The lovely Tuscany golden terracotta rambling house, under the Tuscany morning sun, seemed empty now that the children had gone. A special visit to celebrate her seventy-first birthday. Celebrate? How Eve begrudged each year as her precious sands flowed through her fast-emptying hourglass. Each time they left, she wondered whether next time they came it would be for her funeral. Not that she felt ready to go, never had a day’s illness in her life, but she was getting old.
Give me fifteen more years and I’ll go quietly. Now that most of her life was gone, she wanted to stay alive more than she had ever wanted to. To see Josh growing up. One expected to feel strong emotions for one’s children, but to feel such passion for grandchildren… and now a great-grandchild… that was something she had never expected.
‘Grandma?’ She would never forget Fergus’s exulted voice down the telephone. ‘Grandma, you’ve got a great-grandson. Eight pounds eight ounces, bald as a coot and noisy as all Hell – Joshua. Montague.’ Fergus had an unsentimental feeling for family and history. In naming his first child he had remembered the old man who had been dead long before he was born.
‘Thank you, Fergus.’
‘No problem, Gran – any time.’
‘Lucky little Joshua – having a Dad like you.’
‘I’ll bet you say that to all your grandsons.’
How the year had flown since then. She had never forgotten how endless her own firstborn’s first year had been. How angst-ridden. Poor Melanie had had the worst of it. How had she ever managed to produce such a prize as Fergus, who had had the masculine charm of Eve’s own father but not a trace of the old devil’s nature – thank God?