‘Hi, this is Sam. I can’t come to the phone right now so please leave a message and I’ll get back to you.’
I end the call and kick the ground, a shower of pebbles marking my frustration.
‘Phoebe? Everything okay?’ Lisabeta looks over the terrace wall and instantly I feel ridiculous. I didn’t even know she was there. My face flushes as she navigates her way over the flowerbed and hops down onto the path.
‘Sorry, Lis.’
She nods at my phone. ‘Bad news?’
‘No. It might be.’
‘Like that, huh?’ My host takes off her work gloves and claps them together. A cloud of terracotta dust swirls into the air. ‘I’m popping to town to run some errands. You want to come? Coffee’s on me.’
‘You don’t like the coffee in town.’
Lis laughs. ‘I’ll risk it if cheers you up.’
When she puts it that way, how can I refuse?
The market is in full swing when we arrive, a giddying rush of colour, sound and aroma. I’ve seen so many markets this year but each one has had its own personality. Here the stallholders know Lisabeta so we are greeted like long-lost friends. It takes an hour to buy all the things she needs because each purchase comes with a slice of the latest gossip.
In a café at the edge of the market square we flop down at a table and order coffee and cinnamon sugar-dredged twists of fried dough that look like Mexican churros.
‘How are you now?’ Lis asks.
‘Better,’ I smile. ‘Thanks for bringing me.’
‘My pleasure. So, what happened earlier?’
‘I tried to call someone but they weren’t answering.’
Lis dunks a strip of doughnut in her espresso cup. ‘Your Scotsman?’
It always amuses me when she uses that name. ‘Sam, yes.’
‘Let me guess: you fell out.’
My expression must be easier to read than I thought. ‘Good guess.’
She laughs. ‘Let’s just say I recognised the signs. You know, Karl and I had to spend a year apart, not long after we met. He was two years older than me, so he went to study at Uppsala University. I was still at high school. And crazy though it sounds, twenty-five years ago not everybody had a mobile phone. I certainly didn’t.’
‘How often did you see him?’
‘During holidays. Never at weekends like my friends did with their boyfriends. In the meantime we kept in contact with letters and the occasional phone call.’
‘How did you cope?’
Her laugh garners smiles from customers gathered at a nearby table. ‘With a lot of misunderstanding and pointless arguments. I lost count of the number of times we’d run out of change for the payphone mid-conversation, or misread something in a letter. Everything took so much longer to resolve. And even your phone now, with all its clever technology, is really little better for showing you someone’s true reactions. Texts are misread, calls are cut off. It’s all the same.’
‘I spoke to Sam a week ago. I said something important and I don’t know if he heard me because our video call broke down. And now he isn’t answering his phone.’
She considers my predicament as she portions out the remainder of the doughnut sticks. The calls of the market float across to us on the warm breeze. ‘The only way you can ever know what someone’s true feelings are is to stand next to them and watch. It’s all the tiny little movements, the non-verbal communication our brain sees but our eyes don’t. The whole picture is what counts here. Text messages will never convey it fully. Calls can be misconstrued. Even video calls can be unreliable – as you’ve discovered.’
It should give me hope, but instead the distance between Sam and me stretches even further away. ‘So when will I know where he is on all of this?’
Lisabeta’s smile is sad. ‘When you breathe the same air and can see every flicker in each other’s expressions. In person. Not via a satellite or a screen. Until then, you just have to trust.’
It’s not what I wanted to hear. Do I trust Sam? And can I wait until he contacts me again to make sure he heard what I said about Frank?