SEVENTEEN

My sleep was interspersed with vivid sightings of Tyson. He was around every corner, running through every meadow. I could hear myself laughing as he bounded toward me, my arms outstretched ready to embrace him, but as he leaped up into them, a car came from nowhere and mowed him down. My own screaming woke me up.

“Ssh, it’s okay, it’s just a bad dream,” whispered Thomas as he wrapped his strong arms around me. My heart was racing, and my breathing came in short sharp pants as I struggled to get myself back around the right way.

“It’s okay,” he repeated over and over, and for a few moments I believed him, but then came the sudden rush of reality as the harsh facts presented themselves.

“But it’s not,” I cried. “It’s not okay.”

“I’ll deal with it tomorrow,” he said. “If that man’s got Tyson, I promise we’ll get him back.”

“And if he hasn’t?”

“I’ll get him back,” is the last thing I remember him saying, before I dozed off again.

He was gone by the time I woke up, my hand instinctively reaching down to the floor beside the bed, giving Tyson the sign that it was okay to jump up. I waited momentarily for my face to be licked or the unmistakable swish of an excitable tail going from side to side. It felt like I’d been punched when I remembered he wasn’t there. My body ached with yearning and I thought, as I so often do, about the passage of time. How so much can happen in twenty-four hours—in one hour—one minute. That’s all it takes for your whole world to turn on its axis. In just a moment, everything can change, and your life will never be the same again.


That’s how it had felt when my dad died suddenly. He’d uncharacteristically taken the day before off work, and we’d gone out on the boat—just the two of us. It was the most perfect day; the sun scorched in a bright blue sky and the light breeze worked in our favor as we sailed my namesake out onto the Solent. We had anchored off the coast of the Isle of Wight and called a tender to take us to one of Dad’s restaurants.

“How are you, my friend?” asked the head chef, Antonio, as he kissed Dad on both cheeks.

“Very good,” Dad had replied, his accent so much more Italian whenever he spoke to a fellow countryman. “I couldn’t be better.”

“And my, how you’ve grown,” Antonio said to me. “I remember you when you were down here.” I’d smiled as he’d held a hand out a few inches from the floor. “What are you now? Fifteen, sixteen?”

“Thirteen.” I’d giggled, secretly pleased that he thought I looked older.

Bellissima!” he said. “And Mrs. Russo? Is she not with you?”

“No, it’s just me and this one today,” Dad had said, ruffling my head as if I was three. I flattened my hair self-consciously. “Father and daughter time.”

If I had been cross with him for treating me like a child, it didn’t last long, as he poured the tiniest amount of white wine into one of the glasses set on the table.

“Don’t tell your mother,” he’d said, winking.

I remember the sun shining and Dad offering to swap seats because he had sunglasses and I didn’t. I remember the starched white table cloths and the smell of olive oil and garlic as bowls of seafood spaghetti wafted past us on their way to other diners. If it hadn’t been the last meal we shared, I doubt I’d be able to recall what we had, but because it was, I can see all too clearly my carbonara and Dad’s arrabbiata being set down before us.

“This is the life,” he’d said, as we tucked in. And it was. I couldn’t imagine having a better time.

“One day this will all be yours,” he’d continued, sweeping his arm over the packed veranda we were sat on. You couldn’t squeeze another table in if you tried. All of his restaurants, the one on the Isle of Wight and the four others on the mainland, were always fully booked, more often than not for months in advance.

“But I can’t cook,” I’d said, worrying that I wouldn’t be up to the job.

Dad laughed heartily. “When did you last see me in a kitchen?”

“You’re always in it at home,” I’d replied, confused.

“But I don’t go to work and cook, do I?”

I’d shrugged my shoulders.

“You just need to run the operation,” he’d said. “As long as the chefs can follow Grandma’s recipes, you’ll be fine.”

As always, Antonio had joined us for a drink after our meal and, as always, I’d spent their mostly Italian conversation fixated on watching the smoke rings he created.

I was fluent in Italian, but it was still an effort to keep up, and anyway, they were just talking shop, so I zoned out. Now, of course, I wished I’d concentrated on every word Dad spoke, no matter how boring I thought it was, because ever since, his is the only voice I yearn to hear.

The next morning, back home, he had woken up, made Mum a cup of tea, and collapsed on the kitchen floor with the teaspoon still in his hand. She’d tried to revive him, and the ambulance was quick to come, but it was already too late. He’d had a brain hemorrhage at just forty-nine.

The house had been full of people, even before I’d woken up, and I’d walked out onto the landing to cries and panic from the floor below. I knew something had happened, but it didn’t occur to me that it had anything to do with Dad. How could it? We’d just spent the best day together. He’d been perfectly normal, and he’d let me have some wine. It was our little secret. How could he no longer be there to share it?


My hand was still dangling down the side of the bed, ever hopeful of feeling Tyson, when my phone rang, making me jump. “Hot Guy” lit up the screen. I really had to change that.

“Hi,” he said tightly.

“What’s up?” I asked, immediately aware of his clipped tone.

“That man’s called again,” he said grimly. “I’ve got a good mind to call the police…”

“And say what? People offer rewards for their pets’ safe return all the time. It’s not a crime to take it.”

“But we didn’t offer a reward,” he said.

“No, but I would have done, if I’d thought about it. This guy’s obviously chancing his arm, but if he’s got Tyson, then I’ll happily pay whatever it takes to get him back.”

“He says he’s got him and wants two thousand pounds,” said Thomas.

“Do you believe him?” I asked.

“I think we should take him seriously, in the absence of anything else. I’ve got his address.”

“So, what should I do?” I asked, my voice wobbling. “What’s the next step? Should I get hold of the cash?”

“God no. I don’t want you turning up at some strange guy’s house with that kind of money on you.”

I gulped. “Me? You want me to go?”

“Well, no…” he faltered. “Not if you don’t feel comfortable.”

“Look, I know I’m asking a lot of you,” I said, “especially after everything you’ve done already, but would you mind going? You know Tyson—you’ll know if it’s him. I’ll give you the money and as soon as you’re happy, you can hand it over.”

It dawned on me how ridiculous it all sounded. “God, listen to us,” I went on. “It sounds like something out of a film!”

I still felt uneasy when we met outside the bank and I surreptitiously handed Thomas a brown envelope stuffed with a hundred twenty-pound notes. “I feel like I’m in the middle of a drugs bust,” I said, laughing nervously. But Thomas was rubbing at his chin, deep in thought.

“You sure you’re okay to do this?” I asked.

“Nothing will give me greater pleasure,” he said.

I saw a flicker of something cross his features, a tightening of his jawline, a blackness momentarily descend over his eyes. I’d not seen that look on him before.

“You won’t do anything silly, will you?” I said, feeling unsettled.

“Of course not,” he replied, a little too quickly.

Unconvinced, I waited by the phone, eager for news. I didn’t know what I was more nervous about; it not being Tyson, or Thomas discovering that it was all a ruse and decking the guy.

When it rang, I said a quick Hail Mary on both fronts.

“I’ve got him,” said Thomas.

My hand flew to my mouth in relief and my chest seemed to cave in as it rid itself of the stress and anxiety I’d been holding within it.

“Oh, thank God,” I cried. “Was it okay? Any problems?”

There was a long enough pause to make me think that all was not well and panic gripped me once again.

“By the time I got there, the bloke said he wouldn’t hand him over for a penny less than three grand.”

“Oh,” I said, more concerned about where Thomas had got the extra thousand from than having to pay more to get Tyson back. No amount of money would have been too high a price.

“So suffice to say, the idiot lost out. He should have stuck to his original price, because his audacity pissed me off so much that he only ended up with a thousand.”

“Is that all he ended up with?” I asked cautiously.

“I’ll drop him back shortly,” he said, ignoring the question.

The knock at the door came just after seven, and I raced toward it, narrowly avoiding the chewed-up ball that Tyson loved to play with. To see him there with Thomas on the doorstep, his tail wagging, made my heart feel as if it was about to burst.

I beamed as Tyson leaped up to greet me. “Where have you been?”

I fell to the floor as he whirled about like a dervish, not knowing whether to jump onto me, nuzzle my hair, or lick my face.

“Thank you,” I said, looking up at Thomas. “Thank you so much.”

“I’m sorry that it cost you so much to get him back,” he said.

“I would have paid much more,” I said, laughing, as I ruffled Tyson behind the ears. “You coming in?”

“No, I need to go and see my mum.” He looked down at the ground and I felt as if I should say something. He’d not divulged any information about his background or his family—mind you, neither had I.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said, slipping the envelope, with what looked like the surplus cash, onto the hall table before leaning in to pull me up.

“I can’t thank you enough,” I whispered, our faces almost touching.

“I’m just so happy that I was able to get him back for you.”

His lips brushed mine and I so desperately wanted him to stay. If it hadn’t been his mother he was going to see, I would have done everything in my power to convince him to. I was that close to letting him know how I felt, regardless of the consequences. If he ran in the opposite direction then so be it, but I needed to get across the effect he was having on me because it was unlike anything I’d ever felt before.


When he didn’t call the next day, and the weekend had been spent staring at the phone, willing it to ring, I convinced myself I’d done something terribly wrong. What had I said? Nothing, yet. But the power of the unspoken word should never be underestimated. Had he known what I was about to say? Was he scared that I wanted to take our relationship one step further? I didn’t know what that was yet, but I couldn’t let him go. Though perhaps, in not saying something, I already had.

“Are you sure he’s not married?” asked Maria in the pub after work.

“I have absolutely no idea,” I said, having wondered the very same thing the night before.

“Would you carry on seeing him if you found out he was?”

“Absolutely not,” I said, taking umbrage that she even needed to ask. “I would never cross that line and besides, that isn’t the type of relationship I’m looking for.”

“What type of relationship are you looking for?” she asked. “Because, honestly, right now, it seems that this one is based on sex.”

“But it’s really good sex, M,” I sighed.

Maria rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t suppress a grin. “You can’t allow that to cloud your judgment,” she said. “There’s more to a relationship than mind-blowing orgasms.”

I raised my eyebrows as if questioning the validity of her statement. “Is there?”

“A relationship cannot survive on sex alone; it has to have something more. You need to be compatible in life, not just in bed.”

“We’re harmonious in many ways,” I said. “We talk…”

“A few postcoital words do not constitute a conversation,” she said, laughing.

“We’ve got something deeper than that. Well, at least I thought we had.”

“Does he know that?”

I pulled an apologetic face.

“Oh great,” she said, lifting her hands in frustration. “So you’re now pining like a love-sick puppy for a man who doesn’t even know that you’ve fallen for him. Have you gone this long without speaking before?”

I nodded.

“So, nothing’s changed apart from how you feel. And just because you’ve now decided you want more, he’s supposed to jump to?”

I nodded meekly.

“Jeez, the poor man’s not telepathic, Beth!”

“I know, I know,” I said. “I will talk to him, if I ever get the chance.”

She took hold of my hand. “Listen, this may not be what you want to hear at the moment, but I’m being serious when I say there has to be more to a relationship than—”

“I understand your concern,” I said, patting her hand like my grandmother used to do to me.

“Stop taking the piss,” she laughed, pulling it away.

“You’d be surprised how intellectually stimulating we find each other as well.”

“I’ll bet,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“I mean it!” I exclaimed. “We’ve spoken at length about the value of wine, its investment potential, and the upsides to repack sales.”

She looked at me blankly. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“Aha! See? We’re connecting on a far more cerebral level than you give us credit for.”

I thought it wise not to mention that straight after said conversation, he’d almost made me climax on a packed train.

My phone rang, and smiling, I showed Maria that “Hot Guy” was ringing. “Looks like it’s time for my bootie call,” I said, as she choked on her wine.

“Well, if you’re remotely serious about this guy, I suggest you change that to his actual name.”

“Hey, it’s me,” he said, as I stuck out my tongue at Maria.

“Me?” I queried, letting him believe that he could be one of a hundred.

“Do you have many men’s faces buried between your legs?” he asked.

Touché.

Still, I stayed silent for a few seconds, as if waiting for the penny to drop. “Oh, hi,” I said, eventually. “How are you?”

I thought I heard him snigger. “I’m good, how are you? How’s Tyson doing after his little adventure?”

“He’s all good,” I said. “Thanks to you, he doesn’t seem any the worse for it, as far as I can see. What’s going on with you?”

“I was just sitting here thinking about you and I wondered if you were around tonight to hook up?”

“Tonight?” I repeated, for Maria’s benefit, though I immediately regretted it as the voice of reason was shaking her head and wagging her finger at me. “Er, I can’t really do anything tonight. I’m in the pub with my friend Maria.”

“How late will you be?” he said. “I could meet you afterward.”

There was a very real flip in my stomach at the idea of “hooking up.” It must have been written all over my face as Maria rolled her eyes theatrically and threw her arms into the air in exasperation.

“Why don’t you come here?” I said, throwing a curveball, not thinking for a second that he’d knock it out the park. Maria’s eyes widened and she looked down at herself before shaking her head.

“Sure, where are you?”

Oh. My. God, I mouthed to Maria, as I ran a background check of myself in my head. What underwear did I have on? When did I last shave my legs? Was the flat tidy?

“We’re in the Tiger’s Head in Woking,” I said, my voice belying the panic in my head. “The one overlooking the green.”

“Okay, I’ll be there in around forty minutes,” he said.

“Cool, see you then.”

“Well, you played hard to get,” said Maria after I’d hung up. “And now you’ve thrown me under the bus as well. Look at the state of me.”

“You look gorgeous,” I said, fluffing up her dark curls. “Anyway, I thought you weren’t about all that superficial bollocks. It’s not about looks and physical attraction, Maria. God, you’re so shallow.”

She swiped me across the arm, probably all too aware that I was only taking the mickey out of her to stop myself from spontaneously combusting with excitement.

“Oh, so he’s here then,” she said a little while later. I briefly marveled at how she knew when she had her back to the door, but I realized my wide grin must have given the game away.

“Hi,” I said, way too overenthusiastically. I leaned up to kiss his cheek, but he turned and gave me a kiss on the lips. “This is Maria.”

“Pleased to meet you,” he said, offering his hand. She looked a little miffed that she wasn’t getting a kiss and I had to suppress a giggle.

“You too,” she said, in her clipped telephone voice.

Two bottles of wine later and Maria’s ancestral Scottish lilt was beginning to make itself heard. My accent, on the other hand, had apparently become more Italian, as Maria had laughingly observed.

“So, you’re in the wine business, eh?” she asked Thomas. “How much would this…” She took a look at the label. “So, how much would this Merlot be?”

He smiled as she pronounced the T. “Well, this bottle wouldn’t be worth more than you paid for it, other than you’d expect to pay twenty pounds more in a restaurant and five pounds less in a supermarket.”

“So, where’s the big money angle? Cos me and my Jimmy would be up for some of that.”

I looked at her and rolled my eyes. She and Jimmy barely made it through the month, but maybe that was all the more reason to invest.

“Well, it’s all about the fine wines,” he said. “Their values increase and decrease, and you just have to know when’s the right time to buy and sell, much like stocks and shares I suppose. But this is much more of a dead cert than the London Exchange could ever be.”

“So, we’d be buying wine?” asked Maria.

“Yes, but not to drink.” He laughed. “You’d keep it in a safe place, in optimum temperatures, until you wanted to sell it. All of my clients make over a two hundred percent return, minimum.”

“But who would we sell to?” she asks, her expression confused.

“Well, you’d normally sell it to the highest bidder, and because I’ve always got clients who are looking to invest large sums of money, I’m normally able to outbid anyone else because I’ve got people lined up who want it.”

She gave me a nudge in the ribs. “So, we wouldn’t really need to do anything, your ‘hot guy’ would do it all for us.”

“O-kay, it’s time to go,” I said, not wanting Maria’s loose tongue to reveal any more secrets.

She wound her window down as she got in her taxi. “You two lucky ducks go and have a fun time,” she said, blowing us kisses. “Go give each other multiple orgasms.”

I turned to Thomas, wide-eyed and laughing. “I am so sorry. She has an alcohol threshold that should never be crossed.”

“Don’t worry,” he laughed, pulling me toward him. He took my breath away as he kissed me, his hands entwined in my hair. He almost knew to support me as my knees threatened to buckle. “So, what about it?” he whispered into my ear.

“What about what?” I asked, breathlessly, not wanting him to stop.

“Let’s go give each other multiple orgasms.”