in the shape of wheat, filled with creamy ricotta and spinach drizzled with fresh tomato sauce, arrived to cheers and clinks and the promise of happiness and wealth and health. The guests congratulated her parents’ generosity, their hospitality, oblivious to the fact that the person they appeared to be celebrating was their mute prisoner. The hypocrisy of this pounding celebration made Alba’s throat scratch. A swell of salty water popped in her ear.

      Dinner was an indeterminate age of gluttony. At last the watermelon arrived and the eaters stabbed the red flesh, poking out the seeds, some cutting perfect staircases of sweet crisp fruit, others vertical splices. Alba ate half of hers before the teenagers and younger adults were urged to leave the elders in peace and make trouble someplace else.

      ‘Come on, Alba, you’ll come out with us, right?’ Raffaele asked. ‘Please, God, don’t leave me with all these cool lot. It’s like sending me to purgatory. Dear God, don’t do that. They’ll all be eyeing up the girls in the square and jeering me on. I’d rather not commit social suicide without you beside me, si?’

      Raffaele filled her hand with his and led her from the table. They shuffled towards the back of the pack, slow stroll widening the gap between them and the group.

      ‘Have you thought about what we talked about?’ Alba asked.

      ‘You ask just to make me cry on the street in front of these lot?’

      Raffaele’s voice eased away from his nervous tempo. They walked a few silent steps, the scuff of the dusty white road underfoot, the streets dark save for sporadic streetlamps, surrounding bungalows alive with the clinks of other parties.

      He drew them to a stop in the dark between two streetlights.

      ‘I love no soul in the world more than you, Alba.’

      Alba swallowed.

      ‘It terrifies me to help you leave.’

      The cicadas’ warbled beat intensified. Alba smelled juniper and wild myrtle on the whisper of breeze. ‘It terrifies me to stay.’

      ‘What will I do?’

      ‘Follow your